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How Miserable Is A Tesla Road Trip?

Feb 27, 2020
Hello everyone and welcome. In this video, we're talking about how

miserable

it is, honestly, to take a

road

trip

in a Tesla. In this case, we're on my Tesla Model 3 performance and I just drove it 2000 miles, so first of all, thank you very much. Otto tempus comm for sponsoring this video, we'll go into more depth at the end of the video, but know that if you go to Otto tempus comm, it's a really awesome website to search for a used course, so they compiled all the search results. There is one of the top used car websites and they put it all in one place, very helpful.
how miserable is a tesla road trip
I use it all the time. I love it, but in this video we're talking about Tesla

road

trip

s, so ironically I went two thousand miles 1963 miles. the year I was born in 1963, so that's as far as I got, it took me three days to make that total time it took me to drive and load, including both. Now it takes about 38 hours if you go to Google Maps and enter The point to point I drove through actually says it will take 27 hours, so it took 11 hours longer than Google Maps says it will take. Please note that Google Maps will not include gas stops, who knows what. traffic is going to be heavier during those three days of driving, I don't know if there will be construction on the road, things like that, so I ran into some traffic, some construction on the road, that kind of thing that also adds to it. delays, but there certainly is a significant portion of the time where you're actually charging, so if you like to stop and eat it won't be that different, if you like to just grab something and keep driving then it will be significantly faster to drive a gas car than an electric one, so the total amount of time my cart was in front of a charger during those 38 hours it took me to drive those 2,000 miles was 7 hours and 50 minutes, so I spent about 8 hours total charging time now i was stopping and eating during those stops while it was charging and it generally took about 40 minutes on average it took 12 stops in total now the average 40 minutes get to the stop and generally speaking I just had breakfast, lunch or dinner around that stop the way it works.
how miserable is a tesla road trip

More Interesting Facts About,

how miserable is a tesla road trip...

