It’s very good. You can put it on the car browser, make it a favorite. I created a unique ID to store routes, but if you’re brave you could let it access the car and it’s state of charge (SoC). I’m not that trusting..
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2500 mile round trip AWD ... findings
- Thread starter LyftupX
- Start date
It’s very good. You can put it on the car browser, make it a favorite. I created a unique ID to store routes, but if you’re brave you could let it access the car and it’s state of charge (SoC). I’m not that trusting..
I guess there's always room for some improvement, but most of these things are just things you do on the day of, as you drive, using your common sense:
You do this at each charging stop. Plug in, and set the next Supercharger in your Navigation. It will plot the route and show the estimate % at arrival. When you first plug in, of course that estimate will usually be below 0% and rising. When it's up to whatever buffer you are comfortable with, you leave.
It already does.
Like pavement roughness? I'm not sure there is a database for that. If you mean like rain, that can come and go, so even a forecast for the area of 60% chance of rain couldn't necessarily tell you if it's going to be raining for that next hour or not. For temperature, yeah, I suppose it could figure a fudge factor in there if it's 0 degrees or 90 degrees out there, but I figure that's kind of in my own sense to figure out. I can go with more like a 15% buffer in summer and more like a 25% buffer in winter. I don't need the car to guess that for me.
Also figured into what you want your buffer to be, and how you decide to drive along the way on that route on that day. I've always disliked that idea of the Nav estimates trying to incorporate "your" driving style, because that would be different for each person's driving profile, or if you have someone else drive who doesn't have a profile, but just uses yours but moves the seat and mirrors, and you don't really know behind the scenes how "good" or "bad" it is thinking with moving the estimates around for its opinion of your driving style. I would rather just figure in knowing if I'm a speeder or not, so I know if I need to give myself some extra energy to waste along the way. And that even varies trip to trip or even stop to stop. Sometimes I may want to get going a little sooner and am willing to drive 73 mph on this section, or maybe I have a bit more energy and am wanting to go 84 mph. That doesn't seem good if it's making different planning decisions than each driver is.
I took my first short road trip this past weekend and was a little shocked. It was an unexpected trip from Indianapolis, In to Princeton, In. It is roughly 2.5 hrs and 165 miles in our ICE cars. The car was charged to 90% and it was about 40 degrees outside, and was raining for half of the trip. So the conditions were not ideal at all. However, I felt that I would be good, I mean the 3 has a range of "320 miles," right?! Well not so much as I found out, oh and I am driving a 3 LR AWD with FSD.
I ended up at the SC in Terre Haute, In with about 48% battery left, after roughly 70 miles, and I was able to charge up to 70% in about 15-20 minutes. Then I had to drive down to Princeton, In and back to Terre Haute because there are no other chargers in that part of Indiana. I had no choices but to pray that BRP was accurate in its estimate that I would make it back to Terre Haute to charge again on my way home. By the time I made it to Princeton the onboard nav said we'd have 8% when we returned to Terre Haute. So we had to ride with family around Princeton as there was no place to charge and we weren't staying long enough to justify any special trips to try and charge on a 110 outlet.
On the way back to the Terre Haute SC I was driving slower than normal and even had some alert popup stating that I needed to drive 65mph or slower to reach my destination, the range ended up dropping and we rolled into the SC with 14 miles left on the battery. The round trip from TH to Princeton is roughly 166 miles. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around having to stopping twice on that short of a trip and still rolling into a SC at that low of a charge.
On future trips, hopefully I can plan more and leave with 100% and stay at the first SC stop until about 80% and then I may be around 20% on my way back through.
Another big gripe for me is the damn windows kept fogging up and I was making a point not to run any heat to get as much range as possible. But I was forced to run defrost so that I could see out of the front window. I did that for 5 minutes at a time, maybe 5-6 times on the way back to the TH SC.
