Redmond to Portland and back power use and Supercharging data

[Blurry_Eyed]

I have taken a couple of trips to Seattle to Portland and back and thought I'd post here so those interested can have a rough sense about rated range use and Supercharging data on the drive there and back.

I drove a P85 car with 21" Continental tires, running version 4.5 software and I'm assuming the Supercharger stations were outputting 90 kWh (i'm assuming they weren't upgraded yet and a car running 4.5 probably wouldn't be able to take advantage of the 120 kWh Supercharger if it were upgraded). My driving was 'spirited' and we did stay with or exceeded the flow of traffic all along the way. Conditions were no real wind to speak of and sunny temps in the 70's-80's. Used AC for the whole trip in standard mode and kept the temperature set around 68 degrees.

The information below was gathered during driving conditions that could be termed summer driving conditions. I'd assume these are probably best case (Lowest) power consumption figures. You could get lower power consumption figures under the same conditions by really watching your speed, but my intention was to just drive like I felt without constraints and see what happened. I have my car set to display rated miles, rather than ideal miles and the numbers below reflect a car reporting rated miles:

Executive summary:

If you want to drive fairly freely and not be concerned with watching your speed in the summer months, (Assuming minimal to no headwinds), you should plan on having a minimum of 115 rated miles of range to make it to and from the Centralia Superchargers from Portland or Redmond. For a safety margin (a 20% range buffer), you should have at least 138 miles of rated range.

If you want to try to make the entire round trip only using the Supercharger and not charging anywhere along the way, you will want to charge up at the SC to at least 260 miles of rated range. Doing that will give you about 30 miles of rated range to use at your destination after the SC. Again, this is for summer conditions. Once I have data from the winter, I'll edit this post and add it in, but I'd guess that it would be very difficult to make a round trip only using the SC at that time of year.

In the winter months, if you want to drive fairly freely and not be concerned with watching your speed, I'd estimate if conditions were difficult (wind and rainy conditions with water on the road) and you were running the heater, you probably should have a minimum of 138 miles of rated range (Adding a 20% safety margin over the lower summer conditions requirements) and may want to have 165 miles (adding 20% on top of the 138 miles) or more of rated range to have an ample safety margin. When the rainy season returns, I'll keep some data and see what the actual trip turns out to be.

Long Version:

Started trip from Redmond, WA

- 270 rated miles at start (max range charge)
- 2:05 driving time to Centralia Supercharger station (Hit heavy traffic in areas)
- 156 rated range remaining on arrival
- 114 rated miles used
- 99.9 miles actual mileage according to the trip odometer
- 31.1 kWh of power used
- 311 wh/mi consumption average
- Initial state of battery was 156 rated miles when Supercharging began. 50 minutes of charge time at the Supercharger - recovered 111 rated miles. Did not note initial charge speed on this leg of trip.
- 267 rated miles at departure from Supercharger

Arrived at Portland

- 2:10 total driving time (Ran into heavy traffic and the 2:10 included the drive to our hotel in South Portland)
- 156 rated range remaing on arrival
- 111 rated miles used
- 90 actual miles driven according to the trip odometer
- 29.8 kWh power used
- 332 wh/mi consumption average

Total trip Redmond to Portland:

- 4:15 driving time - 5:05 total trip time (Labor Day traffic was brutal in areas and this includes the Supercharger stop where we ate lunch and walked around with the kids)
- 225 miles of rate range used
- 189.9 miles actually traveled
- 60.9 kWh power consumed



Portland to Redmond - Temps in the 80's and no wind. 'Spirited' driving again on trip home

- 1:20 total driving time to Supercharger (Light traffic, time from North Portland)
- 150 miles rated range at departure
- 113 rated miles (37 rated miles remaining on display)
- 92.3 actual miles traveled according to trip odometer
- I monitored the charging with the iPhone app. In 22 minutes of charging at the SC station I had regained 94 miles, which would have provided me enough power with a buffer to get back to my home in Redmond if I choose to leave right then. But the kids were eating, so we stayed longer and kept charging.
- 32.4 kWh power used
- 351 wh/mi average
- State of battery was 37 rated miles when Supercharging began. Charge speed ramped up to just under 300 rated miles per hour at about 364+ volts and 250+ amps. 150 miles of range recovered at Supercharger stop of 57 minutes. (NOTE - my car stopped charging at 180 miles of rated range for some reason. I don't know how long it was like that. When I returned to the car, I unplugged it and replugged it into the Supercharger and that restarted the charge. So I don't know how many minutes the car was not charging during the 57 minute stop).
- 191 rated miles at departure from Centralia

Arrival at Redmond

- 1:38 driving time
- 84 miles rated range remaining on arrival
- 107 rated miles used
- 90 actual miles driven
- 29.9kWh power used
- 309 wh/mi

Totals:

- 2:58 drive time - 3:55 total trip time
- 220 rated miles used
- 182.3 miles actually driven
- 62.3 kWh power used.

Hopefully this will give people a rough sense of what to expect when driving to Portland from Redmond in the summer.

