Went to Winter Park last weekend on my first Model S road trip.
Left Fort Collins with 250 rated miles ( i had driven to work and around town before leaving after a range charge the night before).
Drove to Denver through rush hour traffic to pick up my friend at the Rockies game. We had snowboards, helmets, groceries, clothes and gear for three people in the car and had the right back seat folded down to fit the long stuff. I also brought a laptop and some folders to try to do some work in the condo, but that never actually occured due to the presence of a hot tub. (*side note: if you know how to ski, you do not know enough to "figure out" snowboarding. Totally different. Ask my acromioclavicular joint.*).
We drove out of Denver and stopped in Golden to grab a quite to eat bite since it was about 7pm. There were a few dinky restaurants nearby and we settled on a Jack in the Box to keep it quick, since we didn't really need too much range, I just wanted to see what it was like charging in the wild. There were two 30 amp free Chargepoint chargers at Kohl's. Free is nice, but 30 amps would not be my ideal charging situation, unless you are staying somewhere for several hours. I believe in 45 minutes we got like 15 miles of range added.
*side note: I had called ahead to the RV park in IDaho Springs which supposedly has 50amp service and will just charge by the electric meter rather than by the day. I think that is going to be a really good resource for anyone making the Mt. Evans trip. Unfortunately, the proprietor was only willing to meet me there before dark, so we chose the 30amp charger at Kohl's instead. Another option would have been a 30amp at Walgreen's, and I think there were a few more along I 70 in the 'burbs of Denver/ Golden but don't recall where. *
We then headed up I 70 into the mountains, and I would say I mostly dove 65 instead of speeding like usual, in an effort to try to retain plenty of range so I didn't worry my non-EV crazy passengers. We had the climate control on and were quite comfortable at 70 degrees. When we got to Berthoud pass it started snowing, and the roads were actually fairly icy at this point so we slowed down significantly for the switchbacks. Predictably range dropped a bit faster, and we only had 78 rated miles left at approximately the top of the pass. Luckily the rest was downhill and we actually arrived at the condo with still 78 miles reading on the battery. The temperature when we left was in the high 60's but by this time was around 29-30 F. I think the range loss was more due to altitude rather than cold, but this is a reason it would be nice to have a detailed report of where the energy is going: HVAC, battery pack heating, driving, etc.
The condo actually charged for covered (and heated) parking, but i think since they had arranged a spot next to a 110v socket they were all distracted and just let us park for free. We could walk to the lifts, so we basically charged uninterrupted for 40 hours or so, and the range when we left was about 215 i think. *Funny story about that: when we were planning this trip I had found an article through the Googles that said in 2011 the city of Winter Park installed 6 free electric vehicle chargers around the city. I was pretty lackadasical about actually packing and prepping for the trip, so it was about 24 hour before we left that I was trying to hunt down the exact locations of these on chargepoint, recargo, and just plain google searching. Turns out, there is a Winter Park Florida. Luckily the condo management was so accomodating, or I would have had to drive a stinky ICE car on my adventure (or camp at the Idaho Springs RV park over night in at least one direction of the trip).
A much warmer drive home Sunday afternoon was easily done at normal 65-80mph speeds all the way home to Ft. Collins ended a perfect roda trip with over a hundred remaining rated miles on the dash once we got home.
Stats:
Friday: 131 miles from Ft. Collins through Denver to Winter Park, rising from 5000ft to 9000 feet over an 11,300 ft. snowy winding mountain pass. Start temperature 69, end temperature 29. Climate control and radio at comfortable levels, speed limits exceeded in the low lands, but no speeding once I was in the mountains. Total 52.1 kWh used, averaging 397Wh/mi.
Sunday: 125 miles back home without the Denver detour. Temperature was 50F and above. Lots of downhill, and a little more exceeding the speed limit. 29.8 kWh used, averaging 238 Wh/mi.
I think a Supercharger in Golden would be a fairly awesome location. Are you listening, Tesla?
