To fly or not to fly. Another SF-LA trip thread. Now with Autopilot!

I would drive, of course. One thought is that you might want to skip LA altogether and take the Superchargers Harris Ranch to Mojave to Rancho Cucamonga.

Sunday afternoons seem to be the busiest time at superchargers, so allow yourself plenty of time in case you have to wait for a stall. You'll probably be spending 30-45 minutes minimum at each SC stop. You don't need to charge to 100% at each, just enough to reach the next one with a little bit of a buffer.

Last weekend I started out from Sunnyvale with a full 100% charge (~260 rated miles), and made it to Atascadero with under 60 miles remaining. While that trip is mostly flat, there are some grades which eat up the miles. And of course, the faster you drive, the less range you get.

That's actually a good thing in L.A. traffic, though. If you are crawling along at 10-15 MPH, your range will be fantastic. :wink:

Personally I would just fly into Ontario airport Sunday night and get a room near your meeting place in San Bernardino. Get a rental car of your choice. Attend your meeting and get out of Dodge asap. Save your driving for another time. The drive from Ontario AP to SB is a breeze in most cases.

Navigating LA traffic is not enjoyable in any vehicle and if you fly into LAX, stay in Huntington Beach and then travel to SB, you have probably covered most of LA's mess than you could if you tried. If you really must fly into LA area choose Long Beach airport for your stay in HB.

My experience is from living in LA/OC for 27 years and moving to Nor Cal for the last 40 years but taking plenty of business and family trips to LA area during the last 40 too. I still have property in OC.

aesculus said:

Personally I would just fly into Ontario airport Sunday night and get a room near your meeting place in San Bernardino.

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For a short, solo trip like this, flying does seem more sensible.

Also, if you want to stay overnight someplace interesting, you could go for the San Bernardino Mountains (Lake Arrowhead, Big Bear Lake, etc.) as there isn't any snow in the forecast that would hamper your travel (yet the ski resorts are open). Compared to Huntington Beach, traffic wouldn't be nearly as big a concern.

I live in the same area as the OP. On the one hand, with a new Tesla with AP my heart says "drive it!" But my head says that flying SFO to Ontario will be much less overall travel time and you will completely bypass LA traffic, which sucks.

As others have said... For a short, solo trip, flying would generally be better, but having Autopilot would make it a pretty easy drive. He won't hit traffic Sunday evening going down, and he probably won't hit too much traffic if he leaves Monday right after lunch. Plus, the company reimbursement is the same for both driving and flying, so he will have a little extra spending money because all he will be spending is time (besides wear/tear on his car).

I have personally come to detest airline travel, and will tolerate it only when absolutely necessary. So my view may be a bit skewed toward automobile travel in this case.

So. You wish to travel from San Francisco to Huntington Beach, traveling on Sunday, and going on to San Bernardino on Monday, then return (Monday evening) back to San Francisco.

You can probably do all of your pre-trip preparations using some Google mapping, some Google searches for the Tesla supercharger sites in California, and a look at the weather.

If it is the shortest block-to-block time you are after, then you should drive on down Interstate 5, and stop at Harris Ranch for juice. And maybe some food. Continue South on I-5, but before you get to Los Angeles, take Highway 405. It skirts downtown, but bogs down over the Sepulveda Pass and past LAX. :-( Take a quick detour on 105 over to SpaceX in Hawthorne and charge up again. Back on the 105 to the 405, and head south to "The OC." Exit the freeway on Bolsa Chica, or Beach Boulevard, depending on your destination.

For a longer but more scenic trip, take the coastal route, i.e, San Jose, Highway 101 thru Gilroy, Salinas Paso Robles, and supercharge at Atascadero, and/or Solvang. More opportunities in Oxnard, Camarillo, and lots more along the 405 in Santa Monica, Torrance, and Long Beach.

Then take the 405 on down to Huntington Beach as mentioned earlier.

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From Huntington Beach (possibly the Waterfront Hilton on Pacific Coast Hwy?) to San Bernardino, its less than 90 miles, but you have to take Hwy 55 to Hwy 91 (and the FasTrak toll transponder will be a necessity/godsend to use the carpool lane, even with your white carpool sticker -- otherwise it will be 10-15 mph for *several* miles), to 215, and in to San Berdoo.

In San Bernardino, the closest superchargers are in Pasadena, some 10-12 miles West of San Bernardino. And of course, there are a number of J1772 charging sites all over the place. Bring your adapter.

-- Ardie

I would drive. Unless I can take a private jet, SFO - LAX is not exactly hassle free and quick. I drove to LA last month and it was about 6.5 hours with charging and a meal on I-5. I don't speed.

- K

e-FTW said:

Considering my schedule (Sunday drive to Huntington Beach, Monday morning to SB, Monday PM to SF):

• How much of a problem will my lack of white HOV sticker will be?
• Am going to get a FasTrack transponder from a local store right now. Will that help?

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I don't think it matters much for most of your trip except for the Monday PM to SF, depending on when you arrive. There isn't much HOV access on US-101 (if you're coming from SB) until you hit the Bay Area. But even if you hit Silicon Valley during afternoon rush hour when HOV is active, you're screwed in terms of traffic no matter what! Careful of the cops near SB on 101 ... they ticket harshly in the 55mph segments.

Fastrak transponder will not ease your traffic troubles. There are no pay-to-use lanes in that stretch.

- K

IMHO our HOV "car pool" lane stickers save us a LOT of time and more importantly frustration driving in O.C. and the Inland Empire.

Even better establish a separate 91 Express Lanes EV account so you can drive almost anytime for FREE in your Tesla. https://www.91expresslanes.com/faq.asp# This saves us a LOT of time AND a bunch of 91 EXPRE$$ LANE$ expensive tolls in my OC to IE trips. The other benefit of the 91Xlanes over The Toll Roads is the 91Xlanes don't charge a monthly "standby fee".

Unfortunately The Toll Roads don't have any EV discounts... Probably because the demographics of their customers have more discretionary income.