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I forgot about the Sepia. Their restaurant has great tartar. If you're charging overnight it doesn't matter, but the 70A station there is only at about 195V and there's a 1/3 risk each hour that the Model S will sense a voltage dip and cut the current to 52A.
The downtown BW doesn't even have a Suncountry station anymore. They replaced with an Easton 30A station iirc. Not really worth it, since it is in an expensive paid parking lot.
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As Doug mentioned, you can go directly from Montreal to Quebec City without stopping. You should try to avoid rush hour in Montreal, though.
Aussie Bob
Member
Thanks everyone. Now I can plan with my Australian friends when I see them in Melbourne in March.
mknox
Well-Known Member
Right. I'm going back a few years here, but I used to know someone who worked at Telus and the story goes that Bell and Telus realized Telus had way better coverage out west and Bell was better in the east, so they came together on a sharing agreement that saved a ton of money by not having to build out as much new tower infrastructure.
mrElbe
Active Member
That Bell and Telus tower sharing agreement was necessitated by the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. All foreign visitors were coming with their GSM phones and Rogers would have been the only compatible provider since Bell and Telus were still in CDMA. So they had to scramble to implement GSM service and agreed to share infrastructure.
Peter_M
Member
Ottawa to Orlando Trip Report and Tips
I mentioned my trip to Florida in the Eastern Canada Superchargers thread, but I thought this forum might be more appropriate to report on how it went. We drove from Ottawa to Orlando on Feb 27 - Mar 1 and then back home on Mar 8 - 10.
It all went very well and here's my list of observations and tips:
And a few stats for the numerically-inclined:
Bottom line: Superchargers are awesome!
I mentioned my trip to Florida in the Eastern Canada Superchargers thread, but I thought this forum might be more appropriate to report on how it went. We drove from Ottawa to Orlando on Feb 27 - Mar 1 and then back home on Mar 8 - 10.
It all went very well and here's my list of observations and tips:
- Ottawa to Utica is definitely doable, and it's easy to do at full speed in all but the coldest weather. On the way down 416, at -24C and 95 km/h, the trip energy graph was saying it would be very close and the GPS wasn't giving us the right routing, so we detoured though Kingston. I'm 99% sure we would have made it, but we were really not keen on running out on the first leg of a 3-day trip (or even the stress of worrying about that). Coming home at +9C was very easy without the side-trip to Kingston and we got home with 78km to spare.
- The GPS was routing us to Utica through Syracuse, which is longer and on faster roads. Highway 12 from Watertown to Utica is a better route, and if you want to "trick" the GPS, enter Fairfield NY as your destination. It's pretty much the same distance as the Utica SC, but it will give you the right routing and energy calculation. Just remember to change your destination to the Utica SC after you pass Watertown.
- The rest of the legs are shorter and in a few cases you can skip SCs. We skipped Edison, Hamilton, Bethesda and Port Orange on the way down and Bethesda, Hamilton and Edison on the way back.
- We never felt any kind of range anxiety and always got to the SCs with at least 8%. We only had to slow down once for about 1/2 hour to extend our range, when it was raining and we had skimped a bit on the previous charge. (I always drove at limit + 8mph except in some 55 zones, where everyone was zooming by if I went only 63.)
- The trip energy graph is VERY accurate UNLESS it's below -10C. When it was warmer than that, we always arrived with the predicted state of charge plus or minus 2%, and in some cases, the graph tracked the prediction almost exactly. When it's below -10C, particularly for the first leg of the day when the car's warming up, it can underestimate the energy usage by a fair bit. I can't quantify this very well... it might say at the start of the trip that you'll arrive with 15%, but you could end up at 7%.
- Doing a supercharger trip is very easy:
- Program your next destination into the GPS
- Charge until the trip energy graph shows that you'll arrive with 10% (15% if it's below -10C; 8% if you're OK with the risk)
- Off you go!
- Keep an eye on the arrival battery estimate and slow down if you need to
- If you see the arrival battery estimate dropping, don't assume it'll keep dropping at the same rate for the whole trip. It continuously re-calculates the estimate, so it tends to converge to a good estimate by about 50km into the trip, in any weather, and often rises a bit after that.
