First Road Trip Approaching: San Diego to Tucson/Bisbee

[nvilletele]

I am about to venture out on my first road trip, from Sand Diego to Tucson and Bisbee in my 2013 P85+. I‘ve read up a bit, but would welcome any tips or suggestions, of any nature, regarding energy usage, charging or otherwise. In the past, when making this trip, I have always used my ICE car. But I have since de-registered it to save on insurance and registration costs, and it sits now, covered, in my driveway.

Bisbee is about 100 miles from Tucson, and has no superchargers close by, closest Is in south Tucson area. There is one destination charger in Bisbee, but you have to stay in the hotel to use it, and I am staying with friends. Wit’s the 245 total miles my battery supposedly can provide, it could be doable, but what with real world mileage and phantom drain, I planned ahead and learned my friends have a welding plug, so I picked up a decent adapter on Amazon. I already have a 30 foot extension cable, and learned my friends also have a 100 foot one, so I seem well covered for that part of the trip.

I also have some other adaptors, including one for a dryer plug. I will be staying at an Airbnb while in Tuscon that has a dryer, so am wondering if it is electric maybe I can charge my car with that. I doubt the owners would appreciate the extra electricity draw of course . . .but there seems nothing said about it in their rules, so . . . .

I’ve heard of, but have never used, A Better Trip Planner. Is this worth checking out, or am I just fine with the Tesla navigation. Any practical benefit on this sort of trip to ABTP?

Anything else I should be considering re this trip? Appreciate any and all useful info and suggestions.

 

[araxara]

The Tucson part of the trip should not be a problem. There are several Superchargers in Tucson. In particular, I would recommend you charge up when first arriving at the River Road one near the I10 and Orange Grove exit. On your way out of town towards Bisbee, you should charge at the Rita Road one, which is off of I10. With that scenario, you will probably not need to charge at the Airbnb. There is also a urban supercharger at La Encantada mall.

 

[LoudMusic]

What adapters do you have for your mobile connector? Using 3rd party adapters may not provide you with the charging speed you are expecting. If you could provide pictures of your charging solution that might help us provide you with information.

ABRP, A Better Route Planner, is the tool many people use to get an idea of what the charging stops will be. It's not as accurate as the car's navigation, but provides a good estimate.

ABRP

ABetterRouteplanner is the world's most popular consumer EV routeplanner - both for beginner and experienced EV drivers. And of course for anyone curious about EVs.

abetterrouteplanner.com

 

[Earl]

As @araxara said, getting to and around Tucson will be easy. Just use the onscreen navigator to navigate to the most convenient Tucson Supercharger.
Your friend's welding outlet should make it easy as long as your extension cords are long enough and big enough. Assuming its a 30 amp welder outlet, your cable needs to carry 30 amps. Even so, given the length, I'd recommend manually dropping your charging current to below 24 amps. If you'll be there for a couple of days, I'd go with 16 to 20 amps, just to avoid overloading the cable and outlet. That will give you plenty of charge to make it back to Tucson as well as a few local excursions to show off and enjoy that P85+

 

[nvilletele]

The Tucson part of the trip should not be a problem. There are several Superchargers in Tucson. In particular, I would recommend you charge up when first arriving at the River Road one near the I10 and Orange Grove exit. On your way out of town towards Bisbee, you should charge at the Rita Road one, which is off of I10. With that scenario, you will probably not need to charge at the Airbnb. There is also a urban supercharger at La Encantada mall.

Thanks. That was along the lines of what I was planning to do. I wasn’t really expecting to need to charge at the Airbnb, just was thinking it might be possible.

What adapters do you have for your mobile connector? Using 3rd party adapters may not provide you with the charging speed you are expecting. If you could provide pictures of your charging solution that might help us provide you with information.

ABRP, A Better Route Planner, is the tool many people use to get an idea of what the charging stops will be. It's not as accurate as the car's navigation, but provides a good estimate.

ABRP

ABetterRouteplanner is the world's most popular consumer EV routeplanner - both for beginner and experienced EV drivers. And of course for anyone curious about EVs.

abetterrouteplanner.com

I have Tesla adaptors for 14-50 and 10-30, but for the 6-50 I got one from Amazon that had many Tesla users commenting that it worked perfectly for charging their Teslas. This one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V94TD6P/

I thought about getting the Tesla 6-50 adaptor, but as my extension cable is 14-50 and is likely needed due to distance from the outlet, this one seemed the better approach, as it can work with a 6-50 extension cable, at the tesla cable end with the 14-50 adaptor, or with my 14-50 cable end plugged into the outlet.