I ended up at the SC in Terre Haute, In with about 48% battery left, after roughly 70 miles, and I was able to charge up to 70% in about 15-20 minutes. Then I had to drive down to Princeton, In and back to Terre Haute because there are no other chargers in that part of Indiana. I had no choices but to pray that BRP was accurate in its estimate that I would make it back to Terre Haute to charge again on my way home. By the time I made it to Princeton the onboard nav said we'd have 8% when we returned to Terre Haute. So we had to ride with family around Princeton as there was no place to charge and we weren't staying long enough to justify any special trips to try and charge on a 110 outlet.
On the way back to the Terre Haute SC I was driving slower than normal and even had some alert popup stating that I needed to drive 65mph or slower to reach my destination, the range ended up dropping and we rolled into the SC with 14 miles left on the battery. The round trip from TH to Princeton is roughly 166 miles. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around having to stopping twice on that short of a trip and still rolling into a SC at that low of a charge.
On future trips, hopefully I can plan more and leave with 100% and stay at the first SC stop until about 80% and then I may be around 20% on my way back through.
Another big gripe for me is the damn windows kept fogging up and I was making a point not to run any heat to get as much range as possible. But I was forced to run defrost so that I could see out of the front window. I did that for 5 minutes at a time, maybe 5-6 times on the way back to the TH SC.
FWIW, I have driven Seattle-LA three times, once in an S70, once an X90D, once a RWD LR Model 3. I charged five times on each of those trips, but two of the charges on each trip were destination Chargers at hotels, so my time used as zero. One critical key to long distance in a Tesla (I have made Miami-Halifax, Seattle-Atlanta and numerous other long trips) is to plan the trip so you find changing where you stop for meals, sightseeing or overnight. Most of the time I end out using Superchargers twice a day or so.
When I first began long distance in a Tesla in 2014 I was panicking and/or nervous most of the time. Of course there were not many Superchargers then. If my experience is any guide you'll learn to reliably manage stops to coincide with other activities, manage driving behavior to adjust to expected stops, probably within a few months or so.
In my experience with other long distance EV drivers the specific habit tend to differ. The biggest lessons are ones about the weather conditions that negatively affect range, those being rain, wind and snow. With ICE one does rarely think about wind.
However, if you learn about prevailing winds you'll be far ahead of the game. Basically a quick review of "prevailing westerly winds" in particular will help immeasurably. Fundamentally winds tend to blow from the southwest in the Northern Hemisphere, but local and seasonal weather causes vast exceptions.
So, why is that important? Basically, for example, driving from Seattle to LA will almost always take 10-15% more energy than going from LA to Seattle. All taht is second nature to airplane pilots who know they'll have a much faster trip SFO-JFK than they will JFK-SFO so loads and fuel are adjusted as well as airline timetables. That may seem overkill, but:
For example a frequent trip i make is from Miami to Savannah. Altitude varies from sea level to high mountains of as much as 30 feet! In short it is Flat. Still Miami-Savannah I stop twice to charge. Savannah-Miami I stop three times. Assuming weather if typical and no rain, I count on that. In both cases one fo teh charges is at a hotel since we rarely go on one day. That is with a P3D+ and is the same as it was with my P85D.
Sorry for discussing wind so much, but I am a long-time pilot and have crossed the Atlantic a few times in a plane that had 1500 statute miles range in still air.
That gives a rigorous education about prevailing winds, rain and temperatures.
All this and a huge amount of good information are in the threads about long distance driving from 2014-2015. A little study of those will make all the adjustments far easier.
When I first began long distance in a Tesla in 2014 I was panicking and/or nervous most of the time. Of course there were not many Superchargers then. If my experience is any guide you'll learn to reliably manage stops to coincide with other activities, manage driving behavior to adjust to expected stops, probably within a few months or so.
In my experience with other long distance EV drivers the specific habit tend to differ. The biggest lessons are ones about the weather conditions that negatively affect range, those being rain, wind and snow. With ICE one does rarely think about wind.
