Hi Ed
As you might imagine I'm a fan of driving the car down. With the supercharger network there is you'd be crazy not to ... I mean, Europe is a beautiful place and the more we can get to experience it the better. I'd try to take back roads and stay in small villages on the way... wonderful!
Shipping it will cost either 3k€ if it goes on a dedicated flatbed, or about €500 if it can come on a multi-car truck, but that takes a longer time to organize as there needs to be enough cars going to Ibiza to justify the journey.
Right now our Model S has a serious 12V issue and needs to be shipped to Aix. As it can't be moved using the motor it can't go on a shared multi-car truck so I need to pay a flatbed. This is going to cost about €2500 all in
I will fly to pick up the car and drive it back.This is a lot of money, but let's put it in perspective... The car is faster, quieter, more spacious and better for the planet than, say, an Aston Martin. Friends with Astons tell me that every 15k kms they need to service the car... and they pay around €8k for that! I have done 65k kms in the Model S. If I have to spend €2.5k every so often then no sweat.
I pay about €1.5k to get the Roadster looked at every year so an engineer catches a flight down and completes the service here at home. At the same time he services the Model S (there's nothing to do though!).
One day soon they will open a service center but in the meantime I can live with this situation. Compared to their combustion equivalents both the Roadster and the Model S are much cheaper to run and maintain, even here in Spain.
As for your solar charging question... If you can charge the car during the day you only need about 40sqm of panels and an invertor. This will charge the car at about 6kW peak so after a few hours you will have 20% more charge. If you drive about 100kms a day that should cover you. A full day charging could fill the battery even.