Logistically, you drive about 200 miles, which takes about three hours, and then you stop for about 50 minutes while you let the core charge, so 200 miles takes 50 minutes. 200 miles takes 50 minutes on the first day, you can cover quite a significant distance. distance, so the first day I drove a total of 919 miles in one day, so if you need to get very far and Evi, yes, it will take you all day, but it can be done, you know, just consider that you are going to be If you drive about 200 miles, then you'll charge route 50. Now I was including a 15% safety buffer on the battery for that entire trip, so I never left a supercharger if it said I wouldn't make it to the next supercharger below 15%. battery so I made sure I always had enough range to get there with a 15% buffer now that 15% buffer is about 40 miles of range at the speed I was driving so I was driving 75 miles per hour and I kept that 75 miles per hour pretty much the entire trip, so if the speed limit was 80, I was still doing 75, that's exactly what I do on my cross track on the cross track once you get to 80, it's like a madness, the noise of the road and the wind.
how miserable is a tesla road trip
The noise is not as efficient, so I generally drive 75 miles per hour on the highways. I didn't change that. Can you drive at 80? Yes, does your efficiency decrease at your range? Yes, there is a noticeable difference due to your speed. increases the amount of power required to overcome aerodynamic drag increases exponentially, so more power is needed to drive at 80 versus 75. I looked at this a bit on the little power map, it's basically a game where you're playing how much risk that you want to have, so I was driving 75 miles an hour and I knew that by doing that I would have that 15% cushion to get where I was going and if something happened, you know, it would be some kind of mishap during the trip or if I was going uphill for a long time or if it was very windy.
how miserable is a tesla road trip
It had that 15% cushioning which is good for about 40 miles. You can now also slow down if you have very little range. Slow down and that will give you a much more efficient drive and you can increase the range you can travel until charging. We made 12 stops total during those 2000 miles specifically to charge. Of those 12 stops, the average time was about 40 minutes, the longest time was 52 minutes and that was not because I had to wait there that long, but because we were eating, we finished after 52 minutes and then left, like this That, generally speaking, I will have enough range to go to the next stop after about 40 to 45 minutes.
I usually went in up to about 50 minutes to make sure I had some security because it was my first time taking a road trip in an electric car. The shortest time we spent on a charger was just 10 minutes and then we went up about 20 percent in those 10 minutes and that was enough to get us to the next place with a lot of range, so what are the variables going on here? I'm sure you're curious to know that efficiency is related to what you were actually doing in the course. As I mentioned, the speed was 75 miles per hour.
There were two of us in the car the entire time and the car was completely loaded with stuff, I now had enough visibility to look out the back windows and the side windows, but the room was full of stuff and it's actually quite impressive how much. of things that fit in this car, including the front trunk, and then there's that. It's sort of a secret rear trunk underneath the main rear trunk, so there's plenty of room in this. I'll show you kind of a short video of what I was able to put in here, so that's quite a few things plus two people. so there was a good amount of weight in the car and that's something to consider especially important if you're going uphill or if you know you're in short stop-start traffic where you have to accelerate that mass over and over again.
Now of course more mass means more regeneration but ultimately it's a losing battle, the more weight you have in the car the less range you will have and you will also have higher rolling resistance. Other variables. I had the air conditioning on for quite some time. For most of the trip it wasn't very hot outside, but it was almost always sunny and it warms up this cabin a bit if it's sunny outside, so I'd say it was probably in the mid 70s for most of the trip at times. Sitting about 80 degrees outside, but overall it was warm enough outside and always sunny that the air conditioning had to be on, so the air conditioning was on pretty much the entire time.
I had music on the entire time I had my phone plugged in charging for that record. so you know almost all the variables were happening that were not in my favor, the car is fully loaded. I'm using the air conditioning, that kind of thing, the only thing is that the temperature outside wasn't really cold, so if it got really cold, it would reduce the range significantly. I don't know to what extent because I haven't done it yet, but I would probably change more than just using the accessories. Accessories don't really play a big role and how much range you have and then when.
When you approach traffic, you might think, oh, now I'm in traffic and now I'm going to lose all this range because I have my air conditioning running that kind of thing, but the reality is when you're in traffic and I ran into Al traveling at low speeds, at those very low speeds, it actually turns out to be really efficient, so the city rating is better than the highway rating, you get better miles per gallon in the city, so when driving in that type of high traffic conditions, you have a lot of range even if you're using air conditioning and that kind of thing, so it was really nice to see that the estimated range that I would have would actually increase when I went into those high traffic scenarios because you get the regen every time that you stop and are not traveling at such high speeds, so there are no very high drag losses overall.
