EUROCHARGE 2026 · eight electric cars, eight days, four countries
Eight electric cars over 35,594 km: every charging stop of the EUROCHARGE 2026 tour
Eight electric cars drove 35,594 km together in eight timed days through Romania, Hungary, Austria and Germany. The daily data of the tour, published by Mircea Meșter of the Romanian car-review site Autocritica, gives for every stop where it was, how long it took, what it cost and how much battery was left on arrival. This page puts them on one road.
- 35,594km, eight cars, eight days
- 118stops at stations, overnight hotel charging apart
- 26 minwaiting at busy stations, all cars together, whole tour
- 1%lowest battery on arrival (Audi Q4, day 7)
Mircea says there was no fixed charging strategy; the data shows only what happened.
What a long electric drive looks like, stop by stop#
All eight cars drove the same road: Pitești, Alba Iulia, Tata (Hungary), Turracher Höhe (Austria), Mannheim, Enzklösterle (Black Forest), Hopfgarten (Tyrol), Szeged and back to Pitești. 16 drivers rotated between the cars; none was driving their own. There was no charging plan: each driver charged where they wanted, as the car of that day needed.
Each line above is one car's battery from Pitești to Pitești. Porsche Cayenne Electric reached the end with 11 stops and 3 h 15 min at stations. BYD Sealion 7 needed 19 stops and 10 h 3 min. Switch to time and the difference shows: road and driving speed are taken alike for all cars, so the difference between rows comes from the stops alone.
Do you get stranded in an electric car?#
Across the 118 arrivals at stations, the battery fell lowest to 1%: Audi Q4, day 7, at the Kecskemét station on the way to Szeged. 14 of them are under 10%; among the 36 arrivals at hotels, two more are. No arrival was at 0%.
Mircea writes that no car ran out of power and that every arrival under 10% was unplanned but stress-free. The data records no incidents; it shows only the level on arrival.
After a stop without a meal the battery level at departure had a median of 80%; after a meal stop, 96%. Meal stops are longer and end higher; from 80% up, fast charging slows on most batteries.
Do you spend the whole day at charging stations?#
other stopsmeal stops
At the wheel each car spent about 53 hours. At stations, Porsche Cayenne Electric spent 3 h 15 min over the whole tour, 6% of its time at the wheel. BYD Sealion 7, the one that spent the longest, 10 h 3 min: 19%.
More than half the charging minutes, 53% (1,701 of 3,202), are at stops recorded as a meal (lunch or dinner). Without them, time at stations is 3 h 8 min per car over about 4,500 km: 4.2 minutes per 100 km. Overall, one stop about every 300 km (118 stops in 35,594 km).
Minutes at a station do not by themselves show how fast a car charges: in a minute plugged in, a fast car adds more range than a slow one. The battery percentage gained, times capacity and divided by the day's consumption, gives kilometres of range. In ten minutes at a station, Porsche Cayenne Electric gained 164 km of range on average, BYD Sealion 7 58 km.
How long is the queue at charging stations?#
Across all 64 car-days, waiting at busy stations came to 26 minutes in total, on four occasions: the Mazda 6 min (day 2), the Renault 5 and the BYD 5 min each (day 4), the Renault 5 another 10 min (day 7, in Hungary). Five of the eight cars never waited.
Mircea says he put in those 10 minutes himself, at a hub with broken chargers in Hungary, at the only working station, behind some of the group.
Waiting is also counted behind cars of the group itself. Eight cars arriving at one hub at lunchtime is not a normal situation anywhere, Mircea notes.
How much of the spec-sheet range does an electric car deliver on the road?#
WLTPtour
The catalogue range (WLTP) comes from a laboratory cycle. On the tour, real range, computed as the battery divided by the tour's mean consumption (weighted by daily kilometres), was between 72% and 81% of it. The Mazda CX-6e and Porsche Cayenne reached 81%, the Volvo ES90 72%.
The tour was driven at the legal limit, 130 km/h on every motorway that allowed it, with no economy driving, no eco modes and no climate control switched off. On the Autobahn without a limit no rule was set.
Mind the definition. "Real range" here means the battery divided by the mean consumption over all kilometres, not a distance measured from 100% to 0%. The WLTP figures are the maximum range in the technical sheets of the tested cars, made available by Mircea Meșter. For the Volvo ES90 the technical sheet gives a band, 554–651 km: with the lowest value, the tour's real range would be 85% of it.
Do mountains, rain and cold really raise consumption?#
| Day | Route | km | Temperature | Weather | Motorway | Relief (up / down) | Consumption |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pitești → Alba Iulia | 306–315 | 10–25 °C | fair, sunny | 18% | +2,500 / −2,600 m | 87% |
| 2 | Alba Iulia → Tata | 691–715 | 15–30 °C | fair, sunny | 49% | +2,500 / −2,600 m | 97% |
| 3 | Tata → Turracher Höhe | 618–634 | 6–20 °C | overcast | 80% | +3,400 / −1,700 m | 111% |
| 4 | Turracher Höhe → Mannheim | 726–756 | 10–20 °C | sunny | 62% | +4,700 / −6,400 m | 95% |
| 5 | Mannheim → Enzklösterle | 137–149 | 18–25 °C | sunny | 12% | +700 / −200 m | 92% |
| 6 | Enzklösterle → Hohe Salve | 490–507 | 10–25 °C | sunny | 40% | +4,000 / −4,000 m | 93% |
| 7 | Hohe Salve → Szeged | 827–874 | 5–15 °C | overcast, rain | 85% | +1,700 / −2,200 m | 102% |
| 8 | Szeged → Pitești | 568–580 | 8–20 °C | overcast | 77% | +1,600 / −1,400 m | 111% |
Each day's consumption, against the same car's mean over the tour, looks like this. The alpine day (day 4: Nockalmstraße, Großglockner, then Autobahn) came out at 95% of the mean; on the computed road the climb was about 4,700 m and the descent about 6,400 m. The day with rain, the coldest (5–15 °C), the longest (about 857 km) and with 85% motorway (day 7) came out at 102%.
