Elon Musk would be certainly happy with this news coming in from Italy where a Tesla Owners Club set a new record of covering the longest distance on a single charge last weekend. The Tesla Model S P100D by the Italia club travelled an impressive 1,078 kilometers on a single charge and became the first members to drive any production electric vehicle over 1,000 kms on a single charge. The previous record stood at about 900 km. Digital Trends reports that it took the drivers 29 hours to cover a distance of 1078 km , the route was planned in advance and went through the suburban roads of Salerno in southern Italy. The Tesla Model S was a regular production car that featured standard low rolling resistance tires and the drivers ensured that car stayed running for as long as possible. The average speed of their trip was as fast as 40 kmph and the club also ensured that he AC was kept off for the entire journey. The club stated that it wanted to maintain a “smooth driving approach.” The goal of the trip was understand the ease of transitioning from fossil fuels to alternative and sustainable power sources.
Our hyper miler 100D during the record #teslarecord pic.twitter.com/HZcwCy0ShA
— Tesla Owners Italia (@TeslaOwnersIT) August 4, 2017
Tesla’s autonomous driving system also helped in achieving this longer range. One of the drivers Rosario Pingaro mentioned that, “Autonomous driving system helped us to keep a constant speed in the middle of the lane.”
“To complete the 1078 km record distance, we used 98.4 kW/h of electricity, which is equivalent to 8 liters of gas (or 3.78 gallons),” said Tesla Owners Club Italia President Luca Del Bo. Elon Musk too congratulated the club and tweeted “Officially verified as the first production electric car to exceed 1000km on a single charge,” the Tesla founder wrote. “Congratulations Tesla Owners Italia!!”
