Ok, here are my tips.
Background: On the 12th of July we did a trip from Vancouver BC, to Palo Alto in 21 hours with charging stops. We returned from LA (yes, we ended up there) via the 405 today (28th of July)
Car: modelS 60
Passengers: 2 and a bit of cargo
Sleeping: Yes, we slept in our car at the SC's lol
Interesting note: we went from SF City down the #1 all the way to Atascadero Supercharger then back out to the coast #1 all the way to Buellton Supercharger and across to Hawthorn.
Another Interesting note: we went from Harris Ranch to Vacaville on a single charge
Tips:
1. Leave with more than enough charge.
2. If you're close (like when we left from Harris to Vacaville), try to make up your charge early in the trip. One way to do this (especially if you have a wicked headwind), is to drive, not draft, behind a semi. It will take a while but you'll slowly gain miles.
3. Drive like a roller coaster / semi - it's ok to let your speed dip a little going up a hill to keep your energy usage low... accelerate down the other side, BUT, don't bother going much more than 10MPH over the limit cause a) don't lose that semi, b) you'll start to get into wind resistance issues that hurt your range any ways. By accelerating down the other side, just a result of gravity not increased energy usage, you'll make up the time you slowed down up the front side. On hilly roads this helps even out the ups and downs.
4. You're better to drive the semi/towing speed limit on the main highways while you make up your energy requirements.
5. YOU CAN"T MAKE UP RANGE AT THE END
6. anticipate slowdowns and gradually let your regen increase, you don't want to come to a complete stop, you're just trying to match traffic and hopefully time it so when they start moving you'll have not come to a stop
7. additional weight in the car really doesn't make that big of a difference.
8. plan ahead on your charger route. An example of this is... on our way through Washington, there is a stop where we only needed an extra 40 miles to go from one SC to another (because we arrived with so much remaining charge), I figured if I spent the time to get the extra bit of charge, I could drive 1.5 hours to the next charger, then charge 15 minutes, then drive 2.5 ours to the following one. From that one I could stop 45 and finally make the border essentially skipping out the middle charger. AND i was charging at max charge rates while at the second and third charger in that row.
I ran into many many people who hadn't let their cars go below 40miles range. We were down at 0 at one point and down to 9 another time. If you're within 3-4 miles of your destination when this happens you'll MOST LIKELY be ok... obviously this isn't the goal.
I'll post more as my brain recovers from sleeping in the car for 3 days lol
