Dear all, we had a false sense of security after reading this blog as we set off in our 60 kw battery Tesla for our first road trip from LA to Vegas. It appears that issues between Barstow and Vegas are very underrated, plus there is a belief that there is a 20 mile reserve beyond zero. This is false. 0 on the dash means 0! Tesla does not allow you to see how many miles are used post-zero, and it is difficult to calculate since at that point we were coasting downhills and driving about 38 miles per hour. However, we estimate we got about 4 additional miles before we got the message to pull over before the car shuts down.
Here are the details:
We got to Vegas easily, and had about 25 miles left to spare. For this reason, we felt comfortable charging the car to 201 miles for the return trip since there were multiple Teslas parked at the Venetian charging stations making the final miles charged extremely slow.
We encountered extremely powerful headwinds on the return trip, and the temperature dipped under 50 degrees (it was about 47 F outside). Both factors significantly dropped our range. My husband had the cruise control on 68 miles/hour until about 1/2 way to Barstow - he went down to 60 miles/hour when we noticed that we were significantly losing range. As we approached zero miles a dotted line appeared on the speedometer blocking max acceleration (this is called limping). The bar reduced more past 0.
Tesla Roadside Assistance, 866-998-3752, was awesome! TJ (the gentleman in Fremont we got on the line) was very knowledgable, helpful and detailed - he went above and beyond even calling us back to see if roadside assistance had picked us up. The towing company was trained by Tesla on how to handle the cars since there are very specific things that need to be done. The gentleman from the towing company said that they haul in about one Tesla per month due to runnng out of electricity. There has never been any other issues with the car other than one tire blowing out. He said the Tesla owners tend to be very nice and polite .
I will not be brave enough to drive to Vegas again until there are more charging stations. My husband said that he would brave it, but he would allocate a lot of time to get the charge up to 210 before leaving Vegas (it would have taken at least 45 minutes to an hour more since it was going at a snails pace). I don't think a 8-9 more miles charged would have helped much since we were 2.2 miles short of pulling into the Barstow station, and we went at least 4 miles beyond zero. That leaves a buffer of 2-3 miles in the same conditions, which is too close for comfort for me (especially since we had been driving so cautiously).
Here are the details:
We got to Vegas easily, and had about 25 miles left to spare. For this reason, we felt comfortable charging the car to 201 miles for the return trip since there were multiple Teslas parked at the Venetian charging stations making the final miles charged extremely slow.
We encountered extremely powerful headwinds on the return trip, and the temperature dipped under 50 degrees (it was about 47 F outside). Both factors significantly dropped our range. My husband had the cruise control on 68 miles/hour until about 1/2 way to Barstow - he went down to 60 miles/hour when we noticed that we were significantly losing range. As we approached zero miles a dotted line appeared on the speedometer blocking max acceleration (this is called limping). The bar reduced more past 0.
Tesla Roadside Assistance, 866-998-3752, was awesome! TJ (the gentleman in Fremont we got on the line) was very knowledgable, helpful and detailed - he went above and beyond even calling us back to see if roadside assistance had picked us up. The towing company was trained by Tesla on how to handle the cars since there are very specific things that need to be done. The gentleman from the towing company said that they haul in about one Tesla per month due to runnng out of electricity. There has never been any other issues with the car other than one tire blowing out. He said the Tesla owners tend to be very nice and polite .
I will not be brave enough to drive to Vegas again until there are more charging stations. My husband said that he would brave it, but he would allocate a lot of time to get the charge up to 210 before leaving Vegas (it would have taken at least 45 minutes to an hour more since it was going at a snails pace). I don't think a 8-9 more miles charged would have helped much since we were 2.2 miles short of pulling into the Barstow station, and we went at least 4 miles beyond zero. That leaves a buffer of 2-3 miles in the same conditions, which is too close for comfort for me (especially since we had been driving so cautiously).