Supercharger Hunting Road Trip to Southern California, Summer 2023

(Map generated by TeslaFi from trip data)

I took my 2022 Model X on a "Supercharger hunting" trip from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Los Angeles and San Diego metro areas, during the extended weekend of July 13-17. The goal of the trip was to log charges at as many unvisited Superchargers as possible, as a part of a friendly competition here on TMC. This is admittedly counter to what most people will do on road trips!

I used A Better Route Planner (ABRP) to plot out a rough schedule for each day, just to determine feasibility of the route and charging I had in mind. Most charging stops were only 2-3 minutes long (that's enough time to plug in, record the charge on supercharging.life, take a few pictures, input the next destination in to the nav, and unplug). Within high density metro areas, even these short charges were more than enough to make up the energy I used driving to the next charger.

Here's a summary of the trip. These were basically full driving days during daylight hours only:

July 13: Home (SF Bay Area) to Marina del Rey via I-5, I-405. 11 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 14: Marina del Rey to Montebello (looping around the LA metro area). 22 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 15: Montebello to San Diego via I-5. 29 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 16: San Diego to Calabasas via I-15, I-210, and US-101. 19 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 17: Calabasas to Home (SF Bay Area) via US-101. 7 new-to-me Superchargers visited.

Notable Superchargers I found interesting:

• Kettleman City, CA: This was my main charging stop southbound...the one with the lounge. It's one of the older Superchargers on I-5 but still a favorite.
• Santa Monica, CA: A huge site (62 stalls) with restrooms and vending machines. It felt like an urban version of Kettleman City.
• Torrance, CA: One of several mall parking garage Superchargers that proved really difficult to find. I ended up needing to pull over and check the TMC thread for the site to learn where to go.
• Sherman Oaks, CA: Another mall Supercharger, where one apparently needs to enter a parking garage from one specific entrance. Most malls, like this one, seem to have good signage for Superchargers once you actually get inside the garage.
• Mission Viejo, CA: In an outdoor parking lot at a shopping mall, this was one I skipped because it was full, there were cars waiting, and no obvious place for one more car (mine) to queue up.
• Temecula, CA - Temecula Parkway: The longest wait I had for a Supercharger, which wasn't all that long actually. Other owners were likely wondering why I waited in line for 11 minutes only to plug in for 2 minutes and leave.
• Ojai, CA: A little out of the way for many travelers, but it's a nice little EV charging oasis with both Tesla and EA chargers next to a cafe.
• San Ardo, CA: In the parking lot of an olive oil company, which was unfortunately closed on the day I passed through.

Interesting places for food along the way:

• Mitsuwa Marketplace in Torrance, in the same shopping center as the Torrance Supercharger. A sushi take-out was a nice quick bite between chargers.
• ComeBuyTea in Huntington Beach. They make various kinds of tea drinks, using contraptions that look like espresso machines. Not particularly close to any Supercharger, but it was a nice stop to get a drink while driving around. They're a chain based in Asia, but this is one of their few locations in the US.
• Tokyo Fried Chicken in Monterey Park. A short drive from my hotel in Montebello (Home 2 Suites, which still has one of the best destination charger setup I've encountered). Tasty fried chicken with sides.
• Café Bōku in Ojai. A nice little cafe right at the Supercharger. They have innovative and refreshing smoothies here.

A few observations:

Road-tripping between NorCal and SoCal in 2023 is super-easy. Using I-5 is basically a no-brainer under almost all circumstances (exceptions might be holiday weekends or a closure of the Grapevine). US-101 has more, smaller Superchargers, so a little bit of planning can be helpful, but it's definitely viable and somewhat more scenic in places.

Unsurprisingly, Superchargers are less busy in the early morning compared to later in the day.

Superchargers in multi-story parking garages are often difficult to deal with. Some have limited hours. It's not always obvious which garage or which entrance to use (some have better signage than others). Once inside, it's often not clear which level to go to, and the restricted lines of sight and traffic flows can make finding the stalls difficult. Queueing up at busy locations can be hard too, although some garages had lanes set aside for Supercharger lines. The Tesla nav usually has some information on which level to use, which I've found helpful (tap the pin for the Supercharger). On the other hand, the nav destination for the Supercharger doesn't always drop you off close to where the pedestals actually are. The appropriate discussion thread on TMC usually has some hints as well (probably best to pull over and look, if you have to do this).

