Five members of the Italian Tesla owners club claim to have set a new distance record, travelling 670 miles on a single charge in a Tesla Model S.



The feat, which they say beats the previous record set in Belgium in June by 110 miles, used a longest-range Tesla Model S 100D and required the five drivers to employ so-called “hypermiling” techniques, which saw them use as little energy as possible by maintaining a constant speed, using low rolling-resistance tyres and trying not to use the brakes.

The team said they drove without air conditioning at an average speed of just 25mph (40kmph), reaching 670 miles before coming to a stop with 0% charge on the meter.

Luca Del Bo, president of the club, said: “To complete the 1,078km record distance, we used 98.4 kWh of electricity, which is equivalent to eight litres of gas.

“This has been possible thanks to the very high output of the electric engine that transforms 95% of the energy into motion. Just consider that the most efficient combustion engines today do not exceed 30% efficiency.”

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk congratulated the club on the record, which was issued by a public notary with a lawyer sealing the charge cap before starting the attempt, the club said.

1078 km - 669.83 miles with Tesla ModelS 100D in a single charge by Tesla Owners Italy-Ticino-San Marino #teslarecord pic.twitter.com/DvQw16V0wo — Tesla Owners Italia (@TeslaOwnersIT) August 3, 2017

Rosario Pingaro, one of the drivers, said: “The driving was made simply by the semi-autonomous driving system, which helped us to keep a constant speed in the middle of the lane.”

In June, following the Belgian record of 901.2km, Musk said that it would be theoretically possible to drive a Model S more than 1,000km on a single charge with the right tyres. Tesla rates the Model S 100D as being able to drive 514 miles at 45mph on a single charge.

Tesla’s latest car, the mass-market targeted $35,000 Model 3, is rated as being able to travel 215 miles per charge as standard or up to 310 miles with an extended range battery option, which costs more. But electric cars still have some way to go to match petrol and diesel cars, which routinely exceed 500 miles per tank of fuel and can be refilled in minutes, with even the fastest electric chargers taking over an hour to fully charge the large batteries.