However, if you learn about prevailing winds you'll be far ahead of the game. Basically a quick review of "prevailing westerly winds" in particular will help immeasurably. Fundamentally winds tend to blow from the southwest in the Northern Hemisphere, but local and seasonal weather causes vast exceptions.
So, why is that important? Basically, for example, driving from Seattle to LA will almost always take 10-15% more energy than going from LA to Seattle. All taht is second nature to airplane pilots who know they'll have a much faster trip SFO-JFK than they will JFK-SFO so loads and fuel are adjusted as well as airline timetables. That may seem overkill, but:
For example a frequent trip i make is from Miami to Savannah. Altitude varies from sea level to high mountains of as much as 30 feet! In short it is Flat. Still Miami-Savannah I stop twice to charge. Savannah-Miami I stop three times. Assuming weather if typical and no rain, I count on that. In both cases one fo teh charges is at a hotel since we rarely go on one day. That is with a P3D+ and is the same as it was with my P85D.
Sorry for discussing wind so much, but I am a long-time pilot and have crossed the Atlantic a few times in a plane that had 1500 statute miles range in still air.
That gives a rigorous education about prevailing winds, rain and temperatures.
All this and a huge amount of good information are in the threads about long distance driving from 2014-2015. A little study of those will make all the adjustments far easier.
I like this thread....BTW, I am planning a trip in July from KC to Sacramento. I have the Chargepoint app, Tesla App, EV Go and PlugShare. Does anyone have any more suggestions on apps? I wanted to know if anyone has a checklist for traveling long distances? I plan on getting a tire pluger and air compressor for the trip. This will be our first long trip in any EV. So it's a little different to say the least.
Beprimeau
Member
I agree that Better Route Planner does a better job than the in-car trip planner. Also frequent short stops are more efficient and psychologically easier than long drives with long charging stops.
SleeperService
Member
How much headwind was there, how fast were you driving, and do you have the 19" wheels or Aeros? That seems like really high consumption... I'm regularly using ~30% charge to do ~72 miles [between Lebanon and Lafayette] at 80+ mph every day with my P3D with Aeros.
I am running on the 19's at around 80mph between Indy and TH and then 65mph between TH and Princeton. As for the wind, I considered it, but didn't have a good way to measure it. I saw that site posted above, if it was similar to what we have today, it would be 5-10mph to the north.
I went to Ft Wayne the week before and I used about 45% to get to the NW side SC located there.
SleeperService
Member
Perhaps I am just getting old, but I think this is great advice and good thinking. I think long road trips constitute an "edge use case" anyway, but its what people always worry about even if they only make such a trip every few years.
Yeah, I haven't checked it recently and with the shift in temperatures from 75 to 40 any given day that could have been a contributing factor as well.
SleeperService
Member
You know that the car will tell you the pressure in each tire (probably not hyper accurate, but good enough for seeing trends), right? I keep an eye on mine basically all the time.
Edited to add: hope this doesn't sound snippy, I could see how this feature could be missed if you didn't read the manual in detail, it's not like it is an obvious button or anything. I find that it is a useful feature. :cheers:
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@FallonAngel I think I know a couple of things that were biting you that catch a lot of new owners off guard.
But you say you were going slower on the section to/from Terre Haute and Princeton?
So now we've gotten more to the truth about your speed. Being able to match the EPA rated miles usually needs to be about in the 65-70 speed range. If you are going above that, you're going to be running through "rated miles" faster than 1:1 with your real miles. And that's not even accounting for any heat, which will reduce that a bit more. It's the same pool of energy that has to supply miles + heat.
So on to the things with climate control. These things are more the car's fault that can be fixed, but you didn't know about them yet.
That is pretty stupid and results in a few problems. Recirculate of course traps the inside breath-filled air, so it fogs up the windows, as you discovered. The car thinks it will compensate to dry out the air by running it through the air conditioning system. Well....but that does also chill the air, which means it then also has to apply even more heat to it to keep the temperature. So with the heating and the air conditioning both drawing more energy to fight each other, it shows up as really high consumption along the trip. I've seen a few threads of people discovering this. The wetter it is, the more this effect shows up. Your thing of turning on the defroster will temporarily remove it, but won't keep it from continually happening.
