I'm surprised you consider a 300km trip long, or 3-4 trips in a year excessive. That's only Berlin to Bielefeld. What do you do with your holiday?

The EU minimum is 20 days annual leave per year.

For that kind of distance I take a train, Munich-Dortmund doesn't take that long. As for holidays, Croatia by bus or by night train to get around horrid traffic, extortion level road tolls and dumbass border controls.