Our team Andrej and Jasna drove on 11th and 12th of October from Bled in Slovenija till Dubrovnik in Croatia (726 km and 5000 to 6000 meters of uphill) using our car Metron 7 without charging. We drove at normal traffic speed (66 and 63 km/h average speed including short stops at border passes, construction works on roads etc) and not “dead slow” as most records have been set and we also had all necessary luggage in our car. We were accopmanied by Igor Kolovrat and a cameraman filming the whole trip in one car and one jouranlist and representative from Bled tourism in another car. At the end we had to drive another 10 km to marina where we got 3 phase charging socket. So actually we drove 736 km or 460 miles without charging and there was still energy for approx 15 km of flat road left.

Round table, press conference and overview of the route was at “Triglavska roza” (Bled) on 10th of October at 18h

As far as we now nobody has ever driven so far without charging in normal traffic conditions.

Depart from Triglavska roza at Bled

Sealing our charging plug. If everything goes well, it Will be unsealed in Dubrovnik

Uphills, more uphills at Adriatic coast….

Starigrad Paklenica, approx half way to Dubrovnik. 51%, it is going to be tough…

There was also some highway driving during our trip

Metron 7 entering the old city of Dubrovnik after 726 km and more then 5000 meters of uphill

At Stradun – the main square in Dubrovnik

Battery is more or less empty, but after we still had to do another 10 km to marina where we had 3 phase charging available. So we actually did 736 km without charging…

We drove with 2 persons and luggage on board all the time:

Technology used in this car:

We have used a lot of advanced technologies to improve vehicle’s range. If we had more funds we would have done the whole new body and the car would be even more efficient, but basically we succeeded at what we intended to even by converting an existing car. One important part are batteries: 96 lithium polymer chobalt based cells stored in special light boxes under the car weighting almost 500 kg including boxes and connections. Alltogether we have 86 kWh stored in main battery and 10 kWh in auxilliary battery. This one is not always installed, but was installed for the record drive. As you can see from the picture above trunk space is still same as at original Mazda 5 model. We managed to keep the car just slightly over its original weight, so its weight does not exceed 1800 kg. Other important part is the new Letrika IPM motor and controller with special light weight and high efficiency construction. Efficiency is so high that when driving up to 80 km/h we do not need any air intakes for cooling (we have a patented cooling system), so aerodynamics is higher. There are numerous small details based on our decade long EV construction experience, that make this Mazda 5 based car so efficient that we can drive 700 km per charge. Some of them we reveal at our technical trainings, some remain secret…

Video of our drive at Youtube

How do Tesla cars perform over long distance drives

Trip organisation:

Igor Kolovrat igor.kolovrat@kilovatmedia.com

E.V.A.blue, tvornica ideja Zagreb, Croatia

Trip sponsors:

Community of Bled

Alpine pearls