I’ve had my P85 for a month. My longest prior trip was Dallas to Austin, where I took advantage of the Waco Supercharger so that I could drive however I wanted, with no regard for energy usage.
Over the past couple of weeks, however, I’ve been facing a trip to Tyler for an afternoon appointment. I’ve been studying google maps, plugshare, recargo, chargepoint.com, noaa.gov weather, the onion, and every possible source of information for insight into the best way to make the trip. I waffled between driving conservatively to make it on one charge and driving like a bat out of hell and detouring to Corsicana for a Supercharge on the way back to Dallas. There are chargers in the Tyler area, but they seem able to provide no more than 17 miles per hour or so and it quickly became clear that if I was going to charge en route, it made more sense to detour to Corsicana for a Supercharge than it would be to sit at a Nissan dealer in Tyler (maybe, if they were cooperative) to get 17 mi/hr.
As a result, the decision was basically: do I drive conservatively and hope that I can make a 250 mile round trip on a single charge or resign myself to a Supercharger detour, which would add nearly 90 minutes to the trip, considering additional travel time?
I took a leap of faith and decided that I could make a 250 mile round trip on a single charge. As it turned out, the journey was amazingly trouble-free. Best of all, I had about 60 miles remaining upon my return home.
Below are further details.
One odd thing: I was watching the charge countdown on the phone and it stalled at 1 minute remaining. After three minutes watching the "1 minute remaining" on my phone, I went to the garage and the car display read "Determining remaining charge time" or something like that. It, too, seemed stuck. With it showing 266 miles rated range, I figured it was as charged as it was gonna get, so I unplugged and left.
For those of you familiar with the Dallas area, I took Route 75 to 635 to 80 to 20 to 69 into Tyler. Except for a couple of construction spots on I-20, I was able to go my chosen speed the entire way there. On the return trip, I hit the 635/75 “high five” interchange at 5:02 pm. If you’ve seen the opening scenes of the movie Office Space where the guy stuck in rush hour traffic is being outpaced by an old man in a walker, you have an accurate image of northbound 75 at 5 pm on a weekday.
An observation on stop and go traffic: Depending on the type of stop and go traffic, it can be very energy efficient. Slow, yes, but not a big demand at all on the battery. If one is able to keep a large enough following distance and find a speed that's equivalent to the average of the ICE vehicles’ “dash and stop” behavior, the Model S can travel 10 to 20 mph in rush hour traffic consuming as little as 125 Wh/mi. The killer is when traffic stops completely, zooms to 30 or 40 mph, only to stop fully again moments later. An hour of this is a huge hit on the battery. Fortunately, I didn't face any of that yesterday.
For most of the journey, I kept the cruise control between 58 and 65 mph and the HVAC on range mode. Ambient temp was high 60's to low 70's and I kept the setting on 68 all day. Driving this way is quite unlike my normal "bat out of hell" way of driving an ICE, dodging police, and refilling whenever I needed. I found it quite relaxing, actually.
My average Wh/mi was around 250 for most of the trip, which meant that my projected range was always higher than my rated. As expected, the gap between the two narrowed as the numbers shrank. When I returned home, rated was 55 and projected was 62. (I may be off by a couple of miles. Didn't take a picture of that screen.)
I did stop at a drive-thru to grab dinner for the family on my way back, so the last six miles or so were rather spirited driving, by comparison to the rest of the day, as I rushed the food home before it got cold.
Trip metrics:
Total Distance: 248.5 miles
Total Energy: 65.4 kWh
Avg Energy: 263 Wh/mi
Taking a trip like this is a huge comfort, knowing what a positive effect on range traveling a consistent 60 mph or so is. I'm also pleased to see 266 miles rated range on a range charge. This is the first time I've done a range charge and the car has 6,000 miles on it. (No, I didn't put 6,000 miles on it in a month. It was a service loaner, purchased with about 4,500 miles on it.)
