Road Trip!

 

We just returned from a great road trip to Florida via Washington DC! This was far and away our longest trip in the Model Y, and one I had been looking forward to doing since I bought the car. My wife and I have done a few long runs - twice to central Maine and once to southwest Virginia - but those were relatively quick - two or so stops each. Driving to Florida requires multiple stops and 'Supercharger hopping'... So I was really looking forward to doing that.

The occasion was my brother's wedding in Washington on Friday, October 26. My wife and I had planned a trip to Florida for earlier in the month, but decided to shift it to after the wedding since we'd be 4 hours closer. We left DC around 10:00 am that Saturday morning and planned to drive straight through to St Augustine FL - planning on about 13 hours including charging stops. The car was just under 50% state of charge (SOC). That was a little lower than I had wanted, but we went about an hour and 15 minutes before stopping in Fredericksburg VA for our first charge of the day. We ended up stopping 5 more times, although the last one in Jacksonville was really just to charge enough for a few days in St Augustine. Total charges were $84.40. Just for comparison, using my old Mazda CX-5 as a comparison, it would have cost approximately $90.00 - so saved a little bit of money.... (Supercharging on the road is way more expensive than charging at home, by a factor of 5 or so). We arrived at 11:30 pm, right at the 13 hours we had planned. 755 miles covered in total.

We spent a couple of days in St Augustine and the nearest Tesla Supercharger was about 15 minutes away, but there was a Florida Power & Light fast charger a minute away from our motel. Fortunately, I have an adapter to use CCS chargers (different plug design from Tesla) and was able to plug right in and juice up. Very convenient, and actually less expensive than the Supercharger.... We also charged up there the night before we left for Clearwater and my sister's home, so we only had to stop once going across Florida, in Celebration. About 250 miles total.

Before we left Clearwater, I charged at a local Supercharger so we could get a good start the next day. We had planned to drive from Clearwater to Rocky Mount NC, where we would stay the night. We stopped 5 times, including a Buc-ee's in Florence SC which I wanted to see. We arrived in Rocky Mount and went to a charger about 2 minutes from the hotel to charge up for the next day. It was a 'slow' fast charger (V2, which gives you about half the power of the newer V3 and V4 units, and you share one power unit between 2 cars, cutting the charge even more) and only charged to about 50% as we were tired. Total elapsed time was about 13 hours again, including stops. Mileage was 720 and cost was $70.00.

The next morning we left Rocky Mount and made our first stop in Stoney Creek VA, after which we stopped at Springfield VA, Newark DE and then home, covering 436 miles. Cost for this leg was $54.00.

So for the entire trip, we drove 2,395 miles and spent $270 for charging, or 11 cents per mile. If I still had my CX-5, the cost would have been approximately $280 or just under 12 cents per mile. Of course, gas prices are very low right now; if I had done this trip last year, the difference would have been greater as gas prices were quire a bit higher back then. And again, just like gas which tends to be less expensive off the highways, charging at home is significantly less expensive than charging on the road.

The (relative) frequency of the stops didn't bother us at all. I can't really go longer than 2 hours without needing a bio break, and the opportunity to walk around a bit actually kept me pretty fresh and alert. The adaptive cruise control in the car is great, it rides well and is very quiet. We had no issue finding chargers - the car does it for you - and most of them are within a minute or two of the highway. Most of them have good amenities as well. We did not have to wait to charge at any of the stops. And we saw many Cybertrucks charging as well! All told, the trip went really well and I can't wait to do it again!

Pull-through stalls in St George SC

CCS charging in Vilano Beach FL

Charging at Bucc-ee's in Florence SC

Sitting next to a Cybertruck while watching another come in - Yemassee SC

(Lead photo - charging at V4 stalls in Emporia VA)

EV's in the Comics

 

The grid can't handle EV's!

Spoiler alert - it can and will....

One of the many examples of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) sown by the anti-EV crowd is that the electrical grid in our country won't be able to support the EV transition. This is patently false, for a number of reasons. This article lays out why.

The Grid Can Handle It!

Long-Lasting Tesla Batteries

 It's been a while since I've posted but I recently came across an interesting article about battery longevity, which is another piece of misinformation that the anti-EV crowd use to try and stem the shift towards EV's.  Here is the article -

Tesla Model S with 430,000 Miles!

