Hey guys,
Took my very first long distance road trip after having my Tesla model y for 2.5 weeks. This is my very first EV ever. Never had an EV before. I’ve watch as many YouTube videos as I could on this and I gotta say I think I’ve reached the end of YouTube for model y videos!! Read below to follow along on the journey!
Setup:
Tesla Model Y Long Range, NO FSD, White with White Interior.
Installed PPF - went to a shop for this. Was thinking of doing this myself but it would have taken me a couple of weekends that I did not have. Just did the front. Didn't want to get rockchips. Also this car is a bug magnet.
mudflaps - self installed. Took 20 mins
Side camera cover - installed 5 mins
Floor mats
Trip Overview: Driving from Arvada, CO to Pittsburg, KS (~710 mile trip)
Current Status: I’m at my destination (so 1/2 way into the trip about 710miles). Took just north of 12 hrs for the trip.
Preparation:
1) watched as many many hours of YouTube videos as I could from OutofSpec, TFL (the fast lane), EVDave, Ryan Shaw, jerryrigeverything, megawatts, the electric man, frugal tesla guy, bearded tesla guy, tall tesla guy, (lots of tesla guys!) AND countless others! (You thought I was joking about hitting the end of YouTube!)
2) did a 410 mile round trip including 2 supercharger stops just to make sure things were charging and get a feel for autopilot.
3) Apps:
WINDY - tells you wind conditions so you can decide if you wish to overcharge at a supercharger
ABRP - a better route planner. This is an alternative to teslas in car route planner. In my experience the car was more accurate with charge levels but the plan was better using this app to get me to my destination faster. Infact tesla eventually updated to do the same as abrp while driving. I think this app accounts for wind AND elevation. Not sure if the in-house car planner does this.
PLUGSHARE - tells you about each charger location based on community feedback. Has food locations near charger, which chargers are working, ect. Not really needed because tesla network is reliable but a must have if you have a non tesla ev.
ELECTRIFY AMERICA - the “other network” this was a backup incase tesla supercharger did not work. Did not have to use this. I’m hindsight this wouldn’t have worked anyways as I don’t have a J117 to Tesla adapter.
TESLA - pretty obvious why you need this app
4) if you don’t want to have range anxiety use percentage than how many miles left. Saying you have 60 miles left can freak you out saying you have 20% left obscures the miles left and if you arrive at 14% state of charge (SOC) it’s not as bad. Try to arrive between 10-15% state of charge if possible. Exception listed below.
The Trip:
1) started off at 90% state of charge (SOC). Was debating on what SOC to start off with. Thought about doing 100% but decided to go with 90%. Why does this matter? Your initial charge matters because you are using the electric rate from your electric company vs what you find at a supercharger. For me this is 11c/kWh (killowatt hour) vs 45 or 35c/kWh when supercharging. Saves you a few dollars. Also saves you time because you can be at the supercharger a bit less or go further on your first leg of the journey.
2) First Leg: From Arvada, CO to Limon, CO
Distance: 99 miles.
Charging at Limon: 17 kWh @ $0.46/kWh $7.82
Details:
Drove 80mph for the most part 75mph speed limit. I had been to this location during the 410 mile round trip prior and it had both 250 kw and 150kw chargers. Plugged into the 250 this time. Didn’t really check charging speeds as I should have and did not keep track of arrival %. I’ll do this for the journey back. I think I charged up to 70ish. So it must have been upper 50s when I arrived. Cost was less than my 410mile round trip because I had charged to 90% at home.
3) Second Leg: went from Limon, CO to Colby, KS
Distance: 144 miles
Charging at Colby: 42 kWh @ $0.34/kWh $14.28
Details:
Again drove about 80mph. Had quite a few hard phantom brakes in this leg. The car would randomly brake for no apparent reason! I'm not sure if its due to bugs flying at the car being detected or what. I noted that it seemed like whenever there was a bridge or a hill, the car would brake at the top of the hill or at the end of the bridge. This was about the only constant that I could find. At other times, it was completely random, no one else was around. At the top of the hill, I got notifications that visibility is limited (it was a Clear, no wind day!). This is definitely an issue that Tesla needs to resolve. If i was not aware of this issue due to the hours of youtube videos i had seen, i would have been freaking out. I will say that autosteer works great. During this trip there were ZERO events where autostreer did not work. If it wasn't for the random braking, the drive itself would have been an awesome experience. I put my foot gently on the accelerator from this leg and onward so that anytime there was a hard brake i could immediately apply the accelerator. Despite watching all the youtube videos, one thing I did not account for was that once phantom brake event happens, it doesn't immediately go always all the time. it could stay like this for over a minute so in that scenario, whenever you let go of the accelerator it will immediately hit the brakes again. Its best to just get off autopilot at this point by just moving the right stalk up. I cleaned up the camera area at the top of any bug splats at Colby and going forward but I don't think this helped anything.