The highest consumption was on two other days: day 3 (Tata–Turracher Höhe, 6–20 °C, overcast, 80% motorway) and day 8 (Szeged–Pitești, 8–20 °C, overcast, 77% motorway), both at 111%. Day 3 climbed about 550 m per 100 km and ended at 1,800 m altitude; day 8 climbed about 280 m per 100 km, with the same consumption. Climbing is not the only factor. Wind, traffic and speed on individual road sections are not recorded, so the reason stays unknown.
The cars did not react alike. On day 3, consumption was 6% above the car's own mean for the BYD Sealion 7 and 20% for the Audi Q4 Sportback e-tron.
Can a city car with a 52 kWh battery do a long drive?#
| Stop | power | arrival → departure | min |
|---|---|---|---|
| St. Valentin | 400 kW | 22% → 86% | 25 |
| Parndorfmeal | 50 kW | 18% → 100% | 69 |
| Lajosmizse | 150 kW | 6% → 54% | 21 |
| Szegedhotel, overnight | 22 kW | 14% → 100% | – |
| Stop | power | arrival → departure | min |
|---|---|---|---|
| OMV St. Valentin | 300 kW | 14% → 81% | 31 |
| Mercedes Parndorfmeal | 400 kW | 10% → 100% | 59 |
| OMV eMotion Inarcs | 400 kW | 13% → 83% | 31 |
| Szegedhotel, overnight | 22 kW | 26% → 100% | – |
The ID. Polo and Renault 5 have 52 kWh batteries, the smallest of the fleet. On day 7 (about 857 km, rain, 5–15 °C, Hopfgarten–Szeged) the ID. Polo made three stops, with 115 min at stations, and the Renault 5 three stops, with 120 min, meal included. The ID. Polo finished the tour at 15.0 kWh/100 km, the most efficient of the fleet; the Renault 5 at 16.3.
They charged overnight at hotels on seven and six nights respectively. The Renault 5 made 17 stops at stations over the tour, against 11 for the Cayenne; total time, 8 h 33 min against 3 h 15 min.
What does an electric car cost on the road, against petrol?#
on the road (lowest–highest tariffs)at home, at your price
Each day has a lowest and a highest cost, depending on the app used. The eight cars used 6,783 kWh over 35,594 km and cost between €2,863 and €4,656, that is €8–13 per 100 km, all of it at road tariffs, not home ones. The same kilometres in a petrol SUV, at 8 l/100 km and €1.9/l, would have cost about €5,400, that is €15.2 per 100 km.
At home, at €0.20/kWh, the same 6,783 kWh would cost about €1,360 (the meter counts a little more than reaches the battery: in the tour data, the median is 7% more). Enter your own prices and see the eight cars at your home price.
Your trip, with the car you pick#
Pick a car and a distance. The page starts from the range the car had on the tour and the battery levels at which it usually arrived at and left a station, then works out stops, minutes, consumption and cost. It is an estimate from one September tour, driven at the legal limit (130 km/h where allowed, about 84 km/h on average), with each driver charging where they chose. A trip over different terrain, in different weather or with fewer stations will come out differently.
Where the data comes from and who made it#
The data is the daily measurements of the EUROCHARGE 2026 tour (eight cars, eight days), made available by Mircea Meșter, the tour's organiser. The totals were checked against each other: kilometres per car, minutes at stations, stops, consumption.
Where the data holds values that do not agree with each other, the page uses the value that agrees with the rest of the day or does not show it.
The time of each stop and the speed on individual road sections are not known. For the time axis, driving time is taken at the tour's mean speed (about 53 hours per car for about 4,460 km, per Mircea), and stops are those in the data.
The road on the map is drawn on OpenStreetMap through the points of the route Mircea Meșter gave (Pitești, Horezu, Transalpina, Alba Iulia, Aiud, Râmeț, Bucium, Oradea, Debrecen, Budapest, Tata, Krems, Melk, Trieben, Turracher Höhe, Nockalmstraße, Leoben (Carinthia), Gmünd, Flattach, Großkirchheim, Großglockner, Saalfelden, Lofer, Walchsee, Mannheim, Pforzheim, Enzklösterle, Donaueschingen, Bregenz, Schoppernau, Nesslegg, Lech, Hopfgarten, Salzburg, Szeged); between points it follows the quickest road. Altitude comes from the Open-Meteo digital terrain model, every 4 km. Stops are placed on the road in proportion to the day's kilometres.
The WLTP range is the maximum value in the technical sheets of the tested cars, made available by Mircea Meșter (for the Volvo ES90, a band of 554–651 km). "Real range" means battery capacity divided by the tour's mean consumption, weighted by daily kilometres, as in Mircea's material.
The tour and the measurements belong to EUROCHARGE, organised by Mircea Meșter; the full results per car are at Autocritica, EUROCHARGE 2026 (in Romanian). The tour's partners: Schaeffler (title partner), BT Leasing (Banca Transilvania), Michelin, ENGIE, VARTA Automotive, Server Config, Eldrive. The data was made available for this page. Drawing: Marius Comper.