# Back from Palm Springs!



## RocketRay (Jun 6, 2018)

Work owed me a couple days off so we took the fam (and Red Rocket 2) out to Palm Springs.

One mistake: went for a cheap hotel and didn't get one with EV chargers. Not making that mistake again. Spent a good amount of time looking for chargers to use and it was a pain. We ended up eating dinner at the same place both nights (King's Highway at the Ace Hotel) cause all the chargers in the downtown parking structure were taken. Alas.

We did the Tram (of course) and the chargers there were both taken (of course). When we got back the temp was over 100F and, for the first time ever, we didn't need to put a towel on the seats because they weren't scorching hot! White interior FTW.

The drive back was exciting, it was very windy. Was driving 70-75MPH and efficiency was over 500 Wh/mile! We charged at Cabazon (pretty slow too) and after that it was 250. A couple guys at the SC asked about my car, said they loved the wheels. They were waiting for the rest of their family to get back from the outlets, they had an S and they had 7 total people in the car!


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## shareef777 (Mar 10, 2019)

Not making me feel good about my first road trip next week. In case I can’t make it in a straight shot, how would I go about finding a hotel with a destination charger?

And I def miss the S with the rear hatch seats. Hoping they come back with that when the time comes for me to upgrade!


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

shareef777 said:


> Not making me feel good about my first road trip next week. In case I can't make it in a straight shot, how would I go about finding a hotel with a destination charger?


You could use plugshare.com to search the area for destination chargers, and note which ones are at hotels.

But I wouldn't rely on it. Too many public L2 chargers end up being occupied, or blocked by combustion cars, or simply not working. I would plan on just using superchargers, and just view L2 charging at a hotel as a "pleasant surprise" if it's actually available and works.


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## Frully (Aug 30, 2018)

While yes, you can't rely on it - on private property like a hotel that provides the chargers you can bug the management to get the ICEers moved at the very least. 

I very much like the value-add of putting $10 worth of electricity in the car while I sleep, and saving me ~an hour at a SC stop...I go out of my way to plan around hotel destination chargers.

Tip: Call ahead to ensure chargers are available, not blocked, and turned on...preferably during 'business hours' as the hotel may need maintenance staff to turn them on.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

garsh said:


> But I wouldn't rely on it. Too many public L2 chargers end up being occupied, or blocked by combustion cars, or simply not working. I would plan on just using superchargers, and just view L2 charging at a hotel as a "pleasant surprise" if it's actually available and works.


Last night I stayed at a hotel that had two Tesla destination chargers and a Clipper Creek charger.

Both Tesla chargers were not functional. I told the front desk clerk, and they were aware of the problem and had scheduled somebody to take a look at them. Luckily for me, the Clipper Creek charger was working. I put a note on my car to avoid getting keyed by some irate non-Tesla driver, but nobody else arrived, and I was able to get a full charge by morning.

That saved me from one of my two planned supercharging stops on the way home. Pleasant surprise.


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## mzichao (Aug 9, 2019)

garsh said:


> Both Tesla chargers were not functional. I told the front desk clerk, and they were aware of the problem and had scheduled somebody to take a look at them. Luckily for me, the Clipper Creek charger was working. I put a note on my car to avoid getting keyed by some irate non-Tesla driver, but nobody else arrived, and I was able to get a full charge by morning.


This is what I'm afraid of for my first overnight EV road trip in my 3. There are simply no guarantee that the charging stations are working before I arrive. Plugshare have crowd-sourced info from checkins (some comments are way too old). After reading the comments on this awesome forum, my safe bet it to stay in an EV hotel and have a Tesla SCer station nearby (as a backup). Does this sound error-proof? But I still wish there can be a guarantee service checking for EV hotel station working and availability.


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

mzichao said:


> After reading the comments on this awesome forum, my safe bet it to stay in an EV hotel and have a Tesla SCer station nearby (as a backup). Does this sound error-proof?


That's about as good as you're going to get.

Tesla Superchargers seem to be much more dependable than other charging networks. So I always plan my long trips only around them. If a hotel has working destination charging and I can top-off overnight, I view that as just a nice bonus.

Now, Superchargers aren't infallible. On my last road trip, the superchargers in Utica NY were having some issue. Half of them didn't seem to be working well at all. But I was able to still charge at one of the functioning stations. And most of them don't have any battery backup, so if the power is out in that particular area, they're not going to work either.


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## JoeP (Sep 7, 2018)

Speaking of the power being out, this happened to me today. I was driving back from Iowa, had stayed overnight in Salt Lake City (where the supercharger is actually at the Tesla dealership there, chatted with folks there while charging which was a nice change). I've done 6000 miles on this trip and thats the first time i was at a Tesla dealer to charge. 

Anyway i get to Wendover Nevada and the power is off. In the whole town. Apparently a "scheduled" outage which ended up lasting till 2pm.
So i'm still in Wendover. Decided to stay the night rather than do the next segment in the dark to home. (I can get all the way home from here in one day its only 500 miles. I've done multiple 800 mile days on this trip btw and although its long, its pretty easy.


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