It's a really efficient way for the court to travel at low speeds, so if you run into traffic, it's not a big deal unless I guess you're just sitting there literally all day with the air conditioning on and without moving, but generally speaking, if you move in that traffic, then it will have a lot of range and will actually work somewhat efficiently in that range. of efficiency, this is something that I'm really excited about and it was cool to see because this car traveled 2,000 miles on the equivalent amount of energy to sixteen point five gallons of gasoline and it turns out that's less than the size of the fuel tank for my Subaru Crosstrek , so what that means is that if my Subaru Crosstrek was as efficient as this Tesla Model 3, it could have made that entire 2,000 mile trip on a single tank of gas, so that really tells us two things, first, it shows how wildly inefficient internal combustion engines are, and secondly, it shows how wildly non-dense electric batteries are.
This car's battery is only a little over two gallons of gas and energy equivalent, but it's so efficient that you can go a long way with it. So my longest trip period was 221 miles and that took 78% of this car's battery to go 221 miles, so if I look at the energy efficiency of my most efficient leg of the trip or my least efficient leg. of driving and then convert it to the equivalent range the car would have, the longest range this car would have on the highway driving 75 miles per hour with all the variables I told you, is 286 miles and the shortest possible range there was experienced.
During my trip with a full battery, the distance I could travel was approximately 200 23 miles. Now Tesla claims that you know based on its highway mpg rating this is good for about 250 miles on a full charge on the highway, now that 250 miles of highway range assumes Tesla's highway mpg equivalent 112 for the average of my trip. I got 118 MPGe about the equivalent, so an equivalent of 118 miles per gallon, so I was doing better than what Tesla is rated on the highway with all those variables, so it's a very efficient machine and you know that You'll get that 200 miles of range between your little charging stops with that 15 percent reserve in case something goes wrong Now, if you want to tempt fate, then you can drive faster than me and you can spend less time on chargers than I do. me and you will go into those regions with lower battery, but that's where it charges very fast and you already know that, so it just depends on how much risk do you want to take on this case?
I was making sure I had that 15 percent reserve and overall I did well. The entire trip took 560 kilowatt hours for my vehicle, which is about seven to five full batteries to get me going. those 2,000 miles are fine, how was the trip itself? How was it in this vehicle? In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was to spend very long days, especially that 919 mile day in this car, we even had some complaints about the comfort. The seats are extremely comfortable, they're not like race car seats where they hug you and keep you very comfortable, but they are very plush and as a result, my back never hurt, my butt never hurt, it never hurt.
It is fine throughout the trip in terms of comfort. I could just sit on this thing all day and not worry about it, so it was actually very nice. Tire noise isn't too bad at 75 miles per hour. Wind noise isn't that bad overall. pretty quiet here you have your sound system on and it's a very nice environment to get over, plus if you have one of these big ones, I just filled it with iced tea, it's a Toyota Supra thermos that also fits wonderfully in the cup holder. like side stand here so if you're a super enthusiast maybe this is the car for you, that doesn't make any sense but either way the water bottle fits great here, good location for those tons of storage here, which is good for road trips, good convenient locations to put everything so I like that now the suspension itself is pretty firm and this is the high performance model so hopefully it will be a little lower than the regular Tesla Model 3, so it's a little firm.
As for the ride quality, but I think what makes up for it perfectly is the fact that these seats are very comfortable, they're very well padded, there's plenty of them. I don't weigh much. I don't know if you can tell from the size. on my wrist, but I don't weigh much, so I usually sit in a firm place just for that and this car actually sinks a little andIt's really comfortable and evenly distributes pressure when I'm sitting. Okay, what's up with autopilot? Well, here comes some unpleasant news for all you big Tesla enthusiasts. I don't have a car.
I think it's great. I think it's great. I just have no problem driving 2,000 miles. It turns out that I use my own hands to turn the steering wheel I know it's a crazy concept but it's not a big deal to me so I don't have autopilot, I didn't use it, I just have normal cruise control, it's actually very nice and very easy to use. Use it if you like to swipe up quickly, go up 5 miles per hour, if you swipe down quickly, go down 5 miles per hour, if you only do one at a time you can have an incremental increase of only 1 mile per hour, so It is really easy to use this steering wheel.
