Happy road tripping and thanks to anyone who shares their trips, experiences, and observations.
I was meandering around TMC looking for info on the CCS1 charge adapter after an interestingly inefficient charge situation in Pueblo, CO, and the forum kept suggesting all these road trip threads to read. I thought by now "electric road trip" would be as relevant as "road trip in my Prius" but I digress. I have about 400k miles across 5 Teslas in 6 years. If you accept that there is a minimum 20% time premium paid to road trip with Teslas then your expectations will be met with warm and fuzzy feelings. In all of my driving I have run out of juice twice and it was on the same trip. I was towing a trailer with a vehicle on it (about 3700lbs total) in 15°F with winds. If I was smart, I could have dropped the trailer and come back for it after charging. I fell short by 6 miles, and by about 100 yds. Not too many things more embarrassing as getting towed across a parking lot to the charger for $100.
Here's my quick list:
I was meandering around TMC looking for info on the CCS1 charge adapter after an interestingly inefficient charge situation in Pueblo, CO, and the forum kept suggesting all these road trip threads to read. I thought by now "electric road trip" would be as relevant as "road trip in my Prius" but I digress. I have about 400k miles across 5 Teslas in 6 years. If you accept that there is a minimum 20% time premium paid to road trip with Teslas then your expectations will be met with warm and fuzzy feelings. In all of my driving I have run out of juice twice and it was on the same trip. I was towing a trailer with a vehicle on it (about 3700lbs total) in 15°F with winds. If I was smart, I could have dropped the trailer and come back for it after charging. I fell short by 6 miles, and by about 100 yds. Not too many things more embarrassing as getting towed across a parking lot to the charger for $100.
Here's my quick list:
- Plugshare is a must.
- Hypermiling to skip chargers is a waste of time. At best you are probably averaging 80mph, whereas the SC can put miles back on your car at up to 400mph.
- Don't draft trucks unless you are stuck in situations where wind has dramatically affected your range. Otherwise all you are doing is eating road debris. It irks your competitive nature and desire to "just get there," but just slow down to 55-60mph, put it in autopilot, and be that old guy in the right lane.
- Follow the "20 minutes remaining to continue on your trip" messages and you'll be fine.
- In order of things that affect your range the most: wind, cold, and speeding. Wind is the worst because it is the most unpredictable and cannot be accounted for in any of Teslas crowd sourced range information. Cold is all but overcome with the latest battery warming algorithms on highway driving, except for under 15°F and local driving where the battery never gets to warm up. Speeding is obviously controllable by the driver, and the car does its best to tell you how fast you can go to reach your destination. Mountains are interesting depending on your destination but I live in CO and if you adhere to the "what goes up must come down" theory you'll be fine. There is a stretch of road from RMNF down into Boulder that is approximately 30+ miles of solid downhill. Not only do you travel that distance you end up with about 13-17 miles of range more than when you left the mountain.
- If you are going "off grid" or your destination is nowhere near a supercharger, you MUST carry a charge cable. I purchased a spare that stays with the car, but I have adapters for several 30A plugs (campground 30A and old 10-30 for dryers). I usually plug into the 50A dryer plug with family or friends. When really off the path, pick areas that have campgrounds with a 14-50 50A drop within 20 miles of wherever you are going to be. I've rented RV spots just to charge overnight while staying with family (they drive me there and back). I've taken naps at free community camp grounds if things get bad enough. If you want to really get into campground electric road tripping, download RV Parky and search for 50A drops and free local community RV parking. I've also parked at free J1772 chargers and Uber'd to a movie theater while in Canada to watch a movie while grabbin' miles.
- 2016 MX 90D [Current]- this vehicle has the most miles with around 190k+ miles with probably 50k+ miles towing. I towed a popup around for cheap vacations for a family of 4 (free supercharging!). Still going strong, but the range can't really tow for road trips anymore. I'd say the range is around 200 miles down from 257 miles rated at purchase. Those first 90kWh batteries are the worst for road trips, but free supercharging so there's some upside. At the time we started road tripping, SCs were always open (except in CA) and a lot of the time I'd pull into the end charger without unhooking the camper. Now there's so many cars, I'd allocate time for taking the trailer on and off. It's seen nearly every SC in the lower 48 and has been as far north as Jasper, BC as far west as the end of Vancouver Island, east as Boston, MA, and as far south as Key West, FL. Still a great Tesla and the free supercharging never gets old.
- 2016 MS P90D [sold] - owned at the same time as the 2016 MX 90D, it landed at around 145k+ when I got rid of it. It had travelled the same routes, but the range had dropped from 272 miles rated, down to about 227 miles. Again those gen1 90kWh batteries had their issues, though not relevant in the grand scheme of things. Just significantly slowed down charge times at SCs because you'd have to go 95%+ to make it to the next charger. Not as much of a problem now with the volume of chargers that exist, but again... free supercharging!
- 2017 MX P100D Used [Current] - This was purchased with about 56k miles, now sitting on 74k nine months later. It started out as a road trip machine, but I wasn't used to paying for supercharging, and the MX isn't as efficient as all the other Teslas so this vehicle has the highest road trip costs of any Tesla on the road. Still better than gas, but hard to swallow when you have 4 years and 300k miles of free supercharging under your belt.
- 2020 P3D+ [sold]- with about 36k miles when I turned it in. I was happy to see the higher charging speeds, quicker SC stops, etc and this was a stop gap until the Cybertruck was supposed to arrive. Ultimately because of the Cybertruck delays, I returned it (early lease termination) because the market value resulted in an early termination cost of $0 even while turning it in a year early. And unlike the MS and MX I could not camp in the back of it. I carry a self inflating full size mattress in the rear under-trunk area of all cars except this one. Blast to drive though.
- 2016 MS 90D Used [Current] - Back to bliss... with 86k miles at purchase, now sporting 101k miles, this is now the road trip car of choice. It enjoys the longest range of the free supercharging cars, unless you find one of the unicorn 100Ds but the premium of those over the 90D is about $20k which buys you either a new battery or 25 years of supercharging fees. Chargers are so close that even the longest range Tesla @ 400+ miles can only net about 5 hours driving across the country non-stop. You'll waste more time than that eating or sleeping over the course of those 30 hours of driving unless you are going from Seattle, WA to Key West, FL in as fast as time allows, you won't need it. The MS 90D is ready for camping, and the range is still 280 of 294 even with the 21" wheels. I've thought about procuring some Tempest wheels to see what it adds, but prices are high for those still and as mentioned before, supercharging is free. Upgraded infotainment unit ices the cake. Costs $10-20k less than the 3/Y, and I don't care what anyone says about AP1... Except for cresting hills where it absolutely fails, it still performs better than Tesla Vision in about 70% of situations and you get the lane changing and summon included. Automatic brights don't behave erratically and the wipers are operating off a rain sensor instead of just the camera. No phantom braking. Obviously it is as good as it will ever be, and the ceiling for Tesla Vision is vastly higher as improvements are made but right now AP1 is king in my opinion.