Electrically Speaking: Cape Cod Road Trip

Hard to believe it, but I never put together a blog entry about our annual vacation trip to Cape Cod back in August.... This was our third road trip, after one to Saratoga Springs in April and one to Boston in May. Better late than never I guess!

We own a time share in West Yarmouth, which is next to Hyannis, the largest town on the Cape. There are only 3 Supercharger locations on Cape Cod, but the Hyannis SC is only about 10 minutes from our time share. So I figured that would be fine as long as it wasn't too crowded. We don't typically drive much once we get to the Cape, other than to dinner and some shopping. Some years we might drive to Provincetown or the National Sea Shore, but didn't have a desire to do the former and the number of shark sightings eliminated the latter from consideration!

We left home at 5:00 am on Saturday, August 7, to head up Route 95. I had charged to 95%, so we had plenty of juice to start, We had one planned stop, in New London, CT, at 26% state of charge, and the car advised charging for 20 minutes (to 75%) to be on our way. We used the restroom in a supermarket and when we got back to the car, it was charged and we were on our way. Between home and New London, we drove pretty efficiently, using 262 watt-hours per mile (similar to MPG with a gas car, except lower is better). That's 82% efficiency, which I was happy with. Cost was $0 as I still had free Supercharging miles from purchasing the car.

We arrived at our destination (the Keltic Kitchen, for traditional breakfast!) and since we couldn't check in until the afternoon, decided to head over to the Hyannis Supercharger for some juice. Our trip from New London to Hyannis was at 88% efficiency, probably helped by some traffic over the Sagamore Bridge (slower speeds). We got there with 21% SOC and let it charge up to 76%, which took about 19 minutes. Again, no cost due to free credit. And the SC location was empty although a pickup truck did park there as we were leaving - an ICEhole.

During the week, I charged once, on Wednesday, from 49% to 90% (no cost), and then again Friday evening prior to heading home Saturday morning (69% => 95%). No cost. I didn't really need to charge up on the Wednesday, I guess, since I only used 21% between Wednesday and Friday evening. Lesson learned.

Saturday, we hit the road at 7:00 am after our traditional stop at Bagels and Beyond. I used the Autopilot while I ate my breakfast driving on Route 25 once we were off the Cape, which was great! We stopped in Madison CT where we charged from 28% to 80% and used up the remainder of our free SC credits and an extra $5.10. Took 21 minutes, enough for a bathroom break. Our efficiency was good at 85% and averaged 281 wh/mi. The remainder of the trip ws on that charge, we arrived home at 27% - 90% efficiency, due to some traffic at the GW Bridge, and attaining 265 wh/mi for this leg.

Overall, this really proved to me how great a road trip car the Model Y is. Our charging time both up and back was 40 minutes combined, which frankly wasn't any longer than we would stop driving up in our Mazda CX-5, which would take an entire tank of gas and cause me agita if we got stuck in traffic at the end of the trip. We would always stop once each way for a bathroom break, so no change there. And since the MY is more efficient in slower traffic is, I didn't have any worries about running out of charge while we were in traffic at either end of the trip.