| The great weakness of the Tesla S in the German market ist the German autobahn, where it runs out of energy very quickly (after an hour or so for aggressive drivers). OK, if you're averaging 200 km/h on the Autobahn then you will run out of energy pretty quickly. But this is just as true with ICE vehicles. If you're getting twice the energy consumption in an EV then you'll also be getting twice the fuel consumption in an ICE, and you'll have to stop and refuel pretty quickly. So, with an EV, as long as there is a fast enough charger at the other end, who cares? You travelled 200km in that hour, you probably got where you wanted to go. Even if you spend 25 minutes recharging at a supercharger, you still got there quicker than if you drove at 100km/h! Audi are already talking about 800V, ~300kW fast chargers that can recharge that 200km of range in 10 minutes. At these kind of speeds, the difference between recharging an EV and refuelling an ICE car becomes pretty negligable. The Tesla S is not designed for sustained high speeds. Simply not true. There's plenty of Tesla videos on YouTube showing sustained, comfortable driving at 200km/h+ autobahn speeds. |
The recommended average speed on the Autobahn is 130 km/h. In reality due to congestion, noise reduction, construction work and maintenance there are probably more stretches with limits below that than not (typically 80 km/h or 60 km/h around roadworks, though there are also plenty of 100 km/h and 120 km/h stretches for no obvious reasons). Typical comfortable driving speed tends to be no more than 180 km/h, though if you don't want to have to break and accelerate all the time you probably don't want to go too far beyond 160 km/h.
I won't deny that depending on the time of day and the particular route you may be able to drive 200+ km/h on the Autobahn but talking about the implications of 200 km/h average speed as if it was an even remotely realistic representation is frankly absurd.