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Long distance driving from arizona to Colorado

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Has any one driven from southern az to denver with Model Y?
if so can a it be charged at Holiday Inn Express in Truth or Consequence without being a guest?
where would other compatible charge stations be and what adaptors are needed?
how far apart are charge stations and how fast can one drive to many miles can be driven before charging?
Lots of questions. Looking forward to planning a trip to enjoy longgggg distance without being stranded.
Happy travels fellow Tesla owners😊
 
Welcome Sundance. You should take some time to become familiar with the Tesla Navigation system and Supercharger Network. Setup your home location in the Navigation system. Enter your destination. Note the Supercharger stops.

Also become familiar with A Better Route Planner (ABRP) on your phone as an app and on the web. ABRP will help you plan your trip in the Tesla vehicle for optimum charging stops along the route.

For questions about other charging locations, options there is the Plugshare app.
 
if so can a it be charged at Holiday Inn Express in Truth or Consequence without being a guest?
For this specific question, it sounds like you are asking about the Tesla Supercharger station that happens to be located at a Holiday Inn Express. That is not something that is owned or controlled by the hotel. Tesla's Supercharger stations are for Tesla car owners to use at any time, without any need for any permission from the business or site whose parking lot it is.

where would other compatible charge stations be and what adaptors are needed?
It sounds like you don't have your car yet, because if you did, you would find that this is far simpler than you are thinking of and doesn't need any pre-planning if you are on normal interstate highways, which are pretty much covered by Tesla's Superchargers (no adapters needed). You can just set your final destination in the navigation, and it will plot the route, including all charging stops and time at each charging stop.

All of the Supercharger locations are built into the car's map, but if you want to browse around any of this stuff from a computer, here are a few things I look at in a basic order of thinking about a trip:

1. www.supercharge.info This is a really good user-maintained map that sources its data from this forum. It's got all of the existing Superchargers, plus places marked where people have discovered building permits filed or construction started for coming soon ones. If I look at where I'm going on the map, and the interstates already have Superchargers, then it's covered, and I'm done planning. I'll just play it by ear in the car as I go.

2. If I'm having to drive somewhere that's not just an obvious straight shot on an interstate, and has to take some smaller U.S. highways or state routes, those are not always covered as well, so I may need to check some of those gaps to see if they are crossable.
www.abetterrouteplanner.com
www.evtripplanner.com
Those two sites do about the same thing, letting you pick which vehicle, and some parameters, like temperature, etc. and it will plot a route to let you know how much energy it will use, and you can see if that will work or if you need to find other charging points in between.

3. If you do need to find other charging resources then, www.plugshare.com is about the most complete site I know if for all kinds of charging resources. You can filter by plug type, and the charging speeds are approximately like this:
CHAdeMO: This is about half the speed of Tesla's Superchargers. Your car DOES NOT come with an adapter for this, but you can buy one from Tesla if you want for $450. Probably not worth bothering with if you can stick to interstates most of the time.
J1772: This kind of charging is about one tenth as fast as a Supercharger, so like a few hours kind of thing and so probably not something you want to have to use. The adapter for this plug is included with the car.

And that's about as extensive as you would need to get. Those tools like ABetterRoutePlanner and EVTripPlanner can plan full routes using Superchargers like the car does, so they are interesting to play with just to see how easy it is to go places.
 
For this specific question, it sounds like you are asking about the Tesla Supercharger station that happens to be located at a Holiday Inn Express. That is not something that is owned or controlled by the hotel. Tesla's Supercharger stations are for Tesla car owners to use at any time, without any need for any permission from the business or site whose parking lot it is.


It sounds like you don't have your car yet, because if you did, you would find that this is far simpler than you are thinking of and doesn't need any pre-planning if you are on normal interstate highways, which are pretty much covered by Tesla's Superchargers (no adapters needed). You can just set your final destination in the navigation, and it will plot the route, including all charging stops and time at each charging stop.

All of the Supercharger locations are built into the car's map, but if you want to browse around any of this stuff from a computer, here are a few things I look at in a basic order of thinking about a trip:

1. www.supercharge.info This is a really good user-maintained map that sources its data from this forum. It's got all of the existing Superchargers, plus places marked where people have discovered building permits filed or construction started for coming soon ones. If I look at where I'm going on the map, and the interstates already have Superchargers, then it's covered, and I'm done planning. I'll just play it by ear in the car as I go.

