Just completed a 2,200 mile Model 3 SR+ road trip

[cbiwww]

We wanted to find out whether an all-electric road trip was a comfortable way to travel for us, so we recently finished a trip up the California coast into Oregon, then to Lake Tahoe and home to San Diego. I figured I'd share some of the results and pose a question. (We're only in our third month of ownership, so please correct any mistakes in terminology, etc. below. I know most range references in the forum are listed in percentages rather than miles, but miles seemed to work better here.)

• Drove 2,231 miles in 8 days, so about 279 miles a day.
• Most days consisted of driving in the morning, supercharging while we ate lunch, driving in the afternoon and then supercharging in the town we were staying in for the night. Generally this was a very relaxing way to travel.
• We supercharged 19 times, and had to wait for a charger only once, and only for 7 minutes. (I've waited much longer at the infamous San Diego Qualcomm supercharger.)
• To support battery health and a wife with range anxiety, we arrived at a supercharger with less than 23 miles of range only once - with 12 miles of range when we got to Eureka. (That one even made me a little nervous, and again, for battery health, was not intentional.)
• Because most driving was 70mph+/-, for the trip as a whole we ended up getting about 83% in actual miles of the initial range estimate on the guess-o-meter. On some downhill rides the actual mileage matched the estimated mileage. The biggest mismatch was climbing from Rocklin to Truckee, where it took 135 miles of estimated range to negotiate the 78 actual miles.
• We averaged 39 minutes and 142 miles of supposed range per charge. (Charging time and range average was lowered by some short top-off charges, including at the new 250kw supercharger before our Tesla factory tour in Fremont.)
• Being a video producer and movie buff, the convenience of supercharging in the Lone Pine Film Museum parking lot toward the end of the trip was especially enjoyable!

All-in-all, a fabulous trip - we won't hesitate to take our SR+ on similar trips in the future. My question is that even though we were driving with the latest software at the time, some superchargers did not show up in navigation (e.g., the 120kw supercharger in Thousand Oaks). It showed up on tesla.com/findus on my phone, so I navigated to it that way, but does Tesla not update its navigation as often as it does its website? (Since the website doesn't even always seem up to date, this doesn't make sense to me.)

 

[JPUConn]

18” aero wheels or 19” sport?

 

[Tam]

...Thousand Oaks...

Please check again, as both superchargers are shown up in mine now:

The standard in the East

And the Urban Supercharger in the West:

 

[Mojito]

Funny you should post this I did about 2750 miles on a trip up the east cost from Orlando to New York on my Model 3SR+. Had a great time only had to wait 3 minutes on a supercharger in Tifton in Georgia. other wise it was a family fun trip my concern was the beating the batteries get from long trips like this on the supercharger.

 

[pdx_m3s]

Thanks for the summary! Sounds like a fun trip.

Did you try to find places to stay at with destination charging? From a battery health perspective, this would be one way to be a little easier on the battery... supercharge during the day and destination charge at night. I know many hotels now offer destination charging.

 

[pk44FG]

We wanted to find out whether an all-electric road trip was a comfortable way to travel for us, so we recently finished a trip up the California coast into Oregon, then to Lake Tahoe and home to San Diego. I figured I'd share some of the results and pose a question. (We're only in our third month of ownership, so please correct any mistakes in terminology, etc. below. I know most range references in the forum are listed in percentages rather than miles, but miles seemed to work better here.)

• Drove 2,231 miles in 8 days, so about 279 miles a day.
• Most days consisted of driving in the morning, supercharging while we ate lunch, driving in the afternoon and then supercharging in the town we were staying in for the night. Generally this was a very relaxing way to travel.
• We supercharged 19 times, and had to wait for a charger only once, and only for 7 minutes. (I've waited much longer at the infamous San Diego Qualcomm supercharger.)
• To support battery health and a wife with range anxiety, we arrived at a supercharger with less than 23 miles of range only once - with 12 miles of range when we got to Eureka. (That one even made me a little nervous, and again, for battery health, was not intentional.)
• Because most driving was 70mph+/-, for the trip as a whole we ended up getting about 83% in actual miles of the initial range estimate on the guess-o-meter. On some downhill rides the actual mileage matched the estimated mileage. The biggest mismatch was climbing from Rocklin to Truckee, where it took 135 miles of estimated range to negotiate the 78 actual miles.
• We averaged 39 minutes and 142 miles of supposed range per charge. (Charging time and range average was lowered by some short top-off charges, including at the new 250kw supercharger before our Tesla factory tour in Fremont.)
• Being a video producer and movie buff, the convenience of supercharging in the Lone Pine Film Museum parking lot toward the end of the trip was especially enjoyable!

All-in-all, a fabulous trip - we won't hesitate to take our SR+ on similar trips in the future. My question is that even though we were driving with the latest software at the time, some superchargers did not show up in navigation (e.g., the 120kw supercharger in Thousand Oaks). It showed up on tesla.com/findus on my phone, so I navigated to it that way, but does Tesla not update its navigation as often as it does its website? (Since the website doesn't even always seem up to date, this doesn't make sense to me.)