For a lot of the open road driving on the freeway, I used FSD with minimal speed-based lane changes. I had a few incidents of phantom braking (annoyingly I noticed a correlation when trying to pass semi-trucks) but it was still generally useful. I've written about this elsewhere, but AP1 on my former road-trip car delivered a better freeway experience than HW3+FSD. I was not comfortable having FSD drive on surface streets or in heavy freeway traffic, partially due to my unfamiliarity with SoCal freeways and roads.

There's something about SoCal freeways (both LA and SD), possibly where there is ongoing or recent construction, that sets off some very strange road noise in my X. I have never noticed that anywhere else. I wonder if it's grooved pavement that's somehow different than in other parts of California?

I saw more older Teslas in SoCal than I would have expected (it felt like more than in the Bay Area). In particular it seemed like there were a fair number of original nose-cone Model S in no-longer-available colors (brown, green, silver, dolphin grey).

There was a lot of 100F+ weather on this trip, particularly on the fourth day. I'm glad I had a sun shade for the upper part of the Model X windshield. (some Model X owners prefer to do a tint on the windshield.) No particular issues with heat or AC. I didn't notice any problems with charging, either.

If this slightly crazy Supercharging hunting game sounds like fun, it's open to anyone to join. See this thread on TMC for more information: Wiki - Superchargers Visited

Trip statistics:

• 5 days
• 1458 miles
• 467 kWh
• 321 Wh/mi
• 88 new-to-me Superchargers visited (348 lifetime total)
  

 

[avlstrike]

I did a somewhat similar trip about a month ago - in reverse (Southern CA to the Bay Area and Napa, using mostly 101). In fact that was my first road trip since taking delivery of my Model Y LR in March. As a newbie I haven't advanced to making a sport out of finding Superchargers, but used them as an obvious necessity. I had my first experience of Range Anxiety when I found that my original expectation of charging in Salinas was not going to happen (there is a long dry stretch between Paso Robles and there). I was expecting to find a charger in King City but none showed up. Fortunately, there was one in the next little town up the road (Greenfield) - and I certainly used it. Otherwise, I had no issues - and never had to wait for a charger slot.

A couple of weeks later I went to King City for my work (my agency has an office there) - and lo and behold right across the street from my motel was an
obviously new Supercharger - in the parking lot of a fast food joint. Perhaps it wasn't open yet when I made my trip - but definitely was at the later date.
Of course on this trip I was driving my ICE work truck - so the charger was of no use to me.

As for there being a charger in San Ardo - that is news to me. None showed up when I was looking. YMMV.

Dave

 

[bmah]

I did a somewhat similar trip about a month ago - in reverse (Southern CA to the Bay Area and Napa, using mostly 101). In fact that was my first road trip since taking delivery of my Model Y LR in March. As a newbie I haven't advanced to making a sport out of finding Superchargers, but used them as an obvious necessity. I had my first experience of Range Anxiety when I found that my original expectation of charging in Salinas was not going to happen (there is a long dry stretch between Paso Robles and there). I was expecting to find a charger in King City but none showed up. Fortunately, there was one in the next little town up the road (Greenfield) - and I certainly used it. Otherwise, I had no issues - and never had to wait for a charger slot.

A couple of weeks later I went to King City for my work (my agency has an office there) - and lo and behold right across the street from my motel was an
obviously new Supercharger - in the parking lot of a fast food joint. Perhaps it wasn't open yet when I made my trip - but definitely was at the later date.
Of course on this trip I was driving my ICE work truck - so the charger was of no use to me.

As for there being a charger in San Ardo - that is news to me. None showed up when I was looking. YMMV.

Dave

Hrm, that's interesting. Between Paso Robles and Salinas, there are four Superchargers as of this writing (San Ardo, Greenfield, Soledad - H Dela Rosa St., and Soledad - Front St.). San Ardo is the newest, opened about a month ago. King City has been under construction for awhile, but it's not open yet. Just curious, where do you normally get information about Superchargers? (in-car nav, mobile app, etc.)

(If I'm browsing, I usually use supercharge.info, which is a crowd-sourced Web site. If I'm on the road I'll usually use the in-car nav because it has information on usage. The mobile app is handy, but it only shows 10 of the closest sites to you, which, in some circumstanaces, might not include all the Superchargers around you.)

Bruce.

