This Is Italy
We receive a lot of questions from people who are considering driving to Italy with their electric car. Is that possible? What about charging points along the way? And if you have to be a little further in Italy than in the north? That is why we asked experts in this field to share their experiences. Marc is speaking.
In July 2019 the time had finally come. I had ordered my Tesla Model 2,5 3 years earlier and now it was neatly delivered to my home on a trailer.
Because I no longer felt responsible for the consumption of my previous car with a V8 engine, I drove a somewhat slow, hybrid Lexus CT 200h for so long. A CT 200h is actually a luxury Prius that you cannot charge, but which does offer electrical support and which therefore uses fuel more efficiently.
That is quite significant if you regularly drive from the Netherlands to Italy and vice versa. The distance to our house near Perugia in Umbria is about 1.600 kilometers.
We usually do this in 2 days with a stopover in Switzerland. The journey is very doable outside the holiday season, but in the busy summer months or in winter, with the risk of snow, it can be a tough ride.
The car would lead me. they said
I had driven a Tesla Model S before, but I had no practical experience with electric charging. During my first charging session at the Supercharger towards Italy, I accosted some Tesla drivers. They were without exception helpful and enthusiastic. I didn't have to worry about the drive to Italy, the car would lead me.
I entered my final destination and the Tesla immediately calculated the entire journey, including stops at Superchargers. Still a little uneasy, I set off. How reliable was this information? What if something went wrong or if the chargers were defective? What about payment?
The cheese fondue was more expensive than the entire drive to Italy.
My fears gradually turned out to be completely unfounded. The computer adjusted the charging points along the way, because consumption in Germany was significantly higher. But each time the calculations turned out to be very accurate. Near the charging point the car started to preheat the battery and once arrived you only had to plug in the cable. Payment was made automatically via the app.
The Superchargers are either located at horrible shopping centers with a McDonald's or an erotic shop (Germany) or in very nice places just off the highway (Italy, Switzerland).
Electric driving to Italy in practice
The only disadvantage in Italy is that you have to get off the toll road, because there are no Superchargers there. But they are never far away and there is always good food and excellent espresso nearby! The stopover in Switzerland turned out to be at our regular hotel in Beckenried, where coincidentally there was a Supercharger in front of the door! The cheese fondue was more expensive than the entire drive to Italy, but the next morning I was able to get on the road again with a full battery.
In practice it works as follows: you drive away from home with a full battery. You stop 2 or 3 times for half an hour to charge to 80% and upon arrival at the hotel you charge to 100%. The next day follows the same pattern. After 2,5 hours of driving you usually feel like stretching your legs, peeing or switching drivers. From experience I can say that the travel time is just as long as with an old-fashioned car and is actually more relaxing.
And in the deep south of Italy?
At our house in Monte Castello di Vibio, our electrician Ennio had now installed a Tesla Wall Connector under the carport with solar panels. Experience showed that we could actually always charge the car at home. The distance to Rome or Spoleto and back can be covered on one full battery. And there are plenty of Superchargers on the road to Milan, at Arezzo, Florence and Modena.
It will come as no surprise that there are plenty of chargers in the north of Italy, but does that also apply to the south? And what about the islands? When I was in Sardinia and Sicily (2020 and 2022 respectively) there were no Tesla Superchargers on either island. You had to rely on the ENEL network and the associated broken app. I wasn't sure...
ENEL's network is, strangely enough, quite extensive and it is theoretically possible to charge your electric car throughout Italy. The problem is that the chargers are often in inexplicable places and not at a restaurant, in a parking lot near the city center.
Well along a country road the middle of nowhere. After some time we found the concealed charging station in Sardinia. We walked 10 minutes to a restaurant along the road. We had to spend quite some time, because the capacity of this charging station was appalling. Anyway, we were able to move on and at least had a working charger near our hotel.
In Sicily we were able to charge the car overnight at our rented house. That went slowly, but after a night you will have sufficient capacity again. Sicily is a large island, so to get back from Palermo we really had to recharge in the city.
We searched for a long time for the charger, which turned out to be disguised as a gas tank. It didn't seem like the charger was used much. The app then asked to scan the QR code, which could not be found. This turned out to be at knee height and virtually unreadable due to sun exposure. Here too, loading took longer than desired, but we wandered around the suburbs and found an ice cream parlor where I had the tastiest brioche with ice cream ate out of my life.
There are now two Superchargers on the islands: in Sardinia in Oristano and Olbia, in Sicily in Palermo and Catania. The rest of Italy already had good coverage and now the islands are also well supplied. During the first few years I rarely saw another Tesla and had the Superchargers to myself. Nowadays they are also open to other brands and the whole of Italy can be reached without problems with any electric car.
Have you ever driven to Italy with an electric car?
Text and photos by Marc van der Aart. He wrote the book 'From Brooklyn to Boerenland' and lived in Monte Castello di Vibio (Umbria) for 7 years.
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