- If you want to save one charging wait per day, stay at a hotel near a charging station. Some reasonably-priced options are:
- Best Western in Point South SC for the 2nd night on the way down: 2 80A HPWCs - it was booked up so we didn't stay there
- Comfort Inn in Rocky Mount NC for the 1st night on the way back: right next to the Doubletree that has the Supercharger
- Best Western Sovereign Hotel in Albany for the 2nd night on the way back: 70A Sun Country Highway
- The spreadsheet I did was really not necessary but it did help to estimate how much ground we'd cover each day, so we could book our hotels in advance near charging stations. The daily total time (driving plus charging) ended up within 10 minutes of the prediction on some of the days.
- I found I was much less tired after 12 hours of SC-hopping than after 9 hours on my previous long ICE trip where we did it in 3 to 5 hour legs. The forced breaks really do help.
And a few stats for the numerically-inclined:
- Total trip distance: 5618 km
- Typical daily drive: 1000 km in 12 hrs with 4-5 SC stops
- Worst leg consumption (Ottawa-Kingston @ -24C): 252 Wh/km
- Best leg consumption (Utica-Ottawa @ +9C): 182 Wh/km
- Typical I-95 leg consumption: 210 Wh/km
- Trip average consumption including destination driving: 222 Wh/km
- Shortest charging time: 10 minutes
- Longest charging time: 50 minutes
- Typical I-95 charging time: 20 minutes
Bottom line: Superchargers are awesome!
Depeche Mode
Member
Peter_M
Member
Also, tolls for the trip totalled about $37 each way, all North of Washington. And be sure you have 50 cents in US coins after Paramus - the on-ramp toll booth has no attendant.
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Aussie Bob
Member
Kalud
Active Member
Peter_M
Member
Greetings from Washington DC:
My wife and I are planing our first major Model S road trip, in June '15, to visit our daughter who teaches at Ste. Mary's in Halifax, NS. It looks, from my research so far, as if the Maritimes will need advance planning. We have a CHAdeMO adaptor in shipment and also welding extension cables. Can anyone tell me the adaptors which are most common in Canadian campgrounds and Marinas. We are expecting our first grandchild in May so we are super excited about this trip. I apologize to the Francophone members for the English; Mon Français est vraiment attroce. Many thanks,
Richard
My wife and I are planing our first major Model S road trip, in June '15, to visit our daughter who teaches at Ste. Mary's in Halifax, NS. It looks, from my research so far, as if the Maritimes will need advance planning. We have a CHAdeMO adaptor in shipment and also welding extension cables. Can anyone tell me the adaptors which are most common in Canadian campgrounds and Marinas. We are expecting our first grandchild in May so we are super excited about this trip. I apologize to the Francophone members for the English; Mon Français est vraiment attroce. Many thanks,
Richard
Peter_M
Member
You shouldn't need to go to campgrounds unless you're camping anyway. Sun Country Highway has the maritime provinces covered pretty well with 70A or faster Level 2 (J1772) chargers, so once you get into New Brunswick, you should be OK, although there will be some longish waits while you charge. Try to plan your overnight stops at hotels with charging stations. The biggest gap is from the Hooksett NH supercharger to the SCH station in St Stephen NB. There are Chademo stations at the Nissan dealers in Lewiston ME and Bangor ME, and they split that trip up into about thirds, which should work well. There's also a Chademo in Truro NS. Check out PlugShare for other options - if you can't find Chademo, look for SCH-100 stations (run at 80A) or Tesla owners with 80A HPWCs at their homes. Good luck and let us know how it goes!
Does your car have dual onboard chargers? Default is only one charger, which will limit the car to 40A charging. You can still use the SCH-100, SCH-90, SCH-80, SCH-70, and SCH-60 EVSEs but cars with only one charger won't draw more than 40A. Dual charger cars pull the full 80A from an SCH-100, which translates to about 78-80 km/hr charging (single charger car therefore would be about 40km/hr).
With dual chargers, what we found on our long trip was an average of drive an hour, charge an hour (with an SCH-90 or SCH-100 on the Trans-Canada Highway). So the result was several 3- or 4-hour midday stops. If you only have one onboard charger I'm assuming the average would be closer to drive an hour, charge two hours. Superchargers change the whole game (like CHAdeMO, superchargers bypass the onboard chargers and go directly to the battery).
Zapped
Model S - PURE EV
What out for avalanches. I drove through two in early May last year in early May between Revelstoke and Golden. Luckly they had just been cleared. Then we hit a snow storm around Banff.
But not to worry... they're right on top of clearing snow from the roads around here ...:wink:
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