So, I took a road trip (yesterday - into today) and since I am still relatively new with the car, I wanted to share this "cautionary tale" with new owners. This is how NOT to behave in your Model (S, X or 3).
So, it starts Friday night where I inadvertently forgot to charge at home (I have a HPWC). It's not the first time I've forgotten to charge overnight, but my failure to charge started a chain of events which almost turned into a call for a tow (as a result of my own stupidity).
I woke up on Saturday morning and I got an unexpected call from a friend to meet a friend in Burlington (which is about 120km round trip for me). While I was out, I FORGOT that I had a guy coming to the house to seal my driveway. The Tesla was supposed to stay in the garage and we were going to use my wife's RX for the weekend. Well, since I was almost in Burlington, we scrapped that plan and let him seal the driveway and we would just use the Tesla until we could use the driveway again (24 hours later). This is all happening at about 10am on Saturday morning while he's sealing and I am on the QEW to Burlington.
After meeting with my friend, I get home, I run some errands with my son and upon our return, my wife decides she'd like to pickup some Chinese food, so we leave the house again and get that at 2pm. On the drive home from Chinese, she says... "lets go to Sarnia" (because there was an event in Sarnia she wanted to attend which was starting promptly at 7:00pm. My response was... I have to make sure we have enough juice to get us to Woodstock.
By the time we got back home, I had 188km left on my S90D and Woodstock is about 123km from my house, so I figured it was a go (but I still really hadn't thought through my plan too well).
We booked a hotel in Sarnia (Best Western) and PlugShare showed it as having 5 Wall chargers but the explanation by the one user was sort of dubious.
Off we went on our way to Sarnia (just after 3pm) and we got to Woodstock with 50km left. Close, but still comfortable. At Woodstock, the car was ready to resume after about 20 minutes but I kept charging for as long as I could, yet still make it to my event at 7pm. We charged until Waze said we would get to the hotel at 6:30pm (which would give us enough time to drop our bags and get to our event). That got me to 366km, with the hotel in Sarnia 151km away from Woodstock. So, I figured (even in the worst case scenario I was good because 151 x 2 = 302km, no problem, I had a 64km cushion). I failed to contemplate the drive to and from the event in Sarnia.
Get to the hotel and we are in such a rush to make our event, I don't ask about charging, but PlugShare shows that Sarnia doesn't have a lot of good charging options, other than our hotel. Of course... just over the Bluewater Bridge is a bunch of Telsa Superchargers (we literally could see them from our hotel they were so close - but we failed to bring our passports - so another link in the chain of events of bad planning).
We rush out, go to our event and of course there are no chargers at the event. Not even a wall outlet.
Event ends at 11pm. Back to the hotel and now I'm looking for the wall outlets. Find them, plug in... nothing. They don't work. Go into the hotel and ask about them and I'm told, they don't work and they aren't for Electric Cars even if they did (not exactly an EV friendly hotel).
Kids are cranky, wife is cranky and I'm a bit frustrated because I have 180km of range left for the morning drive.
I figure, with 151km to go to Woodstock, I can make it (because I've seen the youtube video of the guy that gets 20km after 0, so I figure I have enough of a cushion).
12 degrees overnight in Sarnia and Struja is outside (she is normally garage parked at home in a well insulated garage). Get in the car and for some reason I've lost 2km overnight. Not sure why but I'm sure someone can explain. So, I'm at 178 with 151km to drive. A 27km cushion.
I start... I figure I should go easy so I set up the AP on 107km/hr. I can't get Nav to work because it keeps sending me to Port Huron. Finally after driving for 80km, Nav says I can go to Woodstock but I need to slowdown to below 80km/hr and I will arrive with 2% left.
I stay at 107 km/hr (I have NO good explanation for why). I notice now that I have 71km to Woodstock but I only have 85km left on the battery. So, I am thinking... WTF happend to my cushion!!!! (Fully realizing I have no one to blame but myself).
My wife says..."why don't we just find a L2 charger and get enough juice to get there comfortably"... but I insist, we are going Woodstock or bust! (I insist this partly because I have friends driving behind us in their high end ICE car and my pride wouldn't allow me to stop at a crappy L2 charger) - yes... I can hear all of you screaming "so you'd rather end up pulled over on the shoulder of the 401????" (Notice the title of this thread... it isn't a "how to" thread).
Very long story short... I arrived at Woodstock with 9km left in range. The car performed well, in spite of the dumb driver. We made it, in spite of the dumb driver. We charged for about 30 minutes and arrived back to Toronto with about 40%. I must say, I pretty much did everything wrong and I still managed to make it out without pulling to the shoulder.
I do NOT recommend this for anyone. In hindsight, I probably should have gone for the closest L2 chargers nearby (I think there was only 1 viable option because I don't have a Chademo adapter)...either that, or we should have just brought our passports. I think my car hates me right now but she's plugged in now and hopefully happy!
