Many Lessons Learned on our First Cross Country Trip

[jerry33]

I must ask those that travel the longer distances if they've experienced the navigation bugs that I did on this short trip. For me, this was a 280 mile, one SC, trip arriving at the destination with margin to spare. I was familiar with the route as I've taken it several times before but wanted to try the navigation with the planned SC stop, etc. It should have been an easy route to plan. But the nav system created a route that was nearly 500 miles starting off by going to a closer SC 80 miles in the opposite direction!

This happens. Sometimes you get routed back to the SC you just left. No doubt it will be fixed in some future release. The most helpful workarounds are:

1. Select trip from the routing box and then select clear chargers.

2. Only route to the next SC (or destination). It frequently gets confused if you route to the end point which includes multiple charging stops.

3. Cancel the guidance and reenter.

 

[LetsGoFast]

If you know it's a 50A circuit with properly-sized conductors, no need... but if it were a 6-50 specifically for a welder, in the US it's permitted to be wired differently and you can be more careful. Many welding 6-50's (in my shop, too) are wired with full 50A conductors and breaker, so it's safe at 40A.

I have much less experience than you do, but I've seen three of these and all three were wired to a 50A breaker and charged fine at 40 amps. I always check the circuit breaker for every outlet since I discovered that some 110 circuits have 20A breakers!

 

[cottylowry]

Thanks EdA. 3,500 miles was a long trip, especially with a somewhat unwilling high schooler in the back seat. Luckily he's a good driver and helped a lot. My wife is a hard core Volt driver for the last 3.5 years so she's all for the Tesla. I must say though that by the end of the trip we were all weary and the logistics of Supercharging does take extra energy. Also our farthest tentacle on the trip was at the Coeur d'Alene SC, exhausted and went into Buffalo Wild Wings -- not a good place when you are tired. My wife had a great design in her head for little boutiques at each SC with latte, nice gifts, a place to relax. Great idea, but not a great business model at least until we have 500,000 Teslas on the road.

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It does not seem to understand 35 mph head winds. Also I wonder if the software knows the speed limit in S Dakota has recently been changed to 80MPH. There is no way we could sustain that kind of speed and keep our green line graph from diving right to the bottom of the graph.

 

[jerry33]

Thanks EdA. 3,500 miles was a long trip, especially with a somewhat unwilling high schooler in the back seat. Luckily he's a good driver and helped a lot. My wife is a hard core Volt driver for the last 3.5 years so she's all for the Tesla. I must say though that by the end of the trip we were all weary and the logistics of Supercharging does take extra energy.

Wow! We were really refreshed at the end of our trip, and I was the only driver.

 

[Cottonwood]

7. Use PlugShare to specifically locate Superchargers which may be hiding behind a restaurant or in a motel parking lot – More info than the Tesla Nav screen

Another good way to find hiding Superchargers is to zoom the Nav screen in to a lot of detail, then turn on "Sat" or "Aerial" view. The lat/long of the Supercharger is usually very good, and the "Sat" view shows individual buildings and routes through parking lots that the normal nav screen does not show.

 

[TexasEV]

I have much less experience than you do, but I've seen three of these and all three were wired to a 50A breaker and charged fine at 40 amps. I always check the circuit breaker for every outlet since I discovered that some 110 circuits have 20A breakers!

You don't need to check the circuit breaker for 120V outlets. If it's a 5-15 outlet with a 20A breaker, the UMC 5-15 adapter will still draw maximum 12A. If it's a 5-20 outlet, using the 5-20 adapter can get you 16A but the 5-15 adapter will still draw only 12A. Just look at the outlet and use the appropriate 120V adapter.

 

[cottylowry]

Jerry, the last part of our trip was tough. Driving rain, we had to stop 3 times in S Dakota and once in Minnesota -- could not even see the freeway pavement in front of us. At dinner this evening we were talking about the trip, just a week ago, and really do miss it already. It was a blast and am definitely ready to do more. If my wife were a camper, I'd really take off into the wild non SuperC world.

How long did you take to do your 5300 mile trip?

 

[jerry33]

How long did you take to do your 5300 mile trip?

I took it really easy. Five days each way. If there hadn't been the Wyoming gap, it would have been four days, but I didn't want that one long charge time in Casper to extend it into another 12 hour day, and because there was no SC in Sheridan, that's where we did a destination charge for the night. If you drove death march style it would have been possible to make it in 2.5 days, even with the gap, but that wouldn't have been much fun. The only rain we had was the Denver to Cheyenne portion. Sometimes it was hard, but not nearly as bad as you experienced. (I've had that on other trips with the Model S though).