# Our first model X road trip and the lessons we learned



## MarkL (Jul 17, 2019)

We just took our first road trip in our Tesla. It was definitely a different experience. We make a regular trip 2 or 3 times/year from the Bay Area to Edwards Colorado. The drive is roughly 1750 miles and usually takes about 18 hours. We split the drive across 2 days, usually driving 10-12 hours the first day and arriving the middle of the next day.

Our new Tesla Model X was delivered one week prior to our planned departure so we decided that it would be fun to drive the new Tesla to Colorado. This is our first EV so I had zero knowledge of what to expect. I did the research on the route and charging points, found a hotel with a charging station and read a bunch of blog posts on how to travel long distances with a Tesla. I thought I was ready. Boy, was I wrong.

We needed to get to Salt Lake City the first day as there are really no other decent stops closer. The trip, which takes 12-13 hours in our other car, was going to be about 15 hours in the Tesla (according to multiple EV nav programs). This would be tough but doable as we could hopefully overlap charging stops with eating stops and still reach the hotel by 9 pm.

We started out early the first day with our first surprise. I charged to 100% the night before and the Nav system now said that we could skip the first charging stop and head straight to Truckee. Hooray! I was a bit perplexed as to why this changed (as I put all the same parameters into the other nav programs) but I wasn't going to complain as it would save about 30 minutes.

Not 5 minutes into our drive, however, I start getting warnings from the car to slow down or we won't make the destination. Huh? I fully understand the concept that slowing down would save energy but there is no way I am not keeping up with traffic on a CA interstate. I decided that it must be a bug in the car nav but, to be safe, we would just make the original short charge in Sacramento.

First charge done (24 kwh) - that didn't seem too bad - we were off to Truckee. I pull up the Supercharger info and find - oh no - it is full! I wondered about this risk, but I had never seen any Supercharging stations full when I drove past so, I really hadn't considered it likely. What that did was create an anxiety the whole way to Truckee wondering how long we might have to wait - 30 minutes? 1 Hour? The second new anxiety came in watching the "miles remaining" meter in the car. While I realize that going up the pass would consume more energy, the consumption rate was alarming. There was clearly no point in trying to use this reading directly as it looked like a good hill could consume 3-4 or more "energy miles" per mile. After speakIng to a veteran Tesla owner at a stop, I decided to just turn it off as it was another source of anxiety.

We arrived in Truckee and got lucky, one car was pulling out just as we drove up, we snagged the slot and felt relieved. I made a note to look for a tool that showed predicted Supercharger occupancy. We puttered around for a bit and found that even though we took the dogs out, got coffee refills and hit the bathroom, there was still time to kill. One issue was the "planned" stop time assumes that the supercharger will deliver the highest charge rate. Given the occupancy, the "fast" charge was at 50%. The A.D.D. in me didn't really enjoy sitting around, we wanted to get on the road!

Next stop Lovelock NV. This segment was uneventful, but I did notice that the predicted "charge remaining at next stop" seemed to be dropping every few miles. I assumed that this was likely due to a learning or averaging process in software and assumed that it would get better over time. We arrived and elected to have something to eat. We waited maybe 10 or 15 mins more than we would normally, but it was fine. Next stop Elko.

The Truckee/Lovelock segment was only 124 miles so no big deal. Lovelock/Elko was 196 miles which is a good segment distance. My wife fell asleep and I almost immediately started obsessing silently over the continuously declining "charge remaining at next stop" indicator. I could, and in hindsight should, have stopped at the intermediate station but I still had 10% predicted reserve when I passed the alternate charging station, so I ventured on.

The reserve number continued to decline, and I started to get the "reduce speed" warnings that I first saw early on. I slowed down and even followed some trucks hoping to reduce the wind load on the car. We arrived in Elko with only 19 miles left and I was wiped out from worry. What pissed me off was that the car nav didn't assume the worst case or even nominal case for energy use or just use actual data! It appeared to be assuming some fixed "optimal" and FAR too low energy consumption/mile number. I made some charging adjustments (see Lessons Learned) and we pushed on.