 

[Msicario]

View attachment 959995
(Map generated by TeslaFi from trip data)

I took my 2022 Model X on a "Supercharger hunting" trip from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Los Angeles and San Diego metro areas, during the extended weekend of July 13-17. The goal of the trip was to log charges at as many unvisited Superchargers as possible, as a part of a friendly competition here on TMC. This is admittedly counter to what most people will do on road trips!

I used A Better Route Planner (ABRP) to plot out a rough schedule for each day, just to determine feasibility of the route and charging I had in mind. Most charging stops were only 2-3 minutes long (that's enough time to plug in, record the charge on supercharging.life, take a few pictures, input the next destination in to the nav, and unplug). Within high density metro areas, even these short charges were more than enough to make up the energy I used driving to the next charger.

Here's a summary of the trip. These were basically full driving days during daylight hours only:

July 13: Home (SF Bay Area) to Marina del Rey via I-5, I-405. 11 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 14: Marina del Rey to Montebello (looping around the LA metro area). 22 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 15: Montebello to San Diego via I-5. 29 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 16: San Diego to Calabasas via I-15, I-210, and US-101. 19 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 17: Calabasas to Home (SF Bay Area) via US-101. 7 new-to-me Superchargers visited.

Notable Superchargers I found interesting:

• Kettleman City, CA: This was my main charging stop southbound...the one with the lounge. It's one of the older Superchargers on I-5 but still a favorite.
• Santa Monica, CA: A huge site (62 stalls) with restrooms and vending machines. It felt like an urban version of Kettleman City.
• Torrance, CA: One of several mall parking garage Superchargers that proved really difficult to find. I ended up needing to pull over and check the TMC thread for the site to learn where to go.
• Sherman Oaks, CA: Another mall Supercharger, where one apparently needs to enter a parking garage from one specific entrance. Most malls, like this one, seem to have good signage for Superchargers once you actually get inside the garage.
• Mission Viejo, CA: In an outdoor parking lot at a shopping mall, this was one I skipped because it was full, there were cars waiting, and no obvious place for one more car (mine) to queue up.
• Temecula, CA - Temecula Parkway: The longest wait I had for a Supercharger, which wasn't all that long actually. Other owners were likely wondering why I waited in line for 11 minutes only to plug in for 2 minutes and leave.
• Ojai, CA: A little out of the way for many travelers, but it's a nice little EV charging oasis with both Tesla and EA chargers next to a cafe.
• San Ardo, CA: In the parking lot of an olive oil company, which was unfortunately closed on the day I passed through.

Interesting places for food along the way:

• Mitsuwa Marketplace in Torrance, in the same shopping center as the Torrance Supercharger. A sushi take-out was a nice quick bite between chargers.
• ComeBuyTea in Huntington Beach. They make various kinds of tea drinks, using contraptions that look like espresso machines. Not particularly close to any Supercharger, but it was a nice stop to get a drink while driving around. They're a chain based in Asia, but this is one of their few locations in the US.
• Tokyo Fried Chicken in Monterey Park. A short drive from my hotel in Montebello (Home 2 Suites, which still has one of the best destination charger setup I've encountered). Tasty fried chicken with sides.
• Café Bōku in Ojai. A nice little cafe right at the Supercharger. They have innovative and refreshing smoothies here.

A few observations:

Road-tripping between NorCal and SoCal in 2023 is super-easy. Using I-5 is basically a no-brainer under almost all circumstances (exceptions might be holiday weekends or a closure of the Grapevine). US-101 has more, smaller Superchargers, so a little bit of planning can be helpful, but it's definitely viable and somewhat more scenic in places.

Unsurprisingly, Superchargers are less busy in the early morning compared to later in the day.

Superchargers in multi-story parking garages are often difficult to deal with. Some have limited hours. It's not always obvious which garage or which entrance to use (some have better signage than others). Once inside, it's often not clear which level to go to, and the restricted lines of sight and traffic flows can make finding the stalls difficult. Queueing up at busy locations can be hard too, although some garages had lanes set aside for Supercharger lines. The Tesla nav usually has some information on which level to use, which I've found helpful (tap the pin for the Supercharger). On the other hand, the nav destination for the Supercharger doesn't always drop you off close to where the pedestals actually are. The appropriate discussion thread on TMC usually has some hints as well (probably best to pull over and look, if you have to do this).