I like the steering wheel method instead of the button method. A lot of cruise control systems often have a little switch that you push up or down and I really like the steering wheel here, it makes it really easy and because this has regen, you can actually do it if you approach a car quickly and just You slide that wheel down, you'll actually slow down very quickly, so you won't have to hit the brake very often, you can do everything. with your hand I know it's crazy, it's human control Brett, instead of just letting the car do it and maybe one day I'll buy autopilot because they gave the discount to people who bought before February 28th, but I don't mind using it anyway. regular old cruise control I think the adaptive cruise control is good, but I don't mind driving myself.
I don't mind adjusting the speed myself, it's no big deal, so I didn't use autopilot, okay, so I have a confession to make. I told a little lie at the beginning of this video when I told you that it only took 38 hours to go those 2000 miles, it actually took 45 hours and where did those extra 7 hours come from, well they came from hitting a pothole that I have never liked. low profile tires I wish they offered something different for the high performance model and it ended up being about a six and a half hour test because I got a flat hitting a pothole.
Now I didn't want that to be the focus of this video. I wanted the video to focus on the logistics of electric car travel and not the potholes and flat tires, but I think that's something we're talking about so I'll create an additional video to discuss it because it was actually all. It's a hassle to go through having a flat tire on these vehicles so now let's talk about the navigation system set up on this car and this is what's really great about the Tesla Supercharger network because they make it really easy to take a road trip without having to do it. think a lot about what I like.
I don't want to have to go into a core and have to think, where do I stop every time? So just enter your destination as you can see here. I'm just going to drive from Michigan to California and it gives you all the stops and an estimate of how long you'll be at each of these supercharger locations so you can see that I have 65% battery right now and my next supercharger. I'll wait in charge for 40 minutes and get there with 6%, so I personally wouldn't leave if it only said 6%. I would wait for it to be a little higher if you are a risky type, go. to do that, you would charge a little over 65% and then start getting to that supercharger, but the other cool thing is if you go, you start your trip there and then you look at the power, there's this trip computer. here and it shows you along those miles that you are going to travel and this is a period of one hundred and forty-eight miles that we are about to start, it will take two hours and seven minutes, we will get there at 5:45 p.m. m.
There you can see the complete list of everything you are going to do in the different churches that come to st. Joseph Michigan at 6% you need to charge for 40 minutes once you're there, but if you go into the power here, it shows you your trip, so those 140 miles here is where it shows you where the battery will be throughout that and you can also monitor your consumption to see, hey, I have 65 percent left based on how I've been driving, how far I'll go on that 65 percent, and as you can see, my last 30 miles that I've driven based on that 65 percent. it'll give me 229 miles of range, so there's all kinds of information here if you want to see it, if not you can literally follow these instructions, do what it says, go where it says to load the locations once. you arrive at that location it will tell you hey you are here now you can charge for this time and then you can leave and it tells you when you can leave again and it will tell you and then it will give you the percentage that you will get to the next destination and so you will know each time what percentage you can expect to get when you get to the next destination and it will also show you this on your phone, so if you leave, go to a restaurant or whatever it says, hey, you have 25 more minutes of charge before you can go, which is really cool so you know you're sitting in a restaurant for how long you want to be sitting there, it will show you. your phone now, these super charges are pretty fast, so I want to see that you won't have to spend as much time if you're actually sitting and eating wondering, oh man, do I have to sit here like they charge pretty fast and I figured out? which on average I was understanding, it would tell me that I could leave about 10 minutes before each of these estimates here, so it says 40 minutes.
I bet I could actually sit there for 30 minutes and I'd be like, "Okay, you're ready." but that would give you only about a 6% to 10% margin to get there, compared to I want to be a little more cautious and have a little more than that, but again, it's completely up to you, so the part of range anxiety about this is how much risk are you willing to take and can you slow down like, let's say, worst case scenario, you open up this power graph and it says you're not going to get there on any battery, so slow down. your speed and You will notice this starts to increase over time because because you have reduced your speed you are driving more efficiently and you will actually get there so if you want to drive 80 miles per hour and just see how far you go. you can get there, maybe you can get there great and then if it doesn't work out you just slow down and then you can make sure you get there so there's a lot of information to play with here if that's the case.