We did a big charge, but I planned to not push it until I sorted out the charge prediction algorithm. Our next stop was West Wendover, only 108 miles away. My wife drove as I needed some time to recover from the last segment. We arrived Wendover with plenty of reserve but still far less than the nav originally predicted. The plan here was to do a big charge that would get us to our destination (Sandy, UT) and grab dinner. Because we had the dogs, I was going to grab something to take out. It turned out that none of the places we found would do takeout and we weren't up for Pizza so we would have to wait.

We get back to the car (we were the only ones there) and I look at the charge rate and see 23 kW - What The ....!! That number was supposed to be like 140. I moved to another slot and, sure enough, we went right to 139 kW. I had heard of "bad" chargers. It was disappointing the there was nothing in the app or on the chargers that provides customers information on reported or known issues. Another lesson learned - check your charge rate - another 30 minutes wasted.

I put in the charge I thought would make it and we set off. Unfortunately, the reserve number was just dropping too fast, to feel safe so we stopped one more time outside of Salt Lake City to top off (16 kWh). We picked up some food and it was almost 10 when we arrived - roughly 2 hours over the original Nav predication.

I breathed a sigh of relief as there was still one open destination charger; we were down to 29 miles remaining. With a full charge, we could do a 171 mile segment tomorrow morning and get to Green River, UT. Then one stop in Grand Junction, CO and we were there! The first day was a struggle but I thought of it as a learning experience and that I just needed to build up the knowledge, sometimes through the school of hard knocks. I collapsed into bed and decided I better check the charging app. I pulled up the app and it said "14 kW"- What?!!! I got back up and went down to the hotel desk to complain. They told me that it wasn't a mistake. That was all of the power they put into the unit.

As I have come to find out, it is really hard to find out the capabilities of these small individual chargers. OK, I needed a plan. At 1.5 miles of charge per hour we would need to stay at this hotel for days just to get to the next Supercharger. There was only one choice, charge all night, go BACK to Salt Lake City (26 miles) and charge at a Supercharger. So, I got maybe 4 hours of sleep, left the hotel at 5 am and went to a fairly sketchy part of Salt Lake to the Tesla dealer. I moved chargers once as the first was one not working well and added 44 kWh, which was enough to get to the next charge in Price, UT, went back to the hotel, picked everyone up and we were off on the day 2 adventure.

Day 2, other than getting up at 5 am, was better. We had another Superchager incident in Grand Junction, but I caught it early so not as much time lost.

We did notice a couple of other issues with the car (a 2019 Model X Long Range btw). When the Cruise control was on (no Autosteer) the car would "hiccup" a bit whenever I passed a truck in the right lane (on a 4-lane interstate). It would let off the gas and slow down a few mph then, when it figured out that the truck was in the other lane, it would then accelerate back to speed. It is annoying, especially to a sleeping passenger. My hack was to manually hold the accelerator down when we would pass a car. We also had 2 incidents where the car thought we were going to get in a collision and instituted emergency braking. The first was on a 2 lane road where we were going through a fairly sharp sweeping right hand curve at about 50 mph. The car detected an oncoming truck as being in our lane and braked for about 1.5 sec and then released when it clearly was not an issue. It scared the crap out of my wife and she blamed me for using Autopilot but it wasn't even on. When had one other incident when a car in front of us in our lane made a left turn onto a side road and I was coming up at about 45 mph. The car was going to be well out of the lane LONG before I got there but I don't think the Tesla could detect the lateral motion, so it braked. That was too much, I shut the function off.

The second minor annoyance was the location of the seat heat button. Literally every time I would try to adjust the climate temp, I would turn the seat heat. Sometimes I would see it and turn it off, other times I would find out the hard way.

The only other compliant I had was the sun visors. All I will say is Mickey Mouse.

