Can you take an electric car from Belgium to Albania without spending half your holiday looking for chargers? We put it to the test with a Kia EV6 on a three-week, 4,157-kilometer road trip through nine countries. Surprisingly, range was the least of our worries.

One persistent argument against electric cars in Belgium – and elsewhere in Europe – is that while an EV may be perfectly adequate for everyday commuting, it becomes less practical for that one big family holiday to southern Europe. Range, charging stops, and queues remain reasons for motorists to stick with gasoline or diesel.

Paradoxically, that once-a-year journey is also an important reason to choose a large car with a large fuel tank – or, increasingly, an EV with the largest possible battery. For the other 48 or 49 weeks of the year, much of that long-distance capability may rarely be needed.

So we decided to put that argument to a real-world test. The destination was Lefkada in Greece, where a sailing boat awaited us for a week. But instead of planning the journey around the EV6’s battery, we planned the trip we wanted and let the electric car follow.

Our travelling companion was a first-generation Kia EV6 Long Range, with rear-wheel drive and a 77.4 kWh battery. When new, Kia rated this version at up to 528 km of WLTP range and 16.5 kWh/100 km. Our aim wasn’t to see whether we could reproduce that laboratory figure, but whether such an EV could simply follow the holiday route we wanted to drive.

And we made things deliberately difficult. Motorways were used where the alternatives offered little, but otherwise we preferred scenic roads, mountain passes, and secondary routes. The journey itself was part of the experience, not simply 4,157 kilometers to be covered.

Over the Gotthard, not through it

From Belgium, the route crossed the Eifel and followed the Moselle before heading into the Black Forest, taking the B500 past Mummelsee, Triberg, and Titisee.

In Switzerland, we ignored the Gotthard tunnel and climbed over the pass instead, descending toward Ticino via the historic cobbled Tremola road. That produced an early indication that mountainous terrain isn’t necessarily an EV’s worst enemy. Climbing obviously consumes considerably more energy, but modest speeds on mountain roads help.

Mountain roads also showed one of an EV’s less obvious advantages. With the EV6 in one-pedal mode, even kilometers-long descents and successive hairpins required remarkably little brake use. Lifting off was enough to slow the car while regenerative braking put part of the energy spent on the climb back into the battery.

It became a recurring pattern. Some of the trip’s lowest consumption figures weren’t achieved on motorways but on secondary roads chosen purely because they were more interesting to drive.

Northern Italy took us via Bologna, San Marino, and Urbino to Ancona, where the EV6 boarded a ferry for Igoumenitsa (Greece). And there, range anxiety was suddenly turned on its head.

When too much battery becomes the problem

For our ferry crossing, the operator instructed electric and plug-in hybrid cars to arrive with no more than 40% battery charge, a precaution intended to reduce the consequences of a possible battery fire on the confined vehicle decks.

We boarded with 27% charge on the dash. That required some planning beforehand. For once, the challenge wasn’t making sure we arrived with enough electricity, but ensuring that we didn’t arrive with too much.

We complied. Nobody checked the battery level in the end. What we did get was an ‘EV’ sticker on the windscreen, allowing the crew to identify the car as electric. Case closed.

Albania: paperwork before range

Another potential obstacle appeared before the EV6 had even crossed the Albanian border – and it had nothing to do with electricity.

Our car is owned by the leasing company Arval, so taking it outside the Schengen area required a special Drive Certificate authorizing us to enter Albania. And this wasn’t simply a permission email from the leasing company.

The certificate had to be authenticated by Voka – Chamber of Commerce Flemish Brabant and subsequently provided with an apostille by the Belgian Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs. The apostille itself cost €20; the complete procedure cost us around €99.

The paperwork wasn’t merely bureaucratic insurance. Albanian border officials asked to see both the registration documents and the authorization.

Once produced, however, there was no drama. Both entering and leaving Albania took only around five minutes. In retrospect, getting permission to drive a leased car into Albania proved more complicated than actually driving it there.

Where range anxiety was supposed to begin

From Igoumenitsa, we crossed into Albania near the coast and headed for Butrint and Sarandë before following the Albanian Riviera past Borsh, Qeparo, Porto Palermo, Vuno, and old Dhërmi. The route later turned inland through the Vjosa region toward Gjirokastër.

If there was anywhere on the journey where we had expected an EV to become inconvenient, this was it.

Albania’s public charging network is much thinner than those in Germany, Switzerland, or northern Italy. Chargers are concentrated around cities, main roads, and tourist destinations rather than scattered throughout the countryside. Yet range anxiety never materialized.

What did materialize was a different problem: finding a charger and being able to use it aren’t necessarily the same thing. In Sarandë, there was a fast charger, but the CCS2 connection we needed was occupied by a local courier vehicle. We therefore connected the EV6 to AC.

At first, none of our usual cards could activate it. Then, somewhat mysteriously, it started working. As far as we could establish afterward, we were never actually charged for the electricity.

Hardly the seamless European charging experience promised by glossy brochures. But we were having dinner while the car charged, so in practice it barely cost us any holiday time.

