This past Memorial Day weekend we took our 2022 “Palladium” Long Range Model X on its first road trip from the San Francisco Bay Area to Southern California. We’ve done this trip a few times before in a 2015 Model S, but never around Memorial Day. As usual the main objectives were eating, sightseeing, and Supercharger hunting.
We started off in the early afternoon on Thursday with a full charge. Our first destination was Fresno, CA to take care of a little family business. We used about half our range getting to the Madera (Avenue 7) Supercharger, where I wanted to plug in just to log a charge. (This was the 190th Supercharger I’d visited.) The Refresh Travel Plaza there was new and clean, and we were there for almost half an hour browsing, getting refreshments, etc. We came out to a car with 91% charge.
After errands and dinner (Pismo’s Coastal Grill, try the Rhode Island clam chowder, and also note it’s next to the Fresno (Blackstone Ave.) Supercharger), we stayed overnight in Fresno and left the next morning with 76% charge. Normally I like to start days with a full battery but I knew we’d be doing some touch-and-go charging stops along the way to LA. First stop was Bakersfield (Copus Rd.) [#191], which is notable for being almost literally out in the middle of nowhere. We were only there for 5 minutes (restroom break), but that was enough to get us from 28% to 47% charge. All other things being equal, charging is fastest near the “bottom” of the battery.
We rolled down I-5 to Tejon (Outlets at Tejon Parkway), a huge 56-stall site in an outlet mall parking lot [#192]. My passengers wanted a stroll around the mall, which, counting retail therapy, took about 45 minutes. During this time we’d charged from 41->87%, way more than we needed to get over the Grapevine to LA. The site was pretty busy, more than half full, but there were always open stalls.
We did an early dinner at Jae Bu Do, a Korea seafood BBQ restaurant. They open around 3PM and you want to arrive soon after they open, or else you can end up waiting in line for an hour or two. After dinner and some shopping we drove over to our usual SoCal hotel, Home2 in Montebello. They have the most destination chargers I’ve seen at any hotel…6 Tesla Gen 2 wall connectors each outputting around 9kW, as well as another 6 Clipper Creek units with J1772 connectors. Staying here basically makes charging a non-issue for us.
Saturday morning, I got up early and did a quick outing to log “touch-and-go” charges at San Gabriel [#193], Pasadena (East Glenarm) [#194], Pasadena [#195], Glendale (Harvey Dr.) [#196], and Commerce [#197]. This all took maybe an hour and a half.
Our first actual family activity of the day was a visit to the Petersen Automotive Museum, per my son’s request. They had a Formula 1 exhibit (with about 8 cars), an entire room full of hypercars (think Koenigsegg Regera or Rimac Concept_One), and another gallery of vehicles used in James Bond films. For EV fans there’s one of the only surviving GM EV1s, a Tesla Roadster, and a Model S prototype. Definitely something for everybody interested in cars.
We went over to the Original Farmers Market next, and then did some shopping and browsing at The Grove, a nearby outdoor mall.
Dinner was at Sushi Kisen in Arcadia. Excellent sushi and sashimi. Then back to the hotel. Because of the destination chargers at Home2, we could have gone the entire day without charging.
We started Sunday with breakfast at the Delicious Food Corner in Hacienda Heights. This is a Hong Kong style cafe. Coincidentally it's across from the Rowland Heights Supercharger, so I grabbed Supercharger #198 here. This was supposed to be the first of 5 quick touch-and-go charges, but my family had some slightly different plans, including a stop at a nearby TK Emporium market. We did a touch-and-go charge at City of Industry (#199), then Diamond Bar [#200]. We didn’t really get much of a chance to celebrate this achievement because my family had already taken off for the adjacent H Mart, in fact we spent so much time there that I had to move the car to avoid idle fees!
Next were Brea [#201] and Anaheim (E. Katella Ave.) [#202]. I am sure the other Tesla owners in these places were wondering what I was doing by plugging in, taking pictures, and leaving. Actual stops for shopping were in Westminster and Tokyo Central in Gardena. The latter is a huge Japanese supermarket that reminds me of one of the old Fry’s Electronics stores in scale and decor.
After these shopping stops, my wife graciously asked me if there were any other Superchargers in the area I wanted to visit. We ended up doing two in nearby Hawthorne (W. 120th Ave. [#203] and E. Sepulveda Blvd [#204]) before calling it a day. Driving between those two Superchargers, one can see a Falcon 9 rocket on display outside SpaceX headquarters.
