SoCal to Washington - aka There and back again.

[SoCalNick]

So, just did a trip from Los Angeles to northern Washington, and SC network was fantastic.

Left the house at 100% on Thursday, driving my wife's 2020 ModelX LR. 10 miles down the road we had to turn around as she forgot a necessary item, a few minutes later and there we were again...

Heading out up the 5, we started off over the GrapeVine, and got to skip the SuperCharges at the bottom (Tejon Ranch) and move on up the 5. Leaving at 100% gave us the flexibility to pick our first charger, and Kettleman City coffee shop it was. We all got drinks and the family headed over to the other side of the road to see the wild west attraction. Note that there are 40 chargers here, and another 55 under construction on the other side of the street.

We left Kettleman city, and continued North, past Harris Ranch (my favorite place to stop.) Harris Ranch is the original charging location between San Francisco and Los Angeles. They currently have 18 superchargers, and construction is under way for 80 more.

We skipped Firebaugh (56), and finaly to Scockton supercharger. Here the supercharger is hidden behind a hotel (with has 4x overnight chargers also) and was a good quarter mile walk to the local fast food. Supercharger was fully functional, and the hotel lobby was available if we needed bathrooms. Good stop.

We continued north, passing the multitude of chargers around Sacramento, and hit our first snag around Corning. We wanted to head to Red Bluff (8 stalls) but got a notification from the car thit was full, and the car routed us to Corning instead. Corning has 6 of the v2 chargers (which is fine) and good access to a Starbucks. There are a few restaurants around. It will be nice when Red Bluff expands from the current 8 chargers with teh 12 new ones that are under construction at the other end of the city.

Continuing north, through Redding, we started the climb up Mount Shasta, stopping at the SuperCharger at the top. Note that there are two groups of v2 superchargers here, and the car routed us to the smaller one, as it is closer to the freeway. We went to the bigger one. On the corner here is the original "Black Bear Restaurant" - if you like that kind of thing. The SC is near a shopping center with DIY store, grocery store and a few restaurants. Nice view of Mount Shasta from the supercharger.

Leaving Mt Shasta we took a detour here, and turned right at Weed (yes, that's a real city name in Cali) along the US97 to Klamath Falls.
I'd never gone this way before and it was gorgeous. Klamath falls had a v2 SuperCharger outside a Fred Meyers (seriously, that store has everyting.) and we stayed the night. Note that coffee choices start getting good once we get into Oregon. Once we left Klamath, we were giong to drive around "Crater Lake" as it's supposed to be awesome. We had the juice to do it, but ran short on time.

We left Klamouth, and had a gorgeous drive, ultimately heading towards Eugene, OR. We skipped the v2 SuperCharger in Eugene, and went just north of there to Harrisberg. Another problem, this is 8 v3 stalls in a "winery" on the side of the road. 4 of the stalls were non-operational, and we were lucky to get one of the working ones. This SC location had a few bewildered people pulling up, and then not sure what to do when they realized they could not charge. The winery had food out of a food truck, but I would probably skip this stop again.

Now, with time pressing in, we launch north, and had to deal with Portland on a Friday night. We survived (just) with some horrible traffic, and crossed into Washington and charging in Kelso. Easy v3 supercharger. It really is amazing how many superchargers we kept passing, usually arriving at 10-20%, and leaving with 68-80%.

We next charged just north of Olympia (the captial) and arrived at our destination. We charged over the weekend in Tacoma (Federal way) supercharger. Starbucks was close, as was an awesome doghnut shop. While in Tacoma we visited Port Angeles, and got to sample the Sequim superchager. One of the SC's was broken here, and another was "disabled only" leaving 6 v2 superchargers, which were surprisingly busy. But they worked, and worked well. We finally travelled all the way north on the i5 and got to use the Blaine WA supercharger.

Blaine, was an awesome little supercharger. Great supermarket, able to stock up on supplies, get sandwiches made, and then had to turn around and head home.

