Model S and the Norwegian Fjords

This week we have invited Florentiu to share he’s awesome story with Tesla Model S in Norway !

While filming and photo shooting in Norway, Florentiu gave up his ICE car rental for this lovely Tesla Model S.

Take Florentiu’s example and experiment renting an electric car where possible.

This story started at the beginning of October 2019 in Bodo, Norway.
I was on my way with some friends in Norway and decided to book an early flight to Bodo.

I’ve arrived 2-3 days earlier and booked on Airbnb a room in house and rented a car from one of the companies present in the airport. I had in mind to pick up the car the second day.

I’ve arrived at Even ( my Airbnb host ) at around 14:00 and talked with him about the surrounding areas. I did share my plans for the next 2 days until my friends arrive.

That’s when he told me “why not rent my car?”. I was like, “Thanks, I’ve rented already a car. Anyway what car are you driving ?”. He responded “I have a Tesla”.

That was enough for me to rearrange my plans.
Immediately, I phoned the company where I’ve rented my car, canceled it with no problems and took this Model S for a drive along the Fjords near Bodo!

I was very eager to drive it.

Read a lot about them but never drove one. First impression is that you feel like in a space ship.

Probably on the newer models you can activate anything by simply talking to the car. First thing was to set up the chair and mirrors. The car can save profiles of any person that drives. One of the persons that drove this car was almost the exact height as me. I just had to select the profile from the spaceships main screen and the chair began to move and adjusted until I felt comfortable in my driving position.

Like any electrical car, you do not hear any engine or any motors. Acceleration is instant but what I’ve noticed is when you take your foot off the acceleration pedal the car slows down. Its not breaking, its gradually slowing down. If you have like 500m of road, with no car in front of course, the car will come to a halt. The screen in front of the steering wheal shows a lot of info.

It graphically shows the car or motorcycle in front of you. The front sensors detect anything and shape it on the screen. If you get closer, like 2-3 m it event puts the correct color of the car/motorcycle that’s in front of you: Crazy, I know.

Also when you are parking it gives you information on how many cm you have until you reach the wall/object in front of you which is pretty cool.

Ok, these are mainly details that probably also newer hybrid/electric cars may have.

The thing that really impressed me was the autopilot.
Its scary at first because you are not used to an AI taking control of you steering wheel. But this car really can drive alone. I turns, it breaks when it has to, it accelerates and based on the speed limit it adjusts the speed. You can put your hands away and relax ( I didn’t relaxed tho 😊) ).

After 1 minute of not having your hands on the steering wheal it gives an alert and tells you to put your hands back on the wheel. It doesn’t give you control unless you deactivate the autopilot. The car guides itself when it detects the road marks. If you have a road like the picture bellow it will drive in the middle of the road, so you probably want to drive by yourself and not let Schwartzy the AI terminator drive on some portions.

The spaceships “gear box” is a lever on the right of the steering wheal where normally I activate my windscreen wipers on my car back home. It doesn’t have a hand break, the middle portion of the car where normally you have a gear box its space for putting your bag, backpack, purse, etc. A lot of space in this car. You have a booth in the front in the back. All of the batteries are on the floor, the car is very heavy (2100kg) but having the batteries on the floor it lowers the gravity center which makes the car very stable when you drive it.

Autonomy of this car is around 400km, depending on how fast you drive. If you drive bellow 100km/h you should be fine when it comes to mileage.

Norwegians buy a lot of electric cars: In Bodo ( 50000 population ) in the neighborhood I’ve stayed 1 in 2 houses had an electric car.
Bodo is situated above the Polar Circle which means its very cold here most of the times.

I did ask the owner about battery problems: When its really cold ( November – February ) the battery drops like 5-10% max.

The car is not really affected when its very cold, he didn’t had problems with it, instead of 400km autonomy it has 350km.

In the end..

Had this car for one day only, drove around 300km to find perfect landscapes to take photos and I can say its like a gadget.
It discovered new functions every few minutes and if I had the car for a week I still would discover new adjustments that makes driving really easy and fun.