In the U.S., most people typically drive less than 20,000 miles in a year – about 32,000 kilometres. Germany’s Hansjörg von Gemmingen-Hornberg, however, drives well over 160,000km kilometres – and in a Tesla Model S. As InsideEVs reports, his 2014 Model S has officially crossed the million-mile mark, and currently sitting with just under 1.9 million kilometres on the odometer. Which, by any standard, is a lot of distance, especially for an electric car.
If you do the math, that’s more than 209,000 kilometres of driving every year, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that he’s no longer on the original motor or battery pack. In fact, the rear motor has been replaced 13 times, and the car is now on its fourth battery pack. Doing a little more math, that works out to one battery pack every 482,000 kilometres or so, which really isn’t bad. The engines in most gas-powered cars often fail before they hit the 480,000 kilometre mark.
Mal wieder mit dem Model S in Marokko😃 pic.twitter.com/wpkpkGaUa2
— Hansjörg von Gemmingen – Hornberg (@gem8mingen) November 6, 2023
Gemmingen-Hornberg hasn’t been as lucky with the rear motor, though. With the car on its 14th motor, that works out to less than 160,000 kilometres per motor and more than one motor replacement per year on average. As InsideEVs points out, that’s a common problem with early versions of the Tesla Model S, and it took Tesla a while to figure out what the problem was, so the motors kept failing.
Then again, most Tesla owners don’t drive 209,000 kilometres a year, so it’s not like regular people are replacing the motor in their Model S every year. As for why Gemmingen-Hornberg drives so much, the dude just likes to go on road trips. Long road trips. Last month, for example, he visited Morocco. It’s hard to imagine spending that much time in any car, but clearly he enjoys it, so we say rock on, Hansjörg. Let’s get this puppy up to three million kilometres.
Screenshot: Watt Energy
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Editor’s note: a previous version of this article listed Zachariah Kelly as the author. This has been updated to Collin Woodard.