For a lot of the open road driving on the freeway, I used FSD with minimal speed-based lane changes. I had a few incidents of phantom braking (annoyingly I noticed a correlation when trying to pass semi-trucks) but it was still generally useful. I've written about this elsewhere, but AP1 on my former road-trip car delivered a better freeway experience than HW3+FSD. I was not comfortable having FSD drive on surface streets or in heavy freeway traffic, partially due to my unfamiliarity with SoCal freeways and roads.

There's something about SoCal freeways (both LA and SD), possibly where there is ongoing or recent construction, that sets off some very strange road noise in my X. I have never noticed that anywhere else. I wonder if it's grooved pavement that's somehow different than in other parts of California?

I saw more older Teslas in SoCal than I would have expected (it felt like more than in the Bay Area). In particular it seemed like there were a fair number of original nose-cone Model S in no-longer-available colors (brown, green, silver, dolphin grey).

There was a lot of 100F+ weather on this trip, particularly on the fourth day. I'm glad I had a sun shade for the upper part of the Model X windshield. (some Model X owners prefer to do a tint on the windshield.) No particular issues with heat or AC. I didn't notice any problems with charging, either.

If this slightly crazy Supercharging hunting game sounds like fun, it's open to anyone to join. See this thread on TMC for more information: Wiki - Superchargers Visited

Trip statistics:

• 5 days
• 1458 miles
• 467 kWh
• 321 Wh/mi
• 88 new-to-me Superchargers visited (348 lifetime total) View attachment 959995

Thank you great information.
There seems to be heavy travel from SoCal to Las Vegas and Phoenix AZ. And back. Be interesting to read the same kind of inside report information.

 

[tivoboy]

Hrm, that's interesting. Between Paso Robles and Salinas, there are four Superchargers as of this writing (San Ardo, Greenfield, Soledad - H Dela Rosa St., and Soledad - Front St.). San Ardo is the newest, opened about a month ago. King City has been under construction for awhile, but it's not open yet. Just curious, where do you normally get information about Superchargers? (in-car nav, mobile app, etc.)

(If I'm browsing, I usually use supercharge.info, which is a crowd-sourced Web site. If I'm on the road I'll usually use the in-car nav because it has information on usage. The mobile app is handy, but it only shows 10 of the closest sites to you, which, in some circumstanaces, might not include all the Superchargers around you.)

Bruce.

Trick for the mobile app, just plot a route to or past the SC that you are you are looking for info on, and they will populate for inspection.

I’ll update my post with a TAD more detail.. It’s not as easy as I indicated..

Steps:
Go into App to LOCATION
Input a destination, or route either the intended SC or SC’s on a route
There is a route then populated and presented, and the MAP will show the SC’s with info about availability, outages, or length of time to wait
CANCEL or X that route / nav request, and all the SC’s that were ON that route, along that route or near that route (or alternate routes to get to that destination requested will be in the “Nearby SC“ list and one can query them all for current usage, availability, price, peak times, etc.

It’s not a truly linear process, but that hasn’t ever been Teslas way for SC info, other than IN THE CAR SC nav searching.

 

[Mrbrock]

Trick for the mobile app, just plot a route to or past the SC that you are you are looking for info on, and they will populate for inspection.

I’ll update my post with a TAD more detail.. It’s not as easy as I indicated..

Steps:
Go into App to LOCATION
Input a destination, or route either the intended SC or SC’s on a route
There is a route then populated and presented, and the MAP will show the SC’s with info about availability, outages, or length of time to wait
CANCEL or X that route / nav request, and all the SC’s that were ON that route, along that route or near that route (or alternate routes to get to that destination requested will be in the “Nearby SC“ list and one can query them all for current usage, availability, price, peak times, etc.

It’s not a truly linear process, but that hasn’t ever been Teslas way for SC info, other than IN THE CAR SC nav searching.

Hrm, that's interesting. Between Paso Robles and Salinas, there are four Superchargers as of this writing (San Ardo, Greenfield, Soledad - H Dela Rosa St., and Soledad - Front St.). San Ardo is the newest, opened about a month ago. King City has been under construction for awhile, but it's not open yet. Just curious, where do you normally get information about Superchargers? (in-car nav, mobile app, etc.)

