First trip requiring Supercharger

[MSullivan]

Just a quick day trip to the White Mountains from Southern NH. Started out fully charged in a 75D from Hooksett for the 206 mile round trip back to the SC.
On the return leg I put in my house as the destination and the car said drive under 55 and I would arrive at my house with 3% range.
I ignored this advice (as I said I knew I was stopping on the way home for a quick charge) and drove the speed limit.
The range went to below 0% and all it did was nag me to slow down. It never suggested a SC stop, even as I got to the exit it for the SC it didn't.
How could it let me drive by the last SC before arriving home with an indication I would run out of energy?

 

[mikeash]

Do you have the trip planner functionality enabled in the settings? It's optional. Without that, the car will just route directly to the destination you input, and never suggest charging.

 

[andrewket]

Do you have the trip planner functionality enabled in the settings? It's optional. Without that, the car will just route directly to the destination you input, and never suggest charging.

This.

 

[MSullivan]

Do you have the trip planner functionality enabled in the settings? It's optional. Without that, the car will just route directly to the destination you input, and never suggest charging.

Yes it is enabled. I have used it to show people how it works, I input Miami and it has me stopping all along the east coast.

 

[bob_p]

The Trip Planner is correctly labelled as "beta" - and cannot be relied upon 100%.

We just completed our first long road trip - and if we'd relied on the Trip Planner, we'd have risked driving long periods at very slow speeds - to stretch the charge out long enough to reach a supercharger.

On our last day, we hit 20-25 MPH headwinds - and because the Trip Planner doesn't take wind into account, it was way, way, way too optimistic on how much charge we needed at each supercharger. And even though we waited at each supercharger to take on additional charge, we still had to slow down during each leg.

Trip Planner recommended we skip some SC's on our trip - and we overrode that recommendation in at least one case.

In addition to using the Trip Planner, we used our "30-30" rule before leaving a charger - waiting until we had enough range for 130% of the distance to the next charger, plus a buffer of 30 (or sometimes 20) miles of range to handle unexpected weather or traffic conditions.

Then while driving, we would monitor the projected range to destination in the navigation window, and start slowing down when we go down to 7-10% of charge projected at the destination. We also monitored the distance to the next charger and the rated range on the speedometer, and also slowed down if the difference dropped below 30.

The Trip Planner is a good start - but needs a lot more work in order for it to be reliable. To really be useful, it should allow the driver to configure the target speed (relative to speed limit) and should take into account the projected traffic and weather conditions on the route. Plus, it should be possible to configure how much cushion the driver wants at the destination (20 or 30 miles of range), to handle unexpected situations.

I suggest you report your case to Tesla - so they can look at what happened and report the problem back to the Trip Planner software team.

 

[Sandman1962]

I just got back from my first medium distance trip with the MS to Los Angeles and back. I have many observations about the trip, including supercharging, autopilot, frequent stops, my dashcam, other owners, but the pertinent one here is that the tripplanner does serve as only a guide. It lets you know when you can continue your trip to the next supercharger, yes. But there may not be enough reserve range to allow you to arrive at the next destination without a lot of range anxiety. So I just charged it a bit longer, took a short walk, and was on my way. I did also find that I arrived with more range than it estimated, not by much, but I like that better than the other way around.

 

[MSullivan]

Overly ambitious claims from Elon and Tesla last year made me think it worked better than that:

Tesla makes it 'impossible' to accidentally run out of juice - Roadshow

I guess he thinks slowing to 50 mph on an Interstate is reasonable.

 

[byan1232]

Actually the trip planner is too conservative with my MS. I took a road trip from NJ to CA and back and it always had me charge when I could have reached the next SpC. Although I usually arrive wth 20miles to spare, maybe I should have stopped into between in case there was any issues

 

[ddimit]

I have always found that if you buffer around 30 miles above what the planner recommends you are good to go. A couple of times I only did 20 above the recommended and it was a nail biter.

 

[TaoJones]

There are plenty of legs across the country for which Nav/Trip Planner will leave you stranded on the side of the road at worst, and driving 20-30mph below the speed limit at best. There are also plenty of flat or downhill stretches with little wind and good wx for which Nav/Trip Planner does a marvelous job.

For unfamiliar stretches, do keep evtripplanner.com and in particular the downloadable .csv file in mind - especially for an understanding of which legs have significant net positive elevation.

130-140% over rated is a good rule of thumb, as is, for challenging legs, just adding 30% on top of whenever Nav/Trip Planner says yer good to go - which tends to be at 7%-13% over rated. Great buffer for flat warm non-windy ground. But if you want to avoid an almost immediate and arbitrary route reversal back to the last SC for half your leg (which itself can lead to unpleasant and unexpected results) and/or constant warnings to drive 45mph, do realize that it is more efficient to charge to, say 20% over rated at minimum, which might take an extra 12-15 minutes, than to lose 20 minutes or more driving below the speed limit and sometimes by a lot. What a waste of a perfectly good 80mph speed limit in many cases.

Over the course of a travel day, those 20 minuteses can and do add up. I like adequate amounts of sleep. Nav/Trip Planner negatively impacts that unless I make adjustments. Fortunately, those adjustments are easy to make.

Another example would be Nav/Trip Planner's penchant for avoiding interim SCs if it perceives you have enough charge. Well, again, what it perceives and what is realistic are often two different things. Note after tapping the Trip button the "Remove charging stops" option. Select that once in awhile for an idea of what other charging options exist. If it's windy and uphill, an interim stop is often not a terrible idea.

And so it goes. All it takes for a bad experience on the side of the road is to blindly follow Nav/Trip Planner and to have it be wrong once. It's wrong a lot, actually. Usually that just costs some extra time (see slowing down to get there above) - no big deal and lesson learned. However, there are some times when you'll be SOL, and a good way to avoid that is to simply charge a little extra until you've had the opportunity to transit the leg, ideally in both directions, at least once.

Once you know, you know. Easy peasy.

 

[MSullivan]

I understand all that and indeed that is why I was smart enough to disregard Tesla's advice and stop for an electron top off.
What I found surprising is my Tesla was going to let me drive by the last supercharger on the way home, that it estimated I would arrive with 3% charge if I drove less than 50 mph, and it didn't recommend I get off.
Almost like Elon is trying to save $2 in electricity at the risk of stranding me.