Its been almost a month since delivery so the family and I took a vacation from North GA to Savannah GA, a total of 1,150 miles over the trip. The trip down there was very nice, stopped to charge once along the way and then hit up some free charging once we got there. Not one time did either of us have range anxiety or have a hard time charging. I made sure to send pictures to friends when I got some free juice, I NEVER got free gas. We got as low as 10% on the way home and still no range anxiety, just pissed at traffic adding 3 hours to the drive home. Below is the distance and charging stats from Tessie. We have a much longer trip planned for the end of August.
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First Road Trip
- Thread starter LiquidXTC
- Start date
There are a few people on this forum and other places I go to talk about EVs that profess it isn't worthwhile to recharge the car at overnight stops when there are Superchargers available. I find it HIGHLY beneficial. It often eliminates two Supercharger stops which could be as much as an hour of unnecessary stoppage, plus the cost which is constantly on the rise.
I'm glad you had a good trip. I hope you have more successful journeys
I'm glad you had a good trip. I hope you have more successful journeys
Just finished a 6K cross country trip, and I can assure you staying at hotels that offer free charging is worthwhile.
Every hotel I stayed at offered free charging, and I left with 100% charge. Extends driving to first SC stop, and I would agree it saves at least one stop after leaving hotel, and maybe $15-20 in SC fees. I stayed at 6 hotels on this trip, and saved at least $100 in SC fees.
I can attest that SC fees have gone up considerably. Same trip last year was about $130 cheaper in SC cost.
Still cheaper than gas. 6K trip cost about $325 in charging fees. Added about 2 hrs/day travel time. Trip home was 2400 miles in 3 days. Third time I did this.
Every hotel I stayed at offered free charging, and I left with 100% charge. Extends driving to first SC stop, and I would agree it saves at least one stop after leaving hotel, and maybe $15-20 in SC fees. I stayed at 6 hotels on this trip, and saved at least $100 in SC fees.
I can attest that SC fees have gone up considerably. Same trip last year was about $130 cheaper in SC cost.
Still cheaper than gas. 6K trip cost about $325 in charging fees. Added about 2 hrs/day travel time. Trip home was 2400 miles in 3 days. Third time I did this.
I can’t understand who would make such a silly argument. For both cost and time efficiency reasons, why would anyone skip the option to charge while sleeping.
I too am new to tripping and still getting to know the lifestyle, so far no range anxiety here either. Which app did you use to get this data from? I can't find this data / presentation via the Tesla app... Thx.
I imagine there are two cases where that view makes some sense.
- You have an older Tesla with Free Unlimited Supercharging (FUSC).
- You still have free supercharging miles from the referral program that ended last year.
As older cars go out of service, or get sold to new owners--the free supercharging doesn't always transfer--the first case will become less and less common, as well.
Even though it takes a little more time, unless your last supercharger of the day is close to the hotel where you are staying, I can see the appeal of being able to choose a hotel for factors other than access to free Level 2 charging.
Of course, I never had the advantage of either case. I only had 1,000 referral miles from taking someone's referral, which was used up on trips to see family and back-and-forth to kid's college. I've taken four dedicated road trips in my first year of ownership, and the majority of the time, I've been able to stay at hotels with free Level 2 charging.
Note that in the first case (older Teslas with FUSC), many of those cars have substantially lower Supercharging speeds (and steeper taper curves) than "modern" cars. My 2015 Model S 85D falls in this category...the maximum Supercharging rate it's ever achieved was somewhere around 120 kW, and that was only for a minute or so in nearly-ideal conditions. (mumble mumble chargegate mumble mumble) For owners of these cars, eliminating a Supercharger stop can actually be a significant time savings, even if it doesn't save any dollars due to the FUSC.
Bruce.
Yes--me.
Way to be narrow minded, pal.
