Be honest: is SCing on a long trip annoying?

[bxr140]

With an EV, you have to change the way you think.

Unfortunately, that only works with people who are willing to change. Those that make up the meat of the bell curve are very reluctant to do so. That is where logical discourse breaks down here.

Giving up hours per driving day to charging is simply not an option for people, even if it only occurs a few times a year. It's illogical, but it's reality.

People will get over the fact that there aren't superchargers on every corner like a gas station. They will even get over a higher entry cost, if the ROI really comes in. They will NOT get over longer trip times than they've had for decades in their ice.

It is a downgrade. Humans do not like to downgrade.

 

[bxr140]

Apparently we have different perspectives on what the average American driver will do when confronted with a modern EV that's affordable.

In an ironic twist, perspective is somewhat irrelevant.

By the time EVs make up more than a small percentage of new car sales, progress will have solved the range and charging speed problems.

 

[jerry33]

the average american driver rarely takes long road trips, I don't have a data source but the majority of people rarely drive over 100 miles or so a day.

That was mainly true due to high gas prices. It's changing now. Also I have trouble with "average American" as it includes many folks with cars that aren't reliable for more than a short commute.

 

[jerry33]

It is a downgrade. Humans do not like to downgrade.

I've found it to be an upgrade. There is nothing about a gas car that I would willingly go back for.

 

[ohmman]

the average american driver rarely takes long road trips, I don't have a data source but the majority of people rarely drive over 100 miles or so a day.

I'll get a source for you. Or at least one that hints at your observational conclusion.

Trips of over 100 miles account for only 1% of drives taken by Americans (as of 2008). However, they account for 15% of vehicle miles. I'd say that 15% of miles driven being part of a 100 mile+ trip might mean that a lot of Americans are faced with dealing with long distance travel. Trips are defined in the NHTS (National Household Travel Survey) as being from one point to another in a single day.

This doesn't get completely at your conclusion, since you are talking more about the amount of drivers who take those trips, and not the averages. But the stats are wide enough that I think we can conclude that road tripping isn't a rare event for Americans.

Sadly, the contemporary data aren't available for download, or I'd toy with them in R to see if I could come up with some more applicable statistics. They do make old data available, but I don't feel they're pertinent today.

 

[Mike K]

I should clarify that I don't mind supercharging when it works as expected however in SoCal it often doesn't. I can't speak to other parts of the country where people might have very different experiences but down here we deal with lines, we deal with chargers not putting out anywhere near the power/ charging speed that's advertised. So I should qualify my original statement many pages back by saying it's not an inconvenience when it works as Tesla advertises. Too often though, it does not.

As an example, my three most recent trips that required supercharging:

1. LA to San Diego (Round Trip) - Stopped at the San Clemente supercharger on the way back to Los Angeles. No open stalls and a line of people waiting. Ok, this sucks but it's a problem I can at least understand. After waiting 10 minutes I got a supercharger that was putting out 28kw for 5 - 10 minutes before it simply shut down. I spoke to the valet they had there who told me people asked her every day about this and Tesla knew about it yet nothing was done. I don't even think 28kw is 100 miles an hour. I'm glad I only needed 20 or so. Otherwise I would have been boned.

2. LA to San Francisco (Round Trip) - On the way out I stopped at Buttonwillow. That was fine. Then stopped at Harris Ranch where I got a charge but it shut off after 5 minutes. So I moved the car and it charged but at 48kw. Moved it again and again 48kw. Move it again to the charger that worked but died and of course it's now completely dead. Moved it for the fourth or fifth time and finally got 115kw. But this after 15 minutes of wasted time. Same story at Dublin. Full and slow charging once I got a stall.

3. LA to Phoenix - Had to move twice at the Indio charger before getting an acceptable charge rate. At the Quartzite charger, which is almost always dead, I got just 26kw and I was one of two cars there at 9:00pm, not sharing a charger with the other guy. I moved and got 26 again. Talked the guy in the Model X that was leaving and he couldn't believe it but said he was getting 100+. So I took their charger when they pulled out and managed to finally get full power.

The thing I think a lot of people don't realize is that this problem is compounding. As we have more cars and fuller stations we have more and more cars sharing chargers which means that in the busier stations almost nobody is getting a full speed charge unless they have the luck of pulling in on empty to a stall where the car sharing that charger is nearly full. Now if they're not getting full power to the cars to begin with then that's only going to make the average length of stay longer which is going to result in more lines which is going to result in more chargers being shared which is going to result in even slower charging times. It's a snowball effect.

