$200 for a 9 day rental is cheap! But me, I'll eat the depreciation cost and enjoy the Tesla road trip experience.
Why I'll Use the ICE Car For Vacation
- Thread starter Thumpernator
- Start date
$200 for a 9 day rental is cheap! But me, I'll eat the depreciation cost and enjoy the Tesla road trip experience.
Watts_Up
Active Member
Using the ABRP setting Model 3 Long Range Performance 18" Minus, charging at 95% at Little Rock, and arriving at 8%
there is no more the 62 mph limitation you had.
However, many parameters can affect the range and ABRP provides some additional parameters, from weather to battery degradation.
So it would be safer to make a stop halfway, but looking at the ChargePoint map, there are not too many L2 chargers around.
One option would be to stop at the Super 8 Motel in Russellville, AR where there are 3 Tesla Destination chargers of 16 kW.
Looking at Google Map, the chargers are located outside at the end of the parking lot.
I wonder if contacting the front desk in advance could let you plugin.
An other option would be to stay overnight. In this case you could avoid the Lowell Supercharger and go directly to Tusla the next day.
I just read that Tesla plan to offer payment for destination chargers.
I wonder if this could make possible the chargers usage for non hotel customers?
Note: Pomeranian are very cute. What's the hair color ?
ah yes, a short 1 hour stop for a 3AM meal to add 14% to battery ....very plenty, much bridging
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
Clearly you've not done a lot of EV road tripping. On a couple of occasions I would have given a finger for an additional 4% in the battery. Not a thumb, probably just a pinky... still 14% is A LOT when you're just trying to make it a bit further.
I think the point they're making is that's an unreasonable (if even available) thing to do as part of a plan for a specific route. The difference between being possible with much inconvenience (something early adopters had to deal with) and being a reasonable replacement of a gas vehicle (which requires minimised charging stops to accommodate how people actually travel and stop at the places they want to, not need to).
nwdiver
Well-Known Member
If the point is that you should disregard L2 options I would strongly disagree with that. My point is to LOOK at the available L2 options. There are often a dozen or more available. They can even be useful where L3 is common. For one L2 is often free. Secondly if you need a high SOC to make your next destination it could even be a bit quicker to leave while the car is trickling the final 5% at a lower rate than wait until you're at 100%. Thirdly there are more options. I'd rather be eating dinner in a nice restaurant (once we're allowed to) than lounge in a hotel parking lot....
.... just don't ignore L2. That's all I'm saying.
We do have completely different perspectives and probably won't "agree" with each other, to be fair. I never try to eat at a nice restaurant on a long trip - that's just costing me extra time and extra money. In a thread called "Why I'll use the ICE car", I think "Have to use L2 otherwise" is a fantastic reasoning. Ain't got time for that. If I "stop", it's probably some fast or drive-thru establishment.
That's not to say L2 is pointless. I use local L2 when it's convenient for the places I'm already going to be for more than 20 minutes. But we don't go to different places just because that's where the L2 stations are. The one time I had to use L2 to keep a charge up somewhere we stayed for a few weeks, it was absolutely miserable. Literally sitting in the car for multiple hours because there's nothing to do other than fetch a burger, which gets old pretty quick. If I ever did that trip again, I'd bring the ICE, which is pretty fair considering the headache I went through.
i drove 1400 miles this weekend, but okay.
had a dog in the car, so the ~2hr stopping frequency was just enough for all of us to have breaks.
any less than the range or charging speed of the Model 3 -- meaning more stops, and longer stops -- would be quite torturous. if this was done on a Leaf or a Kona, i'd have rather rented a diesel.
gnelson
Member
I personally think there is a very reasonable middle here as far as Level 2. You rolled your eyes at the idea of how terrible this proposed 1 hour stop is, but to prove your point, you compared it to your experience of having to sit for multiple hours waiting on L2 charging. I look at those as different situations--one reasonable and one not.