When the waiter has the charging card

Gjirokastër provided an even better illustration of how different charging can still be across Europe. The Vega charger required its own RFID card, which we didn’t have. Fortunately, it stood next to a bar-restaurant and filling station.

A waiter appeared with the establishment’s Vega card, activated the charger and, once charging was complete, checked how much electricity we had used. We settled the €14.59 charge at the bar, along with our beers. Not particularly sophisticated. But remarkably effective.

Back in Greece, charging became noticeably more conventional. In Igoumenitsa, a DC charger near a supermarket filled the car while we shopped and had coffee. At Lefkas Marina, a 180-kW PPC Blue charger added 31.7 kWh in roughly 12 minutes, briefly reaching around 160 kW.

That highlighted another recurring lesson from the trip: charging time and lost travel time aren’t necessarily the same thing.

The hotel can be more important than the fast charger

The same applied even more strongly to overnight charging. Whenever possible, we selected hotels offering EV charging. An 11-kW AC charger looks painfully slow beside a 300-kW HPC charger, but that comparison becomes largely meaningless when the car will remain parked for eight or ten hours anyway.

Plug in, have dinner, sleep, and leave with a full battery. In theory, at least.

We generally booked accommodation only a day ahead and discovered that booking platforms still aren’t particularly good at telling EV drivers what they’re actually getting. A hotel may advertise ‘EV charging’ without specifying the number of chargers, power, connector type, availability, or price.

AI-assisted searches made that considerably easier. They let us look beyond booking platforms, cross-check the hotel’s website and other sources, and identify accommodation that appeared to offer genuinely useful overnight charging. Where necessary, we asked the hotel for confirmation.

Even that wasn’t foolproof. At one hotel in Igoumenitsa, the advertised EV charging facility turned out to be an extension cable connected to an ordinary domestic socket. We declined and used a public DC charger the following morning instead.

Elsewhere, overnight charging worked brilliantly – and was occasionally even free, included in the hotel stay.

Back across the Alps

After four days in Albania and a week sailing from Lefkada, the return ferry brought us back to Ancona. This time, we chose the motorway. Rather than spend hours crossing the relatively monotonous Po plains on secondary roads, we headed north at typical Italian motorway speeds of 120 to 130 km/h, making quicker progress toward the foot of the Alps.

From Lake Garda, however, the philosophy changed again. We left the motorway behind and headed via Madonna di Campiglio and Passo Tonale to Bormio, then climbed toward Torri di Fraele and the Cancano lakes.

Then came Passo Foscagno and Livigno, the Swiss Engadin, Nauders in Austria, and the Fernpass into Germany. Once in Germany, we again used stretches of the ‘Autobahn’ to cover ground more quickly toward the Eifel and Luxembourg, before finishing with a final scenic stretch via Saarburg, Luxembourg’s Mullerthal, Vianden, and the Belgian Ardennes.

So this wasn’t an economy run. The EV6 spent plenty of time on efficient secondary roads, often at up to 100 km/h like in Germany, but it also crossed the Alps several times and covered substantial motorway stretches at speeds of up to 130 km/h.

The final numbers were perhaps the biggest surprise

That makes the eventual 14.4 kWh/100 km trip average all the more relevant: it wasn’t achieved by deliberately driving slowly to produce an impressive consumption figure, but rather reflected the way we actually wanted to travel.

The final numbers were perhaps the biggest surprise. By the time we pulled into our driveway, the EV6 had covered 4,157 kilometers in 86 hours and 40 minutes behind the wheel, yet averaged just 14.4 kWh/100 km. We even arrived home with 19% battery remaining. In total, the car used approximately 599 kWh of traction energy over the entire journey.

Interestingly, our 14.4 kWh/100 km average over the entire 4,157 km was even below the EV6’s official 16.5 kWh/100 km WLTP consumption. That doesn’t mean we somehow beat WLTP range, but it does underline how efficiently the EV6 handled this particular journey.

Our overall average speed was only around 48 km/h, which obviously helped. But this wasn’t an economy run. We also covered substantial stretches of motorway at 120 to 130 km/h and crossed the Alps several times…

Lower speeds on secondary roads reduced consumption, while repeated mountain descents let the EV6 recover some of the energy used on the climbs. But the more important conclusion was another one. During three weeks and more than 4,000 kilometers, range anxiety was never an issue.

That doesn’t mean European EV travel has become effortless. We accumulated an ever-growing collection of apps. Some chargers refused our cards. Tariffs ranged from free to eye-wateringly expensive. And in Albania, a waiter with the right RFID card proved more useful than several sophisticated roaming services.

But those were no longer problems with the electric car’s ability to get us there. They were problems with the ecosystem around it.

Coming next: charging and the real cost

And that’s where Part 2 of our road trip begins. We take a closer look at what charging across Europe was really like: the apps and cards, fast chargers and hotel chargers, failed attempts, unexpected workarounds, and wildly different prices.

Then, in Part 3, we’ll open the spreadsheet. How much did 4,157 kilometers actually cost in electricity – including everything from free hotel charging to expensive Italian fast chargers – and how does that compare with making the same journey in a gasoline or diesel car.