A group of Italian Tesla owners just notched an impressive record in the history of the high-performance electric sports car. Driving a Tesla Model S 100D this week, they traveled 1,078 kilometers—or 669.83 miles, as the group noted on its Twitter account—on a single battery charge.
1078 km – 669.83 miles with Tesla ModelS 100D in a single charge by Tesla Owners Italy-Ticino-San Marino #teslarecord pic.twitter.com/DvQw16V0wo
— Tesla Owners Italia (@TeslaOwnersIT) August 3, 2017
That’s the furthest anyone’s ever made it in an electric vehicle on just one charge. Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk saluted the drivers in a tweet on Saturday, stating that the record had been “officially verified.” Musk, 46, co-founded Tesla in 2003, and the company has sold more than 200,000 cars during that time.
Officially verified as the first production electric car to exceed 1000km on a single charge! Congratulations Tesla Owners Italia!! https://t.co/r8fFZIFEP2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 5, 2017
By all accounts, this new mileage record did not come easily. In order to pace out the amount of charge in the car’s battery, which is typically good for 335 miles per charge, the car in question was likely driven for a span of 29 hours at around 23 mph, according to analysis by Electrek. That’s an incredibly charge-efficient speed, although it’s not exactly time-efficient.
That said, as a feat of driving and of pushing the technology past its stated limits, it’s a very impressive achievement. At a final distance of just shy of 670 miles driven, Tesla Owners Italia managed to almost perfectly double the projected range of the car. According to Inverse, the previous record was a mere 560 miles.