The return trip a few weeks later was less eventful but had its moments. We were taking the southern route through Las Vegas. Day 1 was from Edwards CO to Vegas. I had dropped the destination charging idea for obvious reasons and just opted to stay within a mile of a Supercharger. I could drop the car off and wait or Uber back to the hotel or somewhere else. I also had found that Google had an estimate of Supercharger occupancy by day and time. Saturday (our arrival day) looked like no issue. The day was long but went fine. A couple of items to note. The Grand Junction Supercharger had the chargers organized differently than most (1A, 2A, 3A, 1B, 2B, 3B) so when we parked 3 slots away from another Tesla we actually were on the same circuit. We also had to go to one Supercharger that was 5 miles off of the interstate. That was a bit too much in my opinion.

As we were arriving in Vegas, I did a quick check of the local Supercharger status. What!? It was full. My plan to get the charge in before dinner was not going to happen. We left the car and went out. I checked every 30 mins or so starting about 5:30 and openings started showing up about 9 pm. I went over at 9:30, found one slot open and started a 2 hour and 10 minute (half speed) charge. About 90 minutes in I noticed it was getting really hot in the car (note the outside temperature was still almost 100 degrees!). I looked down and saw a warning on the dash that "Due to Supercharging, the air conditioning has been reduced." In typical Tesla fashion they use the term "reduced" when what the really mean is "turned off." I assumed that something was overheating but it was a bit annoying to sit in a 100 degree car at 11 at night waiting for the charge to complete. Note that this did not change once I left the charger, the air-conditioning was dead on the drive back to the hotel. Hopefully it would work in the morning.

The final day was uneventful from a car perspective, but our Dog did get sick in the car causing an emergency stop and cleanup; yuck. We arrived home about 2 hours later than our usual drive time, partially due to the dog incident, with 6% charge remaining.

While we will not likely do this trip again soon in the Tesla, we still love the car. It drives great, has tons of features (our favorite is Dog mode), has more room than most large SUV's and is far superior to every other EV on the market. For commuting and trips within 125 miles of home, it will be our choice.

To me, long road trips with the Tesla is like sailing. With Sailing, you can have a goal of getting somewhere but the journey should be more important than the time it takes to get there. You can have a goal to reach a destination at a certain time but there are major factors that are simply not under your control (like the wind) that could cause significant delays.

The main problem I had with the EV road trip was the variability. I have filled up at gas stations thousands of times and never spent more than 15 minutes pumping gas. The risk that the gas station will be full (with a wait over 5 min) or broken is almost zero. It's not that big of a deal that the Tesla takes longer to charge, it's that the charging station might be full, or slowed down, or broken. Your destination charger might not be available or up to snuff. If you really have to be somewhere at a certain time you would have to simply budget too much time to account for a "worst case" scenario.

Summary of Lessons Learned

A general note. Most Tesla Specs appear to be a "best case" scenario. You might expect them to use your driving as a template or display "average" numbers, but I never found this to be true. Beware.

