I took what came to be known as the Robot Car, the Model X, from midcoast Maine to St. John’s Newfoundland for five nights by way of the long ferry. It carried mostly two people and a dog, sometimes a third person, and a few times acted as shuttle for several adults.
The trip east was as quick as could be with problematic and sparse DC fast charging. Sat on a SunCountry EVSE for as long as possible before boarding the ferry and arrived in St. John’s with 5%. The return trip was more relaxed with two nights in NS—with several newly activated chademo stations, and two nights in NB—where the difficult station was more well behaved.
Some stats:
Total distance 1959 miles.
Total DC charging costs 128.64 CN, ~98 USD
Total time waiting on paid charging 9h 22m
In NL, before I was certain about staying on a free charger overnight, there was one overnight paid parking, cost about $10, with free slow charging.
The two longest legs, between home and first/last stop in Canada each used about 75% battery. This extrapolates out to 195 miles at 100% charge this time of year for this P90D with 56k miles on square set up 20” Nokian eNTYREs.
Difficulties:
Dog friendly hotels and destination charging rarely overlap.
A closing falcon wing door struck one passenger’s head (my fault).
The front passenger door did not like to fully open when car was parked on a hill.
The 12 volt battery warning appeared about half way through the trip.
The parking brake did not release on the first try, twice.
EV highlights:
No EV’s are being sold by local dealers in NF by consensus. There is an enthusiast organization to promote EV adoption and one of the principals installed a 14-50 so I could visit the land of my forefathers in the Tesla and now other EV’s can travel farther from the city.
Quality Tesla time with fellow early adopter (same guy).
Answered “how far can you go” and “how long does it take to charge” more times than I can count—there is groundswell interest!
One dozen chademo stations came online in Nova Scotia while I was in NL. New Brunswick already has many on the roads and Tesla will have a couple Superchargers before my next trip (and maybe some in Newfoundland too if the rumors are true).
The trip east was as quick as could be with problematic and sparse DC fast charging. Sat on a SunCountry EVSE for as long as possible before boarding the ferry and arrived in St. John’s with 5%. The return trip was more relaxed with two nights in NS—with several newly activated chademo stations, and two nights in NB—where the difficult station was more well behaved.
Some stats:
Total distance 1959 miles.
Total DC charging costs 128.64 CN, ~98 USD
Total time waiting on paid charging 9h 22m
In NL, before I was certain about staying on a free charger overnight, there was one overnight paid parking, cost about $10, with free slow charging.
The two longest legs, between home and first/last stop in Canada each used about 75% battery. This extrapolates out to 195 miles at 100% charge this time of year for this P90D with 56k miles on square set up 20” Nokian eNTYREs.
Difficulties:
Dog friendly hotels and destination charging rarely overlap.
A closing falcon wing door struck one passenger’s head (my fault).
The front passenger door did not like to fully open when car was parked on a hill.
The 12 volt battery warning appeared about half way through the trip.
The parking brake did not release on the first try, twice.
EV highlights:
No EV’s are being sold by local dealers in NF by consensus. There is an enthusiast organization to promote EV adoption and one of the principals installed a 14-50 so I could visit the land of my forefathers in the Tesla and now other EV’s can travel farther from the city.
Quality Tesla time with fellow early adopter (same guy).
Answered “how far can you go” and “how long does it take to charge” more times than I can count—there is groundswell interest!
One dozen chademo stations came online in Nova Scotia while I was in NL. New Brunswick already has many on the roads and Tesla will have a couple Superchargers before my next trip (and maybe some in Newfoundland too if the rumors are true).