Last weekend my wife and I flew to Germany for Easter and owning an EV at home we rented a Model 3 at Hertz in Frankfurt for the trip. I’ve been toying with renting an EV for our last few European trips and finally decided to try it. We flew from Montreal to Frankfurt.
Our drive would be Frankfurt to Berlin, Berlin to Dresden, Dresden to Colditz then to Stuttgart and back to Frankfurt.
Without going into too much detail here is a breakdown.
Yes you can absolutely 100% a roadtrip with an EV in Germany. While the Tesla supercharger network is flawless you also have offerings from Ionity, Fastned and a few others. Hertz bills all supercharging at the end of your rental to your CC so no need for a Tesla account. The shell recharge dongle included with the keycard is pretty useless as we could never find a shell with a DCFC over 50kw. I used one Ionity charge point and the app was very easy to use and charge speeds over 150kw. However for stress free voyage stick with Superchargers.
Being a President’s Circle member at Hertz meant we just walked up to the car (knew 24hrs before what bay it was at) got in and drove off. The lot attendant was offering a new EQS as an upgrade.
I’ve had some experience with Model 3s but never anything over a few days. I must say we really enjoyed it… so much so that it’s No.1 on the list for EV No.2. Very comfortable for long drives, stable at high speeds(Frequently topped out on unrestricted autobahns) and handled great. Only annoying part was the random update for 45 mins that decided to start and me blowing by an exit for a supercharger leaving us having to use a random chargepoint in a small town to top up.
I figure we had to stop every 2.5-3hours to use a supercharger to top up which is fine considering the speeds we were travelling at. Example Frankfurt to Berlin required 2 stops. One was for lunch so a complete scratch and the second was for 7 mins which I did 14 mins to have a “buffer” The café at that location was really good.
In the end a 4 day rental was 149€ plus 80€ for going over the included KMs and around 130€ in supercharging plus the 22€ at Ionity.
Would I do it again? 100% We enjoyed the car and the charge stops were nice to stretch our legs or get a drink. Pretty much everyone we know was laughing saying we would get stuck, they laugh at us at home anyways… I think I could have made this trip with the Mercedes EQS the lot attendant was also offering but knew the Tesla would be hassle free. Next time!
Here are some photos Here are some photos https://imgur.com/a/YvcaKzi
