Driving Electric to my Little ITALIAN HOUSE (Was it Worth it?)

Hi everybody and welcome back to my YouTube channel. I am Julie Montague otherwise known as the American Viscountess and today's vlog is all about an electric car versus a petrol gasoline car and even flight. Was it worth driving from London through Europe to my little house in Italy in our electric car? How much did I save? Did we save anything at all? Well you're all going to find out at the very end of this video. But with energy prices soaring and with flying becoming more tedious, more tiring, more expensive, more exhausting, need I say any more about flying, we decided to drive through Europe in our electric car for our vacation in 2022. The final destination of course my little Italian house in the heart literally off of the piazza of Fivisano in Tuscany. And I wanted to find out if we would save any money at all compared to driving in a petrol gasoline car. And this is where it gets really quite interesting. So how much money did we save? Did we save anything at all? Well we'll let you be the judge at the end. So I'm going to be including our charging costs, also the tolls that we had to pay throughout France and Italy, and the channel crossing aka the tunnel. And then compare those to the cost of filling up a tank of a standard petrol gasoline car for a family of four. And then at the end I will compare a little bit of flying with a family of four on a low-cost carrier but including any baggage extras as most airlines now charge for checking baggage and in addition for renting a car for 10 days. Our holiday, our vacation was 10 days. And again this comparison is going to be based on a family of four which is what we were on our vacation. Two adults and two teenagers. So do stay until the end of this vlog and I'll chart these three costs, these three modes of transportation and compare them. So again see you at the end of the vlog but until then enjoy this video. I'm just doing a quick Italian lesson as I'm heading off to Italy in our electric car. I love the food, the culture, the art, and of course the language. And when I arrive at my little Italian house I use that as a base so that I can travel all over Italy and experience it to the fullest. And that's why I subscribe to Babbel, one of the top language learning apps in the world, who is sponsoring this episode. Not only did I want to be able to communicate with the builders helping me renovate my house, but I wanted to have a conversation with the barista in the local cafe. And I want to feel confident that I can even have small talk with a stranger in the piazza. If you're looking to learn a new language, whether that's for travel and culture, self-improvement, professional development, or family connections, Babbel offers short 10-minute interactive lessons. The lessons are designed by real language teachers. There are multiple ways to learn from lessons to podcasts to games and videos, plus live classes with top teachers, and there's a 20-day money-back guarantee. I've set up a special link for you down below to get 60% off of your subscription. Just use my special link in the description and start learning a new language in three weeks with Babbel. I'd love to hear what language you're interested in learning and why, so please comment down below. Until then, ci vediamo presto! Our vacation this year was 10 days. 2022 vacation. We drove from England to the south of France to a lovely town called Féance. Before we left London, we did fill up, and when I say fill up, I mean we charged up. The cost of charging our electric car up to 320 miles was 10 pounds, as we charged at night when electricity is at its lowest. We then traveled from London to Folkestone, Folkestone to Calais. The tunnel crossing was 150 pounds one way, so approximately $172. Okay, we're in the compartment. We've just pulled the car into the compartment, and we've never done this before. We think we just stay in the car. There's good wi-fi. We stay in the car. It's about a 30-minute train journey in the tunnel, so first for all of us. Okay, we're at our first kind of big stop. We're at like one of the Tesla, which is like the supercharger. It takes about 20 minutes to charge it up, and a couple more hours we'll head to really just an overnight hotel that we're staying at until we get to our final destination at a pretty spectacular place in the south of France, which we, here comes my sonny, which we will show you all. While driving in France, we supercharged, and we supercharged 158 kilowatts, our first supercharge, and that worked out to 59 pounds, which got us to where our overnight hotel was located. Bez is an absolutely lovely, quaint French town, and the hotel that we stayed in was just perfect. Okay, everybody, sun is massively in my eyes, but when we stop off at these Tesla supercharger places, which are amazing, I just get out my yoga mat, which is in the boot of the car, very accessible, and I do yoga for 30 minutes. So each charging is around 25 to 30 minutes, and it's really nice. We can get outside, and I just pop on my mat, and you're going to see me do some yoga. So it works really well for me, I'll tell you that. Our second supercharge in France on our way to Féance was 73 pounds, and that was for 144 kilowatts. Again, this took us all the way to our first destination, Féance, in the south of France. The Tesla did good. We've arrived. So, as soon as we get in, I'll give you a tour. Obviously, we're not in this whole castle. We have an apartment here. Details down below of where we're staying. Féance, in the south of France, was pure magic. The view from our vacation rental was so picturesque. We found a gorgeous lake, and can you believe it, we were the only ones here. All right, it's our last day here in the south of France, and then we're on our way driving to Italy, but really able to take it all in this wonderful south of France view. Plus the market on Saturday. I could have stayed all day exploring the local