FIGURE OUT YOUR OWN PERSONAL POWER CONSUMPTION AVERAGE
On every single segment, the nav system was 10-15% more optimistic regarding the charge that would be remaining at the next stop. What was so wild is that this prediction would often drop 5% within ½ mile of leaving the charger! After a couple of close calls, we created a "we would like to actually drive the speed limit (and maybe 5 over) factor" and waited until the Nav indicated "charge remaining at next stop" to be 22 or 23%. It is absolutely stupid that the system doesn't adjust (and can't be forced) to align with the individual car/driver/situation but adding about 13% to the minimum recommended charge did work.​
Here is the math for the technical folks. On our trip of ~3300 miles we averaged 400 Wh/mi. The nav assumption number (that appears to be non-settable) is 300 Wh/mi, which accounts for the ~25% difference. Since you typically charge about 50% of the battery, if you drive like me, you need to add 25% of the 50% which is 12.5% more charge. The only time I can get 300 Wh/mi is on my commute as I live in the Bay Area and my avg highway speed is about 35 mph! If you want to drive at speed (like 80+ mph) on the rural highway in Nevada or Utah, make this adjustment. Other route planners allow you to adjust consumption rates and give you more accurate total trip times, but it is nice to have the real time one in the car as a guide as well.​
THE WORST-CASE SUPERCHARGER TIME IS DOUBLE THE PREDICTED TIME
The Supercharger predicted charge times that you get on the Nav system seem to assume three things. 1) The Supercharger will be less than half full so you can get the ~140 kW charge rate, 2) the Supercharger will not be broken or suboptimal, and 3) that you will arrive with the "predicted" amount of charge remaining. I found, on average that none of these assumptions was assured. As least 50% or more of the rural chargers had issues and roughly 50% of the stations were limited because of the number of other cars charging. As noted in the previous item, you also need to add the time for the additional 10-15% charge that NAV says you don't need. All-in, double the charge time on the Nav prediction and that will be closer to right.​
HAVE A BACKUP PLAN FOR DESTINATION CHARGING
I would also call ahead when possible to verify the size of the destination charger. You can also ask how often they are used. You need a backup plan if the chargers are full.​
YOUR ROAD TRIP SEGMENT RANGE IS ~50% OF YOUR SPECIFIED RANGE
I was blown away by the quoted range of my new Model X Long Range (at 327 miles) but, again let's do some real-world factoring:​
Deduct 10% for emergency reserve è Nominal Range = 295 miles
If you are driving on the open road at the speed limit (75+), lower this number by 25% è First Charge Range (from 100%) = 221 Miles
If you are doing multiple charges, you are not going to want to spend the time recharging to 100 %. Assume you charge from 10 to 70% è Road trip Multi-Segment Range = 147 miles
Approximately 150 miles/segment seems to be a good round number to use for long trips for my MX Long Range.​
CHECK AND MONITOR YOUR PLANNED SUPERCHARGER STATIONS
Check on Google to see if your Supercharger has busy times and plan accordingly. Also check while you are driving as you can often make a different stop if you see that the station is fully occupied. Remember that you can charge in about half the time if you can get a dedicated charger.​
That's it. I think my biggest mistake was assuming that the data provided was going to be "average" and not "best case," so my expectations were far too high. I hope this helps others avoid this problem.


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## shareef777 (Mar 10, 2019)

What was your speed, and what was the destination charge rate? 14kw would give a charge rate close to 50mph (my home does 12kw and does 45mph). I did 5-10mph over all posted speed limits and found the built in Navi to be very accurate. But either way, you’re right in that EVs simply require more time. A semi-annual 800mi trip I do usually takes 12-13hrs in my Honda. My 3 took 15.5hrs. I could of shrank it to 15hrs if I’d of been at the car exactly when it finished charging enough to get to our destination for each of our 4 SC stops. But it could of just as easily been 17hrs if any of our 4 SC stops had been half full (even longer if they were completely full).

Love my 3, but Tesla’s are simply not good road trip cars if the primary goal is the destination. That’ll change once v3 superchargers are deployed nationwide.


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## dburkland (Nov 12, 2018)

For your next road trip I highly recommend using abetterrouteplanner.com instead of the built-in system from Tesla. I used it on all my road trips especially the big one I did in May from MSP to LAX and it worked great (and saved me time). Congrats on the new Model X!


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Welcome to the forum and to Tesla. I do hope that time will improve the chargers and anxiety. As noted hopefully v3 will help and it comes to the chargers you need. If you do find underperforming chargers you should report those, although you would think the feedback would be automatic from the car/charger when it isn't charging at an optimal speed.


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## TrevP (Oct 20, 2015)

Good report. Things get easier as you get used to the car's capabilities and range. Model X is wonderful however due to the weight and CD it's nowhere near as efficient as the Model 3 so it has much less range and it's especially noticeable in the winter.

