MYLR first road trip - 900 miles in California - notes and findings

[Johnny Vector]

Right - the 150 miles jives with my original quote of 40-50% of estimated mileage: 326*.45= ~150mi. At 80mph, you're stopping every ~2 hours for 20+ mins to recharge (provided you've stayed on the route you're given). Like I said, amazing piece of technology, but less flexibility and more time/patience required = not an ideal road trip car.

On the contrary, it's precisely an ideal road trip car. With a few exceptions: Drive 70-75, stop every 2 hours for 15 minutes, arrive refreshed and relaxed. And no gasoline burned.

In most of the country, you shouldn't be driving 80 mph.
Stopping every couple hours is good, physically and mentally.
By the time you have a stretch, grab a bite, and hit the loo, the car is charged enough for the next leg.

In my experience, it adds maybe 20 minutes to a 12 hour drive compared to an ICE. Even for people who like to arrive exhausted from driving without a break, anyone who would trade burning the planet for those 20 minutes gets shockingly little sympathy from me.

 

[Moonbeast]

Thought I will chime in here, Received my MY 7 Seater at the end of March 2021. So far i have done 7200 miles and have been averaging 280wh/mile over that time. I will be driving from Seattle to Orlando and back (about 8k miles total) in about a month and will be using tezlab to keep track of the efficiency. I don't drive slow (typically 5-10 over the speed limit on highways), I just follow what the nav suggests for charging. On my last 700 mile trip, my dad left at the same time in his Camry and I arrived about 1/2 hour later than he did even with the charging stops (left with 100%, charged twice to 80% and still arrived with about 20% remaining).

 

[MDElectric]

I just drove from LA to Bay Area and back last week. I cruised at 85mph on I-5, the normal speed as any ICE car. My average consumption was 357 Wh/mi, or 2.8 mi/kWh efficiency. If I slowed down to 80mph, I got 333 Wh/mi or 3 mi/kWh. The entire trip was super stress-free. Plenty of supercharging options along I-5 between LA and Bay Area, so never got range anxiety.

For any Tesla, take the EPA range number and remove 1/3. That's the more realistic range figure at higher freeway speeds.
Model Y: 326 miles EPA * 66% = 210 miles.

Now remove 20% from the top (supercharge to 80%) and 10% from the bottom (safety buffer) and you get 210 * 70% = ~150 mi of usable freeway range.
I stop to supercharge every 150 real-world miles, ending at roughly 10% at the supercharger. Works for me every time!

This is an amazing, beautiful piece of technology, but probably not a road trip car.

I have to dispute this blanket statement. I’m currently 1200 mi into a 2.5k mi trip from MD, to OH and then New England in our May ‘21 MYLR. Averaging 252 kWh/mi in 90F conditions. Granted, many 2-lane 55 mph roads and generally keeping under 70 on highways, but you can definitely start with 312 mi showing in Ithaca, and drive 210 mi to Queensbury, arriving with 85 mi left. For us, at least, it’s been a great road trip car.

 

[LeaveMeAlone]

I have to dispute this blanket statement. I’m currently 1200 mi into a 2.5k mi trip from MD, to OH and then New England in our May ‘21 MYLR. Averaging 252 kWh/mi in 90F conditions. Granted, many 2-lane 55 mph roads and generally keeping under 70 on highways, but you can definitely start with 312 mi showing in Ithaca, and drive 210 mi to Queensbury, arriving with 85 mi left. For us, at least, it’s been a great road trip car.

I love Ithaca - enjoy. Hope you got some time in Taughannock, so beautiful up there this time of year. And great efficiency!

I drive fast, am impatient and don't like to be told where to go (i.e., driving up Route 17 from NYC to Ithaca would be unwise in a Tesla, but is a magnificent drive). For me, it is not an ideal road trip car.

For the less neurotic, I can see how these arguments are compelling. I don't intend to convince Tesla evangelists otherwise - this was just a "new buyers guide" of sorts with some outside observations - and I certainly don't intend to trade trivial amounts of time for burning the planet, as @Johnny Vector suggests.

Thanks everyone for all the input and conversation - it really is an amazing car.

 

[Rocky_H]

Yeah, there are certainly different preferences in traveling style--sometimes within the same marriage.
I was talking with a couple here a while ago about travel and charge times on the route from Boise to Portland, that people here take fairly frequently. The husband was objecting and griping and complaining about having to take charge stops because "I just want to GET there!" His wife blurted out, "Well, SOME people actually like to sit OUTSIDE the car to eat!!!" She seemed pretty irritated by his usual harsh travel style and was welcoming something that could change that.