2. If I'm having to drive somewhere that's not just an obvious straight shot on an interstate, and has to take some smaller U.S. highways or state routes, those are not always covered as well, so I may need to check some of those gaps to see if they are crossable.
www.abetterrouteplanner.com
www.evtripplanner.com
Those two sites do about the same thing, letting you pick which vehicle, and some parameters, like temperature, etc. and it will plot a route to let you know how much energy it will use, and you can see if that will work or if you need to find other charging points in between.

3. If you do need to find other charging resources then, www.plugshare.com is about the most complete site I know if for all kinds of charging resources. You can filter by plug type, and the charging speeds are approximately like this:
CHAdeMO: This is about half the speed of Tesla's Superchargers. Your car DOES NOT come with an adapter for this, but you can buy one from Tesla if you want for $450. Probably not worth bothering with if you can stick to interstates most of the time.
J1772: This kind of charging is about one tenth as fast as a Supercharger, so like a few hours kind of thing and so probably not something you want to have to use. The adapter for this plug is included with the car.

And that's about as extensive as you would need to get. Those tools like ABetterRoutePlanner and EVTripPlanner can plan full routes using Superchargers like the car does, so they are interesting to play with just to see how easy it is to go places.
This is a really nice summary! I hope you have that saved so you can paste it in when new people ask these questions!

I would add two more things (Original poster: Note that you will not need either of these for your trip from AZ to CO! Just get in the car and drive!):
  1. If you set up an account (free) on www.plugshare.com, you can now do route planning there too. It's not automatic like the other options, and you can only do it on a computer, but if you have a really specific off-the-beaten-interstate trip you want to do, it can help to figure out a way.
  2. J1772 stations do have one great use, which is charging overnight. If you have to spend the night in a hotel, these are essentially equivalent to Tesla destination chargers. Not as fast as Tesla ones generally, but for an overnight charge you'll be charged by morning either way (unless you sleep fast). Eventually all hotels will have chargers, but for now you have to check. Plugshare allows you to show all lodging that has level 2 charging, which is nice if you need to spend the night during a trip.
 
Just want to share an input. Booking a specific hotel and probably paying a premium price just thinking about the destination J1772 charger may not go well. It may be occupied by another EV , or worse by a plug-in hybrid. I have seen some youtube video where someone got really disappointed on seeing all hotel chargers occupied by plug-in hybrids. So, rely mainly on superchargers.
 
I haven't tried to deal with regular charging stations at hotels like that. I get that we should encourage them by booking with places that offer that amenity to show that it's valuable/appreciated, but the ones that do it are usually the pricier ones so far, and I'm more of an AirBNB guy. On my 5,000+ mile trip a couple of years ago, I mostly just did AirBNBs, because the Superchargers are so fast, I don't really need overnight charging. I would get into the city that night, head straight to the Supercharger to get about a half hour of charging, and then head to my AirBNB house. Then, in the morning, I could grab breakfast and take off, or sometimes grab breakfast and head back over to the Supercharger again to make that time productive while I sat and ate in the car.
 
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Welcome Sundance. You should take some time to become familiar with the Tesla Navigation system and Supercharger Network. Setup your home location in the Navigation system. Enter your destination. Note the Supercharger stops.

Also become familiar with A Better Route Planner (ABRP) on your phone as an app and on the web. ABRP will help you plan your trip in the Tesla vehicle for optimum charging stops along the route.

For questions about other charging locations, options there is the Plugshare app.
Thank you
Welcome Sundance. You should take some time to become familiar with the Tesla Navigation system and Supercharger Network. Setup your home location in the Navigation system. Enter your destination. Note the Supercharger stops.

Also become familiar with A Better Route Planner (ABRP) on your phone as an app and on the web. ABRP will help you plan your trip in the Tesla vehicle for optimum charging stops along the route.

For questions about other charging locations, options there is the Plugshare app.
thank you Jcanoe and others for your replies.
Does one need to put much priority on how much A/C and radio and weight in any distance equations to maintain optimum battery function?
 
Thank you

thank you Jcanoe and others for your replies.
Does one need to put much priority on how much A/C and radio and weight in any distance equations to maintain optimum battery function?

A/C is a pretty small impact. Heat is bigger, especially if it's really cold outside. Fortunately the Model Y has a heat pump, which makes the heat 3-4x more efficient, so even heat is not too bad. Radio or other music playing has zero effect.

