In our first ever "longer" roadtrip in our 22 Tesla M3P I have to admit, despite all the encouragement to the contrary that I have gotten from this board and other long time Tesla vehicle owners, I had quite a bit of anxiety about the road even though it was a simple trip from San Francisco to LA along the WELL travelled corridor of Interstate 5 with its plethora of superchargers along the way.
It projected two stops, each about a third of the way along the almost 400 mile journey. At the first stop at a place called Firebaugh. We were the only ones at what looked to be a 70+ stall supercharger LoL! Frankly, it was a bit eerie to be the only ones there in the middle of the day when at the gas stations that were within easy eyesight range, cars were very busily coming and going at the pumps.
A 13 minute charge (which in my nervousness I made a 25 minute stop LoL) and then we were on our way again; My wife grabbing two McDonald's egg mcMuffins and tea and coffee for the road while I monitored the car.
The next stop in Bakersfield and the car arrived at exactly the predicted state of charge that it originally projected in Firebaugh. Nervousness lessening to a great degree
At the Bakerfield Supercharger I decided to completely trust the car's prediction and gave it exactly what it needed in order to arrive at our hotel in Huntington Beach with 20% charge.
,,,and off we went..
My first evidence of things maybe going amiss is as we were getting back onto Highway 5 we were suddenly hit with a tremendous headwind. There wasn't much wind while we were charging and so it was never something I considered in my own mental range calculations, but this wind was severe! I could tell the direction because tumble weeds were actually on direct collision courses with us as we sped down the road, and we, as well as many other cars driving, were doing our best to dodge them
But the worse part was that I looked over at the charge level and noticed that in just 10 miles of driving it had dropped almost 7%! A mini panic started to build inside as I was also considering that we were approaching the Grapevine, a long and steady climb of considerable altitude.
I quickly flicked over to the energy consumption screen and was horrified to see that at the 75mph we were travelling into the headwind (which at times gusted so hard you could literally feel the car significantly decelerate) our instant Wh/Mile was hovering around 600! I tried to hide my growing concern from my wife who was happily looking for songs she wanted to stream from her phone to the car, and who was also mightily disappointed that she couldn't watch White Lotus while we were actually driving.
I considered severely curtailing our speed to save energy, but the wife HATES to drive slowly, and rather than listen to what would have been her constant frustrations with my freeway speed, I decided to just maintain and hit the unscheduled Castaic Supercharger at the summit of the climb since SURELY we would never make it all the way to Huntington Beach as I was literally watching the percentage tick down each minute almost in realtime
At the same moment I noticed though that the predicted arrival charge still said 20% and would fluctuate slightly; sometimes going down to 18% and then even popping back up to 20. This confused me to no end since even though I knew there was a descent into LA on the other side of the Grapevine, it could NEVER recover the almost 30% of the charge we lost before even getting to the start of the climb!
Up and up we went, and thankfully the wind died down, but the steady decline in charge was replaced by the ascent. Then a weird thing happened. The predicted arrival charge slowly climbed higher as we continued to climb. It went from 20 to then 27% and the rapid loss of current charge slowed down to a more reasonable rate.
By the time we actually got to the Castaic Supercharger it still seemed like it would not nearly have enough to get all the way to our destination, but since it wasn't in the single digits like I was fearing, given how fast it was depleting before and during the climb, I decided to press on and maybe just hit a supercharger at the base of the descent, since, of course, it could never make it to the destination with 20% left like it clearly stated on screen!
Over the top we went... and down... The charge level at 25%. Halfway down it was still at 25%. We arrived at the base of the mountains where I was certain I would have had to recharge and still it was stuck at 25% heading toward LA proper and going miles and miles and still 25%. It was like it was actually stuck. Then the 405 and we hit some moderate traffic that transitioned from slow and go to stop, to slow and go again and the charge crept up to 26%! What the hell?!
We were in traffic for probably a good hour and a half and it "finally" went down to 24%... Then a few transition freeways where we were at the speed limit, and consumption was back down to normal levels and I was starting to think that this damn car is smarter than me! LoL! Another 40 minutes or so later and we rolled into the Hilton Parking lot in Huntington Beach with 21% LOL!!!
I thought back at all the unnecessary sweating and anxiety I had suffered thru in the last 3 hours behind the wheel, and literally burst out laughing; Much to the confusion of the wife who was still upset that we couldn't watch movies while driving.
So I say now... Just trust the damn car and as long as there isn't something significantly wrong with it. You'll be freakin' fine! LoL! Thank you Tess! (My wife's name for her car)
p.s. The topper to all this? All the destination chargers at the Hilton were out of order so the Valet couldn't hook it up LoL! Always arrive to your destination with some juice just in case!
