Dear TMC,
Round-trip Boston/DC required compromises but was do-able 14 months ago. Round-trip Boston/New York was EASY last Friday. I have 6.1, the SuperCharger build-out, and Tesla to thank.
Only 14 months ago, I drove my P85+ from Boston to Washington, DC, on some earlier firmware rev (5.X?). No problems encountered. Went via the SuperChargers at Darien, CT and Newark, DE. It was my first major Tesla road-trip. I had the wife, two kids, a ton of luggage, Nokiian Hakka R2 snow tires, winter cold and Thanksgiving traffic to deal with. We wound up dropping our speed to 50-55 mph, turning off the climate control in favor of the seat warmers, bundling up, and generally making accommodations so that we wouldn't run out of juice. These tradeoffs were needed because it's 165 miles between our house in Boston and the Darien SC and another 168 miles between the Darien SC and the Newark SC. We were burning rated miles due to the temperature, cargo and maybe snow tires. And I was an inexperienced SuperCharger user, afraid to have a small mileage buffer when I arrived at the SC. On that trip, I arrived at each SC with between 40 and 60 rated miles remaining. We had to spend pretty much the maximum amount of time at each SC to guarantee that the battery was mostly or fully charged. But it all WORKED. We drove on electricity the whole way there and back. No problems or disasters occurred. It just took some extra time.
Last Friday, the wife and I hopped in the same P85+ for a quick trip down to New York City, to see a show on Broadway. We drove in light snow part of the way, with some ice and snow still remaining on the roads from the big storm earlier last week. Temperatures peaked around 25 or 30 degrees Fahrenheit and by the time we got down to NYC they were in the teens with wind chill below zero. But this trip WAS EASY. In only 14 months, along this particular route, Tesla has added SuperChargers in Greenwich, CT; West Hartford, CT; and Auburn, MA. (There are also a ton more SuperCharger options headed south from New York to DC, too!) So rather than poking along at 50 mph with the climate control turned off: we set the interior temperature to 68-70 (target cycles, as the wife cranks it up, I realize what she's done, I crank it back down, then she cranks it up again). I drove at 75-85 mph the whole way. We stopped at the Auburn, SC and spent 30 minutes there instead of an hour; and, truthfully, most of that time was due to my wife looking for clothes for me in the attached mall, which I was resisting. We didn't need that much juice; we could've left after 10-15 minutes. We zoomed down to Darien, CT, where we spent about 20-25 minutes. Wow, does the mileage coming roaring back when your battery is low. I arrived with a much smaller mileage buffer than ever before, and I could do that with confidences thanks to the trip and energy planning software in 6.1. I could see my predicted target battery percentage; I didn't have to do any calculations in my head; I could watch my actual usage deviating from the predicted use, and then watch the prediction change; and generally drive with much greater confidence that I would arrive safely at my destination with adequate range to spare.
The biggest reason to spend time at Darien turned out to be the desire to accumulate sufficient range so that I didn't have to charge in NYC. Rather than worry about finding a hotel with a charger, or a public charger, I just said the heck with it, we'll charge up at Darien and have plenty of juice to make the round-trip back. How could I be so sure? First, because I did a little advance planning using EVtripplanner and Google Maps. Second, because once at Darien, it was so easy to plug in the address of our final destination and have the trip planning software estimate the energy usage to get to the hotel and the energy usage to round-trip back to Darien.
So: in short: WOW, WAS THAT A PIECE OF CAKE!
THANK YOU, TESLA!!!
Alan
P.S. Yeah, still takes more work if you're not traveling an artery lined with SuperChargers. But given the haste with which Tesla is deploying SCs, this story not only is getting better it is getting better RAPIDLY.
Round-trip Boston/DC required compromises but was do-able 14 months ago. Round-trip Boston/New York was EASY last Friday. I have 6.1, the SuperCharger build-out, and Tesla to thank.
Only 14 months ago, I drove my P85+ from Boston to Washington, DC, on some earlier firmware rev (5.X?). No problems encountered. Went via the SuperChargers at Darien, CT and Newark, DE. It was my first major Tesla road-trip. I had the wife, two kids, a ton of luggage, Nokiian Hakka R2 snow tires, winter cold and Thanksgiving traffic to deal with. We wound up dropping our speed to 50-55 mph, turning off the climate control in favor of the seat warmers, bundling up, and generally making accommodations so that we wouldn't run out of juice. These tradeoffs were needed because it's 165 miles between our house in Boston and the Darien SC and another 168 miles between the Darien SC and the Newark SC. We were burning rated miles due to the temperature, cargo and maybe snow tires. And I was an inexperienced SuperCharger user, afraid to have a small mileage buffer when I arrived at the SC. On that trip, I arrived at each SC with between 40 and 60 rated miles remaining. We had to spend pretty much the maximum amount of time at each SC to guarantee that the battery was mostly or fully charged. But it all WORKED. We drove on electricity the whole way there and back. No problems or disasters occurred. It just took some extra time.
Last Friday, the wife and I hopped in the same P85+ for a quick trip down to New York City, to see a show on Broadway. We drove in light snow part of the way, with some ice and snow still remaining on the roads from the big storm earlier last week. Temperatures peaked around 25 or 30 degrees Fahrenheit and by the time we got down to NYC they were in the teens with wind chill below zero. But this trip WAS EASY. In only 14 months, along this particular route, Tesla has added SuperChargers in Greenwich, CT; West Hartford, CT; and Auburn, MA. (There are also a ton more SuperCharger options headed south from New York to DC, too!) So rather than poking along at 50 mph with the climate control turned off: we set the interior temperature to 68-70 (target cycles, as the wife cranks it up, I realize what she's done, I crank it back down, then she cranks it up again). I drove at 75-85 mph the whole way. We stopped at the Auburn, SC and spent 30 minutes there instead of an hour; and, truthfully, most of that time was due to my wife looking for clothes for me in the attached mall, which I was resisting. We didn't need that much juice; we could've left after 10-15 minutes. We zoomed down to Darien, CT, where we spent about 20-25 minutes. Wow, does the mileage coming roaring back when your battery is low. I arrived with a much smaller mileage buffer than ever before, and I could do that with confidences thanks to the trip and energy planning software in 6.1. I could see my predicted target battery percentage; I didn't have to do any calculations in my head; I could watch my actual usage deviating from the predicted use, and then watch the prediction change; and generally drive with much greater confidence that I would arrive safely at my destination with adequate range to spare.
The biggest reason to spend time at Darien turned out to be the desire to accumulate sufficient range so that I didn't have to charge in NYC. Rather than worry about finding a hotel with a charger, or a public charger, I just said the heck with it, we'll charge up at Darien and have plenty of juice to make the round-trip back. How could I be so sure? First, because I did a little advance planning using EVtripplanner and Google Maps. Second, because once at Darien, it was so easy to plug in the address of our final destination and have the trip planning software estimate the energy usage to get to the hotel and the energy usage to round-trip back to Darien.
So: in short: WOW, WAS THAT A PIECE OF CAKE!
THANK YOU, TESLA!!!
Alan
P.S. Yeah, still takes more work if you're not traveling an artery lined with SuperChargers. But given the haste with which Tesla is deploying SCs, this story not only is getting better it is getting better RAPIDLY.
