New owner thoughts after first long road trip

[moore101]

Have had my new MS75 for about 2 weeks and just completed a 900 mile road trip from LA area to Prescott, AZ (and back). It was a great drive and the car performed very well, even on some rutted dirt and sand roads that looked like normal streets on the GPS (air suspension a big help). Here are some random thoughts from a new owner:

• Autopilot 2.5 while not perfect, makes the drive so much more relaxing on the highway. On the way back there was a very strong crosswind and AP was able to keep the car more stable in the lane than I could which was pretty cool.
• The in car GPS works well routing you to superchargers, it is also good about warning you if you are getting out of range of a supercharger.
• It's better to follow the GPS and charging times then trying to charge for longer and skip a stop. I tried to charge earlier and longer at a stop and was still unable to skip the next stop. The GPS seems to do a decent job on optimizing total charge time. Obvious to most but charging slows significantly after reaching about 80%.
  
• Plan your destination charging ahead, in my case it was to use a 240v welding outlet so I made an adapter following the instructions from this site: CarCharging.us. Plan B was to use the 120v plug and let it charge for the 2.5 days I was visiting with family.
• Enjoy the supercharging breaks! Go patron a local mom and pop restaurant/store. The chargers on the I-40 are in small towns so it was nice to support the local business owners.

While cruising with AP on I was thinking how great would AP be in my motorhome. It will be very interesting if anyone converts the Tesla Semi (TS?) into an RV. If I had the $$ I would have one custom built. Seems like a perfect combination, especially since most stops at RV parks would have 14-50 outlets for charging and running the house systems. Also tapping into the large battery packs for running the 12v house systems while dry camping would be pretty cool.

 

[KJD]

plugshare.com is also a good backup plan for finding destination chargers along with making adapters like you said.

 

[Saghost]

Have had my new MS75 for about 2 weeks and just completed a 900 mile road trip from LA area to Prescott, AZ (and back). It was a great drive and the car performed very well, even on some rutted dirt and sand roads that looked like normal streets on the GPS (air suspension a big help). Here are some random thoughts from a new owner:

• Autopilot 2.5 while not perfect, makes the drive so much more relaxing on the highway. On the way back there was a very strong crosswind and AP was able to keep the car more stable in the lane than I could which was pretty cool.
• The in car GPS works well routing you to superchargers, it is also good about warning you if you are getting out of range of a supercharger.
• It's better to follow the GPS and charging times then trying to charge for longer and skip a stop. I tried to charge earlier and longer at a stop and was still unable to skip the next stop. The GPS seems to do a decent job on optimizing total charge time. Obvious to most but charging slows significantly after reaching about 80%.
  
• Plan your destination charging ahead, in my case it was to use a 240v welding outlet so I made an adapter following the instructions from this site: CarCharging.us. Plan B was to use the 120v plug and let it charge for the 2.5 days I was visiting with family.
• Enjoy the supercharging breaks! Go patron a local mom and pop restaurant/store. The chargers on the I-40 are in small towns so it was nice to support the local business owners.

While cruising with AP on I was thinking how great would AP be in my motorhome. It will be very interesting if anyone converts the Tesla Semi (TS?) into an RV. If I had the $$ I would have one custom built. Seems like a perfect combination, especially since most stops at RV parks would have 14-50 outlets for charging and running the house systems. Also tapping into the large battery packs for running the 12v house systems while dry camping would be pretty cool.

There has been a lot of discussion about making an RV from the semi parts both here and on FB - combined with the profit margin the high end draws I'm pretty sure something like that will happen.

In the meantime, some of the newest top end coaches are already doing adaptive cruise control and limited lane keeping, though it isn't on the level of AP so far from the video I've seen.

 

[calisnow]

I imagine some of the RV builders are already looking at making the semi an RV.