This (missing superchargers on the in-car navigation) happened to me as well. Our trip was Raleigh <-> Tallahassee. Depending on where you 'navigate to' - it looks like it selects the superchargers to display. You can check by prompting 'superchargers nearby' versus 'navigate to <destination>'.. I might be wrong though.

 

[pipestem]

that is correct. nav shows the ones it suggests to complete the route. sometimes you just want to select a different one.

 

[cbiwww]

18” aero wheels or 19” sport?

19" sport.

 

[cbiwww]

Please check again, as both superchargers are shown up in mine now:

The standard in the East

And the Urban Supercharger in the West:

Glad to hear it's listed now. Strange that it wasn't before.

 

[cbiwww]

Funny you should post this I did about 2750 miles on a trip up the east cost from Orlando to New York on my Model 3SR+. Had a great time only had to wait 3 minutes on a supercharger in Tifton in Georgia. other wise it was a family fun trip my concern was the beating the batteries get from long trips like this on the supercharger.

I probably should have paid more attention to that. One concern is that if they only had one or two and they were in use or down, but we still could have gone to the supercharger had that been the case!

 

[cbiwww]

Thanks for the summary! Sounds like a fun trip.

Did you try to find places to stay at with destination charging? From a battery health perspective, this would be one way to be a little easier on the battery... supercharge during the day and destination charge at night. I know many hotels now offer destination charging.

Whoops, meant to post this here and posted to Mojito by mistake: I probably should have paid more attention to that. One concern is that if they only had one or two and they were in use or down, but we still could have gone to the supercharger had that been the case!

 

[cbiwww]

that is correct. nav shows the ones it suggests to complete the route. sometimes you just want to select a different one.

I asked to Navigate to Supercharger, where it shows a list of supers and destinations, but the closest one still didn't show up until I used the website on my phone.

 

[newtonfb]

Funny you should post this I did about 2750 miles on a trip up the east cost from Orlando to New York on my Model 3SR+. Had a great time only had to wait 3 minutes on a supercharger in Tifton in Georgia. other wise it was a family fun trip my concern was the beating the batteries get from long trips like this on the supercharger.

I am the same way. I had to use 4 SC in 2 days when we were on our trip this past weekend. I only charged to 70-80% each time and never got below 20% except for once but barely. Even though I've had it for a few months now I still baby it lol

 

[rglore]

If you cancel your route, then all the superchargers show up.

 

[animorph]

I asked to Navigate to Supercharger, where it shows a list of supers and destinations, but the closest one still didn't show up until I used the website on my phone.

Nearly all the time I try that I get a list of all the Superchargers I've passed by, but not the next one on my route. I have to touch it on the map and touch the Navigate button that pops up for it. So it was probably there on the map, just not in the list.

The nav is the only "guess-o-meter" and it's actually reasonably good. The battery meter displays "rated miles" which are a fixed unit of energy (OK, estimated energy) in the battery. It has no relation to how you are driving, and is not a range prediction unless you drive exactly like the EPA.

 

[ceekz]

I just completed a 900 mile trip from Sacramento to Elko, NV on Saturday, charging twice on the outbound, once at the destination, and once on the return. The altitude change from Rocklin to Truckee is a efficiency killer, but coming back down makes up for it! My co-pilot works for Clipper Creek (building EV chargers) and took the return trip as a hyper-efficiency challenge. By monitoring the projected % of battery remaining at the next scheduled Supercharger, he reduced speed uphill and maximized regen on the downhill side.

We rolled into the Elko SC with 13 miles of range remaining. I'd rather charge more often and not drop below the speed limit than arrive with so few miles to spare! After the first big road trip, I learned to NOT rely on the onboard map to plan my charging stops.

BTW, my neighbor with a shiny new red X just finished a big round trip between Sacramento and El Paso. He said the charging in Quartzsite, AZ took FOUR HOURS (more than twice the normal amount of time) because of the extremely high outdoor temperature. One more thing to add to altitude and wind when planning your trip.

 

[cbiwww]

Nearly all the time I try that I get a list of all the Superchargers I've passed by, but not the next one on my route. I have to touch it on the map and touch the Navigate button that pops up for it. So it was probably there on the map, just not in the list.

The nav is the only "guess-o-meter" and it's actually reasonably good. The battery meter displays "rated miles" which are a fixed unit of energy (OK, estimated energy) in the battery. It has no relation to how you are driving, and is not a range prediction unless you drive exactly like the EPA.

Yes, after having a 2011 Leaf where the battery meter was heavily influenced by recent driving, having the "rated miles" on the M3 takes some getting used to.

 

[Darmie]

Just did a trip from Lake Charles to Dallas over the weekend. I can say that my charge rage did start falling well below the normal on several occasions. Checked the cable to the car and it was very hot to the touch. Noted this when we put the A/C on prior to departure at our first charging stop and the kW went to 0. Was going to unhook and recharge, but the cable was so hot, we just rolled out. so much for conditioning the car. A/C cools off fast enough anyway.

 

[ngogas]

Glad you had a good time. I need to make a trip on my Tesla again.

 

[JPUConn]

19" sport.

In addition to speed, the wheels also play a factor in not hitting rated range. I switched from 18” Aeros to 19” sport wheels and my wh/mile figures have gone up.