04/25/2026
Impressive!
A retired German driver named Hansjörg von Gemmingen-Hornberg has pushed his 2014 Tesla Model S P85 past 1.2 million miles making it one of the highest-mileage electric vehicles on the planet, and he did it by averaging roughly 131,000 miles per year on road trips across Europe, Africa, China and beyond. The car is now on its 14th motor and 4th battery pack which critics will jump on as a reliability concern but context matters because each battery lasted around 300,000 miles and the early P85 rear motor units were a known weak point that Tesla has since engineered out of newer models, and even factoring in an estimated $40,000 to $60,000 in total replacement costs over the car's life that's still a fraction of what a combustion vehicle would have spent on engines, transmissions, oil changes, exhaust systems and emissions work over 1.2 million miles. The owner keeps his battery between 20% and 80% charge, drives in 60-mile segments and never tops off unnecessarily which is a masterclass in EV battery management, and the fact that a 2014 electric car is still running at nearly 2 million kilometers while most gas cars from that era are in junkyards tells you everything you need to know about whether EVs can go the distance.