The very simple and obvious fix for this is to turn the A/C off to make sure it doesn't run and switch it to draw outside air through instead of recirculate, so it will keep sending new air through the car instead of letting that moist air build up inside the cabin. That will reduce the energy use and the window fogging. Also, you might need to keep the fan on at least 4ish to keep the air moving, because if it is at the set temp and puts the fan down on 1, it's not enough air flow to keep the fog off the windows, and it's about like recirculate.
I mentioned about AUTO being wrong year round. The summer effect is that it always wants to use outside air with the air conditioning. I don't know why it is, but I find that for the same given fan speed, it blows half as hard from outside air than from recirculate, so cooling is way less effective. Maybe this is a Model S/X effect that the Model 3 doesn't suffer from with the different venting system it has.
Oh, for Pete's sake! This reminds me of a coworker who was just telling me about his recent trip that was 280 miles, and he said, "So I charged up to the full 310 miles and got on the highway and set my cruise control at 85." So people think they can match EPA rated range whether they are going 35 mph or 85 mph?
But you say you were going slower on the section to/from Terre Haute and Princeton?
But...
Ah, so actually you were driving faster than that, and then it finally had to warn you to slow down to 65 mph.
So now we've gotten more to the truth about your speed. Being able to match the EPA rated miles usually needs to be about in the 65-70 speed range. If you are going above that, you're going to be running through "rated miles" faster than 1:1 with your real miles. And that's not even accounting for any heat, which will reduce that a bit more. It's the same pool of energy that has to supply miles + heat.
So on to the things with climate control. These things are more the car's fault that can be fixed, but you didn't know about them yet.
The choices the car makes for the fully AUTO mode are generally kind of wrong all year round. In this kind of cold/wet situation, here's the specific problem. AUTO thinks that it should be using recirculate and air conditioning + heating.
That is pretty stupid and results in a few problems. Recirculate of course traps the inside breath-filled air, so it fogs up the windows, as you discovered. The car thinks it will compensate to dry out the air by running it through the air conditioning system. Well....but that does also chill the air, which means it then also has to apply even more heat to it to keep the temperature. So with the heating and the air conditioning both drawing more energy to fight each other, it shows up as really high consumption along the trip. I've seen a few threads of people discovering this. The wetter it is, the more this effect shows up. Your thing of turning on the defroster will temporarily remove it, but won't keep it from continually happening.The very simple and obvious fix for this is to turn the A/C off to make sure it doesn't run and switch it to draw outside air through instead of recirculate, so it will keep sending new air through the car instead of letting that moist air build up inside the cabin. That will reduce the energy use and the window fogging. Also, you might need to keep the fan on at least 4ish to keep the air moving, because if it is at the set temp and puts the fan down on 1, it's not enough air flow to keep the fog off the windows, and it's about like recirculate.
I mentioned about AUTO being wrong year round. The summer effect is that it always wants to use outside air with the air conditioning. I don't know why it is, but I find that for the same given fan speed, it blows half as hard from outside air than from recirculate, so cooling is way less effective. Maybe this is a Model S/X effect that the Model 3 doesn't suffer from with the different venting system it has.
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I took my M3 LR AWD from Pittsburgh to Hilton Head, it was about 15 hrs total with stops, normally 11.5 with stops in ICE.
Autopilot was nice, but not as much of a stress relief as I’d hoped...
Having to jiggle the wheel correctly and cancel “Leave the passing lane” suggestions were annoying.
Having lane change fail when there was nothing around the car and jerk violently back into thee original lane, waking the passengers so they could yell at me was annoying.