Weight is mostly not an issue, unless you're going up or down a significant amount with a lot of extra weight. Let's see, from Tucson to Denver you're going up half a mile. Let's call it 1000 meters to keep it simple. So if you add, say, 660 pounds of people and stuff to the car, that's 300 kg, and g is 10 m/s^2, so the extra energy needed is m*g*h = 3 million MKS units, which are joules, and a joule is conveniently a watt-second. If we round up (again) to 3,600,000 W-s, we can easily divide by 3,600 s/hr to get 1000 Wh, or 1 kWh. (Efficiency needs to go in there too, but it's 1 at the level of accuracy we're going for.)

So given that the total capacity the range is based on is ~75 kWh, adding 660 pounds of weight for your trip will use about 1.5% of your range, or about 5 miles. Not a big deal. If you were going from Yuma to Telluride, you'd see twice the hit. And you'll get back extra range in the other direction of course.

Also, you can enter extra weight in A Better Route Planner, and it will do this calculation for you.
 
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Does one need to put much priority on how much A/C and radio and weight in any distance equations to maintain optimum battery function?
First off, "to maintain optimum battery function" is not your job, nor anything you can do anything about. The car is not dumb, where it would allow you to overload or overheat it. It has lots of its own self-monitoring and self-limiting functions it will use as needed, so that is all handled automagically, and you may sometimes see power input or output limits, depending mainly on temperatures.

But what those factors can show up in is just how much energy the car will consume, so the efficiency can look a bit worse. I've listed these out before in kind of a ranked order system to show what matters: (Note the variable spacing of the ranked items)

#1. Moving the car (speed). This is by far the biggest. Wind resistance at highway speeds will be a big deal, but is also where you can have the greatest impact. So keep an eye on the projection of your arrival battery % left, and if it's dropping more than you would like, turn your cruise control down a few mph, and it will make a significant difference as it recalculates over the rest of the drive.

#2. Heat. Electric cars don't run massively hot like a gas engine does, so you're effectively running a space heater, which sucks significant energy. This can be like 20%-30% extra energy consumption in really cold winter conditions, so definitely something to be aware of and maybe plan a bit more reserve.
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#10. Air conditioning. This can be a noticeable draw of a few extra %, so you'll see it, but it's not enough you really need to plan around it.
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#8,312. All other things. Seriously--radio, wipers, headlights, touchscreen, or anything else is totally imperceptible and meaningless, so you never need to think about the energy consumption of them on a trip.
 
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First off, "to maintain optimum battery function" is not your job, nor anything you can do anything about. The car is not dumb, where it would allow you to overload or overheat it. It has lots of its own self-monitoring and self-limiting functions it will use as needed, so that is all handled automagically, and you may sometimes see power input or output limits, depending mainly on temperatures.

But what those factors can show up in is just how much energy the car will consume, so the efficiency can look a bit worse. I've listed these out before in kind of a ranked order system to show what matters: (Note the variable spacing of the ranked items)

#1. Moving the car (speed). This is by far the biggest. Wind resistance at highway speeds will be a big deal, but is also where you can have the greatest impact. So keep an eye on the projection of your arrival battery % left, and if it's dropping more than you would like, turn your cruise control down a few mph, and it will make a significant difference as it recalculates over the rest of the drive.

#2. Heat. Electric cars don't run massively hot like a gas engine does, so you're effectively running a space heater, which sucks significant energy. This can be like 20%-30% extra energy consumption in really cold winter conditions, so definitely something to be aware of and maybe plan a bit more reserve.
...
...
#10. Air conditioning. This can be a noticeable draw of a few extra %, so you'll see it, but it's not enough you really need to plan around it.
...
...
...
#8,312. All other things. Seriously--radio, wipers, headlights, touchscreen, or anything else is totally imperceptible and meaningless, so you never need to think about the energy consumption of them on a trip.
I like this ranking perspective. But it intrigues me what do you consider #3-9? Is it added weight, towing, tire pressure, ambient temperature for battery, aero/gemini caps on vs. off, roof rack, tow rack, etc?
 
Also, suggest airing up your tires to about 2 PSI OVER the recommendation on the door label (some go as high as 4 OVER). That helps with efficiency. And ALWAYS try to precondition the car while it's plugged in regardless of TEMP. If the cabin is TOO HOT or COLD when you get in you can tweak the HVAC system but the hit to the range will be reduced if the battery is up to temp before getting on the highway and the HVAC doesn't have to condition the cabin.
 
