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Has anyone seen a video of roadtrip M3 vs ICU?

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All valid points. Let's not see this as a race but as the following situation ... 6 friends want to go from London to Fort William in Scotland to see the Glenfinnan Viaduct. One has a M3 and the other car is a normal ICE. They leave at the same time, take it relaxed, don't speed and stop when they have to (fill up, have lunch, stop for a toilet).

Out of the box, Abetterrouteplanner adds under 1-1/2 hours charging to a 9 hour trip. Well within natural stops. And £38 in charge costs.

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Out of the box, Abetterrouteplanner adds under 1-1/2 hours charging to a 9 hour trip. Well within natural stops. And £38 in charge costs.

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Is that a SR+ ? That or some excessive conservative settings. I've done Charnock to Abington pretty easily in a LR, can always bail at Gretna if it's looking dicey.

That last stint from Abington to Fort Bill would be a killer, you'll probably need a human break when it's not motorway.

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Probably conservative settings as I hadn't reset anything since last long trip so a long time ago so it would have used that. I normally use bad case scenario, so typically 20-90 charge, cold, wet and windy,10% battery degradation and enough arrival charge to be able to drive around freely.
 
Think my days of heroic long stints driving silly distances are over.

But I like the comparison. Roughly would say for a Model 3 LR for every 3-4 hours driving you need to stop for 45-60 minutes charging, if conditions at SuC are with you and you get lucky on charging location vs total mileage, you can pretty much go wherever you need to in the UK in a day.

Am really looking forward to a proper road trip up through Germany, Denmark and Sweden when the world allows, should be epic .....
 
I think a lot can depend on your route and normal patterns.

I have two long journeys I'm hoping to be able to do later in the year, both are ones that I've done before so I know what my usual routine would be anyway.

In my old ICE car I could comfortably go there and back on a full tank, but I know the Tesla won't do that (~410 mile round trip and ~580 mile round trip), so I will have to charge at least once.

First one I stop at a services that's almost exactly half way that now has a Supercharger, so on the way there I'll plug in and just let the car top up as much as it can in my stop (typically 20-25 minutes) and having checked out my destination there's now a BP Pulse charger in the hotel car park a second one in a hotel more or less across the road and a third in a supermarket around the corner, so unless I'm really unlucky I should have no trouble charging when I get there and best case it'll be at the hotel. I won't need to charge on the return journey, that'll be easy to make even without a full charge.

Total additional time for my journey will therefore be maybe an extra five minutes because the Superchargers at the services are further away than I would normally park from the entrance. I suppose you could add another five minutes to move the car once it's charged at the hotel, but that's not part of the actual journey.


Second journey I plan on stopping about ten minutes earlier on the road for lunch because that's where a Supercharger is; other option would be my usual stop, but the charger there is a Polar one, so I'm not planning on paying the extra simply to stick to my routine.

At my destination there's a Supercharger near the town centre, so I'll use that when I go shopping/grab lunch one day while I'm there.

The return journey is a little less convenient, I'll have to stop at the same Supercharger as I did outbound, which is earlier than I would normally stop, but it's the last rapid charging place before I get home about 170 miles later.

Total additional time is therefore going to be something like 15-20 minutes (I think) on the return leg because I'll probably end up stopping for lunch at my usual place on the way back (it'll be far too early at the SC).


I did both of these journeys in 2019 while paying attention to charging options because I was already thinking about an EV and they were both considerably less convenient - only one of the SCs were there and none of the BP ones.

And of course for both journeys I can charge at home, so I don't have to spend 20-25 minutes driving to a petrol station and filling up the day before I go or when I come back. That means the ICE option is quicker on the day(s), but overall takes more time out of my life.

On top of all of that I don't have to go for fuel once or twice a month now either, overall I'm probably saving 16-20 hours every year and next time there's a fuel shortage I'll be laughing (I remember waiting 3½ hours for fuel during the crisis/blockade of 2000).
 
On top of all of that I don't have to go for fuel once or twice a month now either, overall I'm probably saving 16-20 hours every year and next time there's a fuel shortage I'll be laughing (I remember waiting 3½ hours for fuel during the crisis/blockade of 2000).

That was scary! I very nearly didn't make it home after stopping at multiple service stations on the motorway trying to find petrol. I was driving on fumes when I finally found some.
 
On top of all of that I don't have to go for fuel once or twice a month now either, overall I'm probably saving 16-20 hours every year and next time there's a fuel shortage I'll be laughing (I remember waiting 3½ hours for fuel during the crisis/blockade of 2000).

Conversely, hopefully the blackouts are a thing of the past - Living Through the 1970's Blackouts - Generator Power - iirc at least we knew when the power was going to be cut and reinstated.
 
I have done a trip to Poland in both an ICE Merc A class and a SR+ and to be honest there really wasn’t that much difference. I had my family so organised our breaks with the SC stops.

From memory I stopped 5 times in my ICE for breaks and it took 16hrs including eurotunnel and about the 17hrs in the SR+ with 6 stops although traffic was kinder in the Tesla the weather was worse.

The big difference was I felt fine driving the whole journey in the Tesla but in the ICE I struggled and needed someone else to take over for a bit.

It was also well over half the cost for me in the Tesla for my entire trip as I had access to free 50kw charging in Poland.
 
There are lots of variables so not really as good a test as it may seem. Traffic can make a huge difference eve when starting just seconds apart.

I use to model traffic in urban environments across a midlands city - predominately a major traffic corridor. It was done to compare the effects of air quality by running different traffic light phasing plans in parallel on a clone of the real traffic control system. We didn't always run a different plan especially when developing the system so often like for like but sometimes a few seconds apart. We found that even this small discrepancy in departure time could make a significant difference - 10% wasn't unusual.

Now I realise that this was an urban environment, but many years ago I have witnessed this myself - younger so no stopping involved just different driving decisions. I was travelling north about 200 miles, starting about 2 miles from the start of the motorway. A mate of mine was travelling further north but we met up and started together, We both got stuck in major traffic around Birmingham, but he hit it about 10 minutes earlier - it was an Easter weekend and this traffic hit the national news so exceptionally bad. By the time everything had cleared he phoned in and he had a huge advantage on us. Same time, same route, certainly would not have been exceeding speed limits significantly, but mostly different luck due to different driving decisions.

Years back I used to attend the occasional meeting at one site that required me to join the M4 at Reading. I found that I could arrive at the site after 10:30, or before 09:30, but never between those times due to the peak period for traffic joining the M4 at that junction.