Just be prepared on road trips to have alternatives ready and mapped if you're going off the beaten path


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## MarkL (Jul 17, 2019)

shareef777 said:


> What was your speed, and what was the destination charge rate? 14kw would give a charge rate close to 50mph (my home does 12kw and does 45mph). I did 5-10mph over all posted speed limits and found the built in Navi to be very accurate. But either way, you're right in that EVs simply require more time. A semi-annual 800mi trip I do usually takes 12-13hrs in my Honda. My 3 took 15.5hrs. I could of shrank it to 15hrs if I'd of been at the car exactly when it finished charging enough to get to our destination for each of our 4 SC stops. But it could of just as easily been 17hrs if any of our 4 SC stops had been half full (even longer if they were completely full).
> 
> Love my 3, but Tesla's are simply not good road trip cars if the primary goal is the destination. That'll change once v3 superchargers are deployed nationwide.


Sorry, I think it was a typo in my notes. Must have been 1.4 kW (I believe it was a 30A 110V circuit) I know the Tesla said 1.5 mph as the charge rate. This was in Utah and Nevada on 100 degrees heat (lot of air conditioning) with a 80-90 mph average speed.


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## MarkL (Jul 17, 2019)

GDN said:


> Welcome to the forum and to Tesla. I do hope that time will improve the chargers and anxiety. As noted hopefully v3 will help and it comes to the chargers you need. If you do find underperforming chargers you should report those, although you would think the feedback would be automatic from the car/charger when it isn't charging at an optimal speed.


Totally agree. They know exactly how much charge is and should be going in since they have to account for it. Maybe the next version charger could have a simple red/yellow/green on the front so you could see the status before you park. I would not have expected it would be an issue but I believe we encountered 4 bad chargers on the first 10 stops.


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## MarkL (Jul 17, 2019)

dburkland said:


> For your next road trip I highly recommend using abetterrouteplanner.com instead of the built-in system from Tesla. I used it on all my road trips especially the big one I did in May from MSP to LAX and it worked great (and saved me time). Congrats on the new Model X!


Agreed. I used that tool to verify my return trip and it was much more accurate. I do hope Tesla lets us set the consumption rate in a future release as it is real handy to have the realtime feedback in the car Nav.


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## NR4P (Jul 14, 2018)

MarkL said:


> Totally agree. They know exactly how much charge is and should be going in since they have to account for it. Maybe the next version charger could have a simple red/yellow/green on the front so you could see the status before you park. I would not have expected it would be an issue but I believe we encountered 4 bad chargers on the first 10 stops.


Did you call Tesla and report the bad locations and problem stall number?


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## ajdelange (Jun 26, 2019)

A better comparison than sailing is flying an airplane. The places where you can stop to refuel are few and far between. The amount of fuel you use in reaching one of those places depends on weather and terrain, especially the former with respect to winds. You must, therefore, plan your route with those things in mind. For the pilot there are rules about having enough fuel onboard to reach the intended airport plus enough to continue from there to an alternate airport should you be unable to land plus enough for a half hour beyond that. In flight a pilot constantly checks his progress looking for deviations from his plan (mainly with respect to estimated fuel on board at his destination to see if he must deviate and land at a closer airport etc.

As you gain experience you will, as in any other endeavour, lean the characteristics of the car and the art of navigating it. In order to accelerate that process do, as others have recommended, start using abetterrouteplanner. It allows you to enter data concerning extra load, predicted headwind, battery degradation loss (that will come), road conditions and the speed you intend to drive, stirs all this up with what it knows about the terrain along your route and comes up with a plan. You can play "what if" games with it (e.g. I should have a 10 mph tail wind but what if that turns into a 20 mph headwind?) Or What if I use the East Overshoe SC instead of the Podunk one?

Second, try Teslafi. This is an electronic log book which stores information about every drive, every park, every sleep and every charge. Historical data is presented in a neat calendar format so you can conveniently access everything that happened on a particular day. One of the best features is that it estimates 100% range after every charge so you can monitor battery degradation. Downside of this website is that there is a fee for storing your data and it polls the car (asks it for data) keeping it awake and increasing vampire drain.

