In a recent post about Electric Vehicle Charging at Hotels I mentioned that earlier this year I bought a Tesla Model 3. So far ownership has been perfect. I’ve put just over 6,000 miles on the car and haven’t had any issues with the car. What’s also incredible is that the car is quite different today than the day I purchased it. That’s because Tesla is constantly pushing software updates to the car. For example, Tesla added a feature which programs the car’s settings to the driver preferences when you open the door. It knows which driver you are based on your phone or keycard. That feature wasn’t available when I bought the car.
Anyway, while daily ownership had been fantastic, there was still just one thing I hadn’t done with the car. Until last weekend, I hadn’t taken the car on a proper road trip. In the past I’ve taken the car on a few long drives, but nothing past the 3 hour mark. However, that all changed last weekend when my girlfriend and I took the Tesla Model 3 from New York City all the way to beautiful Buffalo.
The “Challenge” Of Owning An Electric Car
To get from New York City to Buffalo we’d be coving a distance of just over 350 miles each way. This of course wouldn’t be an issue in a gas powered vehicle, but in an electric car it’s a concern. It’s not a concern of if the car will make it, but how.
See, the Tesla Model 3 LR only has a maximum range of 310 miles. Furthermore, I really look at it as though the car as a “useful” range of 240 miles, which I’ll get to in a second. This all means that no matter what, we were going to have to stop to charge at some point. Making the trip even more difficult, on the morning of our trip, the car only had about 80 miles of range left. If I had home charging I would have woken up with 310 miles of range and we would have only needed to stop once, but that’s not an option at the moment.
So, to plan our trip I needed to take all of these factors into consideration before setting off. Sure, we could have plugged our destination into the navigation and the car would have told us where to charge along the way, but where’s the fun in that.
Planning The Route
I wanted to plan the route before heading out so that we’d know which charging stations had the best food options when it was time for dinner. While Tesla Superchargers are great, sometimes there isn’t much around them. So, I did a few minutes of research on Tesla’s Supercharger page and planned out a route on Google Maps.
Let me explain. As I mentioned above, we started out with just 80 miles. So, the first stop would have to be fairly early on. There are a few Tesla Superchargers around where we live so finding one wasn’t difficult. However, I wanted to pick one outside of the greater New York City area to make it through traffic before rush hour. The first stop would be about 35 miles from home.
Next, we’d have to stop for dinner around 7PM, so I picked a Tesla Supercharger with plenty of food options just outside of Scranton, PA. This charger is 90 miles or about an hour and a half from our first stop.
Then, we’d have to make one final stop before we could make it to Buffalo. For this stop I picked a Supercharger in Painted Post, NY which is about 150 miles from the Scranton charger and 120 miles from Buffalo.
After spending a few minutes planning the route I sent the route from Google Maps on my computer to my email and phone (via text) and was ready to head out.
The First Stop
We packed up and left New York in the late-afternoon. Traffic was much worse than expected thanks to a few disabled vehicles and accidents so it ended up taking us 2 hours to go the 38 miles from home to the first Supercharger. This wasn’t an issue at all in terms of range, but was obviously frustrating.
When we pulled into the first Tesla Supercharger of the trip we had about 40 miles of range left, but only needed about 100 miles of total range to make it to our second stop. So, we parked, plugged in, and started charging.
We ended up getting out of the car and walking over to the nearby Target to grab a few snacks for the road. This took about 25 minutes and in that time we ended up getting up to 250 miles of total range. Keep in mind we only planned to stop for about 10 minutes to get up to 150 miles or so.
After getting close to the maximum usable range from this stop we got back in the car and started the drive to Scranton, PA which was just over 100 miles away.
The Second Stop
About an hour and a half and 100 miles later we pulled into the Scranton, PA supercharger. This is where I originally planned to have a “long” 20-30 minute stop to top off. However, when we pulled into the Tesla Supercharger we still had about 150 miles of range left. So, instead of sitting down for dinner, we decided to grab food from Panera and eat in the car.
It took us about 20 minutes to walk from the Supercharger to Panera, get our food, and come back. In that time the car had charged back up to 250 miles of range and we were once again ready to go.