 

[DouglasR]

This is helpful, in that it gives us a realistic idea of how it would be to drive to Portland and back in a single day (i.e., without charging overnight). I guess if you plan to do much driving around when in Portland, you would have to drive a little more conservatively.

 

[donv]

I drove Portland - Gig Harbor - Portland in one day, last week. Stopped at the Centralia supercharger both ways, no problem. By the time I was back from getting a latte at Starbucks, the car was up to 200 miles each time.

Centralia - Seattle - Centralia would be a little dicier-- about 170 miles, compared with 120 Centralia - Gig Harbor - Centralia. However, an hour or so on a Blink or other 220 charger in Seattle would make it a piece of cake in an 85.

This is why the supercharger in Seattle makes sense. Then the trip would be really easy-- I probably wouldn't even stop in Centralia.

 

[antochat]

Thanks for posting, very helpful information.

 

[Blurry_Eyed]

This is helpful, in that it gives us a realistic idea of how it would be to drive to Portland and back in a single day (i.e., without charging overnight). I guess if you plan to do much driving around when in Portland, you would have to drive a little more conservatively.

I did a day trip from Redmond to Portland and back to Redmond a couple of weeks ago. In the summer with good driving conditions, I would say you are best off charging for about 1 to 2 hours someplace while in Portland if possible. That would add back between 12 miles to 56 miles of rated range while there (depending on what power the public charger can deliver - They can vary from about 12 miles of rated range returned per hour up to about 18 miles per hour. If you can find a NEMA 14-50 plug, those are the best (approx. 28 miles per hour of rated range if they deliver 240 volts, but many commercial locations have 208 volt power and that drops your recovered range to something around 21 miles per hour) There are some 14-50 plugs available in Downtown Portland. I used the Plugshare app on my iPhone to locate the 14-50 plugs, but didn't use them on the day trip.

On my day trip, I started with 111 miles of rated range leaving from Portland. I didn't monitor how many actual miles I drove in Portland, but we did drive to the Saturday Market, drove to Salt & Straw Ice Cream on the West side of the river and drove around the downtown core exploring for about an hour (my wife wanted to go by Powell's book store). On the journey home I monitored my power very closely. Around the 50 mile mark, I realized that I might not make it, so I started to slow down and drove more in the 60-65 mph range and hit about 1/2 a mile of slow traffic (probably about 20 mph) as I neared Centralia. I ended up with 2 rated miles of range remaining when I arrived at the SC.

If you did about 30 miles of driving in Portland, plan on that using about 40 miles of rated range to be conservative. Then plan on about needing 230 miles of rated range to make it to and from Portland. If you left the Supercharger with 270 miles of rated range, you should be ok under perfect conditions. If you drove conservatively on the way from the SC and back to the SC, you should be ok with 260 miles of rated range upon leaving the SC, but that doesn't leave much margin for less than perfect conditions.

The 2 rated miles is the lowest I've gone, but the Model is is supposed to have about 10-15 miles of rated range available beyond the 0 mile mark on the screen. If that is true, then you probably don't really have to be conservative on the freeway legs of the trip even if you drive 30 actual miles while around Portland. But I haven't personally tested the cars capability in this manner!

 

[DouglasR]

I did a day trip from Redmond to Portland and back to Redmond a couple of weeks ago. In the summer with good driving conditions, I would say you are best off charging for about 1 to 2 hours someplace while in Portland if possible. That would add back between 12 miles to 56 miles of rated range while there (depending on what power the public charger can deliver - They can vary from about 12 miles of rated range returned per hour up to about 18 miles per hour. If you can find a NEMA 14-50 plug, those are the best (approx. 28 miles per hour of rated range if they deliver 240 volts, but many commercial locations have 208 volt power and that drops your recovered range to something around 21 miles per hour) There are some 14-50 plugs available in Downtown Portland. I used the Plugshare app on my iPhone to locate the 14-50 plugs, but didn't use them on the day trip.

For me, the best place to charge in the Portland area is the Tesla store in Washington Square Mall. I have twin chargers and a Roadster adapter, so could use either the Roadster HPC or the HPWC to get 50+ mph. The problem, however, is that we would be making the day trip to visit a friend, and it would be nice to charge up during the visit so as not to make the day too long. That's why I was looking at the possibility of getting from Centralia to Portland and back on a single charge. I suppose I could play it by ear -- if I used up too many rated miles getting to and around Portland, and if I couldn't find a place to charge during the visit, I could always stop somewhere on the way back to add a bit of cushion.

 

[donv]

There are various pay chargers all over Portland-- I'm sure you could find one. I never use them because it's cheaper to charge at home, but they are all over the place. Practically every parking garage in downtown has one.

 

[brianman]

This is helpful, in that it gives us a realistic idea of how it would be to drive to Portland and back in a single day (i.e., without charging overnight). I guess if you plan to do much driving around when in Portland, you would have to drive a little more conservatively.

I did Sammamish to Centralia to Woodburn to Centralia to Bellevue on the day Woodburn SC opened. I started around 5am and arrived in Bellevue around 3:30pm.

Traffic was far more of a hassle than charging, by a longshot. Especially Portland around 8:30am simply ate time.