Tesla Road Trip: Renting in Italy

[jbcarioca]

This is the first post in what will become an informal travelogue.

For the last four decades my spouse and I have made a trip or two a year usually starting from Nice, where we owned a house for a couple of decades (literally two minutes away from the Cagnes sur Mer Supercharger). All those trips were in ICE mostly our cars. This year we are going from Milan through Northern Italy to Kobarid, Slovenia (one of the best restaurants in the world is there), on to Otocec for our annual truffle fest, then to Zagreb and back through Northern Italy stopping at the excellent. Palazzo Mantua Benavides whose owners are also Tesla drivers.

A few weeks ago it occurred to my spouse and I that driving our traditional Sixt supplied very nice ICE would not suffice; we resolved to travel only by EV, After trying lots if alternatives we found almost nothing that would be suitable. Then we found :
Tesla Owners Italia, the only official Italian Club based in Italy
Tesla Owners Club Directory
Of course there are also is a Tesla club based in the Vatican City and another in San Marino, but those two are not in Italy since both are separate countries. The Tesla Owners Italia website is only in Italian, but Google translate helps. In any event I asked them for a recommendation, which was:
Noleggio Tesla Milano | Tesla Experience
Their website is only in Italian also, but they do work well in English and are very cooperative. Following correspondence we ended out renting a Model X 100D which we will pick up on the 4th of September at Malpensa Airport. Payment is made prior to delivery so, thanks to TransferWise the forex was highly competitive and the funds arrived the same day I made the transfer. We had hoped for a Model 3, but the Model X was available as has free Supercharging too. This will be the largest car I have driven in Europe, with the largest one I have owned there being a BMW 5-series.

Few people outside Europe may realize just how extensive the Supercharger network has become since Model 3 was introduced. By accident our hotel in Ljubljana, the Four Points, hosts the Supercharger there, and throughout our trip there are more Superchargers than we will use. We may use few, since almost all our hotels have either Destination Chargers or other options. In addition there are many networks that have ready available charging, often free. There are also lots of CCS choices, great for a Model 3 or an S or X that ha had the CCS upgrade. Ours will not yet have the CCS installed.

Of course renting a Tesla is more expensive than most ICE choices but I'll save about Euro400 in gasoline costs plus have access without charge to all the central cities, which these days are restricted, charging or denied entry depending on the city and times. On the other hand the Model X is pretty big for most central cities. We'll find out about that.

So, the adventure is soon to begin. We are excited to finally be visiting our favorite places in a Tesla.

 

[JPP]

Big car, small streets. Are you going to the Lake region in Northern Italy?

 

[jbcarioca]

Big car, small streets. Are you going to the Lake region in Northern Italy?

We will be around Lake Lugano and Lake Pusiano but probably not others. We are mostly visiting old friends.

 

[jbcarioca]

When my spouse and I arrived at MXP after a 24 hour trip from Rio de Janeiro we had a decent nights sloop at the Sheraton hotel located inside Terminal One. The next morning Noleggio Tesla Milano | Tesla Experience had prepared a royal arrival. The entire team was there including their fleet of Teslas. Mine is the Model X shown in their online pages, and was absolutely impeccably prepared. It has >80,000 km during it’s year with them but acts like a brand new car. The photo has us all together in front of their Model 3, a near-twin of mine.

Just beside us in front of the hotel is the MXP EV rental location:

All the documents had already been completed so we were soon on our way for our adventures.

Most appropriately I discovered our Model X is named ‘el gigante’. With slight trepidation the giant was off with us.

 

[jbcarioca]

Our Model X did not need to stop but we did, so we arrived at Brescia Supercharger:

The other Teslas were from NL, D and A so our I made it four countries. We soon discovered that such variety is the norm throughout Italy and Slovenia.
The Brescia Supercharger is in a shopping center, Elnòs that has everything one needs, I.e. clean sanitary facilities and a few excellent gelato and coffee choices. As in every EU Supercharger I have seen in the last few months, all are eqippped with the Model 3 CCS fitting. Our own Model X has not yet been retrofitted with CCS but we do have CHAdeMO and everything else.

As many Superchargers have become faster recently, we saw 145 kw briefly in our Model X, a surprise since we were not very low on SOC to begin with.

 

[jbcarioca]

We stopped overnight in Venezia for a days visit and had a nice Japanese lunch at Zushi, discovering they had a Destination charger, so the car was fed during our lunch:
http://www.zushi.eu/en/negozio/home/10/Vicenza/
Sorry, no photos.

 

[jbcarioca]

Then we were off to Hisa Franko in Kobarid, Slovenia ( google it, the effusive praise actually understates the reality!). On the way we charged at the Palmanova Outlet Center, for a quick bit of shopping also.