On trips, there will be a few places where I need to take about 20-30 minutes for a meal stop anyway. And that is regardless of whether it's a gas or electric car or whatever. So I consider that a reasonable minor adjustment to...extend that a bit for up to around an hour. I can take my time a little bit. Maybe it's an extra 5 minutes farther walk to a little bit nicer place I want to eat, or I'll have another refill while playing some games on my phone, etc. So making the meal break up to an hour, I think is not a big ask as a rare-ish thing to fill in a gap between Superchargers.
But yeah, the multi-hour stops are a no go. The route between Boise and Bend, OR would have required about 3.5 hours of 40A level 2 to bridge that gap, and that's something I wouldn't stand for, so I didn't do it, and I took our gas car a couple of times on that route. There is a CHAdeMO there now, and a permit for a Supercharger, so it's much better.
I agree the occasional 1 hour stop is fine, particularly if you had planned to stop for 30 minutes anyway. The delta is "only" 30 minutes.
But the delta is not just 30 minutes, because the 1hr @ L2 isnt buying you a "full tank" like a supercharger ould, its buying you about 40 miles of range before you're back to the same state of charge.
11kwh @ 280wh/mi = ~40mi
MXLRplus
Active Member
To date, for long trips any ICE is faster than any EV on any route.
That's not the EV's strength. At best, you might hope that one day it achieves parity.
This is why PHEV technology is not as silly as many people think. The problem is nobody released a PHEV with 80 miles of AER yet that has a >8 gallon gas tank.
That's not the EV's strength. At best, you might hope that one day it achieves parity.
This is why PHEV technology is not as silly as many people think. The problem is nobody released a PHEV with 80 miles of AER yet that has a >8 gallon gas tank.
So you replied to me, but apparently ignored the last line of my comment:
The math of driving only on level 2 is pretty terrible--drive at 60 mph and refill at 30 mph. That would suck for long distance. But why do you shift to the dishonest route to say it's "not just 30 minutes" because you're projecting this scenario as if it's ongoing for the rest of the trip at every recharging stop? As I said, this is to fill in if there happens to be a gap that's a little bit too long between Superchargers, which do usually cover most routes.
You sacrifice this half hour to get you over to the next set of Superchargers to get back to real charging.
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Yeah, I probably shouldn't have shown the other extreme that was less relevant. My bad.
The stronger point I should have made is a practical one: At least in North America (my context), the grand majority of L2 charging you'd use en-route is 208V 30A. Practically, this means about 5.5kW or about 38km/h of rated range (about 23mph) if not using climate control. This... is not a lot. More realistically, I'd personally be sitting in the car anyways (eating or not) or have dog mode on, which would drop that to 4.5kW or so in summer (worse in winter). Around where I live, if L2 is the "only" charge option, it's often near a CHAdeMO/CCS station as well, which is why I have the adapter.
For example, I did a route a few days ago that looped me around a different region and back home using only CHAdeMO. Had I used L2 chargers, this 15h day would have been a 27h day, which is suddenly no longer actually a day. This is the reality of many non-Supercharger routes within reachable distance of my car, and mostly important because of the "no longer a day" thing.
But as you say, for bridging a gap between Superchargers, maybe it's good enough. I find the actual "gaps" are sufficiently large that stopping at an L2 for just an hour would not be enough, and would require multiple hours in reality. I can think of many such cases nearby (nearly all of which can actually be served by CHAdeMO instead in a fraction of the time) or along my travels to Colorado. I even debated one, really wanting to take a specific highway, but would've needed a 3 hour stop at an L2 for an already 15h drive (one the second day of three 15h drives).
Of course, there's an exception in the form of the shining oasis that is 240V 48A chargers, often found at resorts. Should be able to pull about 10.7kW off these which is much better, but their location is a problem as they're intended for resort guests. And notably, SR+ (the one that would be more likely to need charging to fill a gap!) cannot use the full 48A anyways.
EDIT: I've done the Bend -> Boise route (in the ICE). Along with being a bad time for an EV, there was no cellular signal for hours, which might be the even bigger problem for charger discovery. Pre-planning absolutely needed.
