Galway to Romania in 2019 M3P

Saturday morning around 8am off the ferry in Calais, through France, Belgium, (short entry to Netherlands for a S/C), Germany

Urmond, Netherlands, red looks good on a Model 3 but somehow I still prefer the white. I find that in anything than perfect conditions - sunny, car spotlessly clean - red and blue can look dull on them.

40 stall S/C in Oberhonnefeld, Germany

Driving in Germany is great, from stories I thought lots of the unlimited Autobahns would be limited, but there's lots of unlimited stretches... Yes there are limited parts with temporary yellow markings with narrower lanes, but I feel the car needed those to cool down after the 200+km/h speeds. The limited

stretches felt like driving behind the pace car, with the sign

marking the start of the race. On the initial acceleration, I was pulling away from 'ze germans', moving right after 200km/h and they would overtake, once their steam pressure built up (I mean their turbos spooled up)😀. Of the cars driving faster than me on the unlimited stretches, 80% Bmws, 10% Merc and Audi, 10% an assortment of Porsche (a Cayenne was so close to my back bumper I could see the eye color of the driver, at 200+km/h, while overtaking cars doing 180km/h in the lane to the right), and exotics.

I made probably 10+ accelerations to over 200km/h, with max reached 228, but the Autobahn in that part wasn't the smoothest and was afraid to push any further (to the car's max of 261), maybe I'll get the chance on the way back.

Autopilot only works up to 150km/h, still great... While taking bends in the road at that speed it felt like a very slight ping-ponging, not touching the lane markers, but feeling in the steering wheel, as if some component was slightly lose, and it kept correcting one way, then the other. Very slight, not sure if it's a known issue, or it's just the limits of the current technology and components?

The last stretch in Germany and all the way through Austria it started raining and was getting dark. I was trusting autopilot 100%, mostly cruised at 140km/h on the speedometer through Austria.

Then Hungary, 3 S/C with free charging (I think it's because the war in Ukraine Elon made them free for a while), about a 60 euro saving, not huge, but better than a kick in the nutz I suppose.

I made the mistake of following the navigation through the middle of Budapest, it was the shortest route, but my god the roads are awfully bad, no potholes as such, just the surface seemed very old and maybe mostly concrete, and bumps had formed every 10-20m, first time I regretted the hard suspension on the M3P. On the way back I'll make sure to skip going through Budapest.

Public charging situation in Romania: state-owned stations are free, and with the many Dacia Springs sold here, they are mostly occupied (maybe not at night, haven't checked), max 50kw DC, some 20kw DC.

There are a few privately owned charging networks, best I found is https://rnvapp.e-charge.ro/ for 50c/kwh, they have a few chargers dotted around the country, and especially good they have VAG-group placed chargers, from 75kw to 150kw, all the rest I found are 50kw max.

There are a few Tesla S/C in Timisoara, Sibiu, Pitesti, Bucuresti and Constanta, with one planned in Cluj, once that's built, I wouldn't have need for these other networks.

The car is a pleasure to drive, now I can't wait for the drive back.... crazy to say. It's just so effortless in the way it makes progress, that the hours fly by.

And then there's the Germany Autobahn 😍

Almost went to Greece for a week, but for the lack of a VLC didn't want to risk exiting the EU - apparently roads are better and mostly motorway through Serbia and Macedonia, compared to Bulgaria, which is in the EU, but rumor is that there's a higher chance that police will try and do you for insignificant technicalities, even if untrue - apologies to any Bulgarians if this is not true.

Replacement VLC arrived in Galway 10 hours after the planned departure date, so I have a picture of it...

So this week am relaxing in the Carpathian Mountains, around Bran Castle. There's a 25kw DC charger 10 mins walk away, need an app called Plugpoint and it's 34c/kWh and 20c/hr parking. Day after tomorrow will juice up again at Sibiu supercharger - will try and make it under 10% to get around 30€ of free electricity, on the way back to Cluj for the final week.

Watching Bjorn's video

I'm having second thoughts on the new model Y, seems autopilot only works up to 140km/h (vision only, compared to 2019 Model 3 that also has radar and goes to 150) and high beam assistant is awful...

Back in Galway...

@kanuseeme a few additional points:

The charge stats in the Tesla app are for the last 31days, so it includes about 6 days driving in Ireland before the holiday.

I assume supercharger costs are exact, and Hungary and Romanian superchargers are free, as mentioned before. I also charged at some free local chargers that appear as 'other' in the app, and some not free that are also included in the 'other', but as a percentage of the total energy used, it's quite insignificant.

Finally, total energy in the trip computer does not include sentry mode being used, or any climate being left on dog mode, or cooling the car down a few minutes before getting in, or the cabin overheat protection kicking in... We got some hot temperatures, up to 38 degrees some days.

"High beam assistant is intentionally like that, as it's doing it's best to help out an under-specced sensor suite."

I discovered that high beam assistant can be disabled, not sure if it was like this from the beginning or Tesla added the ability to disable it in a later update, but I'm glad the option is there even on my 2019 car, it was pretty dire.

"You mention in your first post that it would have taken 3x as much time without Autopilot. I assume that you mean AP allows you to relax while the car takes most of the work? So where you could normally do say 4 hours solid driving in a day, AP lets you do 12 hours?"

Yes, mostly the fact you don't have to actively flex the muscles to steer the car, you may think it's not much, but try it for 10+ hours and see how it feels.

Still relating to keeping in lane, most of the mental processing to do that is taken away, you can be less focused on that and just keep an eye on abnormal lane markings that autopilot might interpret incorrectly.

You always keep hands on steering wheel, so even when autopilot jerks suddenly, it's not much of an effort to strengthen your grip for a second to keep it in line, then go back to being relaxed.

On the way over, biggest physical issue was my elbows resting in the same place for long periods of time, on the way back, I learned how to change arm positions so it wasn't an issue, and the biggest problem was neck and upper back muscles becoming a little bit sore, from the long hours of the head moving from side to side, normal movement while driving, but again, try that for 10+ hours a day.

Previous to this, longest drive was Galway to Belfast, so maybe if you do long drives regularly or are a professional driver, these issues won't affect you

"You then go on to day "Autopilot behaved impeccably the whole way through, with 3 exceptions:". But those three exceptions were all the car jerking the wheel without warning, not just disabling itself and slowing down. Personally, I do a lot of driving, but I'd really struggle to do 300% of my normal maximum, in a car that was ready to bite at any point like that."

Of the 3 exceptions, only the dotted lines in Wales surprised me a little bit, but it wasn't hard to keep the car in line.

So I went on this trip with no VLC, I applied for a replacement before going, and had a picture of the new one about a week in.

On the way over, no one asked for the VLC, only 2 passport checks were in Dover before the ferry, and the Hungary-Romania border.

On the way back, both Romanian and Hungarian border officers asked for the VLC 😳

Apparently it's a contravention to travel without one in Romania, and wouldn't even look at the picture of the VLC on my phone.

Anyway, I was very apologetic, brought up the "security risk of travelling with the VLC" , was prepared to show bank statements of paying for the car...

Got away with no fine this time...👍🏽

Oh I knew it's a requirement if stopped, and maybe at some borders, but decided to chance it, after there were no checks of any kind ( other than reg plate) for the ferry to Holyhead. I was lucky this time, will make sure I have it for next time 😀