4) Third Leg: Went from Colby, KS to Hays, KS
Distance: 106 miles
Charging at Hays: 51 kWh @ $0.33/kWh $16.83
Details:
Prior to heading out from Colby arrival at Hays said 14%. once I disconnected, this moved up to 21%. I think we arrived at 18% again going about 80mph. Continued to have random braking but not as bad as the 2nd leg. Once we arrived at Hays, the car said to charge it for 55 mins so that we can go from Hays to El Dorado (200 miles) in one charge. I think the car was suggesting 84% for the 200 miles. A better route planner app (ABRP) said that we should charge for 20 mins and then charge again at Selina and then go to El Dorado. I think the Model Y was charge limited here at 75 kwh. There was a 3 wiggle line at the top so I think the battery was overheated so was limiting charging because of that. Because the Tesla in car planner said it would take 55 mins, we decided to go to applebees but before we even got our food, i got a message saying car was ready to go (about 15-20mins). I checked and now Tesla planner changed the route to go through Selina and then El Dorado similar to ABRP. I think we lost about 20 mins here because of this change othewise we would have gone to a fast food place rather than applebees.
5) Fourth Leg: Went from Hays, KS to Selina, KS
Distance: 93.8 miles
Charging at Selina: 23 kWh @ $0.35/kWh $8.05
Details:
The Selina Supercharger was a little out of the way from our trip. This was NOT like the others where it was just on the side of the road next to food places. The selina supercharger was behind a hotel about 2-3 miles from the interstate. There was also no food places nearby (Luckily for us this was not needed since we had already eaten at the previous stop). We did not need to charge long here since we had charged quite a bit over at Hays. I think we arrived at 37-40% SOC and went up to about 70% or so. The details about this place are on PLUGSHARE so getting this app is helpful to know whats around the area. I believe the tesla app also shows whats nearby but i do prefer plugshare.
6) Fifth Leg: Selina, KS to ElDorado, KS
Distance: 129 miles
Charging at El Dorado: 58 kWh @ $0.34/kWh $19.72
Details:
This was a brand new supercharger that was put in place on 9/2 so we were one of the first cars to use this supercharger which is awesome. there were 8 250 kw supercharger. This was our last supercharging stop for this trip. We did a deep charge to 90% here because at our destination in Pittsburg, KS we only have destination chargers. This area is a great area for charging. There was a dunken donuts, hardees, ezgo station, some chargepoint station, and the tesla supercharger station.
7) Sixth Leg: El Dorado, KS to Pittsburg, KS
Distance: 151 miles
Charging at Destination: FREE with hotel stay
Details:
We arrived at the hotel a little after 8pm CST with about 34% SOC. I had purposely charged a bit more since I wasn't sure about the destination chargers. This would allow us to get to Joplin the next morning if for some reason the destination chargers were not working. We had left in the morning just prior to 7am MT. So total trip was 12 hours and change. I think we could have saved about 15-20 mins just at Hays. I think once I get used to the car more we could probably save some more time by not charging as much between the legs. At the hotel we were able to charge up our car overnight to 87%. there are 2 destination chargers here by tesla both worked flawlessly. Didn't see any other EVs around. Still did not leave it charging overnight just incase someone else came in and wanted to charge.
Let me know what questions you all have. Let me know what other information you all want so I can track those on the way back.
Overall:
I would say that this was a really good experience. The phantom braking was definitely a problem and needs to be fixed. Especially because it will do phantom braking even when you don't have autosteer on. The tesla supercharger experience was very smooth. Every one I pulled up to worked with 10-15 seconds of connecting. The locations of the chargers were good majority of the time.
I did some calculations and I don't think I saved a whole lot driving a tesla vs gas in terms of price. For example, my calculation showed that based on price only and if I have gas price at $3.83, the tesla only breaks even with a car going 37 miles per gallon. if we did the same thing charging at home, goes up to a car that is about 85 miles per gallon efficiency. I can send you details on this if you all want. If your only goal is to have the tesla to save money, i'm not sure that many people will see an return on investment on this.
