[aakour]

I'm from Helsinki but live in Berlin, and drive between the two somewhat regularly. For this trip you essentially have two options - either via Denmark and Sweden, or Poland and the Baltics. You need to take a ferry to reach Finland regardless of which route you pick.

The experience and emissions differ pretty dramatically. Intuitively you might think the total emissions would be lower for the Baltic route because of the significantly shorter ferry trip, but this is more than negated by how dirty the grid is in Poland and Estonia. Polish electricity production is about 100x as polluting as Swedish electricity.

The Nordic route also wins in terms of infrastructure. There are plenty of Superchargers as well as non-Tesla charging stations, located at highway rest stops with good services. Making the 1000km+ drive in one day isn't a big deal at all, and I find that plugging the car in for the time it takes to go to the restroom and grab some food is enough to continue the trip.

[doikor]

> You need to take a ferry to reach Finland regardless of which route you pick.

Well technically not on the Sweden route but it would be crazy to drive the extra to go all the way north to Tornio and then drive back south to Helsinki instead of just taking the ferry from Stockholm (this adds around 1300km to the trip)

[ant6n]

Isn't there a ferry from Finland to Germany or at least Poland?

... What would be really nice on that route would be a sleeper service, once that tunnel between Finland and Estonia and rail Baltica is built.

[aakour]

Yeah, there's a ferry from Rostock to Helsinki. However I'm trying to reduce my travel-related emissions, and after crunching the numbers have concluded that the best option would be ferry+train via Sweden, with electric car via Sweden a close second (per head, assuming two people or more in the car). Fingers crossed for that tunnel and a direct overnight train connection!

[benhurmarcel]

In terms of emissions how does that compare to flying?

[lordnacho]

How did you work out the emissions of the ferry routes?

[aakour]

I used the numbers from the Finnish state research centre VTT (http://lipasto.vtt.fi/yksikkopaastot/tavaraliikennee/vesilii...)

[lordnacho]

Looks like a useful table, but unless I've missed it you need to know how many people/cars are on each ship?

[aakour]

My understanding is that these numbers (try to) account for actual real world usage rates. Actual emissions will of course depend on a whole lot of things, including the things you mentioned, prevailing winds, etc. Same for estimating grid emissions for charging the car of course - the exact mix of sources is always in flux.

[watt]

Where are the car trains when you need them!

[rootusrootus]

> Making the 1000km+ drive in one day isn't a big deal at all,

I'm getting old. The thought of driving 600+ miles in a single day sounds like hell.

[s0rce]

Depends on if you have someone to do it with and the scenery. I just drove from CA to NV, little bit of ID, and OR in a day and it was a great drive (just shy of 800mi). Lots of interesting scenery and places I've never seen. Broke it up into 2 days on the way back and slept at a nice campground.

[ghaff]

I find that on trips, I'm a whole lot less interested in doing long drives than I used to be. I arranged a trip in the Western US for September and one of my decisions was that I'd basically limit the trip to one area of a state rather than zip around to multiple distanced places.

[notJim]

It's not so bad if you make sure to get good sleep the night before and start in the morning sometime, and perhaps take a long break somewhere in the middle.

[aakour]

This is IMO where the Model 3 shines - it's a great car for longer trips. Comfy seats, and autopilot really reduces the strain of highway driving.

[rootusrootus]

That works for some people. I found that the seats in my P3D were decidedly mediocre at best (but I've gotten spoiled over the years by a lot of cars with Recaros). And AP does not drive either as smoothly as I do, nor as defensively as I do, which actually raises my blood pressure a bit. Cruise control with me steering is my most comfortable.