 

[gregincal]

> This is an amazing, beautiful piece of technology, but probably not a road trip car.

It depends on what you mean by road trips. I don't consider LA-SF a road trip, it's a get there quickly by car trip (and I'd generally fly, I haven't done that drive for decades).

For what I consider a true road trip, a Tesla is great. My family and I just did 3 weeks from SF Bay Area up the coast, through Portland and to Mount Rainier, and then back down inland, and it was great. Basically one stop per day at lunchtime to charge, and the car always had enough charge before we were done with lunch. Also a couple hotels with chargers thrown in (which is definitely the ideal, no charging stops during the day at all).

 

[liuster]

Just returned from an SF Bay Area-to-LA road trip for the 7-4 weekend (first Tesla road trip). Measured I traveled 88 miles using about 120 miles of Tesla-estimated available range. Traveled 95% on freeways for the 88 miles.

 

[bmah]

Nice write up, thanks for sharing! Over the past 6 years I’ve actually found my Model S to be a great road trip car (up and down the west coast), but I get that not everybody has the same needs or wishes. Perfectly fine for reasonable people to disagree on this.

Bruce.

 

[MY-Y]

Just for fun, I took several rows of Tesla range data from teslike and compared the expected and reported range drop increasing from 55 to 80 using both linear and a square for range drop as speed increased.

The linear model was far closer, with a 2.5% overestimated range at 75 and 5% overestimated range at 80. It was less within one percent off at 60, 65, and 70.

The square model underestimated range by 20% at 70, 25% at 75 and 28% at 80.

Conclusion, linear is the best simple estimate for speed-based range loss at highway speeds. As expected, there are higher order factors, but they aren't close to dominant at these speeds. I suspect if we had data to do the same analysis from 80 to 105, the square term would dominate.

 

[TomServo]

I just returned from our first LONG road trip from southern IL to souther Maryland via I-64 to Richmond then 95 North until we jumped on some state roads to get to St Leonard MD.

I ZERO'd out me Trip A computer.

We had ZERO issues, in fact, due to slow service at most of the restaurants we ate at the car was finished charging before we were done eating and I had to rush out to move it to avoid IDLE charges.

The Y was a joy to drive. I have more photos and details I'll share in a separate post.

 

[dfwatt]

Having just completed my first long trip in the MYLR (~900 miles roundtrip from LA <--> Bay Area), here are my findings and notes going forward - probably obvious to most but maybe helpful to fellow new Tesla owners shocked by real world range and prospective buyers:

Estimated range is BS unless you're slow and intentional. As others have elegantly pointed out (@DayTrippin, @nadalset), incremental required power increases exponentially at higher speeds, and it's not clear that the estimated range takes into account weather conditions (temp, winds), your driving patterns, your imminent plans to crank the AC, charge two cell phones, bump some Emancipator, hit major traffic, etc. I think it does factor in speed limit and elevation, but if you're in the left lane, climbing and enjoying that electric thrust (!!!), be prepared to see those numbers tank. Others have posted great rules of thumb and have even suggested using percentages instead of mileage estimates to reduce anxiety. Conservatively, I think 40-50% of estimated mileage on the highway makes sense if you're winging it, and psychologically, if you can get in the habit of stopping every 1-2 hours for shorter charges (and are near superchargers) then you'll be ok. But, that said...

Trust the nav system. Yes, this slightly contradicts the first point, but I've learned to trust the nav system (after some initial resistance) with estimated supercharger stops. You just have to be intentional about your speed and how you're driving. Tesla will even implicitly "reward" good driving by decreasing the amount of time required to charge at the next stop and bumping up your ETA - real world evidence that going faster != earlier arrival. Meanwhile...

Study and "gameify" range. On the second leg of the trip, I started using TezLab to track efficiency of each "trip", paying close attention to acceleration, speed limit, temperature, elevation, etc., and trying to stay above 100% on local city trips and above 80% on highway trips. It became a game for me and the friend I was traveling with quickly grew tired of hearing about it. Winning the game meant driving delicately on local roads and within 10 mph of the speed limit with limited passing on the highway - all best practices anyway, but somehow felt ironic after dropping $50k for a sub-5 second 0 to 60. Speaking of best practices...

