Ok, let's finish this chronological photos thing. Last post of the series: Day 7 (and bonus Day 8 aka transit to Ringmeet).
As mentioned in
my Day 6 post, I went to bed that night not having any idea what I'd do the following morning. As I got up, that hasn't really changed. The weather stayed crap, and most people have decided on skipping Stelvio and going straight to our last overnight stay in Germany via one route or the other. I was thinking the same thing as I packed up my stuff and got in the car...
Until I spontaneously decided "fuck it, we've come this far, let's do this" and joined the small group actually heading to Stelvio
On the bottom of the pass, we were met with fog and wetness and general unpleasantness. However, climbing higher up the conditions slowly improved. And I guess the weather has caused many others to skip Stelvio that day as well, as there was very little traffic.
The small group that made it all the way.
As Mikko already mentioned in his post, that picture was literally the high point of the day. From there on, the day progressively got worse:
- Umbrail was closed, forcing us to take a rather long southbound detour before actually heading back north
- Horrible traffic heading up Foscagno back into Livigno
- Mixed weather and various amount of traffic preventing any fun for the rest of the day
We briefly entertained the thought of meeting a part of the other group in Liechtenstein, but after getting reports of bad traffic there as well we decided to skip it. Instead we briefly stopped at a Supercharger in Maienfeld:
And after another couple hours of transit, at what I thought was a supermarket (but turned out to be a hardware and garden store) near Matzingen:
A couple hours later still, we finally arrived at the German border. The wrong-hand-drive BMW was promptly stopped, and we lined up to wait at a petrol station just past a corner. Eventually we figured that Peter might have different navigation than us and not even drive by that way to see us when he eventually got through. At that point I decided that I'm not a U.S. marine and will leave a man behind, and in best Top Gear spirit got up and left. Oh the joy of wide empty German Landstraßen after sitting in Swiss traffic for most of the day... very soon I arrived to this sight:
As well as some great Schnitzel and very interesting rooms.
At this point the "official" part of the Swisstaly Roadtrip ended. Day 8 was a highway transit to Ringmeet. Despite that,
@DaHitch and
@IceBone decided to spice it up with one last bit of nice driving up the B500, and I ultimately joined them for that.
After driving all the way up the B500 and joining the highway, we made a short break at the day's first Supercharger.
After that (and a detour via France for some reason) our small convoy eventually broke up, as I pulled over some 200km later for a very short recharger at a yet another Supercharger near Mainz. That was almost full and I didn't need much charge to make my next waypoint anyway, so I left after not even 10 minutes, and headed for an Ionity charging station not far from the Nürburgring and the day's ultimate destination to test out just how fast the Model 3 will actually charge when given a big enough supply. Turns out, plenty fast:
While it charged, I had some lunch and a chance to talk to a couple older gentlemen very interested in these new "white thingies with cables on them". Apparently the Ionity setup isn't seeing much use yet. I ensured them it will change soon, and having topped up the car all the way to 90%, left for the Ringmeet campsite.
The rest doesn't technically belong in this thread anymore, but I'll finish off with two more pictures. First, the overall consumption after the Roadtrip and Ringmeet weekend:
This actually positively surprised me. To give some context to the number: lifetime consumption of this car sits at 191 Wh/km, and driving on the highway it can easily reach 200-210 for a single drive, higher still if I go above ~130-140 for a while. During the roadtrip itself the counter stayed below 170, and only after the Day 8 highway blast north and some test driving and 'Ring lapping shenaningans did it climb to the above pictured 180.
Also, 'Ring lapping: it happened, and it was fun! Track mode does really make the car feel quite different. Also, one lap consumes about ~20% charge
This concludes my photographic coverage. Stay tuned for drone videos - I've finally figured out a workflow for 4K60 editing on my machine that doesn't make me want to murder people... now to actually do some editing.