Next, get Teslawinds installed. This is a website that, in response to your car's reported GPS location, fetches local weather and terrain information and displays headwind (or tailwind) component and grade. Getting it going can be a bit of a bear as you must obtain tokens from a couple of other websites (for the wx and geo data) and punching one of them in correctly can take several tries over several days.

Study the "gauges" as you drive. Develop simple mental tricks to help you evaluate the situation as you go. Examples: I have an X with a 100 kWh battery and a spec range of 295 mi. After lots of driving I know that it travels, on average, very close to 300 wH/mi. With a 100 kWh battery 1 kW, corresponging to 1% of the battery, will carry me nominally 3.3 miles. If the gauge shows 47% remaining on the battery and want a margin of 10% at destination I know that I have, under average conditions, roughly, 37*3 + 37*0.3 = 111 + 11 miles. If I'm driving in heavy rain and I see that my average comsumption is up to 400 wh/mi (and yes, heavy rain can make that much difference) I know that my range will be 3/4 of that. As you gain some experience I hope that doing such mental calculations will become a way of passing the time on the road rather than a source of anxiety.

As for full chargers: I don't have any recommendations on that. The problem is only going to get worse as Elon is pouring cars into the country faster than superchargers. You'll find on the internet which chargers have the bad reputations. Planning around them is what I do (but I don't think the problem is nearly so bad here on the east coast as it is out west - yet). There is a phone number on each pedestal which can be used to report a problem with it.


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## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

Did your AC operation return the next morning?


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## MarkL (Jul 17, 2019)

Needsdecaf said:


> Did your AC operation return the next morning?


 Yes. It was fine the next day. I assume it was just overheated from charging for so long in the heat.


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## MarkL (Jul 17, 2019)

NR4P said:


> Did you call Tesla and report the bad locations and problem stall number?


I did not. I looked for a way to report and/or view issues on the App (there is nothing) and assumed that, since they monitor the charge rate for billing, they should already be aware of the issue.


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## NR4P (Jul 14, 2018)

MarkL said:


> I did not. I looked for a way to report and/or view issues on the App (there is nothing) and assumed that, since they monitor the charge rate for billing, they should already be aware of the issue.


I don't think they really monitor SuperChargers. When I had a problem I called the 800# on the charger. They asked for the location and asked me which stall I was in. I had tried 2 other stalls so it was showing me in 2 different places for a brief time, None would go over 40kwh and I was the only one there with 6 stalls at 10pm. It is a 120kw site.
The rep took all the information and stated it gets forwarded to the local team to investigate.

Although I never heard a word since my impression is that if we don't call and report it, they don't know to investigate.


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## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

@MarkL, that was a very long trip to cut your teeth on! I also ended a similar length trip in my 100D Model X about the same time you did, so I read your account with heightened interest. Here are some random thoughts of similarities and differences:

