Traveling by electric car no longer surprises anyone, especially if it's a long-range model capable of easily covering 300-400 km without any issues. However, apart from the range and availability of charging stations, there are still questions related to starting sessions and payment, and that's where you might encounter an unpleasant surprise in a foreign country. Even if you seem to have prepared in advance and thought of backup options. And the hero of our story undertook his first serious long-distance trip by electric car.

Decided to do without refueling

First, a bit about the car. Evgeny says that his 2018 Tesla 3 Dual Motor Long Range is standard, without any tuning or modifications. However, the factory did not include a retrofit, which meant only slow charging was possible. After the owner purchased the necessary board for 450 rubles, the Tesla can charge at fast stations. Since it's an "American," the port is NACS standard, so a connector is used to connect to CCS2 stations. And for the trip, a Type2-NACS cable and a portable charger from a household outlet were taken, which allowed for a greater choice of power sources.

"This car has been mine since January," Evgeny explains. "Before this trip, my longest journey was to Osipovichi, and it was a real stress. I arrived in that city, and there were only a few charging stations - and they were all occupied. I couldn't wait, had to drive further, and then look for a place to recharge to get home. In general, all my trips in the Tesla have been within Minsk and its surroundings."

How did Evgeny decide to embark on a trip to Georgia with such a background?

"Actually, the idea was that my friends and I would take our beloved 'Nivas' and drive them. That's how we periodically travel to different countries. I already told you about such a trip to Georgia last year."

They settled on the dates. As a result, the guys left, but I couldn't make it due to work. I decided to catch up with them a week later, but in reality, I only managed to leave a week and a half later. And by that time, I already knew that there might be problems with refueling in Russia: the guys had encountered situations where some gas stations had no gasoline, some had it at a significantly higher price than usual, or there were queues.

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Moreover, Yevgeny admits that traveling in a “Niva” no longer made much sense: by that point his friends had already driven off‑road, and looking for adventures alone in unfamiliar wild places was not the best idea. In the end, although there was an option to go in another vehicle with an internal‑combustion engine, it was decided to set off on the journey in a Tesla.

• I thought I wasn’t losing anything. If needed, I could turn

We made it to Georgia like this, with periodic stops, including in Pyatigorsk and Vladikavkaz.

Georgia: better in the mountains!

— Going to Georgia for the sea, in my opinion, is a bad idea, because the sea is, first of all, not the cleanest, and second, there are few sandy beaches. You should go to the mountains, parks. Then you see that Georgia is beautiful, green, with mountains and rivers that delight the eye everywhere, — notes Evgeny.

— But with electric cars, the mountains are a drain. You go uphill, the car “eats” about 40 kWh, you go downhill, the battery starts to recharge. Not that much, but still.

Just after descending from the mountains — boom! I was trying to avoid all the potholes, and here — two wheels on one side punctured. I called a tow truck, and we went to Natakhteri on it. It turns out that locals there buy used tires in bulk from Europe. I talked to one guy. He told me that just the day before, he had brought 1,500 tires from Germany. I installed a good pair and kept going.

Evgeny clarifies that he arranged Georgian insurance online. He also preloaded the local operators’ apps. However, the

— It's very convenient that you can pay through Apple Pay, you don't need to link your card to the apps. Although, to be honest, Belarusian Visa and Mastercard work just fine. And there are no queues. I only had to wait once, and that was because a gas-powered car had blocked one of the charging stations.

Speaking about the local car fleet, my interlocutor notes that there are a lot of hybrids in the country, in particular, Toyota Prius, and among electric vehicles, Tesla Model 3 and Model Y stand out.

— We drove through the mountains without any extreme difficulties. We met some guys who had left earlier. Their time was running out, and I thought that there was no point in staying in Georgia, so we decided to try to move on — to Turkey. If it didn't work out, we could just return, especially since we had already explored everything here.

Turkey: reaching paradise

— Oh, it was a real quest! — says Evgeny. — The same story as with Georgian operators. To enter the app, you need a local phone number. You can't pass and see how it works until that moment. So, until I crossed the border, I had no idea what to expect.

Well, I entered the country, connected to mobile internet, started logging into apps — and found out that I couldn't link any of my cards. So, how was I supposed to charge my car?

The AI gave me an answer that at Shell gas stations near highways, you can allegedly pay directly with a card. In reality, wherever I asked, everyone just shrugged, no one had even heard of such an option.

The situation was a dead end. We drove to some point on the coast, and I didn't know what to do. We didn't have enough charge to return to Georgia.

In the end, Evgeny just waited until someone came to charge their car, explained the situation, and asked the driver to start a charging session from their phone. The plan worked, and the local resident didn't even take any money when the Belarusian offered to pay him in cash.

• It turned out that in each new country, I spent the first day solving problems with charging.

By the end of the day I had almost decided: we would stay overnight and then head back to Georgia. It seemed I had a backup plan. A friend works for a Georgian company and has a Georgian card. I asked him to give me access to that card, but I couldn’t link it either.

I read that someone creates virtual wallets for Turkish banks and uses them to charge. I started researching the topic. Until recently it really worked, but since the spring of this year almost all of these services (charging networks) stopped working with virtual cards.

In short, I arrived at the hotel already despondent. I sat down, went through all the cards in the apps, and somehow the Georgian card suddenly linked. And that’s it—after that all the charging issues vanished and I found myself in a real paradise for the owner of the “electric train”.

Turkey has a huge number of charging stations. The distances between them rarely exceed 20 km, so they are everywhere. Even in the mountains, after crossing a pass, there’s a charging point in a small settlement. On the highways the complexes are more impressive than in Germany. You arrive, and there are outlets, Subway, Burger King, petrol stations, electric chargers…

There are also Tesla Superchargers. The cost of charging is about 12–13 Turkish lira ($0.25–0.30) on the fast chargers. There are several main apps, and the operators have partnership agreements, so you can charge on one network through another. The main standard is CCS2.

Turkey has many electric cars from local manufacturers. Visually they resemble BYD models. All of them have CCS2 charging ports, so the infrastructure is pulled to match that standard.

First we went to Cappadocia. In terms of natural phenomena, this place is absolutely unique. In person it is even more beautiful than in photos and videos. Plus those hot air balloons that they constantly launch. We literally saw everything there and then headed to Istanbul.

That was our final stop on the route. After Cappadocia, of course you understand that yes, it’s grand, with its own quirks, but it’s still built by humans, so it’s a bit different. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop us from having a good time there. In the end we spent four days in Istanbul before heading back.

Regarding charging, it was much easier, because all the apps were already working and we knew where and how to act.

The whole trip lasted about four weeks, and the total distance covered exceeded 9,000 km. Despite being somewhat unexpected and at times frankly nerve‑wracking, Eugene ultimately considers the long journey in an electric car to be a positive experience.

• Don't be afraid, just take it and go, — he advises. He doesn't hide that he's already thinking about new trips.

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