And so another weekend comes around. Saturday I must work, as so often, but Sunday the weather was sunny, if a bit cold, and I was free. So after a slow breakfast we decided we would go for a short drive, maybe to Mindelheim. We had often passed by Mindelheim and once stopped for a pizza, but we had never visited it. We set of in a fully charged and heated car. As we were leaving Munich, I had a change of mind. Mindelheim would be closed, its Sunday, and I didn’t feel like walking too much so I suggested we just when wherever we ended up. Our short drive ended up going down towards Fussen, crossing over into Austria, over Telfs, through Nauders down to Lago di Resia, which is where there is a church tower sticking out of the water. The history of Lago di Resia and the villages that were destroyed is worth reading about.
We continued up the pass in sleet and fog to Sluderno, and followed the road to Merano. Its is a pretty area we have not driven through before as we usually go up the Stelvio pass, which is currently closed due to winter. As time was getting on, and I don’t yet trust charging in Italy, so didn’t want to drive down to Bolzano, I thought it would be best to go back over the Jaufenpass. In retrospect maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. The pass was open. What it didn’t say was that it was open until 18:00. We got to the start 17:50 but started started the accent. At first all was good. not much traffic, and a nice drive. After a while though it started to snow. By the time we got to the top we were in about 5cm of snow, and it was steadily increasing. It was not an option to turn around. There was another car behind us which couldn’t wait to overtake but I refused to go faster than what I considered safe. Once we reached to top, then the difficult part started. The decent on the north side off the mountain in fresh snow. I went very slow with regenerative breaking at the maximum step to keep speed down. Basically we just rolled down at about 15Kmh until conditions improved. Once we got to the snow line, things improved rapidly and we got a good regen and a fairly rapid decent. Still, it was not the nicest part of the drive.
Arriving at Vipiteno, it was a quick drive up the Autostrada to the Tesla superchargers at the Plessi Museum where there is also a CCS rapid charger. This charger is also free. I sometimes wonder why they put chargers at the top of a mountain when its possible to regen going down, but still, its an ok location. Charged to 94% we started the decent down the Brenner and I expected to have to recharge at Völs but when we got there I was still at 95% so I carried on over Garmisch towards Munich. In the end we didn’t need another charge before home, as I tucked in behind a coach and actually saw my expected range increase. At Garmisch the cars systems said I would not have enough charge to get home, by the time we got to Munich, it said we would have 25Km left. In the end when I connected tot he charger nt e garage, I had 31Km range left.
So, our short drive turned into 680Km.