On Friday, a Tesla club in Italy announced that they had driven a Tesla Model S 100D 670 miles on a single charge — a new record distance.
Tesla Owners Italia tweeted the news Friday with a photo of the vehicle display and a small explanation: “1078 km - 669.83 miles with Tesla ModelS 100D in a single charge by Tesla Owners Italy-Ticino-San Marino #teslarecord.”
Based on the photo of the display, it took 98.4 kWh of energy to go 670 miles, nearly double the usual efficiency of a Model S, which is 300 Wh/mi. For a watts per mile explanation, check out this forum.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk celebrated the accomplishment on Twitter Saturday, announcing that it was a new record for electric cars. “Congratulations Tesla Owners Italia!!” he said.
Before you get too excited about the idea of driving a new Model S far distances on a single charge, it’s important to factor in that this milestone was accomplished using a technique known as hypermiling. When hypermiling, a driver is attempting to get maximum mileage out of their car no matter what. In the case of this exercise, according to electrek’s calculations, the vehicle was probably driven at around 23 miles an hour for 29 hours straight.
It is still an exciting metric, however, because it shows just how far you can push electric cars if you really want to focus on charge efficiency. The EPA’s official range rating for the Model S with the 100D battery is significantly lower than what was achieved by Tesla Owners Italia:
- City range: 331.1 miles
- Highway range: 337.2 miles
- Combined range: 335 miles
Before Friday, the last record for the longest EV cruise belonged to Steven Peeters and Joeri Cools of Belgium, who managed to get 560 miles out of a Model S.
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