Took my very first long distance road trip after having my Tesla model y for 2.5 weeks. This is my very first EV ever. Never had an EV before. I’ve watch as many YouTube videos as I could on this and I gotta say I think I’ve reached the end of YouTube for model y videos!! Read below to follow along on the journey!
Setup:
Tesla Model Y Long Range, NO FSD, White with White Interior.
Installed PPF - went to a shop for this. Was thinking of doing this myself but it would have taken me a couple of weekends that I did not have. Just did the front. Didn't want to get rockchips. Also this car is a bug magnet.
mudflaps - self installed. Took 20 mins
Side camera cover - installed 5 mins
Floor mats
Trip Overview: Driving from Arvada, CO to Pittsburg, KS (~710 mile trip)
Current Status: I’m at my destination (so 1/2 way into the trip about 710miles). Took just north of 12 hrs for the trip.
Preparation:
1) watched as many many hours of YouTube videos as I could from OutofSpec, TFL (the fast lane), EVDave, Ryan Shaw, jerryrigeverything, megawatts, the electric man, frugal tesla guy, bearded tesla guy, tall tesla guy, (lots of tesla guys!) AND countless others! (You thought I was joking about hitting the end of YouTube!)
2) did a 410 mile round trip including 2 supercharger stops just to make sure things were charging and get a feel for autopilot.
3) Apps:
WINDY - tells you wind conditions so you can decide if you wish to overcharge at a supercharger
ABRP - a better route planner. This is an alternative to teslas in car route planner. In my experience the car was more accurate with charge levels but the plan was better using this app to get me to my destination faster. Infact tesla eventually updated to do the same as abrp while driving. I think this app accounts for wind AND elevation. Not sure if the in-house car planner does this.
PLUGSHARE - tells you about each charger location based on community feedback. Has food locations near charger, which chargers are working, ect. Not really needed because tesla network is reliable but a must have if you have a non tesla ev.
ELECTRIFY AMERICA - the “other network” this was a backup incase tesla supercharger did not work. Did not have to use this. I’m hindsight this wouldn’t have worked anyways as I don’t have a J117 to Tesla adapter.
TESLA - pretty obvious why you need this app
4) if you don’t want to have range anxiety use percentage than how many miles left. Saying you have 60 miles left can freak you out saying you have 20% left obscures the miles left and if you arrive at 14% state of charge (SOC) it’s not as bad. Try to arrive between 10-15% state of charge if possible. Exception listed below.
The Trip:
1) started off at 90% state of charge (SOC). Was debating on what SOC to start off with. Thought about doing 100% but decided to go with 90%. Why does this matter? Your initial charge matters because you are using the electric rate from your electric company vs what you find at a supercharger. For me this is 11c/kWh (killowatt hour) vs 45 or 35c/kWh when supercharging. Saves you a few dollars. Also saves you time because you can be at the supercharger a bit less or go further on your first leg of the journey.
2) First Leg: From Arvada, CO to Limon, CO
Distance: 99 miles.
Charging at Limon: 17 kWh @ $0.46/kWh $7.82
Details:
Drove 80mph for the most part 75mph speed limit. I had been to this location during the 410 mile round trip prior and it had both 250 kw and 150kw chargers. Plugged into the 250 this time. Didn’t really check charging speeds as I should have and did not keep track of arrival %. I’ll do this for the journey back. I think I charged up to 70ish. So it must have been upper 50s when I arrived. Cost was less than my 410mile round trip because I had charged to 90% at home.
3) Second Leg: went from Limon, CO to Colby, KS
Distance: 144 miles
Charging at Colby: 42 kWh @ $0.34/kWh $14.28
Details:
Again drove about 80mph. Had quite a few hard phantom brakes in this leg. The car would randomly brake for no apparent reason! I'm not sure if its due to bugs flying at the car being detected or what. I noted that it seemed like whenever there was a bridge or a hill, the car would brake at the top of the hill or at the end of the bridge. This was about the only constant that I could find. At other times, it was completely random, no one else was around. At the top of the hill, I got notifications that visibility is limited (it was a Clear, no wind day!). This is definitely an issue that Tesla needs to resolve. If i was not aware of this issue due to the hours of youtube videos i had seen, i would have been freaking out. I will say that autosteer works great. During this trip there were ZERO events where autostreer did not work. If it wasn't for the random braking, the drive itself would have been an awesome experience. I put my foot gently on the accelerator from this leg and onward so that anytime there was a hard brake i could immediately apply the accelerator. Despite watching all the youtube videos, one thing I did not account for was that once phantom brake event happens, it doesn't immediately go always all the time. it could stay like this for over a minute so in that scenario, whenever you let go of the accelerator it will immediately hit the brakes again. Its best to just get off autopilot at this point by just moving the right stalk up. I cleaned up the camera area at the top of any bug splats at Colby and going forward but I don't think this helped anything.