Trip planner needs work. One of the suggested superchargers was off the path onto the Charlotte beltway, I wanted to skip it. I ended up having to manually trip plan from current location to next supercharger over and over. It would be so much nicer if you could just choose which superchargers to stop at along the route. Seems like a simple no brained that you could fix in the time it takes to write a fart app!
Super chargers at convenient food and shopping locations was a pipe dream.
WV superchargers are at Sheetz gas stations. They were all available, but some were marked 15m general parking not EV only. They often had oversized trucks parked in a stall or two. There was one Sheetz near a mall, but it was a 1000 yard hike to get to it across busy roads without crosswalks (fine for adults, not so much for young kids).
Carolina superchargers we’re behind hotels. Again, not fun walking the whole way around the hotels to use the restrooms, and 1000 yard hikes to restaurants.
On the way down, I was a newbie doing full charges. On the way back I tried to arrive low and leave before charging slowed. It really ended up being a wash. The density of superchargers on the route wasn’t enough to make a difference, south east isn’t as well covered as north east.
On arrival, there is no supercharger within 40 miles, and the hotel didn’t have anywhere to charge. It’s all gated “plantations” for each rental area, so most destination chargers were behind gates. A few weren’t, and there was one not far away in a shopping/restaurant area. Luckily, there were 2 there, a Tesla and a non-Tesla Charger. When I arrived with 23% SoC from the last closest supercharger where I filled to 98%, there was a silver Model 3 on the non-Tesla Charger, which lead me to believe there was another Tesla using the destination charger, but I never saw it, and it was a 6 hour charge... I didn’t know if I’d get to use it again. Luckily, my folks could drop me off and pick me up so I didn’t have to spend it sitting there for all 6 hours. The Silver M3 and I ended up using the two chargers for the week. This was during the off season... I don’t think I’d trust HHI to have enough charging for the season, you'd spend your vacation checking for available destination chargers.
All in all, I didn’t have any problems that made me want to ditch the M3 on the trip, but the available supercharger network didn’t help with solving how to charge when you arrive for a week miles from the nearest supercharger, and there is going to be a lot of concern that the influx of M3s means destination chargers aren’t going to be available.
I was seeing mostly MX and MS at the superchargers, and I was driving from 4pm to 7am, so there wasn’t any full superchargers, but this was off-season travel, night travel.
I’m not sure I’d recommend vacationing in a Tesla until they get v3 superchargers so your not adding 1 hr per 4 to a long trip, and until they get super chargers at more final destinations.
That said, I can’t imagine vacationing is possible in any EV that isn’t a Tesla. You just have to love your Tesla enough to take it with you and put up with the issues!
Autopilot was nice, but not as much of a stress relief as I’d hoped...
Having to jiggle the wheel correctly and cancel “Leave the passing lane” suggestions were annoying.
Having lane change fail when there was nothing around the car and jerk violently back into thee original lane, waking the passengers so they could yell at me was annoying.
Trip planner needs work. One of the suggested superchargers was off the path onto the Charlotte beltway, I wanted to skip it. I ended up having to manually trip plan from current location to next supercharger over and over. It would be so much nicer if you could just choose which superchargers to stop at along the route. Seems like a simple no brained that you could fix in the time it takes to write a fart app!
Super chargers at convenient food and shopping locations was a pipe dream.
WV superchargers are at Sheetz gas stations. They were all available, but some were marked 15m general parking not EV only. They often had oversized trucks parked in a stall or two. There was one Sheetz near a mall, but it was a 1000 yard hike to get to it across busy roads without crosswalks (fine for adults, not so much for young kids).
Carolina superchargers we’re behind hotels. Again, not fun walking the whole way around the hotels to use the restrooms, and 1000 yard hikes to restaurants.
On the way down, I was a newbie doing full charges. On the way back I tried to arrive low and leave before charging slowed. It really ended up being a wash. The density of superchargers on the route wasn’t enough to make a difference, south east isn’t as well covered as north east.