Keep in mind, for this stop the original plan was to sit down and eat at one of the many restaurants in the Moosic, PA mall where the Supercharger is located. This stop was supposed to be a 40 minute stop in which we would charge up from about 50 miles of range to 250. Instead, it ended up being a 20 minute charging stop in which we filled up from 150 to 250.
After topping off near Scranton we got back on the highway and set our sights on Painted Post, NY!
The Third and Final Stop
Scranton to Painted Post was the longest leg of the journey by far. We covered a distance of just under 150 miles which took just over two hours. The drive was easy, there wasn’t much traffic, and the car ended up doing most of the driving itself. Yes, you read that right. Since traffic was light I set the Tesla Autopilot for 75 MPH and let the car do most of the driving. Autopilot is amazing for road trips as it lets you relax a little more than you normally would so you don’t get as fatigued during long drives.
So, after a relaxing two hours of driving and 150 miles later, we pulled into the Painted Post, NY supercharger and filled up for the last time. There wasn’t much around this Supercharger when we stopped, just a 7-11 and a Dunkin. We got out, grabbed a coffee, and got back in the car to play a game of Beach Buggy Racer before heading out.
In total we filled up from about 100 miles of range back to 210 in about 20 minutes. Before long, we were back on the road for the final 120 miles from Painted Post to Buffalo.
Staying In Buffalo
We arrived in Buffalo with just under 100 miles of range. This wasn’t an issue as there is a Supercharger near Buffalo that made it easy to top back off the next day, or before heading back. Also, we were able to plug into my friend’s home outlet to pick up about 120 miles of range while the car sat for a day.
We also ended up taking the car our again on Saturday to go Apple Picking just outside of Buffalo. This took away some of the extra range we had, but again, we had plenty of charging options available.
Now it’s worth noting that when charging out of a standard wall outlet the car only charges at a rate of about 5 miles per hour. So, plugging into a standard outlet isn’t viable for road trip, on-the-go charging, but it is viable for overnight charging or when the car is stationary for a day or two at a time.
By The Numbers
When I told my friend that we planned on driving to Buffalo his immediate reaction was “will it make it?” Yes, that’s a legitimate question and no, the car won’t make it on a single charge. However, Teslas have a significant advantage over other EVs with their Supercharger Network. In the North East there is a Supercharger every 100 miles or so. This makes it very easy to take Teslas on long trips. Superchargers are less readily available in other parts of the U.S. and world, but the network continues to grow.
In the end, we drove about 388 miles to get from our home in New York City to Buffalo. Since we started with a fairly low battery we ended up stopping 3 times and around an hour total. Sure this added an hour to our trip, but it wasn’t all that bad. Most rest stops take about 5 minutes anyway and we would have had to stop in any car at least twice.
Also, pre-planning the route wasn’t necessary. Tesla maps include a built-in route planner which tells you where to charge and for how long. The maps then include that charging time into the total route time/distance. I only planned my own route as I wanted to know where to stop for food, etc. along the way.
For what it’s worth, we took the exact reverse route back to New York City for which the trip was nearly identical. We ended up stopping for about an hour total to recharge and drove for about 6 hours total.
Final Thoughts
Owning a Tesla and this trip has completely changed my view on road tripping an electric car. See, in a gas car you stop at a gas station and top off the tank with each stop. With an EV, that’s not as effective because the final 20% of range takes the longest. This is what I mean by the car’s “useful” range. The Model 3 Long Range is rated up to 310 miles, but it’s not efficient to top it off. The final 30 miles or 10% take nearly 15-20 miles alone, even on a Supercharge.
Instead, the most efficient way to take road trips is to drain the battery down to about 20-30 miles of range and then Supercharge to about 200 miles. This only takes about 20 minutes to do and provides enough range to drive for another 2 hours.
Overall, road tripping in a Tesla is only slightly different than a gas car. Sure you have to think about charging a bit more, but it’s not as anxiety inducing as you’d think. Never once did we worry about our state of charge or range. Instead, we just drove normally (let the car drive) and plugged in when needed. The trip was a ton of fun and one that I’d happily take again.