So no, I don't mind supercharging when I get the advertised rate of charge. The problem is I can't count on one hand how many times I've gotten that speed.

I'm confident they'll fix it and it's not exactly rage inducing but for people in this post to marginalize the opinions of those that do think it's a pain in the rear doesn't really accomplish anything. Just because something doesn't bother you doesn't mean that everyone it does bother is wrong.

 

[aesculus]

At this point I draw a curve in the air and explain tapering and how you want to live in that first half of your range.

Yeah. Met with glazed over eyes, even when I did it with pen and paper.

And try telling them that there is a different meaning for mph if you want to have real fun.

 

[aesculus]

I should clarify that I don't mind supercharging when it works as expected however in SoCal it often doesn't.

Being a Californian I have noticed this almost everywhere in Nor Calif. It's a total bummer and takes what is already a problem (having to stop more often and for longer times than an ICE) and can exacerbate it into non acceptance.

We just completed a 1500 mile road trip to ID and we hit every charger in Northern NV at least once, most twice. Every time we got more than a 300 mph charge rate. We favored charging more often than less because we determined if you could get to the charger very quickly (ie off the highway and plugged in with 2-3 mins), the lower end charge was better than waiting at the alternate chargers longer for the same energy. In fact the one time we did charge longer because of expected head winds that did not materialize, we later regretted it. We still had to stop at the next charger but only for 10 minutes, which was totally not worth the deviation time.

My limited experience seems to point to coming in at about 10-20% SOC and charging for 20-30 minutes. Ie only what you need to get to the next charger at 10-15% SOC.

This really works best if the charging spacing is less than 100 miles and ideally as stated up thread, it would be most efficient if it was ~50 miles. Then you could have more flexibility if weather changed, or you wanted to alter your route. For example last night we were forced off our planned route (and negated our prior charge strategy) because of a unexpected closed highway. Since weather was a factor (and traffic too) for all possible alternative routes, we had to charge an extra long time (1 hour) all the way up to 90%. We got home with 36% remaining, but that could have been easily lost if anything happened on our chosen route. And the only alternative would have been to bed down for the night and find some form of destination charging. Having a much denser supercharger network would have given us much more flexibility. (not only much denser but across more routes too).

So I would favor more charger locations than just increasing the number of chargers.

 

[jerry33]

This really works best if the charging spacing is less than 100 miles and ideally as stated up thread, it would be most efficient if it was ~50 miles. Then you could have more flexibility if weather changed, or you wanted to alter your route. For example last night we were forced off our planned route (and negated our prior charge strategy) because of a unexpected closed highway. Since weather was a factor (and traffic too) for all possible alternative routes, we had to charge an extra long time (1 hour) all the way up to 90%. We got home with 36% remaining, but that could have been easily lost if anything happened on our chosen route. And the only alternative would have been to bed down for the night and find some form of destination charging. Having a much denser supercharger network would have given us much more flexibility. (not only much denser but across more routes too).

Note that it would also work better if the battery had more capacity because you would get more miles in the high kW charing zone.

 

[Hodginator]

I wasn't much of a road trip person before my Tesla and it was likely due to my "only stop as a last resort mentality". Last fall, my wife and I did a cross country road trip of 7,004 miles (some vids in my signature). The SuperCharger stops helped break up the trip and even after doing so many miles in 2 weeks we didn't feel worn out, though we did have some late evenings (fell behind looking at all the sites).

At the time, 2015, the locations of Superchargers directed our route a bit, but we were able to see all of the sites we had wanted to plus a few that weren't planned. We used as many hotels with destination chargers as we could so we had a full battery every morning. It was a great trip and we are already planning our next cross country trip for next year (maybe to get a Model 3 ).

Edit: One item I forgot to mention was that each charge on our trip was about 15 - 20 minutes (with a couple being longer), which was enough time to stretch our legs and go to the restroom. We also timed our meals around some of the stops which was convenient vs grabbing fast food and eating it in the car.

 

[aesculus]

Note that it would also work better if the battery had more capacity because you would get more miles in the high kW charing zone.

Yeah but my napkin calc says I would need 140 kWh and I think EM says he is done making bigger batteries? Also to be truthful that would only work in my case (600 mile longest trip) if I could charge to 100% to start and then only have to charge once more. Otherwise I am fine with the sipping thing.

 

[whitex]

Giving up hours per driving day to charging is simply not an option for people, even if it only occurs a few times a year. It's illogical, but it's reality.

