nwdiver
Well-Known Member
To each his own... I used to drive like that too before I sold my Jetta TDI. Looking back it was more torture than convenience.
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Be honest: is SCing on a long trip annoying?
- Thread starter buckerine
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- Model S Supercharging
To each his own... I used to drive like that too before I sold my Jetta TDI. Looking back it was more torture than convenience.
What kind of vehicle do you have that you can drive 10 hours without refueling? If you average 70 mph (110 kph), that's 700 miles (1100 kph) on a tank.
I've done the trip from the Bay Area in California to Portland in one day (about 700 miles), and it's a long rough 12 hour day on the road. My SO is slow to "boot" in the morning, and starts to fade after sunset, so I get the early and late shift, but last time I couldn't keep my eyes open by the time we got to Salem, OR (about 1 1/2 hours from home) and she had to drive the last leg. The prospect of sleeping in her own bed buoyed her on at the last.
Having to supercharge will add time on the road on those days, but I've been thinking about how I would handle it. I could nap at superchargers when I start getting tired and I probably won't hit the wall at 600 miles.
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
I got 820 miles on a single tank once with my Jetta but I was hyper-miling.
Sparky
Member
I just finished a 715 mi trip; Park City to SoCal. It took 13 hours. Three people and the dog.
The first 300 miles was quick stops, just long enough to charge for the next stop, usually 10-15 mins. On those stops, the dog got exercised but others stayed in the car surfing the web (same stuff they do at home it seems). By the time we got to St. George, people were hungry, and tired of sitting (took an hour there). We ended up overstaying our minimum required charging time at every stop thereafter (Primm & Barstow). I estimated it was about an hour of SC time that we didn't need but on these long trips, it's unusual that all passengers (and dog) can handle 715 miles in 11 hours. I agree that sometimes having to stop is a nuisance and yet an extra hour travel time for a trip this long is perfectly reasonable considering how comfortable and enjoyable the Model S rides.
Hey, I have a comfy ICE car for these trips if needed but no one wants to take it anymore. The Tesla has become our long distance vehicle.
The first 300 miles was quick stops, just long enough to charge for the next stop, usually 10-15 mins. On those stops, the dog got exercised but others stayed in the car surfing the web (same stuff they do at home it seems). By the time we got to St. George, people were hungry, and tired of sitting (took an hour there). We ended up overstaying our minimum required charging time at every stop thereafter (Primm & Barstow). I estimated it was about an hour of SC time that we didn't need but on these long trips, it's unusual that all passengers (and dog) can handle 715 miles in 11 hours. I agree that sometimes having to stop is a nuisance and yet an extra hour travel time for a trip this long is perfectly reasonable considering how comfortable and enjoyable the Model S rides.
Hey, I have a comfy ICE car for these trips if needed but no one wants to take it anymore. The Tesla has become our long distance vehicle.
Mark Z
Active Member
And Park City is especially beautiful during the autumn colors of September!
2012 P85 in 2014
snort
Member
You are right that get best mileage creeping along at a slow speed, but the motor/tires/gearing have an efficiency curve (analogous to the power curve of an ICE) which seems to peak somewhere around 15mph. too slow puts you on the wrong side of it. But the real problem is that regenerative breaking is not very efficient and that starting and stopping every few car lengths (which is what happens in a traffic jam) seems to burn over 500 watt/hrs per mile--comparable to going 90mph or so on level ground.
slightly off topic: a recent update significantly improved TACC when driving in stop and go traffic. much smoother. I can still do better than it because I'm better at anticipating (and can often see several cars ahead, which TACC can't) but it's much better than it was.
I'm sure looking forward to that. Eureka has been at the permit stage since last fall. Crescent City for a year and a half. I-5 is great, don't get me wrong, but I've been doing it 2 or 3 times a year for 40 years and I'm bored with it. 101, CA-1 and 395 are entertaining alternatives in an ICE, but I can never make enough room in my schedule to stop at more than one L2 charger. I've studied Aerovironment's CHAdeMO in Oregon, but I just can't make it work...although once Eureka is finished, maybe. I am really looking forward to the twisty parts of CA-1 in a Tesla...
My record (In an ICE, on New Years day (very little traffic)), is 13 hours and 40 minutes, Silicon Valley to Seattle, fuel, food, restrooms, everything, including a lot of breaking of the speed limit. I used to do it all on one day about 20% of my trips, but charging the Tesla adds 3 or 4 hours and that's just too long for one day. (when I was younger, I could have napped in the seat while charging, but not for about 15 years...)
A bit late to the party but I'm still going to ask. What qualifies as "like a normal car" on that route? I.e., what's the speed of the traffic?
