ElectricStartupSuperTrip pseudo-blog thread!

Edison (my silver S85) departed Cary, NC this morning at 0620 local time, carrying me, my wife, and about 600 pounds of my stuff. We're headed to Palo Alto, California where I'm starting a new job with a small tech startup. Thus, I have dubbed this the ElectricStartupSuperTrip, and this thread may be the closest that I end up to an actual blog.

The first leg is complete, as I sit in the Panera next to the Glen Allen, VA super charger. We skipped South Hill, and the plan is to get nearly full here and then hop all the way to Hagerstown, bypassing Bethesda and Woodbridge. Because really... who wants to deal with Potomac Mills or Montgomery Mall if you don't absolutely have to?!?!

I've got a windows VPS cloud server running VisibleTesla, so I'm hoping that if the server stays up and reliable that I'll have very good instrumentation and stats from the trip. I'm also closely tracking the accuracy of evtripplanner, which so far has been an absolutely AWESOME tool for this sort of thing. I encourage anyone who uses it to read the story of the kid (well, a kid to me) who has done most of the development and DONATE, because that's how the world should encourage innovative software development.

First leg stats: according to evtripplannner, (https://evtripplanner.com/planner/2-4/?id=4dzo) this should have been 180mi, 66.6kWh, and 370Wh/mi. Our numbers: 185.5mi, 70.1kWh @ 378 Wh/mi. Some of that was a breakfast detour, and some was probably because it's VERY windy today, probably sustained 25-30mph out of the northwest which hurts us some.

Hopefully the next update is in about 3 hours... from Hagerstown. evtripplanner's forecast for the next leg: EV Trip Planner 165mi, 59.7kWh @ 363Wh/mi

Yep - Edison seemed the correct level of irony!Just left Hagerstown -- Stats from the second leg: 162.5mi, 59.2kWh @ 364Wh/mi. Next stop is Somerset PA - with the winds (a constant 30mph out of the northwest, still) and the hills between here and Cranberry PA I'm not sure I can skip Somerset.

Hagerstown to Somerset - 109mi, 41.9kWh, 386 Wh/mi. Observation: having supercharging available makes it a lot easier to drive fast! ;-)

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Somerset PA to Cranberry PA - 85mi, 20kWh, 341Wh/mi. Downhill... wheeeeeeeee! This is some really pretty country to drive through in the late day sun.... but as a southerner, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to be here come January and February. Grabbing a starbucks and 35kWh in Cranberry, then onto Macedonia where dinner and a nearly full charge awaits...

I've got a dash-mounted GoPro taking a picture every 30 seconds... the end goal is to do a hyperlapse type of video from all the stills... but now I'm just tired. ;-)

Today's totals: 776 miles, 284kWh, 366 Wh/mi

Not quite as long a day... on the road now between Rockford IL and Madison WI. Stopping for dinner in Madison then overnighting in La Crosse next to the supercharger. Today's efficiency is a lot better at 349Wh/mi, but a good bit of that is because of slower traffic around/through Chicago and some non-highway miles getting to and from friends' houses. Tomorrow is pretty much a dead sprint across I-90, so I should get a really good idea of superhighway efficiency tomorrow. ;-)

Worthington, MN! Two legs down this morning: LaCrosse->Albert Lea->Worthington. Let me tell you people something - the wind out here can blow really HARD, and it blows straight out of the west sometimes. And when you're driving dead into a 25mph wind, and the cruise is set at 77mph, you end up with almost 300 miles of travel at almost 440Wh/mi (!!!)

Gonna have to find a truck to draft on the next leg (Worthington -> Mitchell, SD) and see if we can get that down some... otherwise we'll spend our whole day charging!

Posting from sunset on I-90 west... about 30 miles from Murdo, SO. We found a gold mine - a clean 18-wheeler who has his cruise control set at 78mph. The wife has been following him for the last 100 miles or so, and our efficiency in that period is a crazy low 320Wh/mi. With sunset the winds have died down also, but staying in the draft appears to be making a massive difference.

Hey KBsilver! Take a look at the total cost of ownership spreadsheet that I built, there's a link to it in this thread: Model S total cost of ownership spreadsheet / model - looking for input!

This made a ton of difference in convincing my wife that not only was it an epically awesome vehicle, but over a reasonable period of time it wasn't any more expensive to own/operate than a lot of nice sedans that don't seem "crazy" -- I'm confident my Model S will end up being less expensive than an Audi A6 or a 5-series BMW!

Once we got out of the wind, and driving up in the thin air of the mountains, the numbers look a ton better. We're getting right about 350Wh/mi while going 75+ on I-15. Wheeeeeee!

Side note - the St George Utah supercharger is like a graveyard after 10pm. Not much here ;-)

Second side note - the Timberline Inn in Beaver CO is a pretty decent place to kill an hour. Good homestyle food and nice people.

We did!!! 4225 miles, at 344Wh/mile. I'm convinced if we had not been plowing through 30+mph winds across Minnesota and South Dakota that I could have done it in less than 330.

If anyone is interested in reading it, my wife did a much better job blogging than I did. Note to TMC folks, her blog is targeted at a slightly less tesla-aware crowd! ;-)

Travel different, think different: It's electric!

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Crap - I thought I had that fixed. If it's still broken let me know. In either case, here it is again:

tesla-lwobker-tco - Google Sheets