London to Italy by Electric car in 2025

This was my third trip from London to Italy. Plenty of other EV owners drive far into Europe too. If you don’t know you can then.. you don’t know you can. I would be happy to make trips like this in any EV that can manage 200 miles or more between stops and can charge 10-80% in around 30 mins or less. There are several free apps that making finding and paying easy at most European chargers. I happen to use Shell Recharge app.
Rather than repeat ground covered in previous reports do check out the fuller 2023 report here and 2022 here. They also include tips for doing this trip yourself.

Trip Stats & CO2 saving compared to flying

A few trip postcards from France, Switzerland and Italy by electric car

CO2 by electric car and trip notes

• Travelling on holiday by electric car and electric train are easily the best way to cut carbon emissions on a holiday.
• For CO2 emissions per kWh we’ve taken from the UK grid figure for the rolling last 12 months. CO2 from UK electricity is falling rapidly. According to Carbonbrief the full 2024 figure was 124g/kWh down from 419g/kWh a decade earlier.
  The actual trip figure was probably similar as over 1,300 miles of the trip were in countries with very low CO2 – France 27g/kWh and Switzerland 21g/kWh. Italy itself is the only high emitter because it uses natural gas for a lot of electricity generation and ended up with 270g in 2024. Long distance travel in Italy was 911 miles. Most additional journeys locally were charged for free at our hotel which may have used its solar for part of this.
• I’ve done 3 trips from London to Tuscany in different years. The Tesla Model 3 2019 Performances minus got 3.78 miles per kWh over 2,632 miles in 2022 and 3.75 miles per kWh in 2023 (report here). Temperatures in 2023 were closer to 39C in Italy.
• In 2025 I used a newer Model 3, a 2024 long range dual motor. I got 4.41 miles per kWh over 2,770 mile round trip. These are from the car and don’t reflect charging losses. Temperatures varied quite a bit. Probably lows of around 17 Celsius and highs in Italy in the very low 30’s. The efficiency was remarkable considering that there was a lot French, Swiss and Italian motorway included. It’s worth pointing out that rather than driving the full 130 km or 81 mile an hour speed limits. I often decided the efficiency gain at 115-125kmh (72-77mph) was enough to skip charge stops and therefore make little difference to journey time. Also, when there was a choice of a faster but longer motorway route arriving 15 minutes earlier or a slower shorter route on a toll free Route Nationale in France I chose the latter.
• I do also enjoy mountain passes and this trip included Passwang, Glaubenbielen, Grimsel, Furka and Gotthard passes in one day on the outbound and the St Bernard pass on the way back.
• Overall the car used 626.8k kWh which equates to 82.73kg of CO2 for 3 people and luggage for the entire trip and local travel. That compares with between 750kg and 1500kg* for flying 3 passengers before adding CO2 for any ground transport in Italy.
• Costs I rather lucked in here or rather made my own luck.
  Using the last of 9,000 miles of free Tesla charging meant the entire outbound trip was free in terms of energy.
  The Hotel in Capalbio also had free charging for all our local journeys inc down to Rome
  Charging for the 1.023 miles home cost
  A free full battery at the Capalbio hotel north of Rome on departure
  £64.99 for all the motorway Tesla chargers
  £6.68 for a rather pricey top up in Chalons en Champagne
  Recharging at a cheap local London lamp post was £13.80
  So that’s a total round trip cost of £85.47 for a 2,770 motorway trip! Not having free charging on the outbound would have added the Tesla charging again so around £155 in charging for the full trip.
  
  
  
  *the wide variation for flights appears to be based on a low figure that is the actual CO2 from the engines as if you were burning the fuel on the ground. The higher figure reflects the additional climate effect of leaving all that CO2 30,000+ feet high in the atmosphere where it has additional warming effect including contrails.

Return route

Here is a bit more detail about the route on the way home.

While this map below shows every charge stop needed to reach London.

• The green marker is the AC hotel charger in Capalbio before heading back. We left with a full 100% charge
• Even after staying at another hilltop hotel for 2 nights including some local drives we didn’t need to charge again until Genoa
• Genoa, Italy 4-65% charge in 24 mins
• Aosta Italy just before climbing the St Bernard pass
  19-52% charge in 21 mins
• Martigney, Switzerland
  35-79%i n 23 mins.
• After 2 days in Montreux and local area we continued into France
  Couternon, France near Dijon
  26-64% in 17 mins
• Hotel AC charger (green marker in France) was a top up while staying in Chalons en Champagne
  21-38% in 2.02 hours while parked anyway
• St Quentin Northern France. Bigger charge to reach London with ease
  3-81% in 36 mins
• Arrived in London with 15% battery
  

You might have noticed I have sufficient confidence to plan arriving at a charger with as little as 3-4% charge. My Tesla Model 3 has a highly accurate prediction of charge on arrival. If it looks too tight I would simply decrease my speed a little to gain extra range.
I would not recommend arrivals with less than 10% battery unless you

• Have experience in road trips in your EV and confidence that you know whether your EV is accurate, or too optimistic or too pessimistic with its range estimates. This largely comes from experience
• Are aiming for a reliable charging option (ideally between 4 and 30 chargers at the location) and that you are somewhere where other alternatives exist if needed