Seattle to Vancouver

[redbaronace]

Hello everyone

We will be taking a trip from Seattle to Vancouver, BC in January in our S85D. The hotel we are staying at near Stanley Park does not have destination charging so it likely that we will be relying solely on the supercharger network.

Given that it is cold at this time of the year and we will lose a lot of efficiency due to temps, what is the best way to arrange this trip. I am traveling with wife and kids so ideally there will be somewhere to use the bathrooms and get a bite to eat or coffee while we wait.

Once in Vancouver we will be using the car to drive around as well, so that will also use up some of the battery during our stay.

Is there anyone who does this trip regularly in their Tesla who can share their experience. I am hoping that the Tesla can be our Vancouver car for this and future trips as we visit there every couple months.

 

[marksvend]

A new Supercharger just opened in Tsawwassen, BC. That's just a small side trip on the way to Vancouver and you should be able to get plenty of charge there to drive around before returning.

Tsawwassen, BC Supercharger | Tesla

Here's a planned trip for your S85D in winter temperatures. One 42 minute stop at Tsawwassen is all you need to make it from Seattle to Vancouver with an 80% charge remaining.
A Better Routeplanner

 

[redbaronace]

I did see that and some were stating that it is not in an ideal place to stop off as it detours a person by 30 minutes (15 min each way). What has been your experience with it and is there anything to do while waiting?

 

[marksvend]

I did see that and some were stating that it is not in an ideal place to stop off as it detours a person by 30 minutes (15 min each way). What has been your experience with it and is there anything to do while waiting?

There's plenty of services around Tsawwassen. The Tesla link I posted lists them. It just opened a week ago, so I haven't stopped there.

Another alternative is to just stop in Burlington for 40 minutes to charge to 100% and then you'll have about 62% left when arriving in Vancouver. That's not really enough to drive around much, since you'll need about a 50% charge to get back to Burlington. You'd probably need to stop at a public charger to add more in that case.

A Better Routeplanner

A Better Route Planner is really useful for planning things like this. I use 380wh/mi to account for winter driving inefficiencies.

 

[f-stop]

I did see that and some were stating that it is not in an ideal place to stop off as it detours a person by 30 minutes (15 min each way). What has been your experience with it and is there anything to do while waiting?

there's a huge shopping mall right at the Tsawwassen Supercharger location, lots of food and shopping choices inside, plus more shopping just north across the road (e.g. Walmart).

fyi I posted some local Vancouver L2 charging and downtown parking tips to another person with similar question in this recent thread, or if you have some specific questions, PM me
Vancouver Charging Options

 

[rpo]

For future reference, I always stay at the Coast Coal Harbour Hotel in downtown Vancouver because they have a destination charger and 3 J1772s in the garage in case it is busy. It is a great hotel and pretty cheap in the off-season.

 

[redbaronace]

Ok spoke to the folks at the Pinnacle hotel in Vancouver, BC and they informed me that they do in fact have 2 48amp charging stalls. The location is parking garage level C Stalls 36 and 38. They are limited to 2 hours parking and supposedly you need to bring your own cable. Does this sound correct? The front desk person admitted that he never personally saw the station but that was what he was told.

I will bring my tesla cable in case, but is this common?

 

[dknisely]

We did a family trip from Seattle to Vancouver last summer (so better mileage in warmer weather) in our S75, and it wasn't comfortable because the placement of SCs pretty much leaves absolutely no extra charge for driving around. It was pretty much mandatory to take a side drive up to Squamish to get a full charge. The new Tsawwassen SC should be a much better alternative that is much further out of the way, but still not ideal. Something near the US-Canadian boarder seems to be needed rather badly! I would actually feel pretty comfortable with the Tsawwassen SC available now.

My assessment of other slow charging options in central Vancouver was that they would be a pain to hunt down unless you're staying at a hotel with a destination charger (even a J1772 one). I would note that you should not rule out using just ordinary 120 VAC if you stay overnight. You can add a fair amount of charge in, say, a 16 hour overnight stay (at least +48 miles range), so it is worth asking the hotel/venue of it is OK to plug in somewhere near the parking lot or building. This worked well for us when we visited Olympic National Park last summer and the only charge we could get for side trips was from 120 VAC as the SCs were at the extreme parts of the peninsula from where we were staying. After that, I bought a long, high-gauge extension cord to allow for plugins when parking near the plug isn't possible.

Eastern and central WA state are similar -- the SCs are spaced for driving through with no side trips, so you just have to find somewhere to slow charge or make side trips from the rare SCs. I found a hotel near ours that had two J1772 spots, but they let me charge overnight (twice) for $5, which was a great deal and kept us away from a long side trip to Ellensburg.