So, it starts Friday night where I inadvertently forgot to charge at home (I have a HPWC). It's not the first time I've forgotten to charge overnight, but my failure to charge started a chain of events which almost turned into a call for a tow (as a result of my own stupidity).
I woke up on Saturday morning and I got an unexpected call from a friend to meet a friend in Burlington (which is about 120km round trip for me). While I was out, I FORGOT that I had a guy coming to the house to seal my driveway. The Tesla was supposed to stay in the garage and we were going to use my wife's RX for the weekend. Well, since I was almost in Burlington, we scrapped that plan and let him seal the driveway and we would just use the Tesla until we could use the driveway again (24 hours later). This is all happening at about 10am on Saturday morning while he's sealing and I am on the QEW to Burlington.
After meeting with my friend, I get home, I run some errands with my son and upon our return, my wife decides she'd like to pickup some Chinese food, so we leave the house again and get that at 2pm. On the drive home from Chinese, she says... "lets go to Sarnia" (because there was an event in Sarnia she wanted to attend which was starting promptly at 7:00pm. My response was... I have to make sure we have enough juice to get us to Woodstock.
By the time we got back home, I had 188km left on my S90D and Woodstock is about 123km from my house, so I figured it was a go (but I still really hadn't thought through my plan too well).
We booked a hotel in Sarnia (Best Western) and PlugShare showed it as having 5 Wall chargers but the explanation by the one user was sort of dubious.
Off we went on our way to Sarnia (just after 3pm) and we got to Woodstock with 50km left. Close, but still comfortable. At Woodstock, the car was ready to resume after about 20 minutes but I kept charging for as long as I could, yet still make it to my event at 7pm. We charged until Waze said we would get to the hotel at 6:30pm (which would give us enough time to drop our bags and get to our event). That got me to 366km, with the hotel in Sarnia 151km away from Woodstock. So, I figured (even in the worst case scenario I was good because 151 x 2 = 302km, no problem, I had a 64km cushion). I failed to contemplate the drive to and from the event in Sarnia.
Get to the hotel and we are in such a rush to make our event, I don't ask about charging, but PlugShare shows that Sarnia doesn't have a lot of good charging options, other than our hotel. Of course... just over the Bluewater Bridge is a bunch of Telsa Superchargers (we literally could see them from our hotel they were so close - but we failed to bring our passports - so another link in the chain of events of bad planning).
We rush out, go to our event and of course there are no chargers at the event. Not even a wall outlet.
Event ends at 11pm. Back to the hotel and now I'm looking for the wall outlets. Find them, plug in... nothing. They don't work. Go into the hotel and ask about them and I'm told, they don't work and they aren't for Electric Cars even if they did (not exactly an EV friendly hotel).
Kids are cranky, wife is cranky and I'm a bit frustrated because I have 180km of range left for the morning drive.
I figure, with 151km to go to Woodstock, I can make it (because I've seen the youtube video of the guy that gets 20km after 0, so I figure I have enough of a cushion).
12 degrees overnight in Sarnia and Struja is outside (she is normally garage parked at home in a well insulated garage). Get in the car and for some reason I've lost 2km overnight. Not sure why but I'm sure someone can explain. So, I'm at 178 with 151km to drive. A 27km cushion.
I start... I figure I should go easy so I set up the AP on 107km/hr. I can't get Nav to work because it keeps sending me to Port Huron. Finally after driving for 80km, Nav says I can go to Woodstock but I need to slowdown to below 80km/hr and I will arrive with 2% left.
I stay at 107 km/hr (I have NO good explanation for why). I notice now that I have 71km to Woodstock but I only have 85km left on the battery. So, I am thinking... WTF happend to my cushion!!!! (Fully realizing I have no one to blame but myself).
My wife says..."why don't we just find a L2 charger and get enough juice to get there comfortably"... but I insist, we are going Woodstock or bust! (I insist this partly because I have friends driving behind us in their high end ICE car and my pride wouldn't allow me to stop at a crappy L2 charger) - yes... I can hear all of you screaming "so you'd rather end up pulled over on the shoulder of the 401????" (Notice the title of this thread... it isn't a "how to" thread).
Very long story short... I arrived at Woodstock with 9km left in range. The car performed well, in spite of the dumb driver. We made it, in spite of the dumb driver. We charged for about 30 minutes and arrived back to Toronto with about 40%. I must say, I pretty much did everything wrong and I still managed to make it out without pulling to the shoulder.
I do NOT recommend this for anyone. In hindsight, I probably should have gone for the closest L2 chargers nearby (I think there was only 1 viable option because I don't have a Chademo adapter)...either that, or we should have just brought our passports. I think my car hates me right now but she's plugged in now and hopefully happy!