ROAD TRIPPING IN A TESLA – NO PROBLEM!
I give a lot of advice to folks looking to buy an electric vehicle (EV). A lot of it focuses on the great savings from lower fueling cost, less maintenance, great performance and the incredible convenience of potentially recharging at home. Some drivers will ultimately take their EVs on long trips and wonder/ask what that might be like to completely rely on public charging away from home. I don’t have much real world advice for that question but this is about to change…
I’ve had my Tesla for exactly 3 years as of 12/24 and I’ve really never challenged it outside of New England. Well, my experience will take a dramatic turn after Christmas as my wife and I are planning to drive it to Tampa, FL to visit our son. We will both work there virtually for a month and try not to miss the MA weather in January.
One of the reasons I bought a Tesla is that their public charging network is really convenient and wide spread. Also, I live in Boston and can’t charge at home. I have to rely on public charging most of the time and it is currently easier than for non-Tesla EV drivers. This is expected to change in the next year or so as the recently passed federal legislation provides significant funding and guidelines for expanding the nationwide charging network. This unfolding story, along with other non-Tesla travel strategies, will certainly be a topic for a future blog.
Now, how the heck can I get from Boston to Tampa in my EV?! We are making 2 planned detours along the way and that certainly dictates some of our route. We will stop in West Virginia to see our niece and then take 2 days in Charleston, SC because…well, why not?! We do need to plan our travel days in advance so that we can coordinate our hotels for when/where we expect to arrive. Luckily, this is easily done with the trip planning function on the Tesla website:
Here is a link to this interactive map for you to experience yourself: Go Anywhere | Tesla
Just enter your destination and it will automatically set your route according to where you will need to stop. For our first leg, it’s 14 hours of driving so we decided to stop overnight in between here and WV. We also decided to avoid I95 and actually charted a different course then you see above. Helpfully, Tesla also has a nationwide map to locate all of their charging stations as well as any destination chargers at hotels.
Here is a link to that resource: Find Us | Tesla
We chose a more northwestern route to avoid the big city traffic and located a final day 1 destination that was near a convenient Tesla Supercharger. We took this location and plugged it back into the Tesla trip planner and we were ready to go!
As you can see by the “Find Us” map you are never very far from a quick recharge. This makes it convenient to plan your driving breaks and destinations along the way. The great thing about driving a Tesla is that if you have any changes during the trip you can just plot a new course while in your car and it will automatically reroute you according to their network of charging locations. Easy-peasy!
I won’t say any more about missing the January weather but I am hoping that we don’t get stuck in a snowstorm along the way! If you’re wondering what that scenario might look like for an EV driver, I will just link you to one of my previous blogs from last year: Turn up the Heat in Traffic with an EV | Energy New England – ENE
As always, we are here for you when you want to make the transition to an EV. Please reach out any time if you want to know how the driving went or if you are considering taking the plunge into electronic transportation. I’ll be back up and running “EV Advisory South” on January 3rd…
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