Jim R
Member
My longest trip without refuelling was over 800 miles (with 2.5 gal left in the tank). No hypermiling either, always travelling over the speed limit by the usual amount that doesn't attract law enforcement attention - 70+ mph. Luxury car from a world class maker, very comfortable trip. Mercedes E250. I'm looking forward to Tesla, but the long trips will be different.
Jim R
Member
Not sure I'd want to drive 10 hours in a Jetta, LOL. My ride was a comfortable one in a luxury car - E250.
Just to bring this back to 100, supercharging gets old. Longer trips get old. The limited ability to be spontaneous with route planning gets old. There's no way around it--your road trip inverts from being done on your time to being done on your car's time (and if you're unlucky, on the charging network's time).
Certainly the experience is noticibly net positive from ICE...its just not all kittens and rainbows rigt now.
For me it's less about the frequency and more about the charge time. Most of my trips don't need more range, but I'd sell the left leg of your significant other to have a sub 10min charge time.
For others, more range is going to help with off-network excursions and off nominal weather conditions.
Thankfully, the future will not only bring more chargers, but faster charge times and more range as well.
Certainly the experience is noticibly net positive from ICE...its just not all kittens and rainbows rigt now.
For me it's less about the frequency and more about the charge time. Most of my trips don't need more range, but I'd sell the left leg of your significant other to have a sub 10min charge time.
For others, more range is going to help with off-network excursions and off nominal weather conditions.
Thankfully, the future will not only bring more chargers, but faster charge times and more range as well.
Owner
Active Member
I agree with what you have said. There are times when supercharging does get old. Not in a truly painful way, but you just want the freedom to stop when you feel like stopping and stop where you feeling like stopping, not at the supercharger attached to another outlet mall.
I'd pay a good sum (say maybe $20K??) to double the range to 500 miles.
I'm going to Yosemite in a month or so and my lodging *may* have a destination charger. If it does, I'll take the Tesla, if not I haven't decided yet whether it is worth the hassle to find another charger and leave the car there... ? Hopefully they will install charging before hand to make this a mute point. But figuring out charging is not always a piece of cake.
-- I've been to 100 superchargers and drive across country --
I'd pay a good sum (say maybe $20K??) to double the range to 500 miles.
I'm going to Yosemite in a month or so and my lodging *may* have a destination charger. If it does, I'll take the Tesla, if not I haven't decided yet whether it is worth the hassle to find another charger and leave the car there... ? Hopefully they will install charging before hand to make this a mute point. But figuring out charging is not always a piece of cake.
-- I've been to 100 superchargers and drive across country --
snort
Member
If what you want is a 150kwh battery, doing that for an additional $20K is probably plausible, at least pretty soon, but using the present 18650 based batteries, you'd add about 1000 lbs to the weight of the car, with the accompanying change in suspension dynamics, loss of range efficiency, increase in charge time, etc.
I don't know about you, but about 355 days a year, I drive less than 250 miles, and on those days I'd prefer the lighter car and more moderate battery. in fact, 330 days a year, the range of a Leaf would be totally adequate. so most of the time, I'm carrying half a ton of lithium and associated fooferah that I only use a couple dozen times a year. The point is that everything is an engineering tradeoff. for now, my judgement is that Tesla got the tradeoff pretty close to right: for long distance travel, we need to supercharge more often than an equivalent ICE needs to fill up, but it's far less painful than it would be in a 25kwh car. they can make this less problematic by filling in the gaps in the network, but that takes time. their funding base is not as strong as a GM or Toyota might be and they've failed so far to get competitors to adopt their superior charging format, both of which things slow dissemination of SpCs.
battery technology is getting better every day and Tesla (and GM and several others) are trying to make better cell to use for car batteries. they'll get there but it might be a while before we get a 500 mile car for the same price and weight.
--Snortybartfast
Well, on the east coast things might get more interesting. Tesla confirmed it's having conversations with Sheetz gas stations to install superchargers. Sheetz advertises itself more as a restaurant than a gas station. They have decent food, full convenience store, well-lit, and 24 hours/day service. Got the story out of Forbes from my iPhone.
snort
Member
broadly speaking, this is a good thing, but the east coast is already better served than the northwest. There are NO supercharger deserts east of the Appalachians south of Maine. Western PA, WV, KY could use better coverage and that's probably what they're going for with the Sheetz deal.
(I define a Supercharger desert as an area that you can't get to and back from, or traverse, using only superchargers. Roughly speaking, a place that's more than 100 road miles from any supercharger. supercharge.info's 150 mile circle is helpful for finding them.)
-Snortybartfast
Back when ICEs beat out steam and electric cars, even ICEs didn't have great range compared to today. The Model T had a range of about 200 miles and it was the Model 3 of ICEs. What happened was ICEs got longer and longer ranges over time, especially as more efficient cars came along with hybrids and such. 400 miles was a typical ICE range 20 years ago, but today 700 is possible with some cars.
