First road trip in an X

[Corbets]

No pictures, though maybe I’ll get some later. Still, I felt it was worth sharing the experience after my first 8 hours.

Yesterday we drove from Zug (Switzerland) to Kassel (Germany) as part of a two-day road trip to Denmark. It was our first experience driving any kind of Tesla beyond the test drive when we ordered our X - which incidentally hasn’t arrived yet; this is an older 90D which we’ve rented for our summer holiday.

After yesterday’s drive, I can quite comfortably say that supercharging is a complete non-issue. Just follow the instructions of the Navi, and by the time the dog has been walked, watered and fed (not necessarily in that order), and mommy and daddy have maybe had a quick bite at whatever local fast food chain is nearby... the car is ready for the next hop, and typically has already started charging beyond what we needed. I definitely didn’t feel at all Iike we were waiting on the car. And since the Navi incorporates the fueling stops (unlike the Navi in my S5) we stayed true to the planned arrival time from the beginning, which was a nice surprise.

Additionally, I quickly built a comfort level with the autopilot. The phantom braking is annoying (happened to me about 3 times), it did try to run me off the road once, and the performance in construction zone is, well, non-performance, but for all that it’s amazing. It took me a while to get the pressure just right to keep the sensor aware that I was aware, but once I did that and learned how to do the automatic lane changes, it became a breeze to drive. Totally don’t want to ever drive anything else again!

I will say that we drove a bit slower than normal, particularly on the last leg - we wanted to spare the battery - but what’s another 10 or 15 minutes on an 8 hour drive anyway?

Incidentally, the Schlosshotel Bad-Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel is great value, and has 4 charging stations for Tesla. Staff were super helpful too. Highly recommended!

So far, quite happy. Looking forward to day 2!

 

[Corbets]

Today we drove the rest of the way from Kassel to Aarhus (Denmark). We started the day at 100%, as I over breakfast told the car to finish charging from 90% up to 100%. That gave us the range we needed to get to our next supercharger between Hannover and Hamburg. Interestingly, the car was warning me that I should keep it under 125kph in order to make it to my destination (which it forecast at 5%) but based on the previous’ day’s experience of the same, I actually kept it closer to 135 and ended up with 15% when I got to that charger.

Things worked beautifully again, and this time the auto pilot seemed comfortable with most construction zones (or it was immediately apparent where it would have problems, for example when the old and new lines veered away from each other). It was amazing for my fiancée in stop and go traffic as well.

The only snag was when we got to our destination, the in-law’s house. We were a bit dismayed to realize that the universal mobile charger... doesn’t work. Half a second green, then three red flashes. I know conclusively it worked yesterday with the Swiss adapter, and I’ve tried a bunch of outlets around the house with the EU adapter, so I’m hoping it’s just the Swiss adapter and that a trip to the hardware store tomorrow for a high-rated EU->Swiss adapter should do the trick (something that can handle that kind of draw for half a day at a time). But... we’ll see. Otherwise, I’ll wind up spending a bit of time at a nearby supercharger, and I’m not sure what I’ll do at the summer house at the back end of nowhere next week.