4) Third Leg: Went from Colby, KS to Hays, KS
Distance: 106 miles
Charging at Hays: 51 kWh @ $0.33/kWh $16.83
Details:
Prior to heading out from Colby arrival at Hays said 14%. once I disconnected, this moved up to 21%. I think we arrived at 18% again going about 80mph. Continued to have random braking but not as bad as the 2nd leg. Once we arrived at Hays, the car said to charge it for 55 mins so that we can go from Hays to El Dorado (200 miles) in one charge. I think the car was suggesting 84% for the 200 miles. A better route planner app (ABRP) said that we should charge for 20 mins and then charge again at Selina and then go to El Dorado. I think the Model Y was charge limited here at 75 kwh. There was a 3 wiggle line at the top so I think the battery was overheated so was limiting charging because of that. Because the Tesla in car planner said it would take 55 mins, we decided to go to applebees but before we even got our food, i got a message saying car was ready to go (about 15-20mins). I checked and now Tesla planner changed the route to go through Selina and then El Dorado similar to ABRP. I think we lost about 20 mins here because of this change othewise we would have gone to a fast food place rather than applebees.
5) Fourth Leg: Went from Hays, KS to Selina, KS
Distance: 93.8 miles
Charging at Selina: 23 kWh @ $0.35/kWh $8.05
Details:
The Selina Supercharger was a little out of the way from our trip. This was NOT like the others where it was just on the side of the road next to food places. The selina supercharger was behind a hotel about 2-3 miles from the interstate. There was also no food places nearby (Luckily for us this was not needed since we had already eaten at the previous stop). We did not need to charge long here since we had charged quite a bit over at Hays. I think we arrived at 37-40% SOC and went up to about 70% or so. The details about this place are on PLUGSHARE so getting this app is helpful to know whats around the area. I believe the tesla app also shows whats nearby but i do prefer plugshare.
6) Fifth Leg: Selina, KS to ElDorado, KS
Distance: 129 miles
Charging at El Dorado: 58 kWh @ $0.34/kWh $19.72
Details:
This was a brand new supercharger that was put in place on 9/2 so we were one of the first cars to use this supercharger which is awesome. there were 8 250 kw supercharger. This was our last supercharging stop for this trip. We did a deep charge to 90% here because at our destination in Pittsburg, KS we only have destination chargers. This area is a great area for charging. There was a dunken donuts, hardees, ezgo station, some chargepoint station, and the tesla supercharger station.
7) Sixth Leg: El Dorado, KS to Pittsburg, KS
Distance: 151 miles
Charging at Destination: FREE with hotel stay
Details:
We arrived at the hotel a little after 8pm CST with about 34% SOC. I had purposely charged a bit more since I wasn't sure about the destination chargers. This would allow us to get to Joplin the next morning if for some reason the destination chargers were not working. We had left in the morning just prior to 7am MT. So total trip was 12 hours and change. I think we could have saved about 15-20 mins just at Hays. I think once I get used to the car more we could probably save some more time by not charging as much between the legs. At the hotel we were able to charge up our car overnight to 87%. there are 2 destination chargers here by tesla both worked flawlessly. Didn't see any other EVs around. Still did not leave it charging overnight just incase someone else came in and wanted to charge.
Let me know what questions you all have. Let me know what other information you all want so I can track those on the way back.
Overall:
I would say that this was a really good experience. The phantom braking was definitely a problem and needs to be fixed. Especially because it will do phantom braking even when you don't have autosteer on. The tesla supercharger experience was very smooth. Every one I pulled up to worked with 10-15 seconds of connecting. The locations of the chargers were good majority of the time.
I did some calculations and I don't think I saved a whole lot driving a tesla vs gas in terms of price. For example, my calculation showed that based on price only and if I have gas price at $3.83, the tesla only breaks even with a car going 37 miles per gallon. if we did the same thing charging at home, goes up to a car that is about 85 miles per gallon efficiency. I can send you details on this if you all want. If your only goal is to have the tesla to save money, i'm not sure that many people will see an return on investment on this.
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. I have full body PPF so I am extra crazy.
. My car doesn’t use FSD software stack.
. Let’s not forget just months ago when gas prices rose so dramatically. Gas prices Will get there again soon enough be patient.
