Trip from SF to NY

[chronopc]

I'm thinking about driving from SF to NY and was wondering if anyone has done a similar trip with the Model 3 LR 18" Aeros. Any tips or things to watch out for would be appreciated.

 

[youngmcdonald]

I did something similar (central to west coast).

1) Have at least one other driver with you. Don’t drive all by yourself. It’s risky.

2) Plan your route. Stop for super charging with at least 10% battery to spare. (90 percent Burnt)

3) charge your car when it’s warmed up already - so if you’re stopping for the night after the day of driving. Charge to 95% and do the remaining 5% right before you leave in the morning. (It’ll take 30-40 minutes for the last 5%)

4) Everything works against mileage so make sure to pick warm days to do the trip. Don’t drive too fast. Keep acceleration low. Car performs great if you keep it under 75-80 at all times. Cold weather and rain work against Wh/Mi - this is really important

5) Take into account hilly areas. They burn a lot of battery. Abetterrouteplanner app is good.

remember - you’d rather be late than not get there because your battery died. Take breaks for charging conservatively but don’t go nuts over it. Like I said, 85-90 % burn is a good place to stop and charge. Also note that batteries charge very fast from 0-90. Then take lot longer to charge.

KEEP A SPARE WHEEL WITH TIRE IN YOUR CAR. AND ACCESSORIES TO CHANGE WHEEL AND PUT AIR IN ALL TIRES. CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH

 

[TX_M3P+]

You must, must, must watch this video before taking your trip...

This video by Out of Spec Motoring provides some great insights in cross country driving in a Tesla. It's a very different mindset vs driving cross country in an ICE car. This was the first video I watched that alleviated my concerns about long distance travelling in a Tesla. Worth the time to watch it, for sure.

 

[SammichLover]

1) Have at least one other driver with you. Don’t drive all by yourself. It’s risky.

This isn't that much the case as long as you actually do stopovers for the night. If you're inexperienced and trying to make it in 72 hours or less, or even experienced distance drivers trying to do it under 72 hours total time, that's pushing the safety envelope. An 18, sleep 6, 18, sleep 6, and 14-16 the last leg is about the edge of where I'd feel comfortable driving by myself.

With two drivers, if both are capable of sleeping in a modestly reclined position (the passenger seat) you should be able to easily make it the roughly 2900 miles in 52+/- hours.

If you're staying at hotels and stay at least 3 nights for stops then there's no real issue, unless you're well up in years or other health conditions.

One caveat to this. Driving by yourself you should have a checkpoint partner that you text your expected route to (I take a snapshot of the Nav) and communicate with at least 2x a day on a semi-formalized schedule. If something is weird, needs a route change, etc give an extra update ahead of schedule.

2) Plan your route. Stop for super charging with at least 10% battery to spare. (90 percent Burnt)

Bah. Nothing of the sort.

Perfectly fine to get in your car and punch the destination, the car's Nav will provide a great plan for a 2-end point run like this. You can also use Nav to check the next SC and next two SC, to make sure things are still on point.

On this trip you shouldn't be anywhere near 100% outside of:
1) at departure (above 96% for 24 hours in advance, to let the BMS load balance the modules)
2) you were stopped overnight at a hotel that has a Destination charger or J-1772
3) you are doing a scenic side trip off the SC network path

This is a very well populated clear path, so you shouldn't need to do any awkward, large jumps.

Now if you want to do some interesting sightseeing, well yeah you should do some research on that. Lots of cool stuff out there in "flyover" country. Go explore, it is a large inherent benefit of driving rather than flying!

3) charge your car when it’s warmed up already - so if you’re stopping for the night after the day of driving. Charge to 95% and do the remaining 5% right before you leave in the morning. (It’ll take 30-40 minutes for the last 5%)

Unless you're Tesla camping, get a hotel with a DC or J-1772. Handily takes care of this issue. You can even use the Departure feature for maximum prep.

Also, that's only a real issue in sub-zero temps. Spring through fall it is a non-issue. So you're probably not going to be Tesla-camping when it is an issue. But if you do Tesla-camp, make sure you're doing it with your windows on Vent and the HVAC running. Otherwise once back on the road you'll be burning range via HVAC fighting the moisture you built up inside the cabin.

5) Take into account hilly areas. They burn a lot of battery. Abetterrouteplanner app is good.

Near none over the long run. The only issue here is if you are rising in elevation to the next SC, or the even trickier situation of a large rise followed by a steep fall just ahead of the next SC. This can lead to an oddball situation where you hit 0% before the top of the hill even though if you could go negative you'd still have enough battery as your car recharges heading down towards the SC.

For the Model 3 you use an extra .6kWh per 100m rise. You can use the rough 1% per 100m, or 1% per 300ft. These make rough calculations fairly easy to do on the fly, if you know elevations.

Nav largely takes care of this for you in the background, though.

