Your next car: electric or petrol?

Run a real route. The EV does not always win.

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Worked example: Berlin to Munich on the A9, 585 km. A Model 3 Long Range against a 7.3 L/100 km petrol car, on live Supercharger prices.

Range anxiety? Let's look at the numbers.

One charge does not cover this trip, and it does not need to.

Real-world range

366 km

75 kWh usable at 20.5 kWh/100 km on the motorway. The dashed circle on the map.

Route distance

585 km

Berlin to Munich along the A9.

Reality: The trip runs past a single charge, so it splits into legs of 270, 149, 166 km. Two stops, about 35 minutes plugged in. That is the whole of the range problem on this route.

The charging network is already there.

16 Supercharger sites sit on this one corridor.

Sites on route

16

Supercharger locations on the corridor

Stalls

282

Every one of them rated 250 kW

Stops needed

2

The rest are spare capacity

Reality: Density is not the constraint on a corridor like this. Having more sites than it needs is what lets the planner choose on price, and what makes a missed stop recoverable.

How much time does charging actually cost you?

Two stops, 35 minutes plugged in, on a five-and-a-half hour drive.

Electric

6h 10m
Driving5h 35m
Charging (2 stops)35m

Petrol

5h 40m
Driving5h 35m
Refuelling (1 stop)5m

Reality: 30 minutes. That is the honest gap on this route, and both stops land where you would want a break anyway.

The economics still favour the EV.

Same route, same day. Electricity against petrol.

Electric

€46.43
119.9 kWh used at 20.5 kWh/100 km
55.4 kWh from home at €0.30€16.61
64.6 kWh charged at €0.46 avg€29.83

Petrol

€93.95
42.7 L used at 7.3 L/100 km
Pump price€2.20/L
Nothing cheaper at homeevery litre paid

Savings: €47.52 on 585 km, 51% cheaper. The Superchargers are priced live, so the planner charges where the kWh is cheap rather than wherever you happen to stop.

Which stops, and why those.

The planner weighs all 16 sites and commits to 2.

EV routing

  • State of charge at every waypoint
  • Charging curve for this specific car
  • Live per-kWh price at each site
  • Weather and elevation along the way

Ordinary navigation

  • Shortest time or distance
  • No notion of a fuel state
  • No price data
  • Same answer in any conditions

Reality: The small markers are the 14 sites the planner passed by, several of them charging €0.72/kWh. It waits for Schleiz at €0.62 and Feucht at €0.32, which is what pulls the blended rate down to €0.46. Picking stops is the whole job.

Now run your own route.

Pick your cars and your cities, and get the same breakdown.

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