Sorry for the long post, I wanted to share our road trip experience as a positive example for other electric noobs like me. I have had a 2022 MYP since November 2021 and have over 13k miles on it so far.
I started in Sacramento early Saturday morning at 90 percent and drove to Salt Lake City the first day. Had one adult and three kids in the car and used the ABRP to plan our trip, but used the Tesla navigation while driving. The Tesla nav had us charging longer and driving longer but after watching the “out of spec” YT guy we found that more frequent stops that were shorter were preferable. While charging I would search for superchargers along our route and occasionally add them to reduce charging time. I decided that we would “push” the first day and do 12 hours in the car with the thought of the following days the kids would be antsy and I would have to limit car time. I was shocked when everyone agreed that the first day “wasn’t bad at all”
The next day we started out after breakfast with a nearly full charge thanks to our hotel. I set the charge to 90% when we went to bed, then changed to 100% when we woke up so it was 98ish by the time we hit the road. With SLC in our rear view mirror, we started across Wyoming with our same quick stop charging method that was working for us. Most of the stops had excellent facilities but some didn’t, so we just made a habit of using them when available. I didn’t book a hotel because we all agreed that we would stop when we were hungry and tired. We stopped in Ogalala Nebraska for dinner and while eating at one of the best Mexican restaurants ever… (I know) we decided to travel one more leg and stay in north platte Nebraska. Brrrr 23 degrees, but I had learned the lesson of always charging while the battery is warm, so parked it with 70ish percent and woke up to 66ish percent. Plenty of charge to make it to the next charger with a warmer battery.
Leaving Nebraska and through Iowa it was much of the same. Many of the superchargers were in HyVee parking lots and were amazing. Thank you Wahlburgers
Since we were eating, I just let the car charge as much as it could and thankfully so. I happened to be talking on the phone with a friend and that silences the nav so I missed a charging stop. I didn’t notice until it navigated to the next one and had a 3% arrival estimate. I thought about turning around, but I was an expert by this time 
so I slowed a bit and followed a semi for about 30 minutes until the arrival estimate was >10%. We ended up staying in Davenport Iowa at the Blackhawk. Nice place but no chargers and kinda spendy, so just made sure we had plenty of charge to get to the next supercharger.
We were heading to Columbus Ohio the next day and it was another wash rinse repeat day with more of the same. We rented the FSD a few weeks before we left and for a road trip it is amazing. At the end of every day I honestly felt refreshed. During the short periods where I didn’t use autopilot or FSD, I could feel the tension in my neck and shoulders as well as Elon’s voice saying “you are 10x more likely to crash”
We decided to stop early in Dayton and devote half a day to the Air Force museum.
The next day we enjoyed the museum and drove to Youngstown Ohio, an odd supercharger desert. I had noted this before the trip and to save time I brought the mobile connector and a nema 6-50 adapter to plug into my Father’s shop.
We spent a few days in Youngstown then headed to Columbus Ohio where we picked up my wife from the airport and stayed with some friends and family for a few days. We never had to bother them with any charging nonsense since there were superchargers around. Now would be the test… two adults in the front and three kids shoulder to shoulder in the back. Did I make a mistake not getting a model X
We left Columbus and headed south on a “short” 6 hour drive to Pigeon Forge where we rented a house on the top on a hill with some family and friends. We supercharged when we got there to 90% and didn’t really worry about charging since it was just daily excursions around the area. The second day I noticed a 20amp 120 outlet where my car was parked at our rental house so I said what the heck, it’s free and plugged in. While I was doing that, one of the homeowners down the street offered to let us use his newly installed charger. I was grateful but declined since I was already on the high end of our charge state.
We left Pigeon Forge TN a few days later and decided to travel home on a more southern route. I spent the day explaining and demonstrating to my wife how the stops, charging and autopilot/FSD worked. She took to it rather quickly and we arrived to Little Rock Arkansas after a full day driving. We spent 20 minutes charging before heading to the hotel and after we arrived my wife commented how smooth everything went on her first big day of driving.
The next day we headed to Amarillo Texas and ran into the first hiccup in our trip. We charged before we left Arkansas and our first scheduled stop after was in Oklahoma City OK. My wife was driving and I was continually checking the supercharger there. I kept noticing that there were only 1 or 2 open chargers and then it showed a short wait before we arrived. I plugged into a charger and the car failed to charge. I sent the wife and kids to use the facilities and proceeded to ask some of the other people charging what the deal was and they said the two chargers at the end were broken
I then waited my turn to use a charger and it was showing a 45 minute charge time and I had already been monkeying around for 20 minutes. I checked the nav and found another charger that was halfway to our next scheduled charge and selected it. The charge time dropped to 15 minutes and we were out of there. no further issues.