On arrival, there is no supercharger within 40 miles, and the hotel didn’t have anywhere to charge. It’s all gated “plantations” for each rental area, so most destination chargers were behind gates. A few weren’t, and there was one not far away in a shopping/restaurant area. Luckily, there were 2 there, a Tesla and a non-Tesla Charger. When I arrived with 23% SoC from the last closest supercharger where I filled to 98%, there was a silver Model 3 on the non-Tesla Charger, which lead me to believe there was another Tesla using the destination charger, but I never saw it, and it was a 6 hour charge... I didn’t know if I’d get to use it again. Luckily, my folks could drop me off and pick me up so I didn’t have to spend it sitting there for all 6 hours. The Silver M3 and I ended up using the two chargers for the week. This was during the off season... I don’t think I’d trust HHI to have enough charging for the season, you'd spend your vacation checking for available destination chargers.
All in all, I didn’t have any problems that made me want to ditch the M3 on the trip, but the available supercharger network didn’t help with solving how to charge when you arrive for a week miles from the nearest supercharger, and there is going to be a lot of concern that the influx of M3s means destination chargers aren’t going to be available.
I was seeing mostly MX and MS at the superchargers, and I was driving from 4pm to 7am, so there wasn’t any full superchargers, but this was off-season travel, night travel.
I’m not sure I’d recommend vacationing in a Tesla until they get v3 superchargers so your not adding 1 hr per 4 to a long trip, and until they get super chargers at more final destinations.
That said, I can’t imagine vacationing is possible in any EV that isn’t a Tesla. You just have to love your Tesla enough to take it with you and put up with the issues!
We have a 2016 Model S 90D. We use the Tesla Beta Planner (TBP) but have our display set to show the Tesla Charging stations on the map. Then we make our own decision as to whether we want to stop earlier. For example on our recent trip from Pittsburgh to Baltimore the TBP had us go to Breezewood, PA for the 1st (and only) stop. However, there are multiple charging stations in route (starting from Pittsburgh) at Huntington, PA (at a Sheetz where we decided to stop for breakfast, short 15 min charge), Somerset, PA (behind the Wendy's) which we skipped, Breezewood, PA (at a Sheetz where stopped for a quick biological break, short 10 min charge), Hagerstown, MD (at the Prime Outlet Mall) where we had lunch and my wife shopped a little (full charge). When we returned we stopped at the charging station 2 miles from the Baltimore cruise terminal for a 30 min charge (yes we took a cruise), skipped the Hagerstown, MD station, stopped at the Breezewood, PA and had lunch at Sheetz (20 mins) then straight home, skipping the Somerset, PA and Huntington, PA stops. The TBP had us stop at Somerset, PA to charge with 7% battery and estimated charge time of 1 hour.
I also keep my charge setting at 100% (trip) but I rarely charge to that level, usually I charge in the 80-90% range but by keeping it at 100% I find the time to charge to the 80-90% range to be slightly shorter (~5 mins or so) than if I set it at the "recommended" Tesla 80% daily setting. This seems to have more impact when the temperatures are lower (<30F) than the summer. I am not going to do any "experiments" to prove this so it is just what I seem to be experiencing.
I also keep my charge setting at 100% (trip) but I rarely charge to that level, usually I charge in the 80-90% range but by keeping it at 100% I find the time to charge to the 80-90% range to be slightly shorter (~5 mins or so) than if I set it at the "recommended" Tesla 80% daily setting. This seems to have more impact when the temperatures are lower (<30F) than the summer. I am not going to do any "experiments" to prove this so it is just what I seem to be experiencing.
navguy12
Active Member
FWIW: all winter (eastern Ontario) I drove with HVAC in "manual" mode with ac "off", (forced) fresh air only, airflow to windscreen, floor and mains to the front side windows, fan speed set to "one" and temp (dark/cloudy) 18c or (sunny) 20c.
Never had any issues with fogging or chewing thru excessive amounts of energy (compared to HVAC set to auto).
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