We're back from San Diego. Good first long-distance EV road trip, in our S85D with AP1 and 8.0(17.8.16) software. Many thanks to everyone on TMC whose accumulated knowledge and experience made this actually pretty easy.
On our southbound trip (Sunday 2 April) we took the I-5 route as planned. First charging stop was Harris Ranch, where we managed to get the one unpaired stall. Because we had a long lunch here, we left with a nearly full battery, but those extra electrons got used up pretty quickly when someone (cough wife cough) wanted to see how fast she could drive the car. Oh well.
Second charging stop of the day was Tejon Ranch. We tried one of the temporary stalls to avoid getting a stall paired with someone already charging, but we didn't get a lot of power that way. After a few minutes, a couple of the cars under the canopy departed so I moved my car to get a more normal rate of charge (I would have moved whether the other cars were gone or not).
We had planned a stop at Santa Ana, but that site was having (and continues to have) problems...on the day we did our southbound drive it was showing "limited service". So we diverted to the Buena Park Supercharger/Service Center/Store, where for the very first time I had to wait for a charging stall. In fact we got to witness two drivers getting into a heated argument over who got to go next, with one driver using her Model X to physically block the other's Model S from turning into the stall. The speed at which a Model X can accelerate towards an open charging space is...impressive. The Tesla store staff said they couldn't intervene, but another driver who arrived as this was unfolding and a security guard finally got them to play nicely. A Tesla staffer then sequenced the rest of us to avoid problems. We wasted around 20 minutes with this nonsense, but charging was otherwise uneventful.
We stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott San Diego / Solana Beach Del Mar. It's basically mid-way between Legoland and San Diego proper. They have four HWPCs and two Clipper Creek J1772s. The HWPCs deliver a respectable 32A. There was a bit of ICE-ing, but I was always able to get a space to charge when I needed it. Over the time we stayed
there (three nights) I saw a maximum of 3 Teslas charging there. I'd gladly stay there again if I'm in the area, but they really ought to put some padding (pool noodles?) on some low-hanging pipes that are easily bumped by the Model S liftgate (I now have a couple of dings on my liftgate, sigh). Some signage would be useful also to discourage
ICE-ing. As has been discussed in other threads, having a destination (or home) charger really makes life a lot easier.
We did a couple days at Legoland, which was basically the point of the trip. I was reminded that a lot of people (including tourists at theme parks) still aren't familiar with EVs and how nearly-silent they are in parking lots. One day we checked out the San Diego Supercharger just for kicks. I was amazed it's so far from the freeway.
On our return trip on Wednesday, I routed us back via US-101. First stop was the Los Angeles / Hawthorne Supercharger, totally unnecessary as a charging stop but fun for sightseeing. The first landmark was the SpaceX Falcon 9 on display, the first one they successfully recovered. We also saw the Hyperloop test track that serves as the backdrop for one of the Model 3 spy videos. It's a bit hard finding the charger amongst the Tesla and SpaceX buildings, but it feels like a bit of an oasis in the middle of an industrial neighborhood. After we soaked up a bit of the atmosphere and chatted with the security guard, we loaded up and headed for Oxnard.
The Oxnard Supercharger is located in a shopping area that reminds me a lot of Santana Row in San Jose, or Town Square in Las Vegas. It seems like it's pretty new because there are a lot of "coming soon" restaurants and fairly high-end shops. We arrived to a half full (half-empty?) Supercharger site, but it filled up a couple minutes after we arrived. This was our lunch stop, so our battery was almost full when we departed. We also chatted with another Model S owner about his wrapped nosecone.
Atascadero was next. My wife redeemed her driving performance of a few days ago by beating the energy graph from Oxnard to Atascadero. In terms of the neighborhood, it was quite a change from Oxnard...my son says it's "sketchy". There was a security guard hanging out at the chargers...I halfway wanted to ask him whether he was guarding the
vehicles or the Tesla equipment.
Gilroy was our last charging stop, and the only Supercharger on this trip that we'd used before. It was surprisingly empty (only two other cars), but maybe because it was dinner-time on a Wednesday night.
While at Gilroy we saw a BMW 330e (my wife drives one of these) on one of the J1772-equipped charging stations. Seeing one of these is pretty unusual (only the second one we've seen in the wild), but it was even more surprising seeing one at a public charging station...on a good day that car might get around 18 miles on battery power and with only a 3.6 kW on-board charger it takes awhile to recoup that. So it doesn't (in our minds) make a lot of sense to charge the 330e when you're out and about (and this car appeared to be far from home because it had an Irvine dealer paper plate on it). We wanted to ask the driver about this, but he was taking a nap (with the windows down, what was he thinking?).
We detoured to San Jose Japantown for dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant, and then drove home.
Conclusions and lessons learned:
EVTO did a pretty good planning this trip. Great job, @aescalus! I didn't need it very much during the trip itself, but it was good for visualizing how the trip would go. (I printed out itineraries for reference during the drive.) I used a lot of the default settings, which felt like they were slightly conservative in the end, but it basically worked. A good planning tool.
Unfortunately, no planning tool can take into account traffic delays (curse you LA area traffic!) or the time spent waiting to plug in to charge. Planning tools also need to be told about longer stops (such as meal breaks), they obviously can't guess them for you.
Aside from the above problems, charging stops lined up pretty well with mealtimes and/or required restroom breaks. And the car was almost always ready before we were. I'm pretty sold on this part.
I bought a kneeboard (one of those clipboard/binder thingys that pilots use) to hold a notepad and other papers. This felt
kind of geeky but it worked pretty well to keep things organized, or at least close at hand.
AP1 autosteering did extremely well (I've used it a lot around the SF Bay Area). Interestingly, autosteer seemed more skittish in SoCal, particularly on 405 (er, sorry, "the 405"). Not sure if the lane markings are bad (there was an Elon tweet on this many months ago) or if something else was at play.
Trip statistics:
- Mileage: 1154.9 miles using 356.8 kWh (309 Wh/mi)
- Superchargers used: 8 (Harris Ranch, Tejon Ranch, Buena Park, San Diego, LA/Hawthorne, Oxnard, Atascadero, Gilroy)
- Destination chargers used: 1
- Degraded charging sessions: 1
Bruce.
