As alluded to in other posts, I took a trip from San Diego to the North Rim of Grand Canyon in my AWD Performance+ last week/weekend. This is an 8000-foot ascent.
Setup:
2019.32.11.1
Michelin CrossClimate+ on Dekagram 18x8.5 wheels. (Temperatures dropped into the 20's and upper teens on the North Rim, so these were required over the PS4S.)
Summary: It was a great trip, car did really well, Supercharging was really fast (used the 250kW Vegas Supercharger).
Detailed Summary:
Round trip: 1176 miles traveled, at average of 291Wh/mi on the trip meter. Total time spent driving was 18.5 hours, total time spent charging was 2 hours 39 minutes. (Moving average speed of 63.5mph.)
Charging efficiency was of course then 310Wh/mi (higher by ratio of 245/230). Including vampire at the destination, it was 321Wh/mi. These efficiencies do not include AC-DC conversion losses.
Comments:
1) Yermo is a great Supercharger. Rather bizarre store, but lots of room, candies, and stuffed animals, and nice bathrooms. Access is super fast.
2) Vegas 250kW LINQ Supercharger is inconveniently located. Lots of access overhead makes the 250kW rate nearly pointless (extra 11 minutes of overhead minimum to reach it for a 21 minute session). I don't know whether any of the other Vegas stations are more easily accessed.
3) St. George is a terribly located Supercharger. I recommend using Red Hills Parkway to access it; I did not do this however. I think it might be faster than sitting in traffic - it would definitely be less frustrating. However, I had a nice savory crepe from the crepe place. I had to wait there a long time to make sure I arrived at North Rim with a decent charge level (this was a strategic choice as I was not 100% sure of how well my destination charging would work - I could have saved 10-15 minutes here if I had known it was going to be ok).
4) I was able to set up charging at the North Rim due to my friend working for NPS. Normally, charging would be only at the North Rim general store (for $10/hr!!!). I did not investigate this option - instead I brought my 14-50 extension cord with a 14-30 adapter and plugged into a dryer outlet I had access to, and dialed down the amps to 23A. I do not know what a normal visitor would do. There is a distinct lack of charging options unless you want to somehow get an RV site somewhere (I do not know if they exist). A Supercharger is really required in Fredonia, and elsewhere in this clustering of National Parks in Southern Utah.
5) I lost 55 miles of range in 3.5 days due to Smart Summon Standby Mode (I employed all other vampire reduction techniques). Fortunately I had a good charging option and this f-up by Tesla only cost me 20 minutes of sleep.
6) The app is useless without connectivity. Neither the car nor my phone had LTE connectivity on the North Rim (this was not a surprise to me). This meant that I could not control the charge level except through the screen on the car. As is sometimes the case, I was not able to move the slider in the car to 100% (the most I could get was 98%). The car refused to charge further (it said 98%, 299 miles). Fortunately, I was still able to make Vegas from the North Rim in a single shot (it was close - fortunately I had a tailwind).
It is really stupid that they do not allow full functionality of the app with only Bluetooth connectivity when within range of the car. This should be possible...
7) With my CrossClimate+ and Dekagrams, the 20" Performance wheel configuration option gave me the best estimates for arrival % using the Trip Planner, at the speeds I was traveling. It's not clear to me whether this is a function of the poor aero of the wheels relative to the 20" wheels, or whether the CrossClimates have similar rolling resistance to the PS4S. I suspect the poor aero, as I have seen modest improvements in rolling resistance with the CrossClimates around town.
If I had figured this out sooner, I could have further optimized the return final charge in Yermo (as I arrived with 76 miles which was far too much and cost me probably 10 minutes of charging time). I was used to adding an extra 10% to make sure I could arrive easily at maximum speed, but on that last segment the estimates were finally valid - it predicted 25% arrival and that's what I arrived with.
8) Total cost was $0. I had no issues with crowded Superchargers, but was traveling on a Wednesday, and a Monday - it might not always be the case!
9) I think Tesla should add window washing stations at the Superchargers. I wasted 5 minutes cleaning my window after Supercharging while in Yermo.
10) NoA with ULC disabled was very bad at changing lanes as detailed elsewhere. I do not know why. It failed at least 100 times (at certain times it was at nearly every lane change). Just a single nag early in the trip for applying torque. I found that keeping a hand at 9 o'clock and another at 3 o'clock (with that elbow on the armrest to eliminate weight) worked really well for the entire trip. Overall AP was still pretty jittery but this was tolerable in the relatively light traffic. Only one instance of significant phantom braking under an overpass in Vegas that looked like a semi truck trailer.
11) Unfortunately was not able to use the car to get to my final destination in Southwest Colorado (east of Dolores), due to a massive lack of Superchargers in that area. Another huge hole. (Would have had to go to Farmington or Blanding, and then the unknown (to me) vampire drain would have killed me and made return impossible.) Used a 4Runner instead.