I like this ranking perspective. But it intrigues me what do you consider #3-9? Is it added weight, towing, tire pressure, ambient temperature for battery, aero/gemini caps on vs. off, roof rack, tow rack, etc?
No, there is no #3-9. That is just my informative joke to indicate that these are not equally spaced items. That's why my last catch-all item is listed with a rank of over 8 thousand. If I just list #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. it would seem that they are similar steps in the amounts of energy drain. So I was indicating that speed is definitely 1. Heating is 2. Then far below that is air conditioning, and then far FAR FAAAARRR below that is anything else.

I don't tow anything, so I never thought about that issue, but that one is huge and would be probably even higher than just speed of a car by itself. Good call out. Some of those other things are kind of low-medium issues, similar to air conditioning, but I guess I hadn't remembered them in my simplified list.
 
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No, there is no #3-9. That is just my informative joke to indicate that these are not equally spaced items. That's why my last catch-all item is listed with a rank of over 8 thousand. If I just list #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. it would seem that they are similar steps in the amounts of energy drain. So I was indicating that speed is definitely 1. Heating is 2. Then far below that is air conditioning, and then far FAR FAAAARRR below that is anything else.

I don't tow anything, so I never thought about that issue, but that one is huge and would be probably even higher than just speed of a car by itself. Good call out. Some of those other things are kind of low-medium issues, similar to air conditioning, but I guess I hadn't remembered them in my simplified list.

According to some reasonably well-controlled testing I've seen (but didn't save the links to, sorry!), a roof rack with nothing on it is essentially undetectable, possibly a couple percent hit to the range. Once you put anything on it though, it has a pretty significant impact. You can probably find some examples with data by searching on these boards.
 
No, there is no #3-9. That is just my informative joke to indicate that these are not equally spaced items. That's why my last catch-all item is listed with a rank of over 8 thousand. If I just list #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. it would seem that they are similar steps in the amounts of energy drain. So I was indicating that speed is definitely 1. Heating is 2. Then far below that is air conditioning, and then far FAR FAAAARRR below that is anything else.

I don't tow anything, so I never thought about that issue, but that one is huge and would be probably even higher than just speed of a car by itself. Good call out. Some of those other things are kind of low-medium issues, similar to air conditioning, but I guess I hadn't remembered them in my simplified list.
Oh I get the joking nature and the hyperbole with the 8,000+ ranking. It just got me thinking about what else could be a big drag (pun slightly intended if considering the air drag coefficient) on efficiency.
 
Sorry for the late response, just saw this thread.

I did pretty much this exact drive 2 weeks ago (from Tucson to Colorado Springs) and last week (from Colorado Springs to Tucson). Here's what I did:

Willcox is a good fast SC. It's at a hotel that let's you use their bathrooms. Other options are nearby across the street at a truck stop, and about a mile away

Deming also good fast SC. It's at a gas/convenience store with bathrooms and gas station food. Other options are about a mile away.

T or C, good fast charger as well at a HI Express. They let you use their bathrooms. Food is across the street, but the SC is on a hill, so it's a hike. Need pretty much max charge to get to ABQ. I did exactly the speed limit from T or C to ABQ with no range issue, but I wouldn't push it too much uphill to ABQ.

ABQ, fast charger. Nastiest location I've used, though. Lots of trash and shady people hanging around, would not charge here at night. Only available bathrooms are at the Applebees, but only if you go in and buy food. Walked to the nearby hotel, but they have combo locks on the toilets and many, many signs about not having public toilets.

Santa Fe, lots of chargers, but seem slow. I got maybe 40kw and wasn't sharing at all. Location is at a near bankrupt outlet mall, but has nice clean bathrooms. There's an excellent coffee shop in the mall with coffee shop-type food options and some sandwiches. They close early.

Las Vegas, good fast charger also. It's at a Comfort Inn, and they let you use the bathrooms. Limited food at the truck stop across the street, probably more options in town

Trinidad, good fast charger, but very, very busy. You'll likely be sharing. There's a truck stop there and a nasty Wendy's for food. Other food is nearby though. Need a good charge here to get to CS, as Pueblo is a waste-land of chargers. I have a Chademo adapter and used that when we spent some time in Pueblo.

Colorado Springs, good chargers, the one on the south side is fine with lots of food nearby.
 
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