We finally decided to take the model 3 on a road trip this year instead of the wife's SUV and I was really impressed with how well the car performed on a trip from Norfolk, VA to Orlando, FL and back. I had always been a bit skeptical of taking the car on long distance journeys but after talking to some people on the forum about optimizing charging I figured I'd give it a try.
The supercharger network was great, we didn't have to wait for a charging stall at any point and were able to use 250 kW stations almost exclusively resulting in most stops being 10-20 minutes every 2 hours or so. This was perfect since I had a senior citizen and elementary age child with me. The built in NAV took us to all of our destinations accurately and the Spotify app made for easy driving and great music with no commercials. The car was relatively efficient averaging 280 kw/mi on the 18" aero wheels (no covers they are just too ugly) going 75-80mph for most of the trip and the first 500 miles in hard rain. The only time the NAV underestimated our SOC at arrival was during the heavy rain, aside from that it was within 1-2% which I thought was great.
I have grumbled about FSD a lot when used around town but I have to say it was spectacular on the interstate. I went for over an hour multiple times without having to engage on I95 in NC, SC, GA,and FL (and this was Thankgiving week traffic). I just toggled the volume scroll wheel back and forth to let the car know I was still there and let the computer do the driving for me. There were a couple of lane changes that weren't exactly the way I'd do it but nothing egregiously bad where the car cut someone off or anything. If I had maybe two phantom braking incidents where I am pretty sure the car thought the speed limit was dropping, but thankfully nobody was right behind me when it happened.
I think this may be the new road tripper as long as we don't need extra storage/ground clearance or are heading out to the sticks somewhere that charging may be an issue.
"Tesla Model 3" by Alexandre Prevot is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Admin note: Image added for Blog Feed thumbnail
The supercharger network was great, we didn't have to wait for a charging stall at any point and were able to use 250 kW stations almost exclusively resulting in most stops being 10-20 minutes every 2 hours or so. This was perfect since I had a senior citizen and elementary age child with me. The built in NAV took us to all of our destinations accurately and the Spotify app made for easy driving and great music with no commercials. The car was relatively efficient averaging 280 kw/mi on the 18" aero wheels (no covers they are just too ugly) going 75-80mph for most of the trip and the first 500 miles in hard rain. The only time the NAV underestimated our SOC at arrival was during the heavy rain, aside from that it was within 1-2% which I thought was great.
I have grumbled about FSD a lot when used around town but I have to say it was spectacular on the interstate. I went for over an hour multiple times without having to engage on I95 in NC, SC, GA,and FL (and this was Thankgiving week traffic). I just toggled the volume scroll wheel back and forth to let the car know I was still there and let the computer do the driving for me. There were a couple of lane changes that weren't exactly the way I'd do it but nothing egregiously bad where the car cut someone off or anything. If I had maybe two phantom braking incidents where I am pretty sure the car thought the speed limit was dropping, but thankfully nobody was right behind me when it happened.
I think this may be the new road tripper as long as we don't need extra storage/ground clearance or are heading out to the sticks somewhere that charging may be an issue.
"Tesla Model 3" by Alexandre Prevot is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Admin note: Image added for Blog Feed thumbnail