Tesla Chronicles #23 - Holiday Weekend Trip

Well, this weekend was our first ever road trip over a holiday weekend in our Tesla Model Y. It went well, but not without a little bit of flexibility required on our part along the way caused by busy charging stations. This is going to be a long one, so grab some coffee, get comfortable, and enjoy reading.

But first, a few stats. It is about 240 miles from home to the place we rented for the weekend on the east side of Lake Seneca, about 7 miles north of Watkins Glen. We used about 70kwh of the battery for the drive from home to here. That means with no stops, we would have had about 6-10% of our battery remaining on arrival (our Model Y battery is about 75-77kwh usable) if we hadn’t stopped at all to charge. It is great to know that we could make the trip door to door if we needed to without stopping (at least not in the dead of winter).

The main problem with doing that though is that arriving on “empty” for a destination like Watkins Glen, particularly if you are not staying somewhere that has a L2 destination charger or NEMA 14-50 plug, is just not a good idea. First, you need to have enough power to get out, and most likely, you need power to travel around once you are there. The house we are renting at least has a 110V outlet available outside the garage doors, which we have been using. Around the region, there are several Level 2 chargers, but no Level 3 Chargers close by. So, on our way here, we really wanted to stop somewhere not far from the end of our drive to get a good charge up to have at least 50% when we arrived at the house. This is a MUST when traveling with ONLY an EV, but if there are other cars in your group, you likely can just rely on the other cars for getting around once you arrive. You could even make the short trip to one of the Level 2 chargers nearby and leave the EV there for several hours to get a full charge (although we didn’t need to do this on this trip).

Unfortunately, coming north on the NE extension and I-81, our charging options are pretty limited. We ended up stopping on the NE Extension at the rest stop near Jim Thorpe for a bio break. This stop is just a bit too close to home (this was 90 minutes into our trip), but we had to stop anyway, so we plugged in for 10 minutes (V3 chargers) and added 12% to the battery…a pretty slow topoff because we were above 65% to start with. The next opportunity is near Scranton where the NE extension and I-81 intersect…still a little to close to home, then Binghamton, then Ithaca. Other than Ithaca, all of these are right along the highways, which makes them very convenient, but on a holiday weekend, this will also make them very popular for EV travelers.

PRO Tip: on a holiday weekend, consider taking alternate routes that may not be considered main travel corridors. These routes might be slower at all other times of year, but because the routes are less popular, the chargers along those routes won’t be as busy, therefore your overall trip might actually be faster. For example, we went up the NE extension and I-81, but we could have just as easily went up through Reading to Williamsport, Mansfield, Corning, and onward to Watkins Glen. These three cities all have Superchargers and are generally not on highly traveled highways. We did this in the winter because we were stopping at Corning on our way up. It is about an extra 30 minutes of driving going that way, but also, the speeds you drive are slower, so you use less power and require less charging along the way too.

So…Binghamton was our goal… our arrival there was going to be a little before 1pm, a little more than 3 hours into our trip, which was a perfect time to stretch our legs, and eat some lunch. We were going to arrive there with 23% before stopping near Jim Thorpe, but now it was going to be about 35%. And this is where driving in an EV on road trips is frustrating. In order to maximize the efficiency of your stops, you obviously want to combine charging stops with your other stops (bathroom and food breaks). This is very difficult to do in some parts of the country currently when charging stops are a minimum of 90-120 minutes apart from one another.

The great thing about driving in a Tesla though (beyond that fact that it drives itself) is that you can see all the charging options you have in front of you on your route right on the NAV screen, and how busy they are. And, from late morning on, the Binghamton site was showing FULL with a short to medium wait. Thankfully we had that late morning stop near Jim Thorpe which gave us an additional buffer to work with, which also gave us options. It has never been an issue with us, but after watching countless videos online of people roadtripping other EV brands, having options is always a good idea. As we approached the PA/NY boarder, we decided that Binghamton was not going to be a great option as we really didn’t want to have to wait in line, so we pulled off the Highway to eat lunch quickly, then continued on our way. Our options at that point were to stop in Ithaca, or just continue our trip all the way to Watkins Glen. So we set the Navigation to the Ithaca charger and were on our way.

(If Elon Musk is reading this… please put a charger half way between Scranton and Binghamton on I-81!!!!)

The second bad thing about traveling on a holiday weekend… When we arrived in Ithaca, we were the 4th vehicle to plug in at a site that had 8, Version 2, 150 kw chargers. These work great when they are not full, but unfortunately, they power share when they get full. We got about 125 kw at the start of our charging session and then decided to walk about the shopping center and find a restroom. I am guessing the overall site is limited to 500kw as I should have been able to get nearly the full 150kw up to about 42% SOC (we were at about 23% - we were down a little from our expected arrival because of the short lunch stop and a few other factors). At the end of the day, the difference between 150kw and 125kw isn’t all that much to be honest. About 10 minutes into our session though, our charge rate dropped down to 56 kw and I noticed in the app that the charging site was now totally full. Luckily we got there before it filled up, but unfortunate that we had to share power, which really slowed down our session. We ended up staying there a bit longer than I would have liked (more because we were shopping and not really because of the charger situation), but ultimately, we were not on any sort of schedule, so it was fine. We added 48% in 31 minutes. But if we were on a tighter schedule, or we really just wanted to charge and GO, let’s say get to 70%, we could have easily done this in 15-20 minutes when not busy, but our required stop was 2x longer with a busy station. Unless you really like TJ Maxx, this is not fun.

Thankfully for us, the goal of this stop was really just to give us some battery to have to use once we were here in Watkins Glen. We didn’t need to stay there 31 minutes and could have easily been on our way after a short bathroom stop (~10-15 minutes seems to be our norm depending upon how far of a walk it is). Because we have 3 cars here in Watkins Glen, one which is an ICE, we have had some options to pick and choose which car or cars we are driving for the day. Therefore, arriving with a lower state of charge was a doable option. We could then consider taking the car over to the nearest Level 2 charger, and leaving the car there for several hours, or just using the other cars while here and just let it sit on the L1 charger (mobile charger connected to a standard outlet) all weekend. The L1 charger is really not a great option as it only charges at 1.3kw which is enough to add 30% for every 24 hours of charge time. When we are out and about with the car, it is only getting about 16-18 hours of charge a day, or 20-25%, or about 40-60 miles of driving added per day. The Level 2 chargers in town are about 7 kw, which is about 5 times faster than the 110v outlet here at the house. 0-100% charge would take 11 hours, but we really only needed to add about half of that and could have easily achieved that in the afternoon and evening. Having that option is nice, but it is only possible because we have other cars we could use to drive down there and leave the car for several hours