This is a continual post for the First day and the Second day of the Berlin – Amsterdam – Berlin roadtrip with Tesla Model S.
All good things come to an end. The day at Amsterdam was great, but now it was time to continue the road and driving back to Germany and Berlin. The last day began with a route around one of the biggest things ever made by man, the IJsselmeer lake. To reach the 32 km long dam we drove north the motorway A7. From there we continued to Zwolle Supercharger.
I have already written a post about the first day on the road, from Germany towards Amsterdam. We didn’t drive the whole route at once, but stayed at German side for the night.
The second day was about to take us to Netherlands and Amsterdam.
The morning began interestingly: The host of our AirBnB -place was so interested in Tesla, we decided to take a drive together to nearby bakery to get the breakfast.
Hohenwarsleben Supercharger, near Magdeburg. The first charge on the route.
Driving the Tesla Model S isn’t a new thing. The car was introduced 2011 in US, four years ago. If Model S would be a normal car, it would have had a facelift already.
But it’s not a normal car. It’s still hugely expensive, and the only car to make over 300 kilometers with one charge. And it’s the only car to have Europe-wide, actually working high speed charging network. And you need both to make long road trips.
I’m definitely not the first one to drive the Model S from Berlin to Amsterdam and back, in four days. But for some moments it felt like that. People asked questions like “what is this car, never seen it before?”, “Oh it’s electric! How far can you go with one charge?” One German fellow seemingly refused to believe the charging is free, but wanted to be polite and not question my words. The third question in the row was of course: “How long it takes to charge it?”.
But I’m happy to answer the questions and discuss the cars. Specially the electric cars.
Last fall I had really nice road tour at southern Germany and Austria with a friend and Tesla Model S. Then the plan was to test not only the car and Tesla Supercharger network, but also the local Smatrics operator. Sure there was some issues, but everything went well. The lesson we learned was clear: In case you really want to travel long distances with Model S, specially with kids, you need to be able to rely on Superchargers. So no Superchargers – no roadtrip.
This time I’m actually travelling with kids. This brings the special flavor to driving: We simply cannot take 12 hours leg from A to B. We cannot charge in the middle of nowhere for hours. There needs to be breaks, ice-cream, playgrounds, Lego’s, zoos and so on.
In case you haven’t read about Toroidion, the one megawatt supercar yet, you really should. It’s a new Finnish supercar manufacturer, about to present the 1000 kw (about 1300 bhp) supercar in Monaco, April.
The CEO Pasi Pennanen has revealed they actually have invented something new with drivetrain. I’m curious to give my guess about the car.
Drivetrain is built with batteries, power electronics, the motors, gearboxes and software controlling each and all of them.
Refuelling at Gävle Bro, just couple of hunder meters from Tesla Supercharger.
BMW i3 is an electric car. In so many ways it’s something different compared to other electric vehicles there on the roads.
I had a chance to test drive the car for two days on Swedish cities and highways. The trip began from Arlanda airport, somewhere in the middle of Stockholm and Uppsala. Why, my Swedish friends, did you build that airport so far away from your capital??
Luckily the Swedish have also built a high speed (and high cost) rail connection to Stockholm, and the Germans have brought their Sixt car rental service just next to main train station.
Last year I also took a trip with Tesla Model S in Germany and Austria.
The i3 waited for me at the parking hall. What a beautiful sight it was. Clean black and white cover, big 19″ wheels… The interior of i3 is distinct and simple. The center console is absent and the floor is flat. Makes it easier to move inside the car if needed.
Last November we took a three day trip to Germany and Austria with Tesla Model S. The roadtrip was filled with interesting scenery, Tesla Superchargers, Smatrics network and Autobahns, with P85 Model S. After this I’ve been winter testing the performance of Nissan Leaf in Finland.
About a year ago I had strong believe and high hopes for BMW to bring the i3 to Finland before end of 2014. Well, this didn’t turn out, so it’s time to take the roadtrip abroad, again.
This time it’s Sweden and BMW i3. There’s maybe also some i8 and Tesla on the same trip. Travelling days are 6th and 7th of February.
Last summer we had a plan to go to Germany and Switzerland with Tesla Model S. The initial plan didn’t work out, but the idea stayed. With Tesla there is also couple of other things: you can’t supercharge or drive the Tesla really fast in Finland, so this had to be done somewhere else.
Germany has the autobahns, superchargers and relatively cheap flights to take there. And they also had the Caro car rental company to rent the Tesla with reasonable pricing. This thing had to be done! We decided to drive as much for three days as it is possible. Everything was done to maximize the driving.