(If I'm browsing, I usually use supercharge.info, which is a crowd-sourced Web site. If I'm on the road I'll usually use the in-car nav because it has information on usage. The mobile app is handy, but it only shows 10 of the closest sites to you, which, in some circumstanaces, might not include all the Superchargers around you.)

Bruce.

If you click location it will show the 10 closest in a list. But if you zoom out and move the map around, it will show you most SC in the area of the map. I say most because it doesn't always show all, sometimes ones around the edges are left off, sometimes they aren't. If you move the map around a little bit, you can see other pins in the mapped area appear while others disappear. Just zoom in or out a couple of times and slightly move the map around to make sure all of being displayed. I am in Eastern WA and can see all the 101 SC in my app right now.

 

[OldPro]

View attachment 959995
(Map generated by TeslaFi from trip data)

I took my 2022 Model X on a "Supercharger hunting" trip from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Los Angeles and San Diego metro areas, during the extended weekend of July 13-17. The goal of the trip was to log charges at as many unvisited Superchargers as possible, as a part of a friendly competition here on TMC. This is admittedly counter to what most people will do on road trips!

I used A Better Route Planner (ABRP) to plot out a rough schedule for each day, just to determine feasibility of the route and charging I had in mind. Most charging stops were only 2-3 minutes long (that's enough time to plug in, record the charge on supercharging.life, take a few pictures, input the next destination in to the nav, and unplug). Within high density metro areas, even these short charges were more than enough to make up the energy I used driving to the next charger.

Here's a summary of the trip. These were basically full driving days during daylight hours only:

July 13: Home (SF Bay Area) to Marina del Rey via I-5, I-405. 11 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 14: Marina del Rey to Montebello (looping around the LA metro area). 22 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 15: Montebello to San Diego via I-5. 29 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 16: San Diego to Calabasas via I-15, I-210, and US-101. 19 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 17: Calabasas to Home (SF Bay Area) via US-101. 7 new-to-me Superchargers visited.

Notable Superchargers I found interesting:

• Kettleman City, CA: This was my main charging stop southbound...the one with the lounge. It's one of the older Superchargers on I-5 but still a favorite.
• Santa Monica, CA: A huge site (62 stalls) with restrooms and vending machines. It felt like an urban version of Kettleman City.
• Torrance, CA: One of several mall parking garage Superchargers that proved really difficult to find. I ended up needing to pull over and check the TMC thread for the site to learn where to go.
• Sherman Oaks, CA: Another mall Supercharger, where one apparently needs to enter a parking garage from one specific entrance. Most malls, like this one, seem to have good signage for Superchargers once you actually get inside the garage.
• Mission Viejo, CA: In an outdoor parking lot at a shopping mall, this was one I skipped because it was full, there were cars waiting, and no obvious place for one more car (mine) to queue up.
• Temecula, CA - Temecula Parkway: The longest wait I had for a Supercharger, which wasn't all that long actually. Other owners were likely wondering why I waited in line for 11 minutes only to plug in for 2 minutes and leave.
• Ojai, CA: A little out of the way for many travelers, but it's a nice little EV charging oasis with both Tesla and EA chargers next to a cafe.
• San Ardo, CA: In the parking lot of an olive oil company, which was unfortunately closed on the day I passed through.

Interesting places for food along the way:

• Mitsuwa Marketplace in Torrance, in the same shopping center as the Torrance Supercharger. A sushi take-out was a nice quick bite between chargers.
• ComeBuyTea in Huntington Beach. They make various kinds of tea drinks, using contraptions that look like espresso machines. Not particularly close to any Supercharger, but it was a nice stop to get a drink while driving around. They're a chain based in Asia, but this is one of their few locations in the US.
• Tokyo Fried Chicken in Monterey Park. A short drive from my hotel in Montebello (Home 2 Suites, which still has one of the best destination charger setup I've encountered). Tasty fried chicken with sides.
• Café Bōku in Ojai. A nice little cafe right at the Supercharger. They have innovative and refreshing smoothies here.

A few observations:

Road-tripping between NorCal and SoCal in 2023 is super-easy. Using I-5 is basically a no-brainer under almost all circumstances (exceptions might be holiday weekends or a closure of the Grapevine). US-101 has more, smaller Superchargers, so a little bit of planning can be helpful, but it's definitely viable and somewhat more scenic in places.

Unsurprisingly, Superchargers are less busy in the early morning compared to later in the day.

