Driving newly bought roadster back home?

Make sure to plan out your charge points along the way and have the "right" adapters available.

How much time do you have? It will take a few days to drive back.

Hopefully, you've order the adapters from HCSharp (Henry) - If you have both of them Can JR and SR you can plan your routes around Tesla Service & Galleries to make the trip more manageable. Otherwise, you're looking at campgrounds and J1772 for charging. It will be a great trip, but just give yourself plenty of time. I would recommend EVTripPlanner.com Have fun and post some pictures.

Funny - I'm a Roadster owner in Phoenix and bought a used Model S from an owner in Seattle and had it transported to Phoenix.

Anyway, in my case, the seller left his valid tags on the car but he was not supposed to that. He also had a lien on the title, so I had to wait on that. In the meantime, I took my purchase paperwork/bill of sale to the DMV with proof of insurance and they issued me a 30-day temporary tag. When the signed titled came, I took that to the DMV and got my permanent AZ tags.

However, since you don't live in AZ, they won't issue you a temporary registration. If you can talk the seller into leaving his valid tags on the car and you show your valid insurance, notarized bill of sale, and signed titled you should be fine in case you get pulled over. It's not ideal to dive with that title around, but what can you do?

I'd research the requirements to get temporary tags in Washington state and find out if it's possible to obtain that before you fly out. Then, I guess, the question becomes how do you register car that you don't own yet?

Can you fly out to Phoenix, go to a bank with the seller, initiate a wire transfer, get the title, get a temporary registration online, print out the registration in Phoenix, and then drive home?

I would just call your auto insurance and have them put the car on your insurance as soon as you take possession, then drive it home. Nothing else should be necessary once you pay for it and get the certificate of ownership signed over to you by the seller.

Anyway, congratulations! Post photos!

Surprised I'm the first to mention this - if you head west first to I-5 and then north, you'll be able to follow the Tesla showrooms / galleries and the Tesla Highway:
https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zCkf9Gj_pt4o.kIptvfaBKxaI&msa=0

These will be 70A chargers using J1772 plugs and Roadster plugs. With the Can SR (S to Roadster adapter), then all of the Tesla showrooms / galleries will also be reliably usable (many Tesla showrooms have been replacing their Roadster chargers with Model S chargers). From my experience driving up and down I5, I would suggest calling ahead to the Tesla showrooms - some of them are space constrained and might need that heads up to plan for your arrival. My experience with the different showrooms was that they were very helpful and would go out of their way to help make charging happen. If anything, they were especially excited to help a Roadster passing through on a road trip If I was really organized (I wasn't 2 summers back when I did this), I would call a few weeks or a month ahead, and then again the day you're actually arriving.

In general, once you're along I-5 / Hwy 101 (LA up to SF), you're looking at a 70A charging option about every 100 to as much 150 miles, all the way to the Canadian border.



What I found during my own road trip up and down the coast, I planned my travel days to cover 300-400 miles (bias towards 300-350). That's driving 50-60 on cruise control, with 6-8 hours of driving each day along with 3-4 hours of charging along the way in 2 charging sessions, and ~50 miles of range remaining at the end of the day. Further assumes the car is plugged in over night and charges back to full while you're asleep. (Sidenote - bring a charging protocol card to leave on your dash, so you can indicate for other EV drivers what your charging needs are as well as how to get ahold of you should that be needed).

I have similar problem/question. I just took title to my awaited Roadster yesterday in Houston... couldn't convince myself I could get out of Texas. Once you're out of the Houston/San Antonio/Dallas metro it's kind of bleak until I'd reach K.C. So I'm trucking it back to SF Bay Area. Tesla showrooms in TX ?? I confess - maybe that was cowardly. But it'll get a lot of driving here in CA.

Strib said:

I have similar problem/question. I just took title to my awaited Roadster yesterday in Houston... couldn't convince myself I could get out of Texas. Once you're out of the Houston/San Antonio/Dallas metro it's kind of bleak until I'd reach K.C. So I'm trucking it back to SF Bay Area. Tesla showrooms in TX ?? I confess - maybe that was cowardly. But it'll get a lot of driving here in CA.

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From my experience following the 70A charging network, I can say with confidence that you'll need to be awfully patient and do even better planning if you're going to be relying on campgrounds / 40A chargers for a road trip. Clearly it can and has been done. But even if all of the chargers are working reliably, now you're recovering ~30 miles of range for an hour of charging. If you start the day with a full range charge (call it 230 miles, 4 hours of charging during the day gets you 2 hours of driving, for maybe 300 miles and a smaller buffer at the end. Probably 250-300 mile days, with even more time sitting still. You'll be using a fair bit of your Roadster storage for books

My used Roadster came from New Jersey to Oregon. The thought of flying to New Jersey and driving it home DID cross my mind. It didn't get any further than that though

It's not cowardly to let a truck bring you your Roadster - that's just practical (unless you've got a bunch of time, and a hankering for a grand adventure and doing something almost nobody else can or will do ...).

When I took road trips in the Roadster (anywhere from 1600 to 3500 miles) I typically did just under 400 miles per day when I had access to 240V 70A chargers. If you don't need to cover more miles than that, it's really not a bad way to travel.

Using campgrounds is a lot less pleasant. As noted above, you can't get as far in a day. Plus you're in one spot longer and there is typically less to do, unless there is a good hike in the area. Plus I've just encountered more problems there, like owners afraid of EVs, saggy circuits that pop breakers, etc. I will use campgrounds as a backup charging point, but I don't plan trips using them as my main charging points. Of course, for an introductory trip, if you bring books or a laptop or something and plan to spend the time, it's not necessarily that bad. Electricity is everywhere and you will get there; the key to enjoying an L2 trip is not being in a hurry.

xytor said:

But a question: What do you mean by protocol card?

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A Google for "ev charging protocol card" comes up with http://www.evchargernews.com/chargeprotocolcard.pdf. I took that pdf file to a local Kinko's and had them print it 2-up on card stock for me. $1.25 I think...

swaltner said:

A Google for "ev charging protocol card" comes up with http://www.evchargernews.com/chargeprotocolcard.pdf. I took that pdf file to a local Kinko's and had them print it 2-up on card stock for me. $1.25 I think...

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Yah - dis. I add my phone number to the card so another EV owner can call me. With out of state plates, somebody can reasonably infer that you're going a long distance. Without that hint though, many EV owners know that Roadsters have a ton of range, so maybe you don't really need this charge right now, while they're stuck. This is for the more public chargers you might use along the way (such as the J1772 plug Rabobank chargers along 101 in California), though having your # readily available at a Tesla showroom charging stop might prove helpful to the store staff if something comes up and they need to move you around.

But mostly, it's just good charging and EV etiquette. Lots of minor charging issues that can be worked out by two people talking (and you might meet somebody cool!), that can turn into big problems without the conversation.

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And it's a heck of a drive. I worked things out for the northerly leg (Mexico border back home to Portland) so that I did a fair bit of Hwy 1 instead of just covering Hwy 101 again. If you have the extra time, 101 out to 1 and back to 101 to charge makes for a longer trip, but wow what a highway along the coast

Make sure the car's firmware has been upgraded to support EVSEs that supply more than 70 Amps.