Over the past couple of weeks, however, I’ve been facing a trip to Tyler for an afternoon appointment. I’ve been studying google maps, plugshare, recargo, chargepoint.com, noaa.gov weather, the onion, and every possible source of information for insight into the best way to make the trip. I waffled between driving conservatively to make it on one charge and driving like a bat out of hell and detouring to Corsicana for a Supercharge on the way back to Dallas. There are chargers in the Tyler area, but they seem able to provide no more than 17 miles per hour or so and it quickly became clear that if I was going to charge en route, it made more sense to detour to Corsicana for a Supercharge than it would be to sit at a Nissan dealer in Tyler (maybe, if they were cooperative) to get 17 mi/hr.
As a result, the decision was basically: do I drive conservatively and hope that I can make a 250 mile round trip on a single charge or resign myself to a Supercharger detour, which would add nearly 90 minutes to the trip, considering additional travel time?
I took a leap of faith and decided that I could make a 250 mile round trip on a single charge. As it turned out, the journey was amazingly trouble-free. Best of all, I had about 60 miles remaining upon my return home.
Below are further details.
- I left midday yesterday. The night before leaving, I charged to 90%. I ran a few quick errands in the morning and returned home to begin a range charge. At 240 volts/40 amps from my NEMA 14-50 and mobile charger, I went from slightly less than 90% to a full range charge in 1 hour and 15 minutes, resulting in 266 miles of rated range.
- Within a few minutes of reaching the full range charge, I jumped in the car and headed for Tyler.
One odd thing: I was watching the charge countdown on the phone and it stalled at 1 minute remaining. After three minutes watching the "1 minute remaining" on my phone, I went to the garage and the car display read "Determining remaining charge time" or something like that. It, too, seemed stuck. With it showing 266 miles rated range, I figured it was as charged as it was gonna get, so I unplugged and left.
For those of you familiar with the Dallas area, I took Route 75 to 635 to 80 to 20 to 69 into Tyler. Except for a couple of construction spots on I-20, I was able to go my chosen speed the entire way there. On the return trip, I hit the 635/75 “high five” interchange at 5:02 pm. If you’ve seen the opening scenes of the movie Office Space where the guy stuck in rush hour traffic is being outpaced by an old man in a walker, you have an accurate image of northbound 75 at 5 pm on a weekday.
An observation on stop and go traffic: Depending on the type of stop and go traffic, it can be very energy efficient. Slow, yes, but not a big demand at all on the battery. If one is able to keep a large enough following distance and find a speed that's equivalent to the average of the ICE vehicles’ “dash and stop” behavior, the Model S can travel 10 to 20 mph in rush hour traffic consuming as little as 125 Wh/mi. The killer is when traffic stops completely, zooms to 30 or 40 mph, only to stop fully again moments later. An hour of this is a huge hit on the battery. Fortunately, I didn't face any of that yesterday.
For most of the journey, I kept the cruise control between 58 and 65 mph and the HVAC on range mode. Ambient temp was high 60's to low 70's and I kept the setting on 68 all day. Driving this way is quite unlike my normal "bat out of hell" way of driving an ICE, dodging police, and refilling whenever I needed. I found it quite relaxing, actually.
My average Wh/mi was around 250 for most of the trip, which meant that my projected range was always higher than my rated. As expected, the gap between the two narrowed as the numbers shrank. When I returned home, rated was 55 and projected was 62. (I may be off by a couple of miles. Didn't take a picture of that screen.)
I did stop at a drive-thru to grab dinner for the family on my way back, so the last six miles or so were rather spirited driving, by comparison to the rest of the day, as I rushed the food home before it got cold.
Trip metrics:
Total Distance: 248.5 miles
Total Energy: 65.4 kWh
Avg Energy: 263 Wh/mi
Taking a trip like this is a huge comfort, knowing what a positive effect on range traveling a consistent 60 mph or so is. I'm also pleased to see 266 miles rated range on a range charge. This is the first time I've done a range charge and the car has 6,000 miles on it. (No, I didn't put 6,000 miles on it in a month. It was a service loaner, purchased with about 4,500 miles on it.)
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