First X-Country Trip in our MX:
We are far from the first Tesla owners to have made a multi-thousand mile trip, so there will be no new insights or revelations here. But we do want to add our experience to encyclopedia of Tesla cross country trips. The comfort, acceleration, handling and quietness of the MX made this trip an absolute joy, but were not the top reasons I was so excited about this trip. Even if the car were a 1975 Vega, but all electric, the idea that we could seamlessly travel over 2800 miles round-trip without using a drop of gas excited me to no end. This has been a dream for over 50 years, since my childhood, and I never thought I would see it in my lifetime.
Being afflicted with a chronic disease known as "engineer," I was forced to capture reams of data on this trip. I won't bore you with the details, but just provide the highlights below:
Trip Overview: 2887 miles round trip from Colorado Springs, CO (eastern slope of the Rockies) to Seattle, WA. Weather ranged from sunny and 68 degrees F, to blowing snow and 32 degrees. We drove through quite a bit of rain with a large number of Pacific storm systems flowing through all states we traveled in. The route took us over 3 major mountain ranges-- the Rockies in Colorado, the Wasatch in Utah, and Cascades in Washington. Speeds were the posted limits-- 65 mph to 80 mph. Used only Superchargers except for when in Seattle where there are none. In Seattle we used a Tesla destination charger (64 amp) at a public parking lot under an office building (located using the PlugShare app). Family of 4 with luggage.
Car Overview: Summer 2016 delivery MX 75D, 20" wheels. Suspension set to drop to Low at 70 mph.
Data: For each leg between charges we logged the following-- distance, avg speed, starting State of Charge (% and miles), ending SOC (% and miles), net elevation gain, road conditions (wet, standing water, snow, dry, etc), average winds (from Tesla Waze app), exterior temperature, interior climate control settings, range mode (on or off), and max charging rate at Superchargers.
Total Trip Stats: 2887.4 miles, efficiency= 322 Wh/mile
Most Efficient Leg: Silverthorne, CO to Glenwood Springs, CO, 225 Wh/mile, dry road, -2990 ft elevation change, 70 mph, 45 deg F exterior temp, front climate control only set to 60 degrees, range mode off, average 2 mph headwind.
Least Efficient Leg: Green River, UT to Grand Junction, CO, 376 Wh/mile, dry road, +1234 ft elevation change, 75 mph avg), 44 deg F exterior temp, front climate control only set to 60 degrees, range mode off, average 1 mph headwind. This was a leg after an overnight stop. At our other 3 overnight stops, I would charge to 80% on arrival the night before, then charge another 10% to 15% in the morning to warm the battery. I did not do a morning charge on this leg and believe that battery warming contributed to the higher consumption. Overnight temps were in the low 30s.
Superchargers:
- At all but two SCs, we were able to get the maximum 90 to 96 kW charging rate (max for 60 and 75 kWh battery packs).
- Favorite SC: by far it was Twin Falls, ID. The SC is at the town welcome center which sits on the rim of the massive Snake River Canyon with stunning scenery. Two large shopping areas within walking distance offer many dining options, but we used the picnic tables with the view of the canyon.
- We used the technique of only charging to where we could reach the next SC with 15% reserve as shown on the on-board charging screen. This worked great. The exceptions were the dinner stops where we took on a full charge while eating and were able to skip a SC stop.
- We used hotels at or near SCs for all overnight stops in Tremonton, UT; Ellensburg, WA; Boise, ID; and Green River, UT. We weren't disappointed with any of them.
Planning Tools: I did pre-trip planning on EV Trip Planner to get the big picture. During the trip we relied on the on-board computer, and used the EV Trip Optimizer (EVTO) app on my phone for a sanity check. We had a Plan B (RV sites, J1772 etc) for all legs from PlugShare, but there were 2 long stretches of desert with no other backup options. EVTO and the car matched fairly closely, with EVTO being a little more conservative. This was most likely due to us needing less climate control in the car than what I loaded in the app. We found that solar gain during the cold days was sufficient to heat the car so we only used the minimum needed for defogging (I couldn't get everyone to stop breathing...). We got used to what we call the computer "10 minutes of insanity" where just after starting a new leg, the charge at destination reading will drop 5 or 6% then come back up and show a higher reading than when we started, then settle back down and ultimately give us a reading to within +/- 1% of the original number. This was accurate on every leg.
Pleasant Surprises: We absolutely love Slacker streaming audio. The interstate highways are fairly well covered with cell service and we lost signal only 3 or 4 times in the mountains where we went to USB music backup. Being that the MX replaced a '93 Plymouth minivan with AM/FM radio and cassette deck (if you're under 45, you can Google what that is), the ability to drive into the mountains and deserts and not have to constantly search for a radio signal (only to get a farm report when you find one) was fantastic.
The most pleasant surprise, however, was how painless and seamless this EV trip was. In 24 SC stops, we waited for the car only 2 or 3 times, and even then it was no more than 10 minutes. The rest of the time, the car was ready by the time we finished with bathroom breaks, eating, stretching etc. There were SC stops that we could have skipped because of sufficient charge, but we found that we needed the bathroom breaks anyway. We are hooked on this car!
BTW: It's totally easy now to come all the way up 101 using SCs - all the way to Port Townsend (thanks to the new Aberdeen SC.)