Can you elaborate on what "not an option means"? If you drive 8hrs per day, that's 3-4 SC visits, so 1.5-2hrs (I'm assuming you start the day full charged overnight). From that subtract gas fillups and bio brakes you'd take anyways (30min total at least) and assume someone is not having any meals except snacks while driving (or add 30+mins for lunch). What scenarios do people have few times a year where an 1hr or even 2hr delay in a whole day of driving is "not an option" - when do those people driver, 12am-8am to avoid traffic because an hour delay is not an option? Btw, even at those times you can get delayed by construction. Unless you're driving in a race or delivering organs for transplant, what are the scenarios people run into where supercharging on a 1+ days trip is not an option?

 

[Saghost]

Yeah but my napkin calc says I would need 140 kWh and I think EM says he is done making bigger batteries? Also to be truthful that would only work in my case (600 mile longest trip) if I could charge to 100% to start and then only have to charge once more. Otherwise I am fine with the sipping thing.

Elon's quote was that they'd stop there "for a while" or something like that. I'm thinking that means they don't see another chemistry change on the horizon and they've maxed out the space in the pack with the 100 redesign. That means there isn't really a chance to increase the pack capacity until they start making 2170 based packs sometime next summer/fall (or until they get a new chemistry after all, whenever that happens.)

 

[aesculus]

FWIW we just completed two segments of 600+ miles we have always done in 1 day. In and ICE is generally took 11 hours when I only stopped twice for fuel and bio breaks. Maybe a 1/2 hours stop max.

We did the same trip with no weather and it was 12 hours in the Tesla. We were very careful to only charge just enough. In fact we had to conserve a few times to make sure we got to a charger safely. All the legs were 75+ mph expect for the last one that was about 170 miles and we had to do it at 65 instead of the usual 70+.

On the way back the trip went to hell because of headwinds, snow and terrible drivers. It took 14+ hours. Not the Tesla's fault but having to charge extra to have enough researve in a few cases probably added 45 minutes by itself. In and ICE, you don't using fill up your tank partially to improve time like you do with an EV so when you have to 'fill it up', it does increase the time. Also because of the supercharger density issue, you have to error on the side of caution and overfill if there is a chance you will need the power. In an ICE you just pull into a gas station sooner.

 

[bxr140]

Can you elaborate on what "not an option means"?

It means it does no good to rose-color tesla travel with best-case scenarios and edge-case actuals.

 

[whitex]

It means it does no good to rose-color tesla travel with best-case scenarios and edge-case actuals.

Last month I did a 6400 mile round-trip around the US while supercharging and never ran into any congestion at SC. Did i run into best case scenarios each and every time? If so, maybe the best case scenario is not so rare. I did post a collage of pictures of all SC visited on the return trip earlier in this thread. The only time SC was remotely annoying was on the very few segments where I had to charge to full because I have a heavy foot, speed limits were 80mph and distance was longer than usual.

 

[jerry33]

Yeah but my napkin calc says I would need 140 kWh and I think EM says he is done making bigger batteries?

Well, he's not likely to say that a higher capacity battery is just around the corner and have everyone stop purchasing because they are waiting for the higher capacity battery. However, it will likely be four or five years before a higher capacity battery comes out.

 

[RogerHScott]

85s and 90s ... do[]n't have the range to skip superchargers and charge at the next one.

With a little careful charge management I was able to stop only at every other SpC on a recent trip I took in my S90D, so I think 90/100s
already make a difference in some areas under some conditions. I'm fairly certain that nothing less than an 85 could have managed
that. Obviously more closely spaced SpCs will broaden the circumstances where that's true.

 

[RogerHScott]

Did i run into best case scenarios each and every time? If so, maybe the best case scenario is not so rare.

Your experience only shows that SpC physical locations being overcrowded/malfunctioning is rare, as in a relatively small number of
SpCs have these problems. It does not show that encountering these problems is a rare experience for Tesla drivers, since you are only
one Tesla driver and a disproportionate number of drivers may live and drive in the vicinity of these problem SpCs.

... distance was longer than usual.

??? Someone moved two cities farther apart?

 

[whitex]

Your experience only shows that SpC physical locations being overcrowded/malfunctioning is rare, as in a relatively small number of
SpCs have these problems. It does not show that encountering these problems is a rare experience for Tesla drivers, since you are only
one Tesla driver and a disproportionate number of drivers may live and drive in the vicinity of these problem SpCs.

I think the general concensus is California SC experience overcrowding, elsewhere in the country not so much. So now, what % of all Tesla drivers are in CA? Is it a majority or minoriy?

??? Someone moved two cities farther apart?

No, they just built superchargers farther apart than on other segments on i-90.