"Tesla Supercharger" by Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine is marked with CC0 1.0.
Admin note: Image added for Blog feed thumbnail.
It projected two stops, each about a third of the way along the almost 400 mile journey. At the first stop at a place called Firebaugh. We were the only ones at what looked to be a 70+ stall supercharger LoL! Frankly, it was a bit eerie to be the only ones there in the middle of the day when at the gas stations that were within easy eyesight range, cars were very busily coming and going at the pumps.
A 13 minute charge (which in my nervousness I made a 25 minute stop LoL) and then we were on our way again; My wife grabbing two McDonald's egg mcMuffins and tea and coffee for the road while I monitored the car.
The next stop in Bakersfield and the car arrived at exactly the predicted state of charge that it originally projected in Firebaugh. Nervousness lessening to a great degree
At the Bakerfield Supercharger I decided to completely trust the car's prediction and gave it exactly what it needed in order to arrive at our hotel in Huntington Beach with 20% charge.
,,,and off we went..
My first evidence of things maybe going amiss is as we were getting back onto Highway 5 we were suddenly hit with a tremendous headwind. There wasn't much wind while we were charging and so it was never something I considered in my own mental range calculations, but this wind was severe! I could tell the direction because tumble weeds were actually on direct collision courses with us as we sped down the road, and we, as well as many other cars driving, were doing our best to dodge them
But the worse part was that I looked over at the charge level and noticed that in just 10 miles of driving it had dropped almost 7%! A mini panic started to build inside as I was also considering that we were approaching the Grapevine, a long and steady climb of considerable altitude.
I quickly flicked over to the energy consumption screen and was horrified to see that at the 75mph we were travelling into the headwind (which at times gusted so hard you could literally feel the car significantly decelerate) our instant Wh/Mile was hovering around 600! I tried to hide my growing concern from my wife who was happily looking for songs she wanted to stream from her phone to the car, and who was also mightily disappointed that she couldn't watch White Lotus while we were actually driving.
I considered severely curtailing our speed to save energy, but the wife HATES to drive slowly, and rather than listen to what would have been her constant frustrations with my freeway speed, I decided to just maintain and hit the unscheduled Castaic Supercharger at the summit of the climb since SURELY we would never make it all the way to Huntington Beach as I was literally watching the percentage tick down each minute almost in realtime
At the same moment I noticed though that the predicted arrival charge still said 20% and would fluctuate slightly; sometimes going down to 18% and then even popping back up to 20. This confused me to no end since even though I knew there was a descent into LA on the other side of the Grapevine, it could NEVER recover the almost 30% of the charge we lost before even getting to the start of the climb!
Up and up we went, and thankfully the wind died down, but the steady decline in charge was replaced by the ascent. Then a weird thing happened. The predicted arrival charge slowly climbed higher as we continued to climb. It went from 20 to then 27% and the rapid loss of current charge slowed down to a more reasonable rate.
By the time we actually got to the Castaic Supercharger it still seemed like it would not nearly have enough to get all the way to our destination, but since it wasn't in the single digits like I was fearing, given how fast it was depleting before and during the climb, I decided to press on and maybe just hit a supercharger at the base of the descent, since, of course, it could never make it to the destination with 20% left like it clearly stated on screen!
Over the top we went... and down... The charge level at 25%. Halfway down it was still at 25%. We arrived at the base of the mountains where I was certain I would have had to recharge and still it was stuck at 25% heading toward LA proper and going miles and miles and still 25%. It was like it was actually stuck. Then the 405 and we hit some moderate traffic that transitioned from slow and go to stop, to slow and go again and the charge crept up to 26%! What the hell?!
We were in traffic for probably a good hour and a half and it "finally" went down to 24%... Then a few transition freeways where we were at the speed limit, and consumption was back down to normal levels and I was starting to think that this damn car is smarter than me! LoL! Another 40 minutes or so later and we rolled into the Hilton Parking lot in Huntington Beach with 21% LOL!!!
I thought back at all the unnecessary sweating and anxiety I had suffered thru in the last 3 hours behind the wheel, and literally burst out laughing; Much to the confusion of the wife who was still upset that we couldn't watch movies while driving.
So I say now... Just trust the damn car and as long as there isn't something significantly wrong with it. You'll be freakin' fine! LoL! Thank you Tess! (My wife's name for her car)
p.s. The topper to all this? All the destination chargers at the Hilton were out of order so the Valet couldn't hook it up LoL! Always arrive to your destination with some juice just in case!
"Tesla Supercharger" by Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine is marked with CC0 1.0.
Admin note: Image added for Blog feed thumbnail.