Moving for work with no home charging - thoughts, advice?

[shyboy]

When you charge at a Supercharger, try to plan it so that you don't need to go past 80% charge. That next 10%, and the last 10% take dramatically longer times to finish the charge. The sweet spot for charging speed itself is having a low battery, so starting at 10% or even 5% will cut the time needed to get enough charge.

5% is probably pushing it as a new owner and being unfamiliar with the experience, but after you've done the same trip multiple times you'll get a feel for how reasonable that can be.

Use the internal estimates that the car provides, the Tesla prediction software is very good, and you'll find it routes you to the optimal Superchargers. Be sure to set the destination for the Supercharger- that will allow the car to know you are planning to charge and it will precondition the battery to make the charge faster. If you hit a Supercharger with a cold battery it's a lot slower. On screen you'll see a notice that it is 'preconditioning battery'.

on my last trip, it took me to the supercharger at 5%, when I get there, I couldn't' find a way to get in, it was one of those underground garage where you need to have a pass to get IN the parking. I drove around that area for 5 min to find a way IN and couldn't. Asked a resident and he said oh yeah we have a charger but it is for residents. Now either the nav lying by saying it is tesla supercharger or the resident lied just to push me away.

I turned around and found another supercharger few miles away. but the anxiety to find another charger at 5% was very tensed.

 

[kpanda17]

This was great advice, thanks; the internal nav does a superb job but sometimes I find it to be even more conservative and careful than I am lol. It seems to want to arrive with atleast 20% SOC. I am still trying to nail it to where I start with 95%-100% and only need to stop once in the middle. This past week it wanted me to stop at a supercharger for 5 minutes. No clue why. I also think the last update was buggy; just got the new one (which was also a learning experience since I had to use a hotspot to get the car to download the update) and will see how it fares on my trip this evening.

Also rhe BMS manages rhe SC network of locations where vehicles arrive for quicker/shorter charges and thus allowing more vehicles to charge overall
Tesla does not want 5 to 95% charging by all vehicles
I manage my trips this way, by picking father SCs for a lower arrival SOC and then my destination arrival at 95%
Therefore ready for the next day

Btw, don’t tell anyone

 

[Watts_Up]

on my last trip, it took me to the supercharger at 5%, when I get there, I couldn't' find a way to get in,
it was one of those underground garage where you need to have a pass to get IN the parking.
I drove around that area for 5 min to find a way IN and couldn't.
Asked a resident and he said oh yeah we have a charger but it is for residents.
Now either the nav lying by saying it is tesla supercharger or the resident lied just to push me away.

Which location was this? A residential Supercharger... that's cool.... were you visiting Lanai Island?

You can select on the Tesla Navigation for Supercharger only, or destination chargers.

Note: I would recommend using PlugShare or also ChargePoint to find additional information
and pictures that users provide when visiting a location.

I always look in advance before a trip at the Superchargers or Public L2 chargers that I will find,
regarding comments from users, restroom availability and other amenities and hours of service.

Also I check the access from a freeway exit and the the way to go back, as the Tesla Navigation
sometime doesn't provide an optimal itinerary, such as passing through residential areas with
numerous stop signs instead of using major arteries.

 

[TMYB-C1]

This was great advice, thanks; the internal nav does a superb job but sometimes I find it to be even more conservative and careful than I am lol. It seems to want to arrive with atleast 20% SOC. I am still trying to nail it to where I start with 95%-100% and only need to stop once in the middle. This past week it wanted me to stop at a supercharger for 5 minutes. No clue why. I also think the last update was buggy; just got the new one (which was also a learning experience since I had to use a hotspot to get the car to download the update) and will see how it fares on my trip this evening.

I live in NYC with no L2 charging in my outside lot, it's no big deal in my opinion. Utilize plugshare to find the closest public chargers, leave your max charge at 90% and you shouldn't have an issue.

 

[bo3bdar]

This was great advice, thanks; the internal nav does a superb job but sometimes I find it to be even more conservative and careful than I am lol. It seems to want to arrive with atleast 20% SOC. I am still trying to nail it to where I start with 95%-100% and only need to stop once in the middle. This past week it wanted me to stop at a supercharger for 5 minutes. No clue why. I also think the last update was buggy; just got the new one (which was also a learning experience since I had to use a hotspot to get the car to download the update) and will see how it fares on my trip this evening.