 

[jbcarioca]

When we arrived in a Kobarid we were a trifle shocked to find a free charging station at the local supermarket where we stocked up on the locally produced honey and propolis. We soon discovered that there is widespread charging availability in Slovenia, often free, often sponsored by Ljubljana Electric:
https://www.elektro-ljubljana.com/e-mobility
Despite the warnings that one should not drive into central Ljubljana we found free parking about 50 meters from the Cathedral, plus free charging:

 

[jbcarioca]

The larger surprise in Ljubljana was on-demand EV rental just like at MXP but the vehicle choice was a trifle different:

 

[jbcarioca]

Perhaps our greatest surprise to date has been where we are now,
Otočec, not exactly a huge metropolis. We are staying in Grad Otočec, a fairly unusual place where we stay whenever we are nearby.

The surprise was this:

AZMS is the Slovenian national auto club. In this location they have two Tesla Destination Chargers. This is about 100 meters from our hotel. A few minutes after I took this photo a German Model S arrived for a charge.

 

[jbcarioca]

Among the greatest surprises thus far happened at the Supercharger at Karlovac, Croatia just down the road from Zagreb. It was not so much that I was sharing the 150KW chargers with an absolutely pristine P85+ from the Czech Republic (not pictured) but what is that odd thing beside my car?

Despite the BMW symbol these contain a CHAdeMO, a CCS and a Mennekes2 AC. What is more, they are free!, this in Croatia! Little by little I am growing to appreciate just how far ahead of NA the entire EU is. Of course Imhave no way to know how fast these DC chargers are. I almost hooked my X to the CHAdeMO but the Tesla adapter is limited so it would not really show much. Anyway my charge was already completing.

 

[jbcarioca]

The next major stop for me was Padova, an altogether surprising and exciting visit. I had reserved the Palazzo Mantua Benavides because they had a Destination Charger and seemingly had a perfect location. Little did I know just how excellent my choice turned out to have been. The above photo is the entrance, no sign, no number, no clue what we would discover once I had managed to squeeze ‘el gigante’ through that door.

Clue number one was that this Model S is the property of the owner, who received those two chargers from Tesla when he bought his car about a year ago.

Then came the truly amazing part. That statue of Hercules was created by
Bartolomeo Ammannati Bartolomeo Ammannati - Wikipedia
So, how did such a magnificent work end out as the centerpiece beside a couple of Teslas? The story is fairly long and eventful so the shortest version is that you just need to drive a Tesla to the Palazzo, stay a couple of days and begin to learn for yourself.

The construction just behind is part of the stables that were built as an add on during the 18th century.

There is a picture of how the palace looked before that was added:

The original is the property of Queen Elizabeth, one of whose predecessors was a guest here and had this painting made as a memento. The current owners were granted the privilege of making a copy.

This post could go on and on. So could the conversations I had with the current owner who is a Tesla enthusiast and who also seems to know a fair number of people with whom I once dealt. He prefers a focus on the property.

The Palazzo was originally built by a famous and influential law professor of the University of Pádua whose antecedents were Spanish. He was a legal advisor to kings and potentates, including the then Pope. Here is a wiki on him, in Italian, of course.
Marco Mantova Benavides - Wikipedia
It is an immense pleasure and privilege to stay in places such as this one, the more so because the owners and staff are so gracious and kind.

 

[AudubonB]

What a magnificent travelogue! Now....how to place it in the TMC universe so that it can get better viewings? Hmm.

Oh. And during your next such sojourn, I’d be happy to wash the windshield every so often if you could provide me a seat in the rear.

 

[jbcarioca]

QUOTE="JPP, post: 3970046, member: 12236"]Big car, small streets. Are you going to the Lake region in Northern Italy?[/QUOTE]

Tesla Destination Chargers can be found in some quite exotic places, among the most exotic is the Relais San Lorenzo in the Bergamo old upper city. Actually getting to the gate shown below can be quite an ordeal if one follows typical GPS guidance that wends it’s way through numerous streets not much wider than the Model X. A side benefit of navigating such streets is learning exactly when the sensors show no more room. A small red area really means there is ‘plenty’ of room, when red and yellow together become wide one has a centimeter or so on each side. Well, the time has come to respond specifically that El Gigante has successfully navigated the incredibly narrow ancient streets within the pedestrian zones of several cities. In two of them Padova (see earlier posts) and Bergamo. Here are photos of the passage into the old city of Bergamo (note the red ‘no entry except authorized vehicles). Our hotel is inside the old city and actually has a parking garage, located under the building within ancient Roman walls, as is the hotel restaurant.

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[jbcarioca]

To put the previous post in context, once through the gauntlet and arriving at Relais San Lorenzo we found the restaurant that looks like this:

Obviously this wine cellar is built into ancient walls, pre-Romanic ones. Perhaps that is less astonishing than this:

The garage is adjacent to the restaurant and has three (3) Tesla Destination Chargers. Two Teslas can fit side-by-side while the third must be in front of one of the others. The cords are extra long to accommodate that. These spaces are tiny so vehicle placement is a special art and cars surface in an elevator. Customers are not permitted in the garage. I obtained permission to enter for this photo. Frankly I would not attempt to move any car in this constricted space.

It is almost incomprehensible that Tesla Destination Chargers live happily side-by-side with ancient ruins. I was told that recently all three have often been in use, made less cumbersome because at least one of the three thus far has been a Model 3.