Observations from long trip in my P85D

1. Overall, a great trip and a great car.
2. Found the energy display that gives a plot of percent full vs distance towards destination eliminated any possible range anxiety. At the beginning we made sure it predicted at least 20 percent full at the end of the trip. We reduced that to 15% after some experience. The prediction is reasonably accurate and one can always slow down if after traveling a bit the prediction gets too low. (Never had to do that.) The biggest errors in the prediction had us arriving with 6% less and 7% more than originally predicted.
3. Note that even when the prediction dropped to 9% partway through a leg of the trip, we did not worry because by that time we were close enough to the supercharger we were heading to that energy consumption would have had to be 30% higher than predicted to strand us. (That is, we were at 40% full.)
4. We found ourselves going back and forth between the energy and navigation screens and I was thinking of sending a suggestion to Tesla that they should put a battery level prediction on the main navigation screen. Later we discovered that by touching the line in the navigation display that gives the remaining miles, remaining trip time and ETA, that exactly that gets displayed. A good example of the well thought out Tesla user interface.
5. The navigation and charging system seemed to think that a prediction of 9% full at the destination was sufficient. That is the prediction we found the couple of times we checked immediately after getting notified there was enough charge. We learned to wait an extra 5 minutes so it could charge to our preferred 15% buffer.
6. The supercharging system worked flawlessly. We learned that the best way to find the superchargers which are sometimes in a parking lot behind a building was to zoom in on the navigation map as we approached. This helped find the exact driveway and route through the parking lot after the directions given by the navigations system got us to the front of the building or shopping center.
7. The most crowded supercharger had 3 of 6 stalls occupied when we arrived. In one place we charged we were the sole user of an 8 stall location.
8. Thanks to information on this forum we knew to choose a stall with a different number than any other car was using. Once when we goofed, our car charged slowly, so we moved it. Lesson from this is to wait the few seconds after you plug in the car to make sure it is charging quickly. We had an opportunity to pass on this information to another newbie who shortly after we arrived pulled into the stall paired with ours.
9. Required charging times varied but I’d say 20 minutes was typical. At only about a quarter of the charging stops did we find ourselves having to hang-out waiting for the charge to finish. The other times, the car was ready by the time we were. So it didn’t really feel like we wasted a lot of time waiting for the car to charge. We did adjust our schedule (when to eat meals etc.) to that of the car. It was nice that all the charging spots had facilities near them. We easily found the facilities, mostly with our eyes, but in a few cases we used Yelp to find something. The list of facilities on the TM site which we got to via www.supercharge.info was useful for advance planning. In fact it would be nice if this facilities list was integrated into the navigation system and given along with the address of the location.
10. The only times we had any trouble with charging was when we stayed for several days at each of two relatives. In both cases, we had checked ahead to see what kind of outlet they had available. In the first case, it was an electric dryer outlet and we came equipped with the Camco 50 Amp extension cord and both dryer adapters from www.EVSEadapters.com. We made the mistake of turning down the amps in the car BEFORE we plugged in. Turns out that you have to do it just AFTER you plug in. Hence it drew 50 amps and blew the breaker after a while. No long term harm done. At the second relatives, he had sent me a photo of the outlet (which had had a heater plugged into it). It was labelled as 240V/30A, so I figured one of our two dryer adapters would work. Not! I should have looked at the picture more closely. It was yet a third type of 30A outlet. We had to go to the hardware store where we could not get an adapter, but did get a standard dryer outlet which I used to temporarily replace the one that was there. Lesson learned: when planning to charge at a house, double check the outlet that is available and make sure you have the right adapter. Check that the car is still charging an hour after you start it.
11. Enough about charging. I figured a long drive on the I-5 was a good time to practice passing a car for when I wanted to do it on a 2 lane highway. I’ve always been a timid passer and only pass when I essentially can’t see a car on the horizon. I figured this might change with a more powerful car. I waited to come up on a slow truck in the slow lane. These are pretty rare on the I-5 unless there is a lot of traffic, so I settled for one doing about 60. I came up behind it, floored it and passed it on the left. I glanced at the speedometer just as I was pulling back in front of it. 105. Oops! I guess those who complain about their Tesla not accelerating sufficiently at these speeds didn’t move up from a Toyota Corolla :wink:. Later when we drove on two lane roads, I still didn’t pull out to pass anyone. I guess I need more practice or am just naturally a timid passer.
12. One problem with not stopping at gas stations was the lack of facilities to clean the bugs off the windshield. There as a bucket and squeegee at the Centralia supercharger which was nice. Next trip, will add Windex to the list of things to bring.
13. Heading up the long hill of the Grapevine into the LA area, I looked at the dash to make sure the car wasn’t overheating. (An old habit from my ICE days.) No temperature gauge. No problem.
14. Going back down the Grapevine (and other long hills), I watched for the regen to increase the range. I found that the rated miles increased only in steps of 3 miles, not one at a time. Curious. Wonder why.
15. I’d love to have less tire noise. Some road sections with very smooth pavement were a joy, but most of the road textures caused more noise than I would like. I’m watching another thread on this forum where a couple of people are getting foam glued to the inside of their tires to quiet them down, similar to the Conti-silents used on the 21” rims. (We have 19 inch rims.)
16. We listened to a lot of classical music on Slacker. We found ourselves adjusting the volume at the beginning of each track as they don’t seem to be normalized well. The Slacker Android app has an option to do this automatically. I wish Tesla did too. I have sent that to them as a suggestion.
17. I love the TACC. It worked very well and made the long drive much easier. We still paid close attention to the traffic but it seemed to take less concentration and was certainly easier on the ankle. There was usually enough traffic that a conventional cruise control would have to be over-ridden too often or we would have been changing lanes too often. I look forward to turning steering over to the auto-pilot. Incidentally, I’d had some concerns I’d quit paying attention to traffic, but the couple of times that someone pulled very close in front of me, my foot hit the brake before I even had a chance to think about waiting to see if TACC would handle it correctly. (On not quite such close calls, I just put my foot over the brake and TACC handled it quite nicely.)
18. There just aren’t enough short freeway on ramps where I can put the incredible acceleration to good use . I still found excuses to floor it once in a while.

Gra55h0pper said:

I was wondering: do you see yourself using the dual-chargers?

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