First long distance trip with the Tesla Model S

I got a Tesla Model S at the beginning of June and we recently took our first long-ish range trip, a visit to my parents house in Connecticut. Electric vehicles are still relatively limited in range and more importantly in locations where you can charge. Normally I charge in the garage each evening after commuting to and from where I work in New Hampshire. I'm still new to trips that require a mid-destination charge. To mitigate some worry about where to charge I did some planning that I wouldn't consider if we were driving a gasoline or diesel fueled car.

Tesla Model S P90

Tesla has a series of Supercharger locations to allow long distance trips with their electric cars. If you do need to charge during your trip you'll want to route through these or other locations where you can charge.

Picture by Jeff Cooper (jecoopr) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

There are other options for charging your EV, both free and fee based charging locations, but these typically charge much more slowly than Tesla's Superchargers. Those locations can work if you stop for a few hours to eat, shop or sleep.

The trip from our house here in North Reading, MA to my parents house in New Hartford, CT is about 136 miles each way. The Model S with the 90kWh battery can travel pretty far, maybe 250 miles on a charge depending on the temperature and speed, but its not as healthy for the batteries to regularly charge to 100% and/or run the battery down to near 0%. Doing so has physical side effects for the lithium-ion batteries that can degrade their capacity. It also doesn't seem wise to travel without enough margin to handle the unexpected. Elevation changes can consume much more energy than expected. Routing around traffic or taking detours could extend the distance that has to be traveled. Why not include enough margin to avoid being worried about running out of charge?

Tesla Maps showing how long we have to stop at the Auburn, MA Supercharger

Tesla Maps showing the State of Charge (SOC) expected when we arrive at the Auburn, MA Supercharger

The directions that Teslsa's map application provides are not as good as Waze or Google Maps, as it sometimes routes poorly when there is traffic. However, it is designed for long range trips and using the current battery state of charge (SoC) it can determine which Superchargers you should stop at and for how long. This makes it quite valuable when planning the route for a trip.

You can see its recommendation was to stop at the Auburn, MA supercharger for 15 minutes. I used to drive by this charging station regularly when commuting from our old house in Charlton and about half of the time there was someone there charging. It's location is ideal as a stopping point on your way to/from the New York/Hartford/Boston and it is located at the intersection of routes 90, 290, and 395.

Google maps of the Auburn, MA Supercharger location

On our way to CT we stopped in Auburn to change our son's diaper. The maps application did indicate that we were ok to continue driving for another hour and to stop instead in West Hartford, CT. By charging in Auburn we had enough charge to complete the remainder of our trip to my parents house in CT without that stop.

West Hartford, CT Supercharger

On our way back from CT the maps application initially indicated that we should stop at the Auburn, MA Supercharger to charge. When we got closer to West Hartford the route changed and the maps application recommended we stop at the West Hartford Supercharger (SC). We probably could have limited our speed to around 65mph and made it to Auburn but why take the risk of running out of charge? If you do happen to run out of charge I've read that the solution is to transport the car via flatbed to the nearest Supercharger or Tesla Service Center for charging. I'm ok with not experiencing this first hand.

We arrived in West Hartford around 5pm so we decided charge while eating dinner. You can see the other Model S parked to charge. The Supercharger stalls were outside the back of a Red Robin restaurant, the building in the background in the above photo. The iPhone Tesla app let us know we could continue our trip after only 10 minutes of charging via a notification popup and the car ceased charging at its preset charge limit of 80%, which is as high as I normally charge during my weekly use, after only 20 or so minutes.

The charge rates at the SC are pretty amazing. At home we can charge at 10-11kw (240v * 48A = ~11kw). At the SC, both in Auburn and in West Hartford, the charge rate was near 120kw at times, something like 200 miles of range being added per hour. With this high rate of charge the car activates its battery cooling system. During the charge in West Hartford the cooling fans were audible outside of the car., running at a high rate to keep the battery pack cool.

We had a smooth trip but with two SCs along the way there wasn't much risk of running out of charge. I'm looking forward to the drive up to NH this weekend for a 4th of July party. I'm expecting that all of the trips we take will involve at least a small amount of advanced planning to make sure we have some margin of range. Even though I'm pretty confident that the Tesla Maps application would bring us to SCs if we needed it I still checked the route in advance. I've done a few Google Maps routes and it looks like it is about 80-90 miles each way and there is a Tesla SC along the route, in Hookset,NH. I'm hoping to feel a bit less nervous as we take more trips and gain confidence in the Tesla Maps application and its route planning,.