Driving the Model X Long distances

[lmp1]

I am planning a road trip from CA to TX on my tesla X. 75 battery. I have it mapped out with the supercharger stops in the car.
Can I rely on the mileage that the car is recommending. When I drive to Joshua Tree- uphill - I use way more energy than the car expects, so I am afraid that the car calculations may not take all the road conditions and hills in to account.
Can anyone tell me about their experience on long distance drives and reliability of the battery charge.

 

[jlund]

As far as I know, tesla’s Nav and battery estimates should take altitude into account and, from my own road trips, it’s been largely accurate. I usually buffer 5% error rate against initial estimate and plan to leave at least 10-15% at each destination for unplanned events.

Have you tried evtripplanner? EV Trip Planner

There are a lot more dials and vectors you can change. e.g. the outside temp.

 

[Saghost]

I don't think the algorithm for energy at destination compensates enough for altitude change. When I gain altitude, the prediction shows worse results at destination - sometimes leading the car to panic, but I get the percentage back when I descend again.

I second the recommendation to use the online trip planner.

 

[HookBill]

Also, give A Better Route Planner a go. Allows for waypoints to be mapped into your trip. I have a X90D and used it for a cross country trip this past summer. Worked great. The nice thing about it is it works on the MCU while you drive too.

 

[luisyax]

I am planning a road trip from CA to TX on my tesla X. 75 battery. I have it mapped out with the supercharger stops in the car.
Can I rely on the mileage that the car is recommending. When I drive to Joshua Tree- uphill - I use way more energy than the car expects, so I am afraid that the car calculations may not take all the road conditions and hills in to account.
Can anyone tell me about their experience on long distance drives and reliability of the battery charge.

We have done that drive a couple of times already, except we started from Austin, Texas to California and the calculations are accurate. The first time we were petty hesitant about it, but once we found out that if you let autopilot take over it pretty much on spot. For our family, this also included having AC on, warm/cold seats, and iphone/ipad charging as needed. So, with confidence I can say the mileage readings do work as expected.

Have fun and be safe out there!

 

[travwill]

After a while now I usually feel ok having 20% extra range than the actual miles require. Thus a 150 leg is good with 180 to start, especially if you go above 65, etc. Now if you are going somewhere cold, it is much worse.

 

[animorph]

Navigation lets you know the percent battery charge remaining at your destination, or the next Supercharger along the way. We've road tripped to CA and the east coast for about 7k miles and the nav has been as good at estimating consumption as anything else. I check EVTripPlanner and the EVTO phone app for pre-trip planning. They are also good, and you can tweak them to match your historical data if you'd like. Headwinds and cold temperatures seem like the biggest gotchas that might cause problems, but that's what the margin is for.

I've had a few times where we ended up approaching 10% remaining at destination. Then I just slow down less than 5 MPH to hold the estimation steady at 10%.

So far we haven't had any detours or road closures, but I-10 is certainly prone to both.

My very first leg of our first road trip had plenty of big elevation changes. EVTripPlanner had said we'd arrive with 20%, the nav said something similar at the start. But in the middle of that leg the nav was all over the place, as low as -6% remaining! However we made it with about 20% remaining, without slowing down because I trusted EVTripPlanner. That was the only time the nav ever really let us down.

As a Model X 100D driver, it usually doesn't cost me much to wait for a 25% charge remaining at the destination. A 75D would want to trim that down a bit so you are not charging forever near the top of the battery. Monitor the percentage charge remaining at destination as you drive. You can save tons of energy just by slowing down, so if the margin drops too much for comfort, slow down and you should be fine.

As a last resort, I have the PlugShare app to locate a slow-charger, though I've never had to do that.

 

[Kurt'sX]

View attachment 261192 View attachment 261192 View attachment 261192 Ive just returned from a cross country trip, 30+ days, going from San Diego, CA to the east coast, then north to Quebec City Canada and back to San Diego. Total of over 9000 miles, using super charging for almost the entire trip. I did take advantage of any free destination chargers at hotels along the way, as it was nice getting up in the morning with a full charge, but had no issue with making it to super chargers almost exclusively. I will say, my many stops and off the main road visits made me adjust my charging to a +20% policy, just so I could assure I had enough charge to make it to my next stop. I had only one instance where I was crossing New Mexico on my return to San Diego and I was a little nervous. It all worked out fine tho and I never had issue except for the one close call. (See attached Photo) View attachment 261192 View attachment 261192

 

[luisyax]