This is just one example - there are others. So don't worry about longevity, especially if you take care of your battery!

EV's in the Comics

 

Cybertruck!

 

Tesla recently (finally!) had a Delivery Event for the Cybertruck, 4 years after announcing it.... Although the specs seemingly have dropped a bit, and the price has certainly increased, it's still a very different type of vehicle, very much in the mold of the original Tesla Roadster announced in 2008 and the Model S of 2012. Both of those vehicles were initially very polarizing but in the case of the Model S especially, became almost mainstream and segment leaders. Will the Cybertruck do the same?

I have had a CT on order since early 2021, right around the time I bought my Model Y. It was $100 to get a reservation, which seemed like a no brainer at the time. Tesla reportedly has over 2 million reservations, although perhaps that number has declined a bit since the event last week. 

To me, the Cybertruck isn't a competitor for a gas-powered 'working' truck. People that use their trucks in support of their businesses aren't going to buy the CT (or a Rivian, for that matter). These are 'lifestyle' vehicles, used for off-roading, camping, trips to Home Depot for DIY projects, etc. I think a LOT of people that drive pick-ups, frankly, use their trucks for this purpose. That's the context to think about these trucks. They aren't really suited for long-distance towing or constantly carrying heavy loads. Being an EV, you don't really pay a penalty for around-town use of a truck - no horrible gas mileage, for example. 

I did have the chance to check one out in person in Boston last weekend. There are about 20 CT's on display in Tesla stores around the country - the closest to me is NYC, but since I was in Boston for a family holiday party, I took the opportunity to see it there - much easier to access Boston from where I was staying, then getting to NYC from home. I thought it was awesome! It looks so much better in person than in pics (although I am posting my pics below). It IS big, but the styling actually minimizes the bulk to a great extent. So without further ado, here are my pics (and video)!

Walk-Around Video

Good view of the 'squirkle' steering wheel...

Minimal front overhang.

The massive front wiper blade.

Supercharger Visits - Updated

 I've taken a few road trips this summer, so though I would update my Supercharger list....

Now I really would like to take a trip to Florida and extend the list.....

Week Long Road Trip to Northern New England!

 

Just finished a nice long late summer road trip in northern New England! Our ride took us from Central NJ to Saratoga Springs NY, across Vermont to North Conway NH for a couple of nights, and then to Winthrop ME for a family wedding - then home. The trip was 6 days and about 1,100 miles, and included several new charging locations (for me) which is always fun. Ac always, the Tesla driving and charging experience was flawless. With just over 40,000 miles on the car since March of 2021, and a new set of tires, it continues to be a great road trip car - roomy, comfortable, quiet and efficient.

Here is a summary of the trip from my TezLab app -

A couple items of note -

- Charging cost vs gas savings - you can see that charging at the Supercharger network cost me almost $138, with gas savings of about $100. This reflects the most expensive charging costs you'd encounter, about $.40 per kilowatt. Compare this to my home cost of about $.09 per kilowatt.... Still, $100 in gas savings beats a sharp stick in the eye...

- Total charging time of 11 hours is a little misleading, as that includes home charging at either end of the trip. Actual time spent at Superchargers was 3 hours and 15 minutes. A couple of those stops also included lunch so were a little longer than I would normally stop (one for 27 minutes and one for 29 minutes). One in North Conway also coincided with us doing some grocery shopping. 

- Another interesting thing - driving through the mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire does interesting things to your energy consumption. Just like in a gas car, you use more energy going uphill, but unlike a gas car, an EV can recapture some of that used energy going downhill by regeneration - using the electric motors to capture energy that would normally be wasted by braking and put it back into the battery. You can see on the picture below a flat spot just past halfway in the graph, where is was essentially using no energy coming down a hill. 

You can also see noted at the bottom that the car added back about 53 miles of range through regeneration during this period, which is really cool.

As always, it was a great trip made better by driving a Tesla!

Some pictures from the trip -

Rainbow over North Conway, NH.

Refreshment after a long drive.

Bates Falls on the trail to Arethusa Falls, White Mountain State Forest, NH

Arethusa Falls

Family Wedding, Cobbosseecontee Lake, Winthrop ME

More EV's in the Comics

 

How Norway Does EV's

Interesting article from the NY Times on Norway's EV adoption, which is incredibly high - 80% of all new vehicles sold there are EV's! 

Click here.