artisans, food, and culture. And we just got some beach towels for when we go to the beach, not only here, but also in Italy. I think they're rather smart. I'll show you. One of the things we've always had our kids do is they have to write postcards to their grandparents. So I've got a lot of postcards here, and I'm just about to put it into La Poste for America and for England. Both sets of grandparents, you'll be getting a postcard from Provence. By the way, here are the postcards that they've picked. Very Provence. But after four days of croissants, and once the postcards were sent to the grandparents, we headed off to Italy. This time to my little house in Fivizzano. The drive from Fiance to Fivizzano was only four and a half hours, and therefore we only had to charge once. 68 kilowatts, which was 27 pounds. So we've stopped off on our way to Fivizzano. You can see there's our Tesla there. We don't need to charge it, but we wanted to get some lunch, and we found the perfect place for lunch. And everybody's inside there, and we're gonna head to the beach just for a little bit after we finish our lunch and just get some sun and some sea before we head back in the car for about another two and a half hours to Fivizzano. But I definitely want to go on those rocks right there. Everybody, it's been a long drive, but we have made it. Plus the hair. Two days we went swimming in the sea today. As soon as we entered into Italy, went swimming in the sea, and we've arrived, and I'm going to show you what we've done with our electric car, where it is right now. Okay everybody, we have arrived. My house opened up the windows. We actually got here a little bit before, but we need to now charge the Tesla, and we were going to go to this car park here in there's a window, the big kitchen window, and we can charge the Tesla right here because Tesla provides you with a charger, so you just have to connect it up to a point. Anyway, really really exciting. So right outside the house, we can charge the Tesla. We'll be doing this, I'm sure, many many more times. We have had a great time driving to my house. We had a brilliant five days in Fivizzano and the surroundings, and I was able to complete the renovation and decoration of a bedroom in my little house, including assembling the four poster 19th century bed that I found at an online flea market. Thank goodness for my youngest son Nestor, who is now taller than me, so be sure to check out that video next. So after a brilliant 10 days away, what were my cost savings? I'm going to base it on the trip just from London to Italy, and you can kind of work it out and in one sense double it on the way back, but what were my cost savings? All in all, travel from London to the south of France and through Italy in an electric car looked like this. Our channel tunnel ticket, aka the channel, was 150 pounds one way. Tolls in France and Italy totaled 63 pounds one way. Total charge to France, in France, and then to Italy was 169 pounds. So the total cost of driving electric came out to 382 pounds. Now let's look if we had driven a standard petrol gasoline car for a family of four. To drive from London to France, which is approximately 865 miles, I used this calculation for an average car. 35 miles to the gallon at a pound 75 to the liter at the time of travel. So again, this is 2022. The cost of fuel would have been about 196 pounds. When we drove through France and into Italy, the cost per liter was pretty much the same as it was in the UK. So it was about a euro 91, which is roughly a pound 75 to the liter. Driving from France to Italy would have cost 53 pounds. Add in the same tolls of 63 pounds and the channel ticket of 150 pounds, total cost had we had driven with a petrol car would have been 462 pounds. Therefore, not only did we save 80 pounds just one way by driving electric versus petrol, but our carbon footprint was zero by driving electric where the CO2 produced had we driven with a petrol car would have been 268.47 kgs one way. So what about comparing driving electric to the cost of flying? Well, good question. The savings again are much more substantial when you compare an electric journey compared to flying. So and it's really easy to actually figure that out. What I really looked at was we're a family of four and had we chosen a low cost carrier, we would have then had to have hired a rental car for 10 days. The thing about rental cars these days, they're at their highest. Why? The high rental hiring car prices are so high and the reason is is because they were caused by car rental companies having sold off much of their stock vehicles during the pandemic and then demand collapsed. Now with people taking holidays again, they're trying to rebuild their fleets. But a global shortage of semiconductors means that they're paying more for new vehicles. So when I looked into hiring a car in France and Italy, it was roughly about 60 pounds a day to fit in a family of four and luggage. That cost right there over a 10-day trip would have easily been 600 pounds. Plus flights to France or to Italy with checked baggage would have been about 125 pounds per person. Easily over a thousand pounds. And that's not including travel to the airport. So compared to the 382 pounds when driving electric, that's a huge thing. Yes, of course, you kind of have to double it, but flying would have cost well over a thousand pounds. So will we drive our electric car again to my little Italian house? The answer is a resounding yes. And again, we'll drive it to even more destinations in Europe. Not only did we save money, but we found it relaxing, easy, I was able to do yoga, and there was plenty of family bonding. Do comment down below if you've driven electric before, or if you're thinking of driving electric, or again, any comparisons that you've made, I'd love to hear. Do comment down below. Make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel, American Viscountess, and be sure to hit the like button. Bye everybody.