This is why we almost got a PHEV, but the ones we were interested in couldn't even be full-electric to work and back (120km), so it became a bit pointless. Of course, now work requires only 15km/day, because things change and we can't predict life. Oh well.
I chopped out a section here, because these two statements need to be put next to each other to show that they are talking about opposite and non-overlapping scenarios. Sure, by the numbers, the vast majority of public charging stations are the 30A kind of thing, but those are in bigger cities, which are already on interstate routes that are already Supercharger covered. But places in small towns that are putting in wall connectors because they are filling a long gap on a minor highway traveling route, do not use 30A circuits because that does not serve that purpose there.
These places covering the Bermuda Triangle of lack of Superchargers: John Day, OR, Burns, OR, and McDermitt, NV all had 75A wall connectors to provide the best charging speed on level 2 to fill these gaps between the Superchargers with some reasonable charging speed instead of the kind of crappy 30A stuff. 30A isn't very useful for these fill the gap situations, so that's just not what gets installed there.
And even the places that are really remote are not "car charging stations", but you are getting your level 2 charging from RV outlets, which are 50A circuits, not 30A circuits.
I didn't ignore that scenario. It was already implicit in my calculation. To lay it out fully:
You start at point A. Your car ranges perfectly to SC_B, where you'd SC for 30 minutes as usual, and move on...
Now SC_B is an additional 40 miles away, which you cannot reach. But there is an L2 at the end of your range. You spend 1hr there, giving you just the necessary range to make it to SC_B (a 32min drive) where you'd have to do the 30 minutes fill up again, and move on...
That charging bridge didn't cost you 30 minutes. It cost you 1hr.
Further, you'd have a cadence of 1hr charge -> 32m drive -> another 30m charge. That's a sequence of 2hr where you'd have moved 40 miles.
And to anchor it back to the very original scenario, the guy laid out passing Little Rock at a little past midnight, where the suggestion was to stop for a quick meal....at that time of the day. I suppose a nap would be healthy
Paying customers--does not need to be overnight sleeping guests. People do this all the time. Almost all places hosting these consider you a paying guest if you just eat in the restaurant there and will have no problem letting you use their charging stations for it. People do that all the time, and it's very rare to hear of a place that would not accept that offer.
Ah, well yeah, now this one is touching on something that already is a sore subject for me, and an area where I think Tesla is making a really annoying terrible business decision in doing away with the higher power chargers in the cars. And in particular they are getting it backward, that the cars with the shorter ranges are the ones that will have more problematic needs for more frequent and faster recharging, since they do not have the surplus of range to play around with like the longer range cars do. So restricting the short range cars to the 32A chargers is a truly boneheaded move.
Ah, I see where you're going with that, because you're saying it's an entirely extra stop that wouldn't happen. I'll meet you in the middle on that, because I still disagree some. You have the math worked out in a story problem way, but there's math, and then there's real life. Real life has things like wanting a bathroom break and to stretch legs a bit sometime during that period of 4 continuous hours of driving, so there will probably be a stop of some kind anyway instead of no stop at all.
Despite being somewhat nearby, I think we just drive different routes and have different contexts. I see small towns with CHAdeMO/CCS, but still 208V 30A L2 stands, even a few oddball 16A weird ones (or just standard lower-current outlets). It doesn't make sense from a travel perspective to have just 30A, I agree, but... L2 isn't for travel, the CHAdeMO/CCS station is. I can't even reach some L2 installations up north, but they exist anyways for the locals. I've seen lots of L2 stations that ask you to limit your charging as well.
You clearly have more history with Tesla than I do, but my undeveloped perspective is probably evidence of the rapidly increasing divide between Tesla and other charging networks. 5 years ago, I'd probably entirely agree with your assessment - most of the L2 stations within 1000km of me would be Tesla Destination chargers, usually at high amperages (definitely 50A or more) to serve the S/X crowd. Some of these are Sun Country/Clipper Creek high current units as well. But it's now mostly 6kW L2 and CHAdeMO/CCS combo stations. The old Tesla-oriented high current stations still exist, but some are even being ripped out because they're a waste of electrical capacity (they could now charge 2-3 new vehicles at their max capability, at once, instead of just one older Model S, with no changes to the circuit).