On Monday it was time to head back. We started with a full charge, stopping only for a touch-and-go at San Fernando [#205]. We then slogged through the I-5 holiday traffic up to Kettleman City for lunch and our only required charging stop of the day. It was a little chaotic here, but we managed to get lunch from In-N-Out and parked over at the old Kettleman City Supercharger (the side with the lounge). There was a Tesla employee directing traffic, he said all the V3 chargers were in use but there were plenty of V2 stalls available. We opted for a V2 stall because above a certain level of charge the difference between V2 and V3 stalls is negligible. We stayed at Kettleman for about 40 minutes, which was enough time to eat lunch, walk around a bit, gawk at other Teslas, and get from 30% to 91% SOC. (It probably would have been more efficient to do a couple shorter stops, but my wife drove this part and she wanted to get home in one shot.) We arrived home with a comfortable 13% left in the battery.
A few observations from this trip:
Road tripping the Palladium Model X is way easier than the 2015 Model S 85D. The battery has slightly (but significantly) more capacity, but charging seems to be much faster. Practically this means we can easily get from the Bay Area to Southern California with only one charge, whereas before we would have needed two charges.
We never had to wait for a charging anywhere.
I feel like AP1 did a better job than AP3 (with Tesla Vision) of tracking the speed and position of the car it’s following. I’d attribute this to the fact that AP1 cars have always (and will always) use radar for distance finding. A number of times I’d merge into a gap in faster traffic and need to nudge the car with the accelerator pedal to get it up to speed. Hopefully AP3 will improve with software updates.
This was our first trip with a Tesla with a glass roof. It actually was cooler than I expected. Hats and sunglasses are useful though.
In general we liked the larger cabin, more comfortable seats, and better sound system. I had to ban the use of Tesla Theatre while driving (it plays video on the rear screen, but the audio plays on all the cabin speakers, highly distracting).
We had a couple of options for seat configuration. If we wanted to spread out, we could do the normal 6-seat configuration. That’s what we did on the southbound part of the trip. However due to purchases and acquisitions, we weren’t able to do this coming home, and we folded down the third-row seats for more cargo carrying capacity, effectively making a 4-seat car.
Teslas can still attract attention. When we were loading up to leave the hotel, a kid whose family was just arriving saw our car and exclaimed, “Wow a Tesla!”
A few stats:
Total distance traveled: 1038 miles
Wh/mile: 322 Wh
Superchargers visited: 17 (16 new)
Bruce.
We started off in the early afternoon on Thursday with a full charge. Our first destination was Fresno, CA to take care of a little family business. We used about half our range getting to the Madera (Avenue 7) Supercharger, where I wanted to plug in just to log a charge. (This was the 190th Supercharger I’d visited.) The Refresh Travel Plaza there was new and clean, and we were there for almost half an hour browsing, getting refreshments, etc. We came out to a car with 91% charge.
After errands and dinner (Pismo’s Coastal Grill, try the Rhode Island clam chowder, and also note it’s next to the Fresno (Blackstone Ave.) Supercharger), we stayed overnight in Fresno and left the next morning with 76% charge. Normally I like to start days with a full battery but I knew we’d be doing some touch-and-go charging stops along the way to LA. First stop was Bakersfield (Copus Rd.) [#191], which is notable for being almost literally out in the middle of nowhere. We were only there for 5 minutes (restroom break), but that was enough to get us from 28% to 47% charge. All other things being equal, charging is fastest near the “bottom” of the battery.
We rolled down I-5 to Tejon (Outlets at Tejon Parkway), a huge 56-stall site in an outlet mall parking lot [#192]. My passengers wanted a stroll around the mall, which, counting retail therapy, took about 45 minutes. During this time we’d charged from 41->87%, way more than we needed to get over the Grapevine to LA. The site was pretty busy, more than half full, but there were always open stalls.
We did an early dinner at Jae Bu Do, a Korea seafood BBQ restaurant. They open around 3PM and you want to arrive soon after they open, or else you can end up waiting in line for an hour or two. After dinner and some shopping we drove over to our usual SoCal hotel, Home2 in Montebello. They have the most destination chargers I’ve seen at any hotel…6 Tesla Gen 2 wall connectors each outputting around 9kW, as well as another 6 Clipper Creek units with J1772 connectors. Staying here basically makes charging a non-issue for us.
Saturday morning, I got up early and did a quick outing to log “touch-and-go” charges at San Gabriel [#193], Pasadena (East Glenarm) [#194], Pasadena [#195], Glendale (Harvey Dr.) [#196], and Commerce [#197]. This all took maybe an hour and a half.
