Tesla Chronicles #19 - Weekend 550

(Posted to Facebook 8/15/2022)

We managed to do 550 miles of driving this weekend without having to stop during our drives. HOW? We charged overnight Friday to Saturday. We drove 167 miles then we charged for 8 hours while visiting family, which was plenty to do the 167 mile return trip. Then charged overnight again (Sat-Sun) before returning home. This was possible because my grandmothers garage has a 240V outlet that was used by my grandfather for his welding, and we recently upgraded it to a 50 AMP, NEMA 14-50 circuit. On my travel charger, I can add roughly 10% to the car per hour.

In an EV: 200 kwh of Electric - $30 (approx) of electric assuming $0.15/kwh (I only pay $0.10 at home but I think this is roughly the rate at my family's homes). Side note, I only paid for about $2 of this electricity because I used outlets at the homes of family members. Most significantly, ZERO "fill-up" stops along the entire drive (except for a quick bathroom stop).

In an ICE: 27.5 Gallons of Gas (20 mpg vehicle) - $120 of gas .... would have had to stop 2-3 times for gas to ensure a full tank this morning for the work week.

So, in particular situation, I saved nearly $120 and eliminated 15 minutes or so of fill up stops. If my grandmother didn't have a 240V outlet, we could have easily stopped at the Somerset Turnpike rest stops going and coming, and at most, those stops would have required about 20 minutes of charging (10 minutes each way). That's all.... Driving an EV on this trip could have costed me about 5 extra minutes of my time and maybe about $20 of charging... for $100 of savings... I'll take it every time....

And this is the experience of our typical road trips. Taking an EV on a trip often SAVES us time and definitely saves us money. After 1 year of ownership and 23,000 of driving ... only once have we been on a trip that required many charging stops during a couple of days of driving (Trip to Florida).... and sure, taking the EV on that trip slowed us down a little, but we were on vacation and at the end of the day, it didn't impact our arrival time at the resort. We had to pick Emily up at the airport (which we did with plenty of charge) when her flight arrived before going to Downtown Disney (which had on site chargers we used while we were shopping). Driving the Tesla meant that we had about an extra hour of driving that morning, which was fine by us. It meant we had to leave by 8am instead of 9am.