Three reasons, mainly:
1. Yes, I do have an older car with free unlimited Supercharging
2. I generally prefer to use AirBNBs, which are cheaper than the hotels with charging (usually very expensive).
3. Hotels unreliable. My wife and I chose a hotel on purpose that offered charging on a trip to Bend, OR last year. I wasn't able to use any of it. They had one Tesla wall connector, which it turned out was already being used by another Tesla. And then they had two J1772 plugs from a Chargepoint station. But I read the usage and fee structure, and it had only a 5 hour time limit!! And after that, it was $2 per hour idle fees! I would have had my car not fully charged up and been hit with $10 in idle fees. No &%#$ing thank you. So the Supercharger I knew would be available and reliable and free.
bradtem
Robocar consultant
If you are staying at an AirBNB with no charging, you are not passing up the opportunity to charge, there just isn't charging where you are staying.
The statement is more about why anybody would not charge at a hotel, all other things being roughly equal. For example if your hotel happens to have charging, or there were two hotels you were looking at, one with charging and one without, of similar price. Anybody can understand how you might pick a hotel or airbnb that is cheaper or otherwise better for you, and then supercharge -- even if you didn't have free miles.
The main thing free miles would make you do is use supercharging instead of expensive level 2 charging. Now, for me, I still pick paid level 2 over free supercharger fairly often because a) My free supercharger miles are not unlimited but I do expect to use them all before they expire and b) Charging at hotel involves no detours, and zero waiting time, and is easier on my battery. But if you are very focused on just cost, you might use free supercharging over hotel charging.
Most hotel charging is free, and even paid almost never has idle fees because that would be stupid at a hotel. (In general no L2 charger should charge idle fees between midnight and 8am, because for most people that's going to mean "just don't use that charger.") In fact, it would be nice if superchargers promised no idle fees in the middle of the night because in reality they don't fill up at night but you can't be 100% sure they won't get to 50% and hit you with huge fees. I stayed at a motel next to a supercharger and it would have been convenient to leave the car there overnight and it would not have blocked anybody from charging, but one could not risk it.
RichAZ/CapeCod
Member
Slight (?) hijack. I use PlugShare to find hotels/motels with chargers. Is there another way which would be useful to know?
Rich
(+12,000 road trip EV miles to date)
Rich
(+12,000 road trip EV miles to date)
bradtem
Robocar consultant
Hotels.com has it as an amenity but doesn't have the database of plugshare. Plugshare also finds hotels that have charging down the block, which is often good to know about, sometimes not what you want. Airbnb has a way to search for Airbnbs that have charging but it's not in the standard UI, you have to hand-craft the search URL -- you can find web pages about how to do that.
Google has all the data but no way I know of to search it. What you want, ideally, is to be able to search hotels with available rooms, showing prices, either filtered by the presence of (reservable) charging or showing an icon if they have charging. Nobody has that though I guess hotels.com is closest.
I noticed just recently that AirBnB has added a filter for "EV charger". It still hard to find, but if you click Show more under the Amenities section of the Filter pop-up window, it shows up in the Features section. (Similar how you have to click Show more under Amenities in Hotels.com)
Maybe one day soon, filters for EV charging will be popular enough to be shown all the time.
RichAZ/CapeCod
Member
Yes it does, and I addressed that specifically in my answer.
You are moving the goalposts and adding new conditions that weren't there in the original question. You are stating this as if you are already AT the hotel that has the charging, would you reach over the grab the handle and plug in? Well yeah, of course. But that's not what the question was.
The question as phrased that I was responding to was this exact wording:
That was strictly about do you choose to book a hotel that has charging, or decide to stay somewhere else and use Superchargers? There was no mention of costs being equal, and I very much think that is exactly the point. Some people think it is a higher priority to intentionally pay significantly more for that very reason of having the extra convenience of the overnight charging. I've heard many people explicitly say that. And I am pointing out, that's not always true for everyone.
And it was one of my specific reasons I gave was that when I paid more to choose a hotel that did have charging, I wasn't able to use it anyway. So it may not be worth it to take that risk which may just be a waste of money if it doesn't pay off.
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