Our first actual family activity of the day was a visit to the Petersen Automotive Museum, per my son’s request. They had a Formula 1 exhibit (with about 8 cars), an entire room full of hypercars (think Koenigsegg Regera or Rimac Concept_One), and another gallery of vehicles used in James Bond films. For EV fans there’s one of the only surviving GM EV1s, a Tesla Roadster, and a Model S prototype. Definitely something for everybody interested in cars.
We went over to the Original Farmers Market next, and then did some shopping and browsing at The Grove, a nearby outdoor mall.
Dinner was at Sushi Kisen in Arcadia. Excellent sushi and sashimi. Then back to the hotel. Because of the destination chargers at Home2, we could have gone the entire day without charging.
We started Sunday with breakfast at the Delicious Food Corner in Hacienda Heights. This is a Hong Kong style cafe. Coincidentally it's across from the Rowland Heights Supercharger, so I grabbed Supercharger #198 here. This was supposed to be the first of 5 quick touch-and-go charges, but my family had some slightly different plans, including a stop at a nearby TK Emporium market. We did a touch-and-go charge at City of Industry (#199), then Diamond Bar [#200]. We didn’t really get much of a chance to celebrate this achievement because my family had already taken off for the adjacent H Mart, in fact we spent so much time there that I had to move the car to avoid idle fees!
Next were Brea [#201] and Anaheim (E. Katella Ave.) [#202]. I am sure the other Tesla owners in these places were wondering what I was doing by plugging in, taking pictures, and leaving. Actual stops for shopping were in Westminster and Tokyo Central in Gardena. The latter is a huge Japanese supermarket that reminds me of one of the old Fry’s Electronics stores in scale and decor.
After these shopping stops, my wife graciously asked me if there were any other Superchargers in the area I wanted to visit. We ended up doing two in nearby Hawthorne (W. 120th Ave. [#203] and E. Sepulveda Blvd [#204]) before calling it a day. Driving between those two Superchargers, one can see a Falcon 9 rocket on display outside SpaceX headquarters.
On Monday it was time to head back. We started with a full charge, stopping only for a touch-and-go at San Fernando [#205]. We then slogged through the I-5 holiday traffic up to Kettleman City for lunch and our only required charging stop of the day. It was a little chaotic here, but we managed to get lunch from In-N-Out and parked over at the old Kettleman City Supercharger (the side with the lounge). There was a Tesla employee directing traffic, he said all the V3 chargers were in use but there were plenty of V2 stalls available. We opted for a V2 stall because above a certain level of charge the difference between V2 and V3 stalls is negligible. We stayed at Kettleman for about 40 minutes, which was enough time to eat lunch, walk around a bit, gawk at other Teslas, and get from 30% to 91% SOC. (It probably would have been more efficient to do a couple shorter stops, but my wife drove this part and she wanted to get home in one shot.) We arrived home with a comfortable 13% left in the battery.
A few observations from this trip:
Road tripping the Palladium Model X is way easier than the 2015 Model S 85D. The battery has slightly (but significantly) more capacity, but charging seems to be much faster. Practically this means we can easily get from the Bay Area to Southern California with only one charge, whereas before we would have needed two charges.
We never had to wait for a charging anywhere.
I feel like AP1 did a better job than AP3 (with Tesla Vision) of tracking the speed and position of the car it’s following. I’d attribute this to the fact that AP1 cars have always (and will always) use radar for distance finding. A number of times I’d merge into a gap in faster traffic and need to nudge the car with the accelerator pedal to get it up to speed. Hopefully AP3 will improve with software updates.
This was our first trip with a Tesla with a glass roof. It actually was cooler than I expected. Hats and sunglasses are useful though.
In general we liked the larger cabin, more comfortable seats, and better sound system. I had to ban the use of Tesla Theatre while driving (it plays video on the rear screen, but the audio plays on all the cabin speakers, highly distracting).
We had a couple of options for seat configuration. If we wanted to spread out, we could do the normal 6-seat configuration. That’s what we did on the southbound part of the trip. However due to purchases and acquisitions, we weren’t able to do this coming home, and we folded down the third-row seats for more cargo carrying capacity, effectively making a 4-seat car.
Teslas can still attract attention. When we were loading up to leave the hotel, a kid whose family was just arriving saw our car and exclaimed, “Wow a Tesla!”
A few stats:
Total distance traveled: 1038 miles
Wh/mile: 322 Wh
Superchargers visited: 17 (16 new)
Bruce.