Some months ago I wrote taking a roadtrip in Europe is difficult. Now, Saturday tomorrow the trip is actually becoming a reality. The flight takes us to Munich, Germany, where we’re about to rent the Tesla Model S and drive through Austria for three days. Back to Finland on Monday.
For trip we have three basic charging solutions. The fastest and cheapest is of course the Tesla Superchargers. There’s one in Aichstetten Germany, St. Anton Austria, Salzburg Austria and Irschenberg Germany. These chargers actually dictate a lot of the route.
First we’ll drive by Aichstetten to Lake Boden. The road is Autobahn and there’s no speed limits. This will be interesting part of the route, as we’re able to really test the performance of Model S. From Boden through the mountain roads 198 and 200 to St. Anton. Staying overnight there.
This one is taken from backstage, with a narrow view to stage. The blue blurred colour on the left is construction of stage lightning and wall.
Hi there! The Reaktor Design Day and Dev Day are over for this year, what a cool events they were! My job there was to take photographs, just like I have done before. There is a post of the previous set too.
This time the set was very much the like the previous one: The same venue, almost the same floor layout of the event, pretty much the same kind of activities for breaks.
The sister of e-Golf is the new plug-in hybrid Golf GTE.
Thanks to local Volkswagen in Finland, I had a chance to test drive the Volkswagen e-Up and e-Golf couple of weeks ago. I wrote couple of posts right away in Finnish, here and here.
But now it’s time for some Londonish post.
To really understand the whole point of Volkswagen e-Golf, we first need to discuss the Golf in general. VW Golf is not just another car. It’s a complete definition and culture of German engineering skills. It’s the greatest middle-class car ever invented. Toyota Corolla or Auris is compared to Golf, and nothing else.
There’s also fast charging option with 40 kW CCS.
The electrification of Golf is massively important to Volkswagen. With e-Golf Volkswagen says they essentially can and will make cars not just gas or diesel driven, but also natural gas, electric and electric-gasoline hybrid (the GTE Golf). And not just any car, but the one and only Golf.
So how does e-Golf perform? Very well. It’s clear Volkswagen has tested and tried every cable, bult and piece of this car before the launch. They simply cannot afford to fail.
If you are looking for surprises or some magical feel in e-Golf, you’re probably going to be disappointed. The car is very much like any other Mk7 Golf, it just happens to be electric. Or maybe it’s little more silent. And maybe the response to pushing down the pedal is more instant.
e-Golf shares the very same MQB-platform as any other Golf, or the future VW Passat or Skoda Octavia. So be ready for plug-in Passats and all-electric Octavias too.
Holidays are finally here! This summer our family did the long waited road trip to Southern Europe and the Alps. Specially Munich area in Germany and Northern Switzerland.
Would it be possible to do it electric? And if not, why?
It’s time for my second infograph about electric mobility. First one was about EV Charging technology. What do you like? Please comment via Twitter: twitter.com/TuomasSauliala
Finnish software consulting company Reaktor combined forces with the world famous game company Supercell to bring us the Hello World Open – the first world championships of coding. The event was held at Kaapelitehdas, Helsinki, and I was there to convert the happening to still images (ie. photographing).
I can’t even remember when I entered my gmail-address to the Younited.com webpage to get a spot of this new app. As everybody knows, the internet is filled with all sorts of services to spend your time, money, and not get you anywhere. But Younited is different. It is made by F-Secure, and somehow I trust the company.
I happened to find the Foundation web-framework when I began to develop this blog I now have. The Foundation had come up with version 4, a mobile-first responsive framework dropping the IE8-support.
Slush, the main event, is over for this year. I just got home, kids to bed and it’s time to wonder all things happened during these two days.
The nice people of Nokia gave me a one month trial period of the Nokia 1020 -cameraphone. My actual phone is Lumia 820, so the Windows Phone 8 is already familiar to me. I had a nice chance to focus in camera only, instead of trying to figure out how to use the phone effectively.
I’m taking part to the Slush event, held at Helsinki next November. I’m a really small player there, doing the thing I know pretty well – the photography. But the game isn’t small at all, it’s going to be huge.
Finnish software company Reaktor organized for third year a row the Devday at Helsinki, Finland. And for this year, there was also for the first time the Designday. This equals some hundreds of people, mostly young software professionals gathering together.
Then there’s me, as a photographer, taking pictures for these two events.
