Purchased my SR+ June of 2019. Love the car... but have only made a Saturday run to Tucson and back. We have a wedding to go to in February and I am trying to convince my wife that we should take the Tesla. I only see two issue in making the trip. I am using abetterrouteplanner to plan my trip and there are two spots (between Wilcox, AZ and Deming, NM and then again between El Paso, TX and Van Horn, TX) where I will be arriving with less that a 10% charge. One of those jumps between superchargers would have us arriving at 4%. Has anyone made this trip? Or something similar like to San Antonio, TX? Does anyone have a CHAdeMO adapter that I could rent for this trip as an extra precaution.
When you cut it that close, the car will tell you to slow down if you are going to run out. When i am running close i put the energy meter on and make sure i am driving under the energy rating. You may want to start those legs at 60-65mph to give yourself a cushon. The range is based on the rated consumption rating, so if drive under that youll have more range, but over youll be stuck! Download the plugshare app..in a pinch you may find a tesla owner on the road willing to lend a plug or a destination charger at a hotel.
Have done I-10 from AZ to El Paso in my MS 100D multiple times, and on to Houston and back multiple times before I had the Tesla. Sure my car has more range than an SR+ but Wilcox to Deming is only about 140 miles, and same for El Paso to Van Horn. A little surprised that these ~140 mile hops would leave you at 10% charge or under with a car that has a range of 250 miles. If you charge to 90% that still gives you 225. So after 140 miles you have roughly 85 miles range left which is 33%. I suspect this has more to do with the settings in abetterrouteplanner. It is probably advisiing you of the absolute minimum charge time to make it to the next supercharger. Show settings, then show more settings. You can tell it what minimum charge you want to arrive at for each charging station. Set that to something like 20% and re-plan the route and you will probably like it better.
Thank you all for the input. My main concern is winds. West Texas can get windy. I figured I could watch www.windy.com and see how that will effect the drive. A really good headwind could really cause range issues on those couple long legs of the trip.
@TezTex Please keep updated, as I may need to do Galveston, TX in some future in P85, which is pretty much same setup. Given the experience of going to LA, San Diego and little bit around the state, I think it should be doable, if driving longer legs carefully at slower speed on cruise, staying little longer at SCs and keeping tire pressure higher. Can't say for abetterrouteplanner, but in Tesla planners, both online and onboard, I've seen predictions between a hair too optimistic and little more pessimistic, so in average the accuracy is OK, and little on safe side. BTW, not sure about US, but in other countries it's possible to get on tow with a semi for little bit of cash. Running in regenerative braking mode, you can be even recharging while still making your way, and the truck will barely feel the difference, if ever.
Have made this trip (Actually Phx to MS) 4 times with our M3 with no problems or worries. As someone said above, play with the ABetterRoute Planner settings. EG make Willcox a waypoint and set a higher "charge to" number. Charging a bit longer in both Willcox and El Paso would give you more miles to lessen your worries. And the El Paso supercharger is in the parking lot of a great BBQ place so enjoy!
PS Planning a trip to Alabama and then returning through Galveston in April. Very Doable. If you want to get off the I-10 a bit in Texas, you can go down to Marfa (hotel there has Tesla destination charger). Also stayed a night in Fort Davis and got tickets for the wonderful Star Party they have at the big Observatory there.
Apologize for the delay in my update... But I did make the trip! It was a success! I only had a few issues. I will summarize my trip and takeaways. I used ABRP for pre-trip planning, but realized that allowing for a headwind painted a bad picture for the whole trip. The reality is when your driving like that, sometimes the headwind is less or worse... I generally arrived with more SOC then the ABRP stated. After the first day, I quickly realized that using the cars trip planner, worked just fine! I did not use ABRP on the way home at all. We enjoyed the stops and arrived rested and ready to go. As the driver, I only experienced the "in a car for days" feeling... not the normal exhaustion due to driving fatigue. I did learn a valuable lesson: Our first day we arrived in Ft. Stockton, TX in the evening with about 10% SOC. I chose to checkin to our hotel and call it a night and planned to charge in the morning @ the Supercharger. Well.. the cold of the night significantly impacted the rate of charge and we waited A LOT longer to charge. The next time I had these opportunities, I charged to 80% before calling it a night. When we stayed at hotels with Destination Chargers, we didn't have this concern. ICE'd: I did have a few times where ICE vehicles where parked in Superchargers, but there were always additional open stalls. There was also a night that a Destination Charger was ICE'd. Enjoyed the trip. Would do it again! My wife and kids enjoyed it as well.
Well, our fun April trip was cancelled and instead we needed to go earlier to pick up child from college that was closing due to Covid19 situation and then drive home. Just got back. No issues with charging along the way, road traffic was understandably light (90% semi truck), hotels were thankfully very on top of cleanliness guidelines. Seeing all the empty parking lots and closed businesses on the trip was a bit surreal. On the way to Alabama, took a 10 minute detour after charging in Cisco to see the first hotel Conrad Hilton ever bought. For the return leg, took a southern route down through Biloxi. Stopped to see the USS Alabama and USS Texas ( both Museums and ships were closed but could see from outside and explore the grounds). After charging up in Lake Charles, in Winnie, TX went south (on 87 I think) to take ferry over to Galveston Island, drive the island a bit then head back to Houston and the I-10. Very pretty ride right along the coast for a bit. Last tip, we tried Lum’s BBQ after charging in Junction, TX which was a 2 minute drive from the SC and doing takeout. Awesome food and will be a must stop for us whenever we are back in Junction! We use both ABRP and Tesla when planning our trips. Stayed at 2 hotels that had destination chargers for overnight charging and relied on superchargers for the rest of the 5 night/6 day trip.