I was on the other half of the US - As far west as Missouri (actually edged into Kansas) as far south as Alabama and returned to PA. My trip total was 3350 miles, 335 Wh/mile and about 95% efficiency (going 95 actual miles for every 100 rated Tesla miles.) I believe I stopped at 22 different superchargers. That makes that I averaged about 150 miles between stops - exactly your calculation.
There can be a myriad of reasons for differences in energy consumption, but it sounds to me like speed may be the largest reason for your high consumption. You said you went 80-90 mph but you also initially said it was a 1750 mile trip that you usually do in 18 hours - a 97 mph average?!!!. (At that point I double checked whether you live in Germany 😬). Regardless of the actual numbers, your speed is higher than average, at least for us east-coasters, and it doesn't surprise me that you found the Tesla estimates to come up short. Like @shareef777, I'm typically about 5-10 mph over the speed limit and I find the Tesla estimates quite good. Actually, I often leave a supercharger a little bit before it says I'm ready to resume my trip and I end up at the next SC with slightly more range than it estimated. So I don't think it's just a best case scenario that the Tesla calc is doing.
I have only experienced a full SC three times ever, and the condition was very fluid each time with a complete changeover in cars in 30-45 minutes (and no longer full). By far my typical SC experience is to have no more than 1 or 2 others there, and I'm often the only one.
The destination charger at your hotel - you corrected the 14 kW to 1.4 kW, but even that should have given you 3 mph. I regularly use a simple 120 V outlet at a relative's house that I visit, and that has consistently given me 3 mph in a wide range of temperature conditions. Anyway, destination charging at a hotel definitely does need to be greater than a simple wall outlet. And as others mentioned above, always have a backup plan.
I totally endorse @ajdelange's suggestions about mental math and Teslafi. Love the data I get from Teslafi and especially helpful to be able to look at stats from routes that I repeat often.
Your observations on autopilot are spot on. It is not perfect yet and is something you have to get to know its quirks. And it's like a relationship with a person because it's ever changing. But that being said, autopilot has changed my life. At least my driving life. I am excited about it as it improves and I am sure it is our future.
A long trip in a Tesla is very different than in an ICE. I was very disillusioned after my first Tesla trip. Like you, I found there are so many details I had not fully understood. Having a car that is supposed to go 300 miles but needing to stop every 150 miles - that was hard to swallow. And my initiation was winter driving for which the situation is even worse. I was someone who drove an ICE from full to fumes with no biological stops - they are just a waste of time. But now with around 30,000 Tesla miles under my belt and more than half on long trips, I have changed a lot. The frequent SC stops do refresh me and I arrive at my destination less tired. I stay better hydrated as I know I'm stopping again within 2 hours anyway. I rarely pass a SC opportunity, as my ideal is to ride the 65% to 15% battery range, usually giving me less than 30 minutes at a SC. I now love my long trips in a Tesla. I definitely prefer it to my Volvo, which only gets pressed into service when I have something that time is all that matters.
I wish you well on your still-new ownership experience.


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## Mike (Apr 4, 2016)

Bigriver said:


> I rarely pass a SC opportunity, as my ideal is to ride the 65% to 15% battery range, usually giving me less than 30 minutes at a SC. I now love my long trips in a Tesla.


Just to add my two cents worth (I have 32,000 Tesla kms under my belt).

With the usual caveats (wx, terrain, etc), 119 kph (about 74 mph) seems to be the sweet spot for speed/time versus range in my Model 3.

I'll top off at a SC watching the live energy reading creeping up to 10% expected at the next stop, then drive the leg with the aim of arriving with 5% (but cruising no faster than 119 kph).

-------------------------

I really wish supercharge stall availability status (for the SC that is in the active nav route) would always be showing, perhaps as an icon next to the clock at the top of the UI.

I also wish that when one pulls up the list of nearest superchargers:

the information does not freeze but continues to update,
the system provides positional context by adding an arrow pointing to the direction of the various superchargers listed,
the system provides actual road distance (not as the crow flies) to each of the SC's listed, and
the system provides an estimated time enroute to each of the SC's listed.


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## Mickylee3 (6 mo ago)

MarkL said:


> We just took our first road trip in our Tesla. It was definitely a different experience. We make a regular trip 2 or 3 times/year from the Bay Area to Edwards Colorado. The drive is roughly 1750 miles and usually takes about 18 hours. We split the drive across 2 days, usually driving 10-12 hours the first day and arriving the middle of the next day.
> 
> Our new Tesla Model X was delivered one week prior to our planned departure so we decided that it would be fun to drive the new Tesla to Colorado. This is our first EV so I had zero knowledge of what to expect. I did the research on the route and charging points, found a hotel with a charging station and read a bunch of blog posts on how to travel long distances with a Tesla. I thought I was ready. Boy, was I wrong.
> 
> ...


Great post. I live in the Bay Area and my primary road trip is to St. Louis area. I just got my Model 3 RWD (SR+), so I haven't done the trip in it yet. But I have been having fun with abetterrouteplanner.com, and I know all of those stops you mentioned going through NV. It seems from what you said that abetterrouteplanner.com has more variables to customize your usage. It's a great warning for me. My plan had me stop first at Auburn, CA and then Truckee.


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