View attachment 261192 View attachment 261192 View attachment 261192 Ive just returned from a cross country trip, 30+ days, going from San Diego, CA to the east coast, then north to Quebec City Canada and back to San Diego. Total of over 9000 miles, using super charging for almost the entire trip. I did take advantage of any free destination chargers at hotels along the way, as it was nice getting up in the morning with a full charge, but had no issue with making it to super chargers almost exclusively. I will say, my many stops and off the main road visits made me adjust my charging to a +20% policy, just so I could assure I had enough charge to make it to my next stop. I had only one instance where I was crossing New Mexico on my return to San Diego and I was a little nervous. It all worked out fine tho and I never had issue except for the one close call. (See attached Photo) View attachment 261192 View attachment 261192

You close call look like the one we just had recently as well at 1 mile as well. That happened right as we were entering the garage.

One mile left on the battery

 

[aesculus]

You guys like to live on the edge. The other day, in a light rain, we pulled over at a supercharger 15 miles from my home when we read 5% remaining, for a 10 minute charge. Based on the final results we could have easily made it but my wife reminds me often of another tow event (non Tesla) that I stated "no problem", so I error on the conservative side now.

 

[lundse50]

I find that Range Mode does give me a few more miles so whenever I am on trip, I turn this on. When I was in New Jersey a few weeks ago at a super charger station there was a tow truck alongside a Model S. The owner had tried to reach the charger but he had gone down to 0 a few miles from the station. He continued to drive it and ALMOST got the the charging station. Bad news, once the tow truck got him to the station and he started to charge the car, it would not start. When I left the tow truck driver was on the phone with Tesla. The Frunk was open and he was charging the accessory battery. Car was still dead when I left 40 minutes later.

 

[kiwi]

Here are my results from a much shorter trip in my MX75.
As others have mentioned - speed hurts range.
I found that spirited acceleration also hurts it.
But outside of those two - the range estimator in the car is really good.

 

[ecarfan]

Here are my results from a much shorter trip in my MX75.
As others have mentioned - speed hurts range.
I found that spirited acceleration also hurts it.
But outside of those two - the range estimator in the car is really good.

Except that the car nav knows nothing about weather: temp, winds, rain, snow, etc. All those things can significantly impact range. The driver needs to factor in weather conditions.

A software app that does factor in weather is New EV Trip Optimizer For Tesla App | Digital Auto Guides

 

[BerTX]

You guys like to live on the edge. The other day, in a light rain, we pulled over at a supercharger 15 miles from my home when we read 5% remaining, for a 10 minute charge. Based on the final results we could have easily made it but my wife reminds me often of another tow event (non Tesla) that I stated "no problem", so I error on the conservative side now.

Have you tried planning with a trip planning tool? I can recommend a good one...

 

[Garudaheart]

I find that Range Mode does give me a few more miles so whenever I am on trip, I turn this on. When I was in New Jersey a few weeks ago at a super charger station there was a tow truck alongside a Model S. The owner had tried to reach the charger but he had gone down to 0 a few miles from the station. He continued to drive it and ALMOST got the the charging station. Bad news, once the tow truck got him to the station and he started to charge the car, it would not start. When I left the tow truck driver was on the phone with Tesla. The Frunk was open and he was charging the accessory battery. Car was still dead when I left 40 minutes later.

Good to know!

 

[beths11]

I am planning a road trip from CA to TX on my tesla X. 75 battery. I have it mapped out with the supercharger stops in the car.
Can I rely on the mileage that the car is recommending. When I drive to Joshua Tree- uphill - I use way more energy than the car expects, so I am afraid that the car calculations may not take all the road conditions and hills in to account.
Can anyone tell me about their experience on long distance drives and reliability of the battery charge.

I like evtripping.com

 

[Yinn]

I am planning a road trip from CA to TX on my tesla X. 75 battery. I have it mapped out with the supercharger stops in the car.
Can I rely on the mileage that the car is recommending. When I drive to Joshua Tree- uphill - I use way more energy than the car expects, so I am afraid that the car calculations may not take all the road conditions and hills in to account.
Can anyone tell me about their experience on long distance drives and reliability of the battery charge.

I've used it. And if you end up using more energy than it expects, it adjusts accordingly. It will even give you a warning - I believe it said to reduce energy consumption, slow down and stay under X to make it to your destination. Once I slowed to a speed that was acceptable, the message went away. For chucks and giggles, I turned on range mode and sped back up and the message stayed off. Range mode off, it popped back on until I slowed down.

To be safe, I added a charging stop for an extra 10% charge. When I got to my destination it was spot on based on what the nav was telling me - but it was about 3% off from what it told me from the last top off.