A BMW i3 Drove 3,658 Miles From Norway to Spain With Less Than Three Hours of Charging

BMW drove an i3 50 xDrive 3,658 miles, or 5,886.7 kilometers, from Norway's North Cape to Tarifa, Spain, and spent 2 hours, 45 minutes and 54 seconds on the charger, InsideEVs reported. The company said that beats the previous Paneuropeana record, set in 2017, by more than seven hours. The route crossed eight countries.

The challenge is to cross Europe from north to south while spending as little time charging as possible. Drivers must pass set checkpoints but can choose their route and charging stops. BMW used public chargers and averaged 275 kW during those stops. The trip lasted about 75 hours, with an average speed of 79.7 km/h, or 49.5 mph, so it was not a slow crawl staged only to save energy.

Efficiency and an 800-volt car

On the road, the i3 used 12.5 kWh per 100 km, or about 5 miles per kWh. At that consumption, its 108.7 kWh battery would theoretically deliver about 540 miles before reaching empty, well above the i3 50 xDrive's 468-mile EPA rating with 20-inch summer tires. The record car wore 19-inch aero wheels and low-rolling-resistance tires, which InsideEVs said certainly helped. The sedan uses BMW's sixth-generation Neue Klasse electric drive, including an 800-volt architecture and cylindrical cells in a cell-to-pack layout. It can charge at up to 400 kW. BMW quotes a 10-to-80 percent charge in 21 minutes and says the car can add up to 263 miles of WLTP range in 10 minutes.

BMW had already shown the platform's range with an iX3 that drove 626 miles from Debrecen, Hungary, to Munich without recharging, arriving with 2 percent left. That run involved mostly country roads and systems, including air conditioning, switched off. The Norway-to-Spain i3 drive is a different kind of demonstration: a long public-charger crossing at a nearly 50 mph average, with total plug-in time under three hours. It is a manufacturer record run, not a promise that every owner will match those numbers, but it is a clear look at what an 800-volt, high-efficiency sedan can do on Europe's fast-charging network.

The i3 also supports bidirectional charging, a feature of the same Neue Klasse hardware, though that was not the point of the record run. InsideEVs argued that Europe's fast-charging network already makes long EV trips more straightforward than many drivers assume. The writer's own iX3 drive in Romania, including a mountain road taken twice, ended a roughly 250-mile day with 16 percent of the battery left and no charging stop, a less staged example than the Hungary-to-Munich record. The Norway-to-Spain crossing remains the headline number: 3,658 miles, eight countries, and 2 hours, 45 minutes and 54 seconds on public chargers averaging 275 kW.