You meet a nerd and you want to take advantage of him and there's only so much you need to get there if you don't want to know all that stuff. Personally, I wish there was a little more functionality here, I think it would be really cool if you could say "Hey, I want a 15% or 20% buffer." I always want to have that minimum amount when I arrive at my next destination and then connect the charges. It also doesn't show you the chargers. In the meantime, there are places where you know there's probably a supercharger between here and here, but you don't have to stop there, so if you use the bottom of the battery, that battery charges very quickly, for example, I charge from the 15% at 65. %50% battery charge in just 20 minutes so if you were constantly charging just that really fast charging region then you could probably get there faster too and it doesn't let you optimize that handling here it basically just optimizes by minimizing things, so fewer stops instead of more shorter stops.
I wish you could give him the flexibility to choose, but he doesn't. I've heard there is something called a better trip route planner, an app or website that you can use that adds that functionality, but it would be great if it was integrated across the board, although the system is pretty easy to use. I mean, you don't have to think much, you just get in the car and go, if I were to do this like a Chevy bolt or something. a Nissan Leaf, I have no idea where all of this stuff is and it would take a lot longer than the one hundred and fifty kilowatt charging speed that these superchargers provide, so honestly what's really convenient are some things I wish had. a little more flexibility, but overall it's a pretty good system as far as this estimation curve here.
One of the things I wanted to monitor while driving is how accurate it is because that influences how comfortable I am listening. You already know their recommendation, that's why I always maintained that 15% margin. Worst case scenario what happened is I was driving and he told me he would arrive with 23% and instead I arrived with 15%, so it was 8% less than what he initially said. The best case scenario I had once I started driving was maybe 15 percent then went down based on the initial part of the driving to eight percent and I thought, oh, I'm just going to get there with eight percent and then , when arrive.
I got there, it was up to twenty-four percent, so you know 16 percent better than what I was predicting. At best, you know, the best and most accurate I had is that I guessed fourteen percent and I got there with 14 percent. What about the act of charging itself? How it super charges and it's super easy, which is the good news. I mean, literally, you just park, plug in the device and everything is already working, so it's already linked to your Tesla account. They charge you that way. You're not using a credit card or anything like that, they charge you through your Tesla account and it immediately starts charging and I never had a problem, none of them were broken, I reached out to them all and resolved that there was never a line.
The most I saw in one place was for cars and there were eight stalls, so that was half of them. Most of the time I showed up, there were no cars or there was another car and that core was gone when I left so they don't stay long, you know, three in 240 minutes and they're usually out of there so they never I had problems loading. I haven't driven through California. I'm guessing there will probably be a lot more of these in California and maybe loading will become a real problem with everyone waiting in line. I don't know what that's like, but my own experience is that there was never a waiting line, everything always worked, it was very convenient, so these chargers are also incredibly fast.
I mean one hundred and fifty kilowatts to give you. Any ideas, it's about 500 miles of charging per hour, 150 kilowatts is what you charge when you're on that lower end at home with a 240 volt charger. I'm going between 7 and 8 kilowatts instead of 250 if you're using a 120 volt outlet. you are at 1 kilowatt, that is, one hundred and 50 times faster than what you know with a normal old plug at home, so a very fast charge again you know that it goes from 15 to 65 percent, 50% of the battery in just 20 minutes it was crazy see how fast it's able to charge and then that starts to taper off so once you get to about 80% you know you're going down to maybe 60 or 70 kilowatts once you get to 90 percent, it is charging and only likes 30 kilowatts. so it gets significantly slower as you get to those higher percentages, so you know, from a convenience standpoint, from a timing standpoint, you would want to be in that lower battery region to have the Fastest road trip possible, because that's where it charges the fastest, but it charges incredibly fast.
I mean literally sit there and watch it go up 1%, 1%, so it's cool how fast the superchargers are, how easy they are to use, how simple everything is and it shows you on the screen you know which one it is. the charge rate this is how long it will take to get to your next stop how much charge you need to get to your next stop that kind of thing so all the information there so you can eliminate that range anxiety, wondering when can I leave, what should I do, but I know the question you're probably here is the latest YouTube craze: how cheap can you get into something crazy?
So the question is how cheap can it be? You get into a Rolls-Royce. I wondered the same thing, so again a big thank you to Auto Tempest Comm for sponsoring this video. The results looked pretty expensive until I saw a $4,000 silver shadow. This is definitely a case where the listener also works the angles pretty well. There is a bit of damage to the car, but if you must have a Silver Shadow, it looks like they can actually be found in wonderful condition for under $20,000. I would still recommend a Mazda Miata and check out auto tempest com if you are looking for a used car, it is a wonderful search tool to compile results.
Thank you all so much for watching and if you have any questions or comments, of course, feel free to leave them below.

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