I'm over the range anxiety....

[AdamHLG]

So today was my first "road trip" in my 6 month old X100D which is now on 22" black Onyx rims as of Tuesday because I should have ordered those to start with (when I get around to posting it I'm selling my sonic carbons with 6,000 miles) if interested PM me My ride looks sick now. 22" black Onyx rims ; midnight Grey Metallic; Modesta BC-04 ceramic coating. Tinted front driver and passenger windows. Red painted calipers. Lighted T to be installed next week. I am tricked out for my first shore ride if I don't run out of watt hours. But I got Tesla Superchargers and a ChaDEmo adaptor so let's hit it what can go wrong. Ready to be loud and proud with the party of owners at these Superchargers.

Anyway I needed to drive from Baltimore County to PG County Circuit Court at 5 am for a hearing (billable hours pay for the ride!) and then head to Dewey beach. Paranoid as I was this was my first "try and charge to 100 and leave within 1 minute of hitting it" thing so as to not damage my battery per forum surfing the past year. I charge to 95 the night prior and wake up at 5 am and try and get to 100 percent by 5 45. I get close to it. 294 miles of range...but never got to 100 percent and it was Time. To. Go.. So I leave. I have so much range left when I arive at PG County Circuit Court that I am like wtf why did I worry. Court all day. Leave at 4, hit the Grasonville SuC with 194 miles remaining. Not a single car charging there. Its a Royal Farm store. I Supercharge for 20 min, grab a soda and powerbar, and it's back up to ridiculous range I don't remember. I leave, get back on phone, hands on wheel, activate EAP, and talk and let car drive while I supervise and talk on phone.

I get to Lewes and still have 190+ range but hit the Lewes SuC anyway for 15 min while answering emails. I now have 265 range. I was on the phone the entire ride down. Flowed the thin blue line on the MCD.

It's like quicksand you thought of as a child. That was not a true life problem. Neither is range and charging . Neither is 22" wheel range loss. I have more range than I have at home on a normal 70% SOC. I worried about this for nothing.

Bottom line for you lurkers that read this from a member of the club. Buy what you want. And make sure you get 22" wheels.

And don't worry about range. Plan your trip. Know where u can charge. It's an app. PlugShare. It's free. thanks. You'll be fine.

 

[boaterva]

Nice write up. BTW, not sure you were serious about the 100% but the pack won’t die if it’s at 100 for a minute or an hour. Or even a day. Storage for days and weeks is the bad thing. Fill to 100% when you are going to use it ‘soon’, like for a trip. Timing things to the minute is just stress inducing and you can’t do it anyway as you’ve see because it’s too hard to charge to 100!

 

[AdamHLG]

I actually was serious about the 100% but that was anxiety and not worried anymore. But thanks for the feedback I feel better about it now.

 

[bak_phy]

I find that the only time I get in trouble with charging to 100% is after a road trip when I forget to set the charge level back to 80%. Even after doing that a few times the battery has only lost something like 5 miles of range over 2 years.

 

[Cirrus MS100D]

Great story!

Having actual data (thanks, TesliaFi!) has been super helpful for us comparing our actual usage vs. how we thought we were going to use the car before we bought it. Over nearly 10 months, we've used SuperChargers 13x (one of those doesn't count because it was "for fun" to make sure we knew what we were doing before taking it on a road trip) and have barely gone below 20% state-of-charge 2x. Most of the time, the car hovers around 60-80%. We thought we'd be using SuperChargers all the time. It's sure nice to have the infrastructure there when we need it (couldn't do our long trips without them) but we certainly don't use them like we thought we'd need to.

95% of our driving is daily/around town where charging at home is the perfect option no matter where our routine, errands, and day-trips take us. I think people vastly underestimate how amazing it is to wake up to a "full" car every single morning (and we only charge to 80% daily!)

Even before most road trips in our old ICE car, we used to always have to plan a gas stop. Either a trip out the night before, or immediately upon leaving the driveway. Now? We just schedule it in the app so we're at 100% a little bit before we're ready to leave. While we have barely used the SuperChargers compared to a lot of folks on here, we have yet to actually have a situation where we needed to wait for the car. In every single case, the car was done before we were ready to get back on the road. Whether it be a vacation with the kids or just my wife and I, I get the notification that our *car* is ready to continue our trip, but *we* need 5-10 more minutes. I can only imagine this will improve over the coming years where recharge times are an absolute non-issue.

 

[GOPJEW]

Nice write up - just got my 22's put on today (did not order my P100DL with them because I knew they'd be free from referral) and planning to roast trip to NC next weekend.

TeslaFi will help me track Wh difference as I started this month on the 22's and last month on my 20's (keeping them for winter - had them painted black today at the Rockville SC for a decent price - the typical guy they use to fix rims was there and made me an offer I couldn't refuse)

Saw a slight difference on the 22's so far - avg Wh/Mi yesterday was 330/19.21 miles driven (average speed was 19 w/max @ 63) vs the 22's (more highway) which was 384/28.22 miles driven (average speed was 33 w/max @something I cannot write) - I'll take that trade off...

 

[DarrenK]

I think I am going to start a "Lawyers with Teslas" group here in MD. You are the 4th one I have run across. I don't know if any other profession has as many clustered in one area.

 

[Nilnoc]

Careful. You know the old joke: What do you call four lawyers riding in a Tesla on autopilot?

 

[paulkva]

I find that the only time I get in trouble with charging to 100% is after a road trip when I forget to set the charge level back to 80%.

After being super-careful for a long time, I just did this for the first time ... twice in the past month or so. I expect the battery won't lose much more than I've already lost. (I'm down to ~253 at 100% now, from ~270 when new nearly 5 years ago.)

I think people vastly underestimate how amazing it is to wake up to a "full" car every single morning (and we only charge to 80% daily!)

Yes, this! Before taking delivery, I expected it would be a big benefit, but it's even better than I thought.

In every single case, the car was done before we were ready to get back on the road.

Ditto for us, with just a few exceptions. And in aggregate I've supercharged more than I would've expected -- maybe 15-20% of my miles. I'm not a major road-tripper (with two notable exceptions, from DC to SC & FL in 2014, and DC to Cooperstown & Boston in 2016), but I also have a very short commute.

I think I am going to start a "Lawyers with Teslas" group here in MD. You are the 4th one I have run across. I don't know if any other profession has as many clustered in one area.

Software/IT, and not just in Silicon Valley. I'm a software engineer at a medium size tech company outside of DC, and we share a parking garage with at least two other major tech companies. Quite a few Teslas in the garage.