First road trip Orlando to Knoxville - tips?

[YellyYeti]

We will be driving from Orlando to Knoxville in a few days, it will be our first real road trip in our 100D Model X. Charging looks pretty straightforward. We are planning on starting early in the morning with a 100% charge, then stopping in Tifton, GA if we can make it (256 miles), or Lake City, FL if we cannot. Then we would work the bottom half of the battery through Tifton, Macon, Atlanta, and Chattanooga, until our destination just south of Knoxville, where we have a 14-50 available. Any tips? I think we will try to avoid the Chattanooga airport (hard to get into?) by fully charging in Atlanta while eating dinner so we can make it to our destination that is 200 miles away. I read the Atlanta Supercharger thread, it looks like a nice location once you figure out how to get in there. Macon looks like it might be iffy at night but we should be there in the early afternoon. Normally the trip takes 11 hours in an ICE car, with stops, I am curious to see how long it will take us.

 

[verygreen]

The takeaway I have from my first (and so far only) trip in X100D is:
When supercharging - monitor the charge rate remotely via the app - it might drop prematurely due to handle overheat, so be ready to return to the car and move it to another stall - might save you a bunch of time (happened to me every time)
On the longer legs if you have 6% left predicted at destination - you'll get nags to drive less than 70 or so mph, and at 5% less than 65 mph, I think. Those are BS, ignore them IF your predicted SoC at destination does not change (and you don't expect increased usage further down the road due to a hill or whatever). The nag is just that - a nag. If the destination SoC drops below 5% and keeps dropping - then you know you are in trouble and might want to reduce the speed.
I drove from Lexington, KY to Knoxville at 85mph accompanied by those annoying nags and made it with 7% left (in fact nags stopped eventually once some internal remaining threshold of SoC left moved closer to 7%).

 

[Drucifer]

The only thing I would add is that at each supercharger stop, plug in and then enter your NEXT destination into navigation when you START charging. That way you can figure out when to leave and not stick around needlessly during the slow part of charging at the top of the battery charge state.

I am more conservative on the "nags". If I am going 78 and the Tesla says to reduce speed to 65 to reach destination, I split the difference (in this case maybe 72 mph) and monitor.

 

[jelloslug]

The Macon, GA Supercharger is kind of out of the way if you are just passing though and it's in what I consider a "shady" location.

 

[verygreen]

The only thing I would add is that at each supercharger stop, plug in and then enter your NEXT destination into navigation when you START charging.

Huh?
If you enter the final destination at the start of the trip, then as you charge the next supercharger stop is already there.
The only annoyance is if the supercharger overheats and you need to unplug and plug into another stall, it confuses the navigation system and t thiks you are departing and adds some more changing stops on the way that you then need to manually remove.

 

[Drucifer]

Huh?
If you enter the final destination at the start of the trip, then as you charge the next supercharger stop is already there.
The only annoyance is if the supercharger overheats and you need to unplug and plug into another stall, it confuses the navigation system and t thiks you are departing and adds some more changing stops on the way that you then need to manually remove.

I'm probably not doing "best practices", but since I have gotten some weird routings doing the final destination, I just go with one "destination" at a time. That always works.

 

[verygreen]

I'm probably not doing "best practices", but since I have gotten some weird routings doing the final destination, I just go with one "destination" at a time. That always works.

Yes, the in-car navigation is pathetically bad.
I typically still plug my final destination in the nav, but then ignore the directions and use google maps on my phone instead until I get to a major highway (this is for longer trips anyway). From thereon the nav is usually matches google maps suggestions and could be trusted until the last stretch where again I might need to fall back on the google maps navigation (still have the nav running in the car for the energy tracking purposes).