Blaine, WA - starting point.
Centralia, WA - first stop.
Kelso, WA - 2nd stop.
Salem, OR (nice Target for supplies.)
Myrtle Creek, OR
Yreka, CA (truck stop.)
RedBluff, CA
Sacramento (Parking garage, nothing open $4 parking fee.)
Firebaugh (56 stalls, solar panel shade, McDonalds but not much else.)
Waved past 5 more superchargers until we reached:
Tejon Ranch (56 outside the outlets)
Home.
Blaine to Home in 24 hours straight drive, with the AC running non-stop.

 

[israndy]

I did the same trip last Thanksgiving, all the way to the Canadian border from San Diego.

Best part, it was free.

Not because Supercharging was free off peak, but that is becoming a thing to cut down on everyone driving during the day.

It was free because California and Oregon and Washington had a thing called the West Coast Electric Highway and until recently it has been free due to its purchase by EVCS. They have been retrofitting faster charging into the old stations then they go back to pay-for charging, but it was a blast to go anywhere with my Tesla CHAdeMo adapter (recently sold on eBay in favor of the new CCS adapter from Tesla) and not have to worry about paying to charge.

Lots of California rest stops are also putting in free charging (50kW DCFC like at the foot of the Grapevine or Kettleman City) but when I tried to come home from that trip via the coast I ran out of free places to charge upon reentering California. I also didn't make it in 24 hours like you did, as Superchargers are a LOT faster than CHAdeMO. But I was enjoying the challenge of stopping at every one of the WCEH stations, so I only needed about 5 minutes per as they are about every 25-50 miles up HWY 5, 101 and 99.

I was up there again this month and only Seven Feathers still has free charging, not that I stopped to check each one.

 

[SoCalNick]

Using non-Tesla chargers is an interesting choice; I think I'd be chicken.

However, what is this CCS adapter; I didn't think it was available out here yet?

 

[israndy]

Ordered from Korea

 

[bselby01]

I did a similar trip. Lake Stevens, WA to San Diego, CA and back in my 2013 Model S 85 (left March 22, 2023 and got home March 30, 2023). Since I have the older Tesla my max charge rate was 120 kwh but I have free unlimited supercharging so that is the trade off. I stopped in Red Bluff overnight because there is a hotel with a Tesla destination charger (and a supercharger close by if I had issues with the destination charger) so I could charge overnight (took 9-10 hours to take the car from 4% to 98% while we slept). Traveling with small children (2 and 5 years old) we didn't mind the extra time we spent supercharging. Most of the superchargers were at Targets where they could look at toys and run up and down the aisles. I stayed on I-5 the whole time and let my car plan the stops (I researched the proposed stops to make sure there was something for us to do and took notes to avoid some chargers because comments of no bathrooms or only gas stations, where it's dangerous for the kids to run around). Sometimes the car would plan for me to stop with 40% battery so I would manually override to a charger where my estimated arrival percentage was between 5-10%. Tons of superchargers available, 100% would do the trip again but I would have stopped supercharging when the charging speed slowed down instead of waiting for it to tell me how long to charge and then going. Attached is a download of my supercharging history from the Tesla app to show stops, power consumed and price per kwh.

 

[israndy]

Slowed down to what rate? I'll often leave when I hit 80-85kW, but that's not always enough to get to Boise.

Speaking of Rates, your car charges at 120kW, not kWh, that's a measure of capacity, not rate

 

[bselby01]

Slowed down to what rate? I'll often leave when I hit 80-85kW, but that's not always enough to get to Boise.

Speaking of Rates, your car charges at 120kW, not kWh, that's a measure of capacity, not rate

Sometimes the car would be telling us to charge to 80% and I would want to leave at 50% charge but my wife wanted to listen to the car. We only had the car for 4 months and it was my first ever EV. My cars charging speed would hit 85 kw when we were only at 30%. We would hit 50 kw at 50% charge. Waiting until 80% SOC we would be down to 30 kw. I took some screen shots of the Tesla app while super charging and charted the results over 1.5 years of supercharging, see attached.

Speaking of rates, yeah I still get them confused. I knew very little about electricity (volts, amps, kw) before getting an EV and I'm still trying to keep it straight in my head. Even when getting solar panels 7 years ago I just trusted the company installing them and never really did research (it was a great investment, spend $20K and with incentives it paid off in 4 years). I didn't understand our kwh usage or production but just looked at the bill credits rack up in the summer and burn off in the winter never dropping to zero.