Superchargers in multi-story parking garages are often difficult to deal with. Some have limited hours. It's not always obvious which garage or which entrance to use (some have better signage than others). Once inside, it's often not clear which level to go to, and the restricted lines of sight and traffic flows can make finding the stalls difficult. Queueing up at busy locations can be hard too, although some garages had lanes set aside for Supercharger lines. The Tesla nav usually has some information on which level to use, which I've found helpful (tap the pin for the Supercharger). On the other hand, the nav destination for the Supercharger doesn't always drop you off close to where the pedestals actually are. The appropriate discussion thread on TMC usually has some hints as well (probably best to pull over and look, if you have to do this).

For a lot of the open road driving on the freeway, I used FSD with minimal speed-based lane changes. I had a few incidents of phantom braking (annoyingly I noticed a correlation when trying to pass semi-trucks) but it was still generally useful. I've written about this elsewhere, but AP1 on my former road-trip car delivered a better freeway experience than HW3+FSD. I was not comfortable having FSD drive on surface streets or in heavy freeway traffic, partially due to my unfamiliarity with SoCal freeways and roads.

There's something about SoCal freeways (both LA and SD), possibly where there is ongoing or recent construction, that sets off some very strange road noise in my X. I have never noticed that anywhere else. I wonder if it's grooved pavement that's somehow different than in other parts of California?

I saw more older Teslas in SoCal than I would have expected (it felt like more than in the Bay Area). In particular it seemed like there were a fair number of original nose-cone Model S in no-longer-available colors (brown, green, silver, dolphin grey).

There was a lot of 100F+ weather on this trip, particularly on the fourth day. I'm glad I had a sun shade for the upper part of the Model X windshield. (some Model X owners prefer to do a tint on the windshield.) No particular issues with heat or AC. I didn't notice any problems with charging, either.

If this slightly crazy Supercharging hunting game sounds like fun, it's open to anyone to join. See this thread on TMC for more information: Wiki - Superchargers Visited

Trip statistics:

• 5 days
• 1458 miles
• 467 kWh
• 321 Wh/mi
• 88 new-to-me Superchargers visited (348 lifetime total) View attachment 959995

My wife also commented on the difficulty of finding the Torrance Del Amo Shopping Center Charging Station after visiting "Grandma" in Lomita

 

[MikeRadio]

View attachment 959995
(Map generated by TeslaFi from trip data)

I took my 2022 Model X on a "Supercharger hunting" trip from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Los Angeles and San Diego metro areas, during the extended weekend of July 13-17. The goal of the trip was to log charges at as many unvisited Superchargers as possible, as a part of a friendly competition here on TMC. This is admittedly counter to what most people will do on road trips!

I used A Better Route Planner (ABRP) to plot out a rough schedule for each day, just to determine feasibility of the route and charging I had in mind. Most charging stops were only 2-3 minutes long (that's enough time to plug in, record the charge on supercharging.life, take a few pictures, input the next destination in to the nav, and unplug). Within high density metro areas, even these short charges were more than enough to make up the energy I used driving to the next charger.

Here's a summary of the trip. These were basically full driving days during daylight hours only:

July 13: Home (SF Bay Area) to Marina del Rey via I-5, I-405. 11 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 14: Marina del Rey to Montebello (looping around the LA metro area). 22 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 15: Montebello to San Diego via I-5. 29 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 16: San Diego to Calabasas via I-15, I-210, and US-101. 19 new-to-me Superchargers visited.
July 17: Calabasas to Home (SF Bay Area) via US-101. 7 new-to-me Superchargers visited.

Notable Superchargers I found interesting:

• Kettleman City, CA: This was my main charging stop southbound...the one with the lounge. It's one of the older Superchargers on I-5 but still a favorite.
• Santa Monica, CA: A huge site (62 stalls) with restrooms and vending machines. It felt like an urban version of Kettleman City.
• Torrance, CA: One of several mall parking garage Superchargers that proved really difficult to find. I ended up needing to pull over and check the TMC thread for the site to learn where to go.
• Sherman Oaks, CA: Another mall Supercharger, where one apparently needs to enter a parking garage from one specific entrance. Most malls, like this one, seem to have good signage for Superchargers once you actually get inside the garage.
• Mission Viejo, CA: In an outdoor parking lot at a shopping mall, this was one I skipped because it was full, there were cars waiting, and no obvious place for one more car (mine) to queue up.
• Temecula, CA - Temecula Parkway: The longest wait I had for a Supercharger, which wasn't all that long actually. Other owners were likely wondering why I waited in line for 11 minutes only to plug in for 2 minutes and leave.
• Ojai, CA: A little out of the way for many travelers, but it's a nice little EV charging oasis with both Tesla and EA chargers next to a cafe.
• San Ardo, CA: In the parking lot of an olive oil company, which was unfortunately closed on the day I passed through.