Consumers have become used to being able to just jump in their car and do a long road trip with no concern unless your car is in poor repair. Few people make very many road trips in a year. These days people who need to travel a lot on business tend to fly rather than drive. For most companies it's a lot cheaper to pay the airfare, car rental, and lodging for their traveling employees than to essentially pay for the downtime while employees spend days traveling between cities, even if the "fuel" was free.
With electric cars we're faced with having to think about some things that people haven't thought about in even for most of our parent's lifetimes (and my father was born in 1920). Road trip capability is one of the biggest.
So far I've had some minor tastes of what long distance travel will be like. In the first week we made a trip to Olympia and supercharged in Centralia on the way home. Yesterday we went down to Salem. I may have had enough to get all the way home, but we were starving about the time we got to Woodburn, so we plugged in and ate. Woodburn is very convenient if you're hungry. Even if you're not hungry, we had enough energy put into the battery to easily get home before we even sat down at the restaurant. The battery hit 90% as we paid the bill and left.
The only painful thing about the whole process was I missed the exit for the outlet mall and had to turn around at the next exit which was 6 miles up the road.
On a longer trip it will probably be a bit more tedious, but I think my tendency is to push on through past the time where my body is comfortable and I end up getting to my destination rather stiff. Being forced to get out and walk around a little every few hours is probably a good thing.
I have been concerned about real world range vs rated range. Running around town I consistently burn more energy than the rated range. Part of that is probably the need to climb a hill just before getting home. On a short trip of 10-20 miles I have a big energy burn at the end. Also the car is a lot less efficient when speeding up and slowing down all the time.
I was watching the rated range vs actual range yesterday. For the first 30 miles we were way below the rated range, but we began to catch up and when we got to Salem we were within 5 miles between actual and rated ranges used. I was driving 5-10 mph over the speed limit (70-75 mph) with the air conditioning running, so it wasn't exactly hypermiling. I did have AP on most of the time. I was glad to see the rated range seemed to be closer to reality when actually driving on the highway for any distance.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Question: Is long-distance driving with SCs annoying ?
Answer: It is long distance driving
Answer: It is long distance driving
snort
Member
yep. as pointed out earlier in the thread, the 250ish mile range doesn't get you much if the spacing between the chargers you need to use is 150 miles. you don't have enough range to skip one, so you have to stop at every one and get almost a full charge. As with your model T example, it's still early days, and there are still lots of places with no high speed charger coverage at all, so we need to be patient. Tesla has only so many resources. One of the most valuable and difficult to exploit is happy Tesla drivers with money in their pocket spending half an hour or more at an out of the way charge site: they can't go there until there's a charger, and the potential charge site doesn't quite believe it until they see it. ICEs had the same problem, for longer, when they were new. once superchargers are 50 miles or less apart, our trips can have a little spontaneity.
You will quickly learn what the realities of range are. the biggest awakening I needed was that it's heavy, so uphill and lots of accelerations sap range worse than in a lighter car. hypermileing (e.g. 50 instead of 70) makes a huge difference...increasing both range and boredom to about the same degree. I avoid it when I can... be aware of J1772s. there are a lot of them around (use plugshare) and they can add 15 miles in half an hour when you really, really needed it.
Eureka construction has begun. hooray! I'm pretty sure I can make it from Grants Pass to Eureka even in winter....it's downhill, and from there to Ukiah is easier. not so sure about the uphill direction. It also brings the coastal CHAdeMOen in Oregon into range.
"I don't know about you, but about 355 days a year, I drive less than 250 miles, and on those days I'd prefer the lighter car and more moderate battery. in fact, 330 days a year, the range of a Leaf would be totally adequate."
I would say most people fit pretty close to this use case. If you have home charging and wake up with a full tank every morning you actually are saving hours and hours at gas stations. And the added benefit of, no more late to a meeting(work, appointment Etc.) because you forgot to fill up the night before. For the average person a Tesla actually makes you spend less time fueling your vehicle.
For your roughly ten days of road tripping a year, sure it takes a little longer, but you're still left with a net gain in time spent fueling a vehicle. I feel this point is so often overlooked.
I would say most people fit pretty close to this use case. If you have home charging and wake up with a full tank every morning you actually are saving hours and hours at gas stations. And the added benefit of, no more late to a meeting(work, appointment Etc.) because you forgot to fill up the night before. For the average person a Tesla actually makes you spend less time fueling your vehicle.
For your roughly ten days of road tripping a year, sure it takes a little longer, but you're still left with a net gain in time spent fueling a vehicle. I feel this point is so often overlooked.
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