I do agree the Gen3 car in masses can motivate people to drop their ICE cars as some voters said. However, EV does not manufacture by Tesla alone. The rest of the car manufacturers need to endorse and create mainstream products to support this initiative. I vote for the "more superchargers" but more importantly we need more range battery, like 400 mile range for a single charge. We need supercharger buy-in by the major car manufacturers to push the EV initiative but we have a long way to go. I also post my first long trip experience which I posted on the Tesla Web Site Forum, "60 vs 85" and is the reason I am still keeping my ICE car..
"I have the S60 for 9 months now. I love the car and really cannot tell the difference in performance between mine and the S85 test car. I rarely drove more than 150 miles a day and life is good until I took the car to New Jersey (from NC) one weekend. It was a 500+ miles trip and I am very familiar with this route. I wish I have the S85. It took me 16 hours with about 3 hours traffic (normally 8 hours with no traffic) Tesla Ownership Experience(OE) told me they plan to build the Superchargers about every 150 miles. It sounds good for the S60 owners right? With long trip, you have to consider these items: 1. Unexpected road construction/repair which will bring the long detour; 2. Closed highway exit which the Model S GPS cannot tell and that means you have to find the next exit, cause additional miles; 3. Travel uphill (usually from South to North) will need more energy. I experienced all of these during my i95 corridor trip and it was no fun at all. I had two stops (one at Nissan Level 2 charger) which I had 2 miles and 1 miles left with my heater off and cruse control on for 65 miles driving all the way. No spirited driving at all. I am grateful that I didn't need any tow, but imagine my range anxiety!!!
My suggestions for long distance travelers:
1. If you are debating between S60 vs S85 or P85 buying, get the 85KW if you can afford one. I really regret my purchase (purely because of the range) and want to upgrade and hopefully the 110KW or higher battery comes out sooner than later.
2. If you want to charge 200 miles (can only get 196 miles now with v5.8), the last 1/4 charge will be quite slow, so charge whatever you need to get to the next SC.
3. Be careful the in-between superchargers' distance on the monitor is not the same as the GPS (Garmin vs Google, short by about 15-20 miles). Tesla OE said they are working on this to consolidate.
4. Always put in the contingency (including weather condition and load) while you travel from SC to SC. I am now using 20% for uphill climb and 10% for downhill. Tesla OE told me they are working on the improvements for Model S Navigation, which will take into account elevation changes, more refined address searching, and potentially weather conditions. These are all good news.
This was my first long trip using my S60 and learned a lot from it. I hope this can provide some help for those of you who are planning for your next long trip."
I did a lot of planning prior for this trip including calculating distance from google map, track down the SCs, Level 2 charger stops, etc. My 8.5 hours trip turns into 16 hours (3 hours for heavy traffic). 4.5 hours are wait time between the SCs and Level 2. I am glad I didn't have my family with me. I hope Elon will have a more fun trip in his next cross country show.
. Arrival of model X will mean little car goes to other son, big ugly truck stays a while longer. I'm thinking of getting a C-1 from Lit Motors too! We'll see how that looks when they actually make one. ML