Interesting places for food along the way:

• Mitsuwa Marketplace in Torrance, in the same shopping center as the Torrance Supercharger. A sushi take-out was a nice quick bite between chargers.
• ComeBuyTea in Huntington Beach. They make various kinds of tea drinks, using contraptions that look like espresso machines. Not particularly close to any Supercharger, but it was a nice stop to get a drink while driving around. They're a chain based in Asia, but this is one of their few locations in the US.
• Tokyo Fried Chicken in Monterey Park. A short drive from my hotel in Montebello (Home 2 Suites, which still has one of the best destination charger setup I've encountered). Tasty fried chicken with sides.
• Café Bōku in Ojai. A nice little cafe right at the Supercharger. They have innovative and refreshing smoothies here.

A few observations:

Road-tripping between NorCal and SoCal in 2023 is super-easy. Using I-5 is basically a no-brainer under almost all circumstances (exceptions might be holiday weekends or a closure of the Grapevine). US-101 has more, smaller Superchargers, so a little bit of planning can be helpful, but it's definitely viable and somewhat more scenic in places.

Unsurprisingly, Superchargers are less busy in the early morning compared to later in the day.

Superchargers in multi-story parking garages are often difficult to deal with. Some have limited hours. It's not always obvious which garage or which entrance to use (some have better signage than others). Once inside, it's often not clear which level to go to, and the restricted lines of sight and traffic flows can make finding the stalls difficult. Queueing up at busy locations can be hard too, although some garages had lanes set aside for Supercharger lines. The Tesla nav usually has some information on which level to use, which I've found helpful (tap the pin for the Supercharger). On the other hand, the nav destination for the Supercharger doesn't always drop you off close to where the pedestals actually are. The appropriate discussion thread on TMC usually has some hints as well (probably best to pull over and look, if you have to do this).

For a lot of the open road driving on the freeway, I used FSD with minimal speed-based lane changes. I had a few incidents of phantom braking (annoyingly I noticed a correlation when trying to pass semi-trucks) but it was still generally useful. I've written about this elsewhere, but AP1 on my former road-trip car delivered a better freeway experience than HW3+FSD. I was not comfortable having FSD drive on surface streets or in heavy freeway traffic, partially due to my unfamiliarity with SoCal freeways and roads.

There's something about SoCal freeways (both LA and SD), possibly where there is ongoing or recent construction, that sets off some very strange road noise in my X. I have never noticed that anywhere else. I wonder if it's grooved pavement that's somehow different than in other parts of California?

I saw more older Teslas in SoCal than I would have expected (it felt like more than in the Bay Area). In particular it seemed like there were a fair number of original nose-cone Model S in no-longer-available colors (brown, green, silver, dolphin grey).

There was a lot of 100F+ weather on this trip, particularly on the fourth day. I'm glad I had a sun shade for the upper part of the Model X windshield. (some Model X owners prefer to do a tint on the windshield.) No particular issues with heat or AC. I didn't notice any problems with charging, either.

If this slightly crazy Supercharging hunting game sounds like fun, it's open to anyone to join. See this thread on TMC for more information: Wiki - Superchargers Visited

Trip statistics:

• 5 days
• 1458 miles
• 467 kWh
• 321 Wh/mi
• 88 new-to-me Superchargers visited (348 lifetime total) View attachment 959995

I get that same strange sound when driving that’s because there is groove payment or something strange about the payment where they used to be Jersey barriers set up due to construction but they’re gone and the pavement is still not good in certain areas. This happens a lot on I 10 which until recently was under tons of construction.

I use FSD a lot, in chill mode, that way I am in control of most of the lane changes as it doesn’t change lanes quickly, but it lets me do that. However, if it’s coming up on a slow moving truck, it will change lanes to a faster lane. I also like how it goes into the passing lane and will come out when the car is coming up fast behind you to get out of the way which is nice and polite FSD has come such a long way over the years