I have seen zero new public installations of Tesla wall connectors. I have seen many public J-1772 stations pop up at 30A. I have seen higher current stations disappear and get replaced by more 30A units, because this is a sort of common denominator for most EVs.
I've done this too, but I'd rather it not be a requirement if that makes sense. These places are often ridiculously expensive. I'd prefer to just pay to charge honestly.
Related note, since it is often overnight guests, I found they're usually occupied as an EV parking spot (plugged in, maybe done charging). Despite whether or not this is good manners, it happens more often in these situations. Completely broke my plans two days in a row because there was nothing "wrong" with what they were doing. Nor was I going to argue with staff that they should force paying and happy occupants to move their car for a prospective customer.
This is actually the first time I've realised this, and I'm slowly getting just how "boneheaded" it really is. Dang. Lower Supercharger rates makes sense (they already stress the SR+ packs more than LR at Superchargers), but this is just artificial limiting nonsense.
But to be fair, like I pointed out above, they're sort of just matching what else is out there. Most other EVs have similar current limitations and can't utilise the higher currents. The high currents are also problematic to accommodate (losses to heat become very significant, voltage sag is increased, need far more expensive cable, and takes up a ridiculous portion of service capacity). High current AC charging is actually a bit unreasonable. It's attractive to those who install the stations to match the common denominator and also not incur huge costs just to deliver "slow" (and free to the customer?) charging. 30A installs fit this very nicely, and the 48A capacity of the LR is rarely even used by many people (even at home).
Oh! I can't believe I had forgotten about them. Yes, Sun Country Highway was one of the great pioneers of that, enabling the Trans-Canada highway with very high amp level 2 stations.
It's enabling bad behavior, and I wish they wouldn't stoop to that level by doing the same thing and normalizing it.
Most of this is questionable. You say more expensive cable, but doing that reduces the voltage sag (which isn't an issue anyway) and makes heat loss not very much of a problem.
"huge costs" applies to fast DC charging, which equipment is an order of magnitude more. High amp AC charging is very inexpensive and is cost effective by comparison. And besides, the materials cost difference in wire/breaker for high amp versus low amp is a pretty small part of the costs of these kinds of installations versus the much larger portion of the electrician's overhead, concrete trenching and refill to get the station posts out into the parking lot, etc. etc.
Anyway, I get the point that there is the more common case, and that's fine that the lower power stations serve that purpose for most people. But removing the option of the higher amp stations and chargers for the people who have need for them is very customer unfriendly.
Off-topic from road trips now:
I spent all of last month away from home, in a place without overnight charging capabilities. It simulated for me what some urban folks may be living
The car lived on a steady rotation of Supercharging (luckily it's free!) and L2/Destination charging. All the groceries/shopping/eating trips needed planning so that the parking time wouldn't be wasted.
My takeaway was that it was doable, but not ideal. And the biggest gap was learning that the OBC was limited to 11kW. Since all of the L2 provided 22kW, I feel getting that speed would alleviate all the pain. Not sure what the engineering limitation is to harness all that power (much larger and heavier charging module???), but that would be a great boon to EV adoption.
I spent all of last month away from home, in a place without overnight charging capabilities. It simulated for me what some urban folks may be living
The car lived on a steady rotation of Supercharging (luckily it's free!) and L2/Destination charging. All the groceries/shopping/eating trips needed planning so that the parking time wouldn't be wasted.
My takeaway was that it was doable, but not ideal. And the biggest gap was learning that the OBC was limited to 11kW. Since all of the L2 provided 22kW, I feel getting that speed would alleviate all the pain. Not sure what the engineering limitation is to harness all that power (much larger and heavier charging module???), but that would be a great boon to EV adoption.
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