The next day we wanted to check out Grand Junction Colorado so used the Tesla nav and took off as usual. The first two legs were pretty straightforward but the next seemed a little suspect. We were supposed to charge up to 70ish percent and drive for 3.5 hours in mountainous terrain. This didn’t sit well with me so I charged for an extra 20 minutes to 90 something percent. We ended up skipping a SC stop and making it all the way to GJ Colorado. Long story short, it would have been fine We have always been interested in Grand Junction as a place to live, sigh, when we pulled into charge, a pickup backed in next to us and started revving their engine. We ignored them, they lost interest and left, but what a first impression
Next leg we decided to drive as far as we felt comfortable and ended in Winnemucca NV. It was “only” 6 hours from home but we decided to just start fresh the next day with what we have come to feel as a short day driving.
I didn’t reset the trip odometer but when I inputted our trip with stops it came to over 5700mi. with no excursion miles, so all in we were probably over 6000 miles
Autopilot set to 80mph on 95% of freeway miles and I would estimate over 97% of the driving was Autopilot/FSD. This trip was by far the best and most enjoyable road trip I have ever been on. Stopping every 2-2.5hrs to charge worked out so well and resulted in a nearly stress free experience. FSD rental was great, I didn’t use the navigate on Autopilot feature much because it would randomly change lanes on occasion, but instead just used the turn stalk to execute a lane change when needed.
I toyed with the idea of buying a set of Gemini wheels for the trip but in the end just went with the 21s that the car came with. I packed a plug kit and compressor as insurance. We have a three piece luggage set and I removed two wheels from the middle size suitcase so it would fit under the rear hatchback area. The other two suitcases easily fit along with another small suitcase and IKEA bag for miscellaneous treasures. We also used the fitted luggage in the front for dirty laundry and souvenir storage. The luggage sat low and did not interfere with rear visibility at all.
This trip has transformed how we view travel time automotively. 7-8 hours to Legoland used to be so tedious even in a black label Lincoln, (or our old Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid) but now we are exploring trips in the 13-14 hour drive range. Anywho, thanks for reading and I hope our account helps others contemplating the same. Can’t wait until the next one.
TL
R The Y is a great road trip car thanks mostly to the SC network, Autopilot and great storage.
I started in Sacramento early Saturday morning at 90 percent and drove to Salt Lake City the first day. Had one adult and three kids in the car and used the ABRP to plan our trip, but used the Tesla navigation while driving. The Tesla nav had us charging longer and driving longer but after watching the “out of spec” YT guy we found that more frequent stops that were shorter were preferable. While charging I would search for superchargers along our route and occasionally add them to reduce charging time. I decided that we would “push” the first day and do 12 hours in the car with the thought of the following days the kids would be antsy and I would have to limit car time. I was shocked when everyone agreed that the first day “wasn’t bad at all”
The next day we started out after breakfast with a nearly full charge thanks to our hotel. I set the charge to 90% when we went to bed, then changed to 100% when we woke up so it was 98ish by the time we hit the road. With SLC in our rear view mirror, we started across Wyoming with our same quick stop charging method that was working for us. Most of the stops had excellent facilities but some didn’t, so we just made a habit of using them when available. I didn’t book a hotel because we all agreed that we would stop when we were hungry and tired. We stopped in Ogalala Nebraska for dinner and while eating at one of the best Mexican restaurants ever… (I know) we decided to travel one more leg and stay in north platte Nebraska. Brrrr 23 degrees, but I had learned the lesson of always charging while the battery is warm, so parked it with 70ish percent and woke up to 66ish percent. Plenty of charge to make it to the next charger with a warmer battery.
Leaving Nebraska and through Iowa it was much of the same. Many of the superchargers were in HyVee parking lots and were amazing. Thank you Wahlburgers
Since we were eating, I just let the car charge as much as it could and thankfully so. I happened to be talking on the phone with a friend and that silences the nav so I missed a charging stop. I didn’t notice until it navigated to the next one and had a 3% arrival estimate. I thought about turning around, but I was an expert by this time so I slowed a bit and followed a semi for about 30 minutes until the arrival estimate was >10%. We ended up staying in Davenport Iowa at the Blackhawk. Nice place but no chargers and kinda spendy, so just made sure we had plenty of charge to get to the next supercharger.We were heading to Columbus Ohio the next day and it was another wash rinse repeat day with more of the same. We rented the FSD a few weeks before we left and for a road trip it is amazing. At the end of every day I honestly felt refreshed. During the short periods where I didn’t use autopilot or FSD, I could feel the tension in my neck and shoulders as well as Elon’s voice saying “you are 10x more likely to crash”
We decided to stop early in Dayton and devote half a day to the Air Force museum.The next day we enjoyed the museum and drove to Youngstown Ohio, an odd supercharger desert. I had noted this before the trip and to save time I brought the mobile connector and a nema 6-50 adapter to plug into my Father’s shop.
