First Big Roadtrip with Tesla

mibaro2 · Nov 4, 2014

After having my S85 for 6 months, I finally took her on a road trip to Chicago. I was going to Soldier Field to see the New Zealand All Blacks play Saturday November 1.

I left Georgetown, ON on Thursday. Stayed at the comfort Inn in Windsor overnight (met another Tesla owner from Rockwood), and arrived in Deerfield on Friday night.
Aside from driving through sleet on Friday in Chicago, the trip was uneventful. Everyone was driving 65-75 mph on the expressways in Chicago. Went through a lot of tolls.

The SC network in the U.S. is great. Wasn't iced anywhere.
Here is the route I took (odometer and kwh):

Oct 30: left Georgetown at 6:00 a.m. with 433km charge. ( 24882.9km , 4401.9kwh)
Oct 30: Arrive Windsor Comfort Inn with 30km left. ( 25275km , 4470.3kwh)

Oct 31: left Windsor at 8:00 , arrived at Angola, IN at noon. (25516km , 4517kwh)
Oct 31 arrived at Michiwaka SC at 1:00 p.m. (25628 km, 4540kwh)
Oct 31 arrived at Aurora SC at 5:00 p.m. (25860 km, 4590kwh)
Oct 31 Deerfield Tesla SC 6:30p.m. (26022 km, 4632kwh)

Return trip:

Nov 2: left at 6:30 a.m. Went to Mishiwaka, Angola, Maumee (side detour since we were in the area), then Comfort Inn.
-charged up in Windsor for 2 hours, then an hour in Cambridge before arriving home at 10:00 pm
Arrived home with 26976 km on the odometer. Total trip was 2094km using 400kwh.

hpjtv · Nov 13, 2014

Thanks for sharing. I plan on doing a big trip in my S85 when it arrives in December. Going from Vancouver to Los Angeles. Hope the snow/cold weather won't make me use too much power. Plan on using 8 superchargers over 2 days.

pairtrader · Nov 14, 2014

hpjtv said:
Thanks for sharing. I plan on doing a big trip in my S85 when it arrives in December. Going from Vancouver to Los Angeles. Hope the snow/cold weather won't make me use too much power. Plan on using 8 superchargers over 2 days.

I did this trip in July, down the Oregon coast, Cali coast, past LA, over to Vegas, then Superchargers back up to Vancouver. If you want to get off the I5, RV parks with 50A hookups are great...just not sure about availability in December. You'll get 40-50km/hr charge rate. Be careful if they only have 30A hookups as my adapter didn't want to cooperate. You're probably already aware, but plugshare.com is useful as well.

If you talk to Robin at the Vancouver sales center, she should be able to book a tour of the Fremont facility for you, if you're interested. Unfortunately I was there during the July shutdown, so I'll be back next summer. There is also a Supercharger at SpaceX in Hawthorne, but good luck getting a tour!

Enjoy your trip!

hpjtv · Nov 17, 2014

Thanks for the info pairtrader. I'll probably try and stay on I5 for my first trip in the MS. Depending on the weather on the way back, maybe I'll try the Oregon coast. As for the tours, I heard there won't be any tours until January as the factories are gearing up to make lot of deliveries for Q4. I bought a nema 14-50 (40A) extension cord and a 14-30 (24A) extension cord just in case I need to go off grid. If you use only the 14-50 adapter, you can actually shave a bit off (or cut off completely) the neutral prong to make it fit a 14-30 outlet. I shaved off one end of the 14-50 extension cord (cause I didn't want to make any modifications to the Tesla adapter) so I could plug it into either a 50A or 30A circuit or extend it even longer in series with the 30A extension cord. Of course I'd be dialing the current down if there's any 30A circuits/extension cords in use.

Search

First Big Roadtrip with Tesla

mibaro2

Member

hpjtv

Member

pairtrader

Member

hpjtv

Member

Similar threads