Through Europe in a Tesla Model S part 3: Barcelona or bust

Last time on our 1000 mile electric road trip we ran into trouble as the Model S took us on some time consuming detours. That saw us miss our hotel by about 150 miles. We're behind schedule so the pressure will be on for our final day's driving. It's Barcelona or bust. [SOUND] [BLANK_AUDIO] [NOISE] That looks like a nicely charged car to me. [NOISE] We're back on the road. It's looking like a nice morning in I want to say it's a south France but my monitor myself basically the middle. Yeah we have not got as far as we hoped. So instead of trying to listen to the car SatNav which explains how far we're gonna get on a single charge. We found that to be a bit too conservative and telling us we're not going to make it to our next. Next charge. Instead, what we're going to do is go with our gut and it says we've got a hundred kilometers to spare, then we can make. Question of the morning is this natural cloud forming is this some sort of giant power plant hidden behind this mountain? I was right. It's a power plant. It's a power plant. [INAUDIBLE] As the sun rises on not quite southern France the miles disappear beneath our electrically powered wheels. With an open road and a better sense of what the model S needs, yesterday's concerns feel a 100 miles away. Aqua had only one album on Spotify. By aquarium. Very recently I was looking at it and they have both of their hit albums and the other. Both of their hit albums? Yeah. Aqua did not have two hit albums. Some of their songs, let's have a look. Happy Boys and Girls. Stone cold classic. My My. I sing it every day. Barbie Girl? unforgettable. Good Morning, Sunshine? Legendary. Dr. Jones? Classic of the genre. [LAUGH] Heat of the Night? Epochal. [LAUGH] [MUSIC] Another charge, another few hundred kilometers closer to our goal. With the Spanish border looking, we're getting more comfortable with the dynamics of electric charging. But we're still learning new things about the car, itself. The car is making a new noise. It is always what you want from a car. Kids toys. It's a shop! And why is that unusual? We've finally found one. Because every charger so far has just been in the back garden of a bad hotel [BLANK_AUDIO] [FOREIGN] [FOREIGN] Smarties, four pack, Haribo four pack, [UNKNOWN] mix four pack, [UNKNOWN] sharps four. And I got Got this space ranger on the Segway, frankly because it's the closest I could find to a technology journalist. With our next charge point well within range, we're able to spend some time getting to grips with the model S's more exotic hardware. [SOUND] What's particularly cool about this car is that it's actually [INAUDIBLE] With tech on the inside. In particular, some of the, well let's call it auto drive features. If I just, double pull this little stalk towards me, firstly, it's matching my speed to what I've told it to. But also, it's using sensors on the outside of the car, to look at the line, Lines on the road, and it will steer for you, to make sure you stay in those lines. But also, if you just, if you just tap the indicator, then, when it's safe, the car can actually, move across the next lane for you. [MUSIC] We're now only stopping at charge points that are close to the most way. And ignoring charges when we confidently have enough spare range to just power through. The hours role past in a haze of road, chargers, and killing time in hotel car [UNKNOWN]. We even find time to take a coastal detour before crossing the border into Spain and making a final smooth run into Barcelona airport. Hate to say it look but it actually looks like we're going to make it to [UNKNOWN] congress>>hooray>>hooray See, I'm not gonna get fired, and you're not gonna get fired. [LAUGH] At least not over this. [LAUGH] [BLANK_AUDIO] We could probably pick up at the airport. Do you know what that means? It means we're done. It means we're actually done. That's a thousand miles, all on electric. How many fossils have we [UNKNOWN] Zero. None, I mean none in the car, but, [UNKNOWN] torch. [LAUGH] Come for beer. [UNKNOWN] Por favor. Well Luke, we made it. Any final thoughts? Well I'll start by how different an electric drive is. All the variables that we have to deal with, things like range, speed, charge time, charge location, terrain. Charging an empty battery, versus one that's half full. It's all that mental trigonometry that's always going on. It felt, actually a little bit more sometimes, like sailing, than driving. Having to accommodate for things like wind, and tide, that sort of stuff. Always thinking. Yeah definitely. But, at the end of the day though, We did make it. Now we've shown that electric cars aren't just great for these short city drives. We did a 1,000 miles in that Tesla and really makes me extremely excited about the future of electric driving. Indeed. Well thanks for watching guys. Adios. Au Revoir.