A much bigger issue is rain. I keep an eye on weather ahead, as well as radar watching for storm systems. Running into a heavy rain will really knock you off your estimated ranges.

 

[Avid]

I will second the rain, you will use no less than 25% more kilowatts than driving steady at 70-75mph on flat terrain.

 

[SammichLover]

I will second the rain, you will use no less than 25% more kilowatts than driving steady at 70-75mph on flat terrain.

Yes, and up. Heavy, pounding rain where it starts creating depth on the highway even as it runs off is more like 35% and up.

It is three-fold issue. You're getting lower traction on the ground, so slight slipping constantly happening. Your tires are pushing water out of the way, which is a fair amount of energy. But even without that you are literally running into a wall mass that is effectively standing still compared to you, so your body panels are pushing the water in the air out of the way, too. Plus that water streaming off your body is messing with your aerodynamic shape to an extent.

It is the same effect that airplanes flying in rain have to deal with.

 

[wws]

I did a solo drive from the Bay Area to Chicago last fall - I-80 the whole way out. (Return trip was mostly non-Interstate sight seeing.) On the way out, made it to SLC the first day, Sidney NE on day two, Des Moines on day three, and arrived in Chicago on day four. Could have made it in three days, but did a couple of side trips along the way and made more Supercharger stops than I needed to. Really wasn't much different than what I've done in the past in a ICE car.

Supercharging worked great. Actually when I overlapped it with a food stop, it was sometimes too fast. I'd get a 80% warning text message before I was done eating.

In addition to carrying your UMC with 5-15 adapter, a 5-20 adapter can be handy for overnight charging. You'll sometimes find 5-20s in hotel/motel parking lots and give a couple more mph than the 5-15 would. I also carried 14-50 adapter and some other charging stuff I thought I'd use. Did use the 14-50 adapter at a couple of RV parks and also used a borrowed CHAdeMO adapter a couple of times on the return trip. Of course don't forget the J1772 adapter.

I carried a spare tire - and fortunately didn't need it.

Found out that if you go over 90 mph with autopilot engaged, it puts you in "autopilot jail".

 

[augkuo]

If you're driving after hours, try avoid charging at malls, etc. because there likely won't be any bathrooms or food open especially with the CV19 restrictions. The best ones are at the 24 hour truck stops usually outside of town so even if you don't need to charge, those will be better than the urban chargers (limited to 72kW/hr). For example the Tooele supercharger in Utah would be a better bet than the Salt Lake City supercharger outside of their hours (Mon-Sat 10am-6pm) even though you might have plenty of charge since you could still use the bathrooms at the hotel.

 

[Nvbob]

Last March (2019), we drove our 3 from Carson City, Nv. to Vero Beach, Fl and back (~6500 miles). We used evtripplanner, plugshare, and the car's navigation. We took our time, stayed at hotels with free charging or proximal to superchargers. We had no "range anxiety" and had no issues. My one suggestion, . . . Have fun!

 

[gigawatt1010]

We did that on our Model X last year from NY to Fremont Factory tour and back. Stops in Fort Worth, Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Moab. 16 days, 7500+ miles. I highly recommend A Better Route Planner. My 11 year old daughter made a vlog.

Tesla Model X Cross Country Road Trip - YouTube

 

[ranss12]

I've made 2 round trips from western NY to San Diego in my 2018 RWD LR Model 3. The main advice I give is that if you are in doubt whether to stop at the next SuperCharger station or instead press on to the one after that, make the stop. You could almost certainly make it to the one after that, but you will benefit from the break and won't be stressed out always looking at your state-of charge and wishing you had stopped at the prior SC station. I used the Tesla in-car route planner, and also used an app called "EV Hotel" that pointed out free destination chargers at Hotels along my route. Always good to get a free charge. One other tip. It's better to SuperCharge in the evening after a day of driving instead of waiting to SuperCharge the next morning. Your battery will charge faster after being warmed up by a day of driving.

 

[Sklith]

I've done a couple round trips with my family to the west coast from Atlanta: Palm Springs, CA & Vancouver, BC. Both of my trips were in the winter.

I noticed that driving 10-15 mph above the posted speed limit in the cold I would consume about 10% more energy than my car would estimate before departing supercharging sessions, so I would typically resume driving when my car says I'll arrive at the next supercharger with at least 15%. I found if you want to be averaging as many miles per hour as possible, plan to keep your SoC 5%-70%, any more than that slows you down due to the reduced speed.

I made it a priority to have destination charging at hotels along my travels, I would even call ahead just to confirm the parking spot's not taken. It's so nice to have a whole charge session taken care of while you're resting, and leaving the hotel with a warmed up battery saves in energy consumption.

Road tripping in Long Range Model 3s is a cake walk, better than in ICE cars in many ways. I've gotten very used to the free hot coffee & clean bathrooms at the hotels hosted by most of the supercharging locations along my travels!