thedadlegend
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I’m on the tail end of a week long trip with the family, 2 adults and 2 kids under 6, from Austin to Des Moines. We hauled the family, our luggage, and a portable freezer/fridge about 2000 miles.
Overall:
This trip has instilled so much confidence in the truck, especially now that we have the NACS adapter. It rides like a dream, floating down the highway at 85. BlueCruise is also awesome, though I don't think i'm prepared to pay $800 or whatever it is.
Conversely, the trip has also shown that I am not really a road tripper, or at least not for 1000 mile stretches. I read somewhere that it’s time anxiety not charger or range anxiety and that’s exactly the kind of anxiety that I have and which is exacerbated by road trip in an EV with kids. Definitely will use it for local camping trips, maybe 500 miles away max
.Efficiency:
Average efficiency: 2.0
Lowest efficiency: 1.7
Highest efficiency: 2.2
The entirety of the way there we had a massive tailwind, 20mph pushing us all the way. And then on the return trip, somehow we had a much calmer but still directionally helpful tailwind from the north. I maintained ~5mph over the speed limit on the way up, usually 75-80mph. On the way down, ~80-85mph. Guess I’ve been in a rush.
Charging:
Before I left, I signed up for the Tesla supercharger membership. Exclusively on supercharger I spent may be somewhere around $300. I did fill up in DSM at an EA charger which I think took around 50kw from the 250kw balance. I also charged to around 100% each stop in Wichita, and used a standard outlet charger at our DSM destination to get a few % each night.
I never had to wait for a charger, and had no problems using the Tesla system which I would initiate by selecting the charger in the Tesla app on my phone unplugged into the truck and voila.
Charging stops were basically planned ahead of the entire trip in terms of the general route, although I found that I would usually plan the next stop at each current stop. For example, I would use ABRP with my estimated charge that I was getting to to see how far I can make it. Then once the charge is actually done. I used Apple Maps to enter the next destination. Speaking of Apple Maps my experience was that the map is extremely conservative around 2 to 2.2 efficiency and less so around 1.8. Still it is a good gauge and I like to keep my eye on the estimated charge once at destination to make sure nothing crazy was going on. I found stopping in each major city was decent, and only basically had one extra charging stop such as Emporia outside of Wichita, or a random Kansas Service Stop or whatever they call them.
I do wish google/apple would get an update with Tesla chargers and availability to those with the adapter as they were basically all I wanted but Apple Maps would not select them automatically. I also wish Tesla would somehow update their software to indicate to other drivers or even to ABRP that a truck is using 2 spots. It would reduce the amount of (imagined?) side eyes I received.
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