We spent a few days in Youngstown then headed to Columbus Ohio where we picked up my wife from the airport and stayed with some friends and family for a few days. We never had to bother them with any charging nonsense since there were superchargers around. Now would be the test… two adults in the front and three kids shoulder to shoulder in the back. Did I make a mistake not getting a model X
We left Columbus and headed south on a “short” 6 hour drive to Pigeon Forge where we rented a house on the top on a hill with some family and friends. We supercharged when we got there to 90% and didn’t really worry about charging since it was just daily excursions around the area. The second day I noticed a 20amp 120 outlet where my car was parked at our rental house so I said what the heck, it’s free and plugged in. While I was doing that, one of the homeowners down the street offered to let us use his newly installed charger. I was grateful but declined since I was already on the high end of our charge state.
We left Pigeon Forge TN a few days later and decided to travel home on a more southern route. I spent the day explaining and demonstrating to my wife how the stops, charging and autopilot/FSD worked. She took to it rather quickly and we arrived to Little Rock Arkansas after a full day driving. We spent 20 minutes charging before heading to the hotel and after we arrived my wife commented how smooth everything went on her first big day of driving.
The next day we headed to Amarillo Texas and ran into the first hiccup in our trip. We charged before we left Arkansas and our first scheduled stop after was in Oklahoma City OK. My wife was driving and I was continually checking the supercharger there. I kept noticing that there were only 1 or 2 open chargers and then it showed a short wait before we arrived. I plugged into a charger and the car failed to charge. I sent the wife and kids to use the facilities and proceeded to ask some of the other people charging what the deal was and they said the two chargers at the end were broken
I then waited my turn to use a charger and it was showing a 45 minute charge time and I had already been monkeying around for 20 minutes. I checked the nav and found another charger that was halfway to our next scheduled charge and selected it. The charge time dropped to 15 minutes and we were out of there. no further issues.The next day we wanted to check out Grand Junction Colorado so used the Tesla nav and took off as usual. The first two legs were pretty straightforward but the next seemed a little suspect. We were supposed to charge up to 70ish percent and drive for 3.5 hours in mountainous terrain. This didn’t sit well with me so I charged for an extra 20 minutes to 90 something percent. We ended up skipping a SC stop and making it all the way to GJ Colorado. Long story short, it would have been fine
We have always been interested in Grand Junction as a place to live, sigh, when we pulled into charge, a pickup backed in next to us and started revving their engine. We ignored them, they lost interest and left, but what a first impression Next leg we decided to drive as far as we felt comfortable and ended in Winnemucca NV. It was “only” 6 hours from home but we decided to just start fresh the next day with what we have come to feel as a short day driving.
I didn’t reset the trip odometer but when I inputted our trip with stops it came to over 5700mi. with no excursion miles, so all in we were probably over 6000 miles
Autopilot set to 80mph on 95% of freeway miles and I would estimate over 97% of the driving was Autopilot/FSD. This trip was by far the best and most enjoyable road trip I have ever been on. Stopping every 2-2.5hrs to charge worked out so well and resulted in a nearly stress free experience. FSD rental was great, I didn’t use the navigate on Autopilot feature much because it would randomly change lanes on occasion, but instead just used the turn stalk to execute a lane change when needed.I toyed with the idea of buying a set of Gemini wheels for the trip but in the end just went with the 21s that the car came with. I packed a plug kit and compressor as insurance. We have a three piece luggage set and I removed two wheels from the middle size suitcase so it would fit under the rear hatchback area. The other two suitcases easily fit along with another small suitcase and IKEA bag for miscellaneous treasures. We also used the fitted luggage in the front for dirty laundry and souvenir storage. The luggage sat low and did not interfere with rear visibility at all.
This trip has transformed how we view travel time automotively. 7-8 hours to Legoland used to be so tedious even in a black label Lincoln, (or our old Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid) but now we are exploring trips in the 13-14 hour drive range. Anywho, thanks for reading and I hope our account helps others contemplating the same. Can’t wait until the next one.
TL
R The Y is a great road trip car thanks mostly to the SC network, Autopilot and great storage.
I think we did about 340 based on mileage and kWh charged. You are totally right about the SC network getting better. Most of the time we stayed between 10% and 60% and that 50% range charges in 15-20 minutes and gave us about 2 hours of 80mph driving. Pee, get a drink, drive, charge repeat 
Fully loaded car and no Fs given about efficiency. What car did you take?
don’t want to be controlled 
…How fast you drive determines where and when you must stop to get kW’s. (Multiple stops at that) driving can be fun but you have to admit less worries and getting to your destination in a shorter time is best; Specially when family (grandkids) are waiting for you.. 
