I just completed a round trip from Phoenix to Rocklin CA (just outside of Sacramento where I stayed for 3 days) over the last 10 days. I'd like to make a couple of points here. Taking the "Rabobank Highway (101)" from LA to the Bay Area was great. I hit all four bank sites on the way to Sacto and enjoyed the stops of 2 or 3 hours because I wandered around, ate a meal and visited with the bank personnel who were all thrilled to see someone using the chargers, or talked to people who came up to ask about the car. A couple of the bank sites have 220/70 service, a couple were limited to 40 or 30 amps as they weren't upgraded yet. The Salinas bank was closed when I got there, but the 2 hrs I spent was fine once I found the Starbucks.
From Salinas, the last bank stop, I traveled to Vacaville where they had a 240/30 Tesla charger installed at a park and ride. The fact is it was 1:30 in the morning and raining when I stopped and I only needed to add about 80 miles to the car, at 4 AM I couldn't take it any more and left with about 70 miles added. These differences in time to fill are not linear when you consider time of day and circumstances. Now, it was my dumb decision to drive the LA to Sacto leg (I left LA at 9:30 AM and arrived in Rocklin at 5:00 AM the next morning) in one stretch because I had lost a day due to poor charger planning (I'll tell you later) and I had people to meet the following day. I also had a great HPC hookup in Rocklin during my 3 day stay, located outside a Financial Management firm that is full of EV nuts, including a Tesla owner and 2 Model S orderers.
On my trip home, I stopped at an HPC in Davis instead of Vacaville and that site was much better (plus it was early in the daylight part of the morning, wasn't raining and the site was inside a parking garage). I next stopped for an overnight in Atascadero while I charged, and the next day I skipped Santa Maria and went to Goleta, then to LA. Actually, the above is all the good stuff. I was using HPCs at least and didn't have to worry about connections.
On my way from Phoenix, I stopped first at an RV site in Blythe with a 240/50 connection and I had the right adapter (thanks Martin and James). I spent 5 hours there going and closer to 6 hours on my return to fill the tank. Those were long, long stops. I read a novel, I walked to keep my back loose, I talked to RVers who asked about the car, but still the time dragged. Going I had good weather, returning it was raining and the park had electrical problems. The park was nice, the people were great, but I was watching the pot boil and it seemed to take forever.
From Blythe, I was to stop at a hotel in Ontario to charge overnight. This was my big screwup. I read on the EV charger web site a comment from a Tesla driver about using the site and I made sure the charger was operational when I made hotel reservations, but I didn't look at the type of connector. It was an SPI, no good to me as I didn't have that adapter as did the other Tesla driver (I now note). The drive from Blythe to Ontario sucked me dry and the battery alarmed eight miles from the hotel. I got off I-10 and went to an AM-PM where I could at least get a 110/15 connection. It took 2 hours to get about 8 miles worth of power and I made it to the hotel only to find the SPI connection problem. It was 11:00 PM, no maintenance man on duty so I left the dead car and went to bed. Next morning, the maintenance man shrugged his shoulders and said maybe I'd better go ask at other businesses around the hotel. When that didn't produce results, he told me about the service station they used for their trucks, which actually did service work and might have 220 available, but which wouldn't open until 10AM. The station was about 4 miles away and though the car complained, I cycled the key and went into the reserve power and drove at about 10 to 15mph to the station.
While I sat there waiting, I called AAA and Tesla road service asking for help. Both said they'd get back to me, but my phone was working to make calls, it just wasn't ringing when someone called me (I'm not making this up). (I later found their messages in my mail box.) To end this gruesome story, AAA finally arrived, the station service department people came (no 220), Tesla and AAA found no 220 charging locations in the Ontario area, so AAA loaded me on the truck and hauled me about 60 miles to the Tesla store on Santa Monica Blvd, where I was able to fill the car. By the way, the car phoned home (the LA Tesla store) when I cycled the key to go into the reserve battery and asked Bob to please rescue it. Since this was the first trip back to Tesla, Bob took advantage of the opportunity to do some upgrades and asked me to stop on my way back to let him finish the work. Even diasters have bright spots.
So, the moral of the story is: the Tesla can be driven on long trips, even by dummies like me, but it takes good planning. Whenever the plug in time is longer than the driving time, the time drags expotentially. More is better for juice. And if the battery technology can get to fast charging times of 45 to 30 minutes for highway use, this EV technology will explode.
Sorry it took so long and I hope it's not so scrambled you don't get my points.
