That’s right, this is your first Tesla. General rule with the typical battery is the recommendation not to charge over 90% on a daily basis, for three reasons, in order of importance:
- It impacts battery longevity
- It takes forever to get that last 10%
- You don’t get regen braking when you’re at that high charge. The brakes still work, but it’ll be a little disconcerting if you’re used to one pedal driving
The one published exception is when you’re about to go on a long trip. So, using the car’s built-in charging options, one typically charges starting in the wee hours so the car is maxed out just before leaving. It’s cheaper that way, too: home charging is typically 2x or 3x cheaper than SC charging.
The other bit that people have been alluding to is that the
rate of charge is much, much faster when the battery State of Charge (SOC) is tiny rather than full. At 5% to 10% you’ll get the full blast of that 250kw (or whatever) SC. By the time one gets to 30% or 40% the car starts limiting the charge rate. When one gets to 80%, it doesn’t matter what kind of SC one is hooked to, the charge rate will be 60kw and dropping.
The general rule is that charging from 10% to 80% takes 20 to 30 minutes, the lower number at the 250kw chargers. And if you’re trying to cover the maximum distance in the minimum time, 80% is as high as you want to generally go. With exceptions for:
- Long legs sans SCs where one wants to max out the range. This generally won’t be true for your trip.
- You’re stopping for dinner or lunch somewhere and want to eat and take your time. In which case the car will be ready for the next leg before you are. If the SC isn’t crowded you can let it charge (one can change the charge limit in the app), but if the car is maxed out or the SC is crowded.. well, we all have the experience of having to pop up and go move the car to let someone else in and avoid the idle charge penalty that Tesla imposes. Which means that the restaurant one is eating at shouldn’t be a 15 minute walk away
.
So, on any given leg, assuming you’re driving an LR, you’ll typically be doing around 250 miles between full and near empty, plus or minus, which is around 3.5 to 4 hours driving time. At which point you’ll
want to stop, anyway, stop watching the bugs hit the windshield and hit the loo. 20 minutes later if you’re dedicated you’ll be on your way.
If you want to play tourist and stop somewhere to go shopping or whatever (can never have enough tee shirts) be advised that ChargePoint and similar charging stations have infested the universe, some of which cost a bit, others are free. These charge at 30 mph or so, as compared to the 1000 mph one gets out of a SC, but what the heck, if you’re going to wander the cutesy streets and look at knick nacks for an hour, why not? The PlugShare app’s your friend for this
if you want to take the trouble of finding an (open) spot.
The J1772 adapter that comes with the car is invaluable for this kind of activity. Unless you luck into a Tesla Wall connector somewhere. These are called, “Destination Chargers” by Tesla, do show up on the NAV, and one can get 40-45 mph charge rates out of them. But, again, on a long trip where you’re hitting up fairly common SCs, not really necessary.