 

[richrootes]

Hello everyone

We will be taking a trip from Seattle to Vancouver, BC in January in our S85D. The hotel we are staying at near Stanley Park does not have destination charging so it likely that we will be relying solely on the supercharger network.

Given that it is cold at this time of the year and we will lose a lot of efficiency due to temps, what is the best way to arrange this trip. I am traveling with wife and kids so ideally there will be somewhere to use the bathrooms and get a bite to eat or coffee while we wait.

Once in Vancouver we will be using the car to drive around as well, so that will also use up some of the battery during our stay.

Is there anyone who does this trip regularly in their Tesla who can share their experience. I am hoping that the Tesla can be our Vancouver car for this and future trips as we visit there every couple months.

If you get low, pop over the bridge and you can charge at mine - or I'll show you where the local chademo is

PM for details

 

[redbaronace]

Thanks so much for all the helpful advice. Richrootes, I am hoping to get by with the twassen SC and hotel charger. I will let you know if something changes.

 

[BerTX]

Ok spoke to the folks at the Pinnacle hotel in Vancouver, BC and they informed me that they do in fact have 2 48amp charging stalls. The location is parking garage level C Stalls 36 and 38. They are limited to 2 hours parking and supposedly you need to bring your own cable. Does this sound correct? The front desk person admitted that he never personally saw the station but that was what he was told.

I will bring my tesla cable in case, but is this common?

This doesn't exactly all fit together to make sense, but bring your Mobile Connector and of course your J1772 adapter. Likely the garage has a J1772 EVSE since they said it is more than 40A, so you will just need the adapter. You should get 30-36 miles added per hour of charging. You will probably be able to charge another 2 hours if you check in with them, they probably just don't want one car keeping others from charging.

 

[PLUS EV]

Getting close to full at Tsawwassen and then inquiring at the hotel is the clear course of action.

On the way back, you could plug in at Tsawwassen again, or, if you have enough range, you could push on to Burlington which is more conveniently located along I-5. Arlington is also an option, but it's a 3-4 mile detour off I-5.

Have a fun trip!!

 

[redbaronace]

We visited Vancouver this week and ended up charging at Burlington on the way up because the Tsawwassen charger was saying temporarily out of service as we were headed there. I thought it was really nice that the navigation system alerts us that the charger was not open, instead of us finding out once we arrived.

The hotel did have a Level 2 charger and with the use of our J1772 adapter we were able to charge during our entire trip. It says 2 hours minimum, but in fact we did not see another electric car on either of the stations the entire time. We just parked there and charged overnight. We did leave the card with our phone number displayed on the dash in case 2 cars happened to show up. Really unlikely given that we never saw any other folks needing charge.

It was nice to return to the Hotel from our trips to the mountains and get topped off each time. Feels like the free charge somewhat offsets the high cost of parking in the garage. We were charging at 27MPH.

Hope this helps others who stay at this hotel or are visiting Vancouver, BC in the future.

On a side note, the Burlington supercharger was really nice. Located across from a hotel, it allowed us to use the bathroom and hang out in the lobby for the 30 minutes we charged. Very close to the highway (2 minutes), it is a fast little detour. While there we encountered 7 model S cars.

 

[whitex]

I did a few day-trips to Vancouver in a P85D. Stopping at Burlington SC and charging 90%+ was sufficient with some driving around Vancouver to make it back to Burlington (on way back charge just enough to get home). Once I had a little more driving around Vancouver including some through the mountains, so I stopped by a ChaDeMo charger in North Vancouver for 20 minutes or so to give myself comfortable buffer to make it back to Burlington. Now with the new Tsawwassen SC I would have done that instead. For extra backup, you can bring a ChaDeMo adapter and make sure you get yourself the Greenlots card as some of the chargers in Vancouver (including the ChaDeMo I used), even the free ones, require the card.

 

[deonb]

Hello everyone

We will be taking a trip from Seattle to Vancouver, BC in January in our S85D. The hotel we are staying at near Stanley Park does not have destination charging so it likely that we will be relying solely on the supercharger network.

Which hotel are you staying at? There are so many parking lots in Vancouver with EV charging that if you just park a couple of blocks away you can generally get an overnight charge for cheaper than the hotel parking.

I generally stay in the Marriott there but park in the West Pender parking lot at least for one of the nights to charge. It gets enclosed overnight so it’s pretty safe as well.

 

[redbaronace]

The hotel parking is $35 per night Canadian at Pinnacle Hotel which is where we stayed. The EV charging was free and neither of the stalls was ever occupied so we charged frequently. We did leave our contact info in case someone needed to charge.