Here is a summary of the trip from Madrid to Barcelona and back, starting Saturday morning and returning late Sunday night.
* 1400kms total,
* 5 charge stops, all with 22kW outlets although thanks to the firmware limit I could only charge at 17.5kW.
* There were a total of something like 3500m of climbs and drops (counting only the mountain passes, not every little hill
).
* The temperature on all but the coastal areas was not much above 0C and sometimes negative. It snowed heavily Saturday midday and the snow stayed all through Sunday on the high roads. In Barcelona it rained enough to flood the highway.
Here's how the road looked heading out of Siguenza towards the highway to Zaragoza:
Now I've got 21" wheels with summer tires (its a P85+) so this was not entirely perfect for me
However the car behaved impecably with not a hint of under or oversteer. I didn't test it to the limit but it felt rock solid frankly.
I drove at 90km/h all the time, (less on the country roads above
), but only occasionally slipstreamed a truck (I have found this to not help that much compared to the Roadster perhaps because the S is so streamlined).
Energy use was on average 195Wh/km. This was a little dissapointing bearing in mind how easy I was going, but I think it comes down to the low temperatures and the prevailing wind. On Saturday it was difficult to get low energy use whereas on Sunday there was no wind and it felt easier. This is something I intend to study in greater depth, but it makes sense... if the impact on energy use between 90km/h and 100km/h is large then a 10km/h wind can easily have the same impact, right? Has anyone studied this already? (So now the ideal EV sat nav not only has to choose the shortest rather than fastest route, but must also factor in climbs and drops, AND prevailing winds!)
As part of Drive & Dream I organise 22kW outlets at all the places I visit, and if you look at Paradores (parador.es) you will see they are some pretty impressive historic buildings. Here is the Model S charging at my overnight stop outside Barcelona:
(Sorry for the low quality but it was actually very dark and raining heavily)
That building is where the 10kV transformer resides and so its the ideal place to locate some high power outlets as voltage drops are minimized. They are going to prepare several outlets in fact there, and are motivated to even put Mennekes outlets etc. if enough customers visit... so let's make sure everyone coming South for their vacations stops at Cardona ok?
Other interesting aspects of the trip were, tire pressue and the final leg home.
Tire pressures... It was on my checklist for the night before, but I didn't write the checklist down, so I forgot. Perhaps as a result of being at 1200m altitude or perhaps because the temperature dropped to sub-zero, but I got a pressure warning as I set off from Siguenza. Maybe this was good for the snow (soft tires = more grip?) but later when I inflated them really high the car was just as well behaved in the snow, so probably not. I confess to not knowing the correct pressures and not knowing where the sticker was that specifies them (drivers door column) so I over-inflated them. It didn't help energy consumption by the way, which is a surprise (helps the Roadster).
Final leg home: This was 403kms of very hilly terrain (see the blog at driveandream.wordpress.com for details) and very cold weather, however, thanks to going very slow at first (70km/h... it was a curvy road) and then taking it easy (90km/h) on the highway, I could see I was going to make it and increaed speed near the end. This is why I arrived with 10kms of range... it is easy to judge and there isn't any point in arriving with charge to spare frankly. I could have arrived with 50kms or more if I had wanted, but it was late and I was enthusiastic to get home
I could do Madrid-Barcelona with just one stop (a 4 hour stop in Zaragoza at the Reina Petronas Hotel would do), and this would actually be rather similar to a regular ICE journey. ok, normally the lunch stop woul d be an hour or two (this is Spain, so lets make it two!), and I wouldn't go as fast as in an ICE, but the whole journey would take the best part of a day, which is also the case in an ICE frankly.
More trips coming soon....