The car will try to arrive to a non-supercharger spot with greater than 20%, because below 20%, it will automatically disable some functionality like the Sentry Mode and Cabin Overheat protection. That might or might not be a concern for you at a given spot, but the car will mark the battery indicator in yellow to show that some things have been disabled. It will navigate to a supercharger below 20% because the presumption is that you will be connected to charging and thus can use some of that for the other functions.

Might be controversial, but I recommend slow rolling the updates. In the last couple of years Tesla has pushed out some truly horrible updates that broke functionality and introduced weird bugs. I'm a software dev, and I think they do a really shoddy job of unit testing their code before pushing it out. They also will not allow you to roll back the software which means that if they break something you are using, you just have to wait for them to fix it. They had a head-unit crashing bug (screen goes black) for over 6 months. This is the mark of a poorly performing software dev team. Years ago every update was good, and you didn't have to worry about breaking bugs. It looks to me like their software dev team was somehow gutted, but they still act like everything is normal. If they would simply allow a single version rollback, that would alleviate all of the pain of software updates.

In particular, if you are going on a long road trip, don't update before or during the trip, because they might break something you need. I'm on a road trip right now, and it's nagging for an update, which I refuse to accept because forum people have already said that version breaks bluetooth connections to the iPhone, which I'm using on my trip. Before installing any new versions, I always check Tesla Software Updates & Release Notes - Latest Tesla Updates to see if it's something I might want.

 

[Happy Hippo]

Keep in mind that it will be very expensive to use superchargers. almost 3 times more than home charging cost.

it also depends on what state the person lives. Home charging can be the same as Supercharging if you are close to urban areas.

 

[kpanda17]

Just to clarify charging levels and expectations

L3 DC Fast Charging Tesla Supercharger
V4 350KW, V3 250KW and V2 150KW
Sought out and typical V3 runs 80-250KW or 1,000 per hour (realistically becomes avg 110KW or 440MPH or 10 to 90% for LR 333 miles 80% 25 minutes)
Btw, L2 never achieves such speeds
L2 AC 240 volts max 11.5kw or 44 MPH
L1 AC 110 volts 1.5KW or 4 MPH Tesla UMC

When traveling always seek out L3s at rhe highest KW possible. Also understand how the location dedicates or splits power delivery, Tesla V3 is not split vs V2 is split up to four vehicles and if all charging would result in as low as 40KW/160 MPH

 

[GeekyDoc]

The car will try to arrive to a non-supercharger spot with greater than 20%, because below 20%, it will automatically disable some functionality like the Sentry Mode and Cabin Overheat protection. That might or might not be a concern for you at a given spot, but the car will mark the battery indicator in yellow to show that some things have been disabled. It will navigate to a supercharger below 20% because the presumption is that you will be connected to charging and thus can use some of that for the other functions.

Might be controversial, but I recommend slow rolling the updates. In the last couple of years Tesla has pushed out some truly horrible updates that broke functionality and introduced weird bugs. I'm a software dev, and I think they do a really shoddy job of unit testing their code before pushing it out. They also will not allow you to roll back the software which means that if they break something you are using, you just have to wait for them to fix it. They had a head-unit crashing bug (screen goes black) for over 6 months. This is the mark of a poorly performing software dev team. Years ago every update was good, and you didn't have to worry about breaking bugs. It looks to me like their software dev team was somehow gutted, but they still act like everything is normal. If they would simply allow a single version rollback, that would alleviate all of the pain of software updates.

In particular, if you are going on a long road trip, don't update before or during the trip, because they might break something you need. I'm on a road trip right now, and it's nagging for an update, which I refuse to accept because forum people have already said that version breaks bluetooth connections to the iPhone, which I'm using on my trip. Before installing any new versions, I always check Tesla Software Updates & Release Notes - Latest Tesla Updates to see if it's something I might want.

Thanks. Yes, I do the same - check teslafi to see release notes. That last update broke my BT so I wanted to update to see if it resolved it. It still behaves randomly buggy but my BT connection is now holding. I totally get your point though; there have been updates where I have thought this is perfect and to not update.