Don't stop looking in your blind spots. The Tesla saved me from side swiping someone on the 101 by auto changing lanes. It also contributed to the near-accident to begin with. Tesla Vision isn't perfect and sometimes it doesn't pick up shorter, smaller cars, and when cars are actually in your blind spot, it shows them as slightly farther behind you, which is dangerous if you're changing lanes quickly and not actively looking (i.e., turning your head). This near-accident would have been very costly, but thankfully...

You'll save money on gas, even at Superchargers. We stopped a few times on each leg, costing around $15-20 a pop. All in, we averaged approx. $0.10/mile using Superchargers only. With current gas prices in California, that's 30-40% savings over an ICE vehicle. However, don't kid yourself. You're probably closer to breakeven in other parts of the country, and the real economic value of EV vs. ICE is charging at home and longer-term maintenance. We'll see. Overall...

This is an amazing, beautiful piece of technology, but probably not a road trip car. Yes, it's doable and yes, there are plenty of people posting videos of cross-country roadtrips that are making out fine. But unless you have the patience of Joseph and are ok stopping frequently, you're going to have issues with longer trips in this car (though I will say many Superchargers are located in great little shopping centers). If Tesla achieved its EPA rating all the time, this would be a moot point. That said, it is still a fantastic daily driver and perfect for shorter trips. It's also genuinely a pleasure and joy to drive. Hopefully 500mi real-world range isn't too far off. And finally, most importantly...

Avoid the Bakersfield CA Supercharger at night. Some real sketchy stuff going on in that IHOP and in the Jack in the Box parking lot.

The key for us was discovering that in fact if you go to the Energy tab and you look at estimated range not instantaneous but average you can get your actual range to within a mile. We find this uncannily accurate. Of course as many and pointed out, it's typically way less than the rated range miles on your battery icon, but that's okay. It is extremely accurate. We also found that even though the actual real-world trip/highway range is significantly less than its epa-rated range (and on that point it's no different from any ICE vehicle), three to three and a half hours in the car is as much as time as we want to spend so we regard these as the best trip cars we've ever had (due to enhanced autopilot and the fact that we have unlimited free supercharging on both cars). If I could drive 500 miles on a single tank so to speak, I just wouldn't. But it would of course shorten our charging stops because at that point you're in The Sweet Spot of the battery for charging and you'd never have to charge to 80 or 90%. Even so, we find that the supercharger visit length particularly at version 3 is only about 5-8 minutes longer than our bathroom break, coffee break or snack break. It's not really enough time to even get a real meal so what for some is a deficit or a bug so to speak for us is just a feature

 

[bluetrep1]

tesla EPA range is bs. Non-Tesla EPA range is more realistic.

 

[dfwatt]

tesla EPA range is bs. Non-Tesla EPA range is more realistic.

Curious what your data is for that. In our experience the mileage for gas cars is pretty optimistic. I've never gotten my average mileage in a Lexus IS 350 compared to what the EPA claimed was its regular City and highway mileage. So both for gas and electric vehicles, the epa's test cycle yields pretty optimistic numbers. It's less of an issue in relationship to gas cars because your actual Highway range is still often times greater than 350-400 mi.

 

[DayTrippin]

Count me in the camp of overly optimistic for Tesla. I've had several cars recently where I could meet or beat the EPA estimates on the highway. Most notably a Ram 1500 Ecodiesel. I could get about 28 mpg at a steady 70 mph vs. the EPA rating of 26 mpg. If I drove it like the EPA test, I could get about 30 mpg on the highway. Even running the AC had almost no discernible difference.

I have had other cars that miss the EPA ratings but never by anything approaching that of my Model Y. A friend with a Taycan easily beats his EPA estimates. I think Tesla does an amazing job of gaming they test. By that I mean exploiting every possible thing they can to the point it bears no resemblance to anything approaching how most people might drive their car, and the EPA test is already pushing that in the first place.

 

[bluetrep1]

Curious what your data is for that. In our experience the mileage for gas cars is pretty optimistic. I've never gotten my average mileage in a Lexus IS 350 compared to what the EPA claimed was its regular City and highway mileage. So both for gas and electric vehicles, the epa's test cycle yields pretty optimistic numbers. It's less of an issue in relationship to gas cars because your actual Highway range is still often times greater than 350-400 mi.

some articles from insideevs.com. for example, id4 , has bigger kwh battery , but epa range is only 250mi. sure, tesla has better efficiency, but not enough to make such big difference . id4 real world range sometimes beat epa.