Pictures (and yes, I know my right front door is all crooked...one of these days...)
Setup:
2019.32.11.1
Michelin CrossClimate+ on Dekagram 18x8.5 wheels. (Temperatures dropped into the 20's and upper teens on the North Rim, so these were required over the PS4S.)
Summary: It was a great trip, car did really well, Supercharging was really fast (used the 250kW Vegas Supercharger).
Detailed Summary:
Round trip: 1176 miles traveled, at average of 291Wh/mi on the trip meter. Total time spent driving was 18.5 hours, total time spent charging was 2 hours 39 minutes. (Moving average speed of 63.5mph.)
Charging efficiency was of course then 310Wh/mi (higher by ratio of 245/230). Including vampire at the destination, it was 321Wh/mi. These efficiencies do not include AC-DC conversion losses.
Comments:
1) Yermo is a great Supercharger. Rather bizarre store, but lots of room, candies, and stuffed animals, and nice bathrooms. Access is super fast.
2) Vegas 250kW LINQ Supercharger is inconveniently located. Lots of access overhead makes the 250kW rate nearly pointless (extra 11 minutes of overhead minimum to reach it for a 21 minute session). I don't know whether any of the other Vegas stations are more easily accessed.
3) St. George is a terribly located Supercharger. I recommend using Red Hills Parkway to access it; I did not do this however. I think it might be faster than sitting in traffic - it would definitely be less frustrating. However, I had a nice savory crepe from the crepe place. I had to wait there a long time to make sure I arrived at North Rim with a decent charge level (this was a strategic choice as I was not 100% sure of how well my destination charging would work - I could have saved 10-15 minutes here if I had known it was going to be ok).
4) I was able to set up charging at the North Rim due to my friend working for NPS. Normally, charging would be only at the North Rim general store (for $10/hr!!!). I did not investigate this option - instead I brought my 14-50 extension cord with a 14-30 adapter and plugged into a dryer outlet I had access to, and dialed down the amps to 23A. I do not know what a normal visitor would do. There is a distinct lack of charging options unless you want to somehow get an RV site somewhere (I do not know if they exist). A Supercharger is really required in Fredonia, and elsewhere in this clustering of National Parks in Southern Utah.
5) I lost 55 miles of range in 3.5 days due to Smart Summon Standby Mode (I employed all other vampire reduction techniques). Fortunately I had a good charging option and this f-up by Tesla only cost me 20 minutes of sleep.
6) The app is useless without connectivity. Neither the car nor my phone had LTE connectivity on the North Rim (this was not a surprise to me). This meant that I could not control the charge level except through the screen on the car. As is sometimes the case, I was not able to move the slider in the car to 100% (the most I could get was 98%). The car refused to charge further (it said 98%, 299 miles). Fortunately, I was still able to make Vegas from the North Rim in a single shot (it was close - fortunately I had a tailwind).
It is really stupid that they do not allow full functionality of the app with only Bluetooth connectivity when within range of the car. This should be possible...
7) With my CrossClimate+ and Dekagrams, the 20" Performance wheel configuration option gave me the best estimates for arrival % using the Trip Planner, at the speeds I was traveling. It's not clear to me whether this is a function of the poor aero of the wheels relative to the 20" wheels, or whether the CrossClimates have similar rolling resistance to the PS4S. I suspect the poor aero, as I have seen modest improvements in rolling resistance with the CrossClimates around town.
If I had figured this out sooner, I could have further optimized the return final charge in Yermo (as I arrived with 76 miles which was far too much and cost me probably 10 minutes of charging time). I was used to adding an extra 10% to make sure I could arrive easily at maximum speed, but on that last segment the estimates were finally valid - it predicted 25% arrival and that's what I arrived with.
8) Total cost was $0. I had no issues with crowded Superchargers, but was traveling on a Wednesday, and a Monday - it might not always be the case!
9) I think Tesla should add window washing stations at the Superchargers. I wasted 5 minutes cleaning my window after Supercharging while in Yermo.
10) NoA with ULC disabled was very bad at changing lanes as detailed elsewhere. I do not know why. It failed at least 100 times (at certain times it was at nearly every lane change). Just a single nag early in the trip for applying torque. I found that keeping a hand at 9 o'clock and another at 3 o'clock (with that elbow on the armrest to eliminate weight) worked really well for the entire trip. Overall AP was still pretty jittery but this was tolerable in the relatively light traffic. Only one instance of significant phantom braking under an overpass in Vegas that looked like a semi truck trailer.
11) Unfortunately was not able to use the car to get to my final destination in Southwest Colorado (east of Dolores), due to a massive lack of Superchargers in that area. Another huge hole. (Would have had to go to Farmington or Blanding, and then the unknown (to me) vampire drain would have killed me and made return impossible.) Used a 4Runner instead.
Pictures (and yes, I know my right front door is all crooked...one of these days...)