 

[nvilletele]

As @araxara said, getting to and around Tucson will be easy. Just use the onscreen navigator to navigate to the most convenient Tucson Supercharger.
Your friend's welding outlet should make it easy as long as your extension cords are long enough and big enough. Assuming its a 30 amp welder outlet, your cable needs to carry 30 amps. Even so, given the length, I'd recommend manually dropping your charging current to below 24 amps. If you'll be there for a couple of days, I'd go with 16 to 20 amps, just to avoid overloading the cable and outlet. That will give you plenty of charge to make it back to Tucson as well as a few local excursions to show off and enjoy that P85+

Thanks.

My 30 foot extension cable is rated at 50 amps. I expect that would be fine a 30 amp welder outlet, though I suppose there may be other reasons to throttle back on the amps (outlet/adaptor plugs?). And I may need to use my friend’s 100 foot extension cable, and I don’t know what it is rated at. If it’s 50 amps like my 30 ft., it must weigh a ton, as the 30 ft one is godawful heavy itself. I would never one to try to lift 3 of my cables at one time.

 

[LoudMusic]

Thanks. That was along the lines of what I was planning to do. I wasn’t really expecting to need to charge at the Airbnb, just was thinking it might be possible.


I have Tesla adaptors for 14-50 and 10-30, but for the 6-50 I got one from Amazon that had many Tesla users commenting that it worked perfectly for charging their Teslas. This one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V94TD6P/

I thought about getting the Tesla 6-50 adaptor, but as my extension cable is 14-50 and is likely needed due to distance from the outlet, this one seemed the better approach, as it can work with a 6-50 extension cable, at the tesla cable end with the 14-50 adaptor, or with my 14-50 cable end plugged into the outlet.

View attachment 793973

Thanks for the detailed reply. I look forward to your trip report

 

[Earl]

Thanks.

My 30 foot extension cable is rated at 50 amps. I expect that would be fine a 30 amp welder outlet, though I suppose there may be other reasons to throttle back on the amps (outlet/adaptor plugs?). And I may need to use my friend’s 100 foot extension cable, and I don’t know what it is rated at. If it’s 50 amps like my 30 ft., it must weigh a ton, as the 30 ft one is godawful heavy itself. I would never one to try to lift 3 of my cables at one time.

It sounds to me like you've got everything 100% under control and your instincts all sound good. You'll have no trouble.
Now you can just relax and enjoy the trip!

 

[wws]

Before charging at your friends place, check the breaker for the 6-50. If it is a 50 amp breaker, and assuming you have a Gen 1 UMC, you should be fine charging at 40 amps. But if a 40 amp breaker, dial the current down to 32 amps. This because a continuous load, such as EV charging, must max out at 80% of the circuits rating.

Likewise, clothes dryer receptacles are typically either 10-30 (older homes) or 14-30 (newer homes). So you'll want to charge at 24 amps max.

 

[nvilletele]

Before charging at your friends place, check the breaker for the 6-50. If it is a 50 amp breaker, and assuming you have a Gen 1 UMC, you should be fine charging at 40 amps. But if a 40 amp breaker, dial the current down to 32 amps. This because a continuous load, such as EV charging, must max out at 80% of the circuits rating.

Likewise, clothes dryer receptacles are typically either 10-30 (older homes) or 14-30 (newer homes). So you'll want to charge at 24 amps max.

The guy I am visiting is an electrician. He put in a 50 amp breaker. The car charged at 32 amps, without me making any change to the settings. It charged at 22 miles per hour.

 

[nvilletele]

Ok, I am back home in San Diego now. The trip to Tucson and Bisbee went great, no issues of any significance (other than a big scary wildfire across the canyon in Bisbee, but the winds were blowing in the right direction, for us at least.)

On the way to Tucson the Tesla, between Gila Bend and Tucson, the car told me to charge up at a closer location, saying I wouldn’t make it to Tucson, but that charger was five miles off the freeway and I really didn’t want to take the extra time, as I had a tight dinner appointment. So I canceled navigation, then navigated again. The car then told me I was fine to make it to the Tucson charger next to the freeway.

I didn’t get the mileage I would have liked, but it did pretty good I guess, for a performance model with 21” wheels. Average energy for the trip was 375 Wh/mi. Since owning the car, my average has been 343, over 19k miles.

 

[Earl]

Glad to hear of another successful first roadtrip!

 

[Unclepaul]

Emergency backup is always a 120V household adaptor. (The one that comes stock). While you will only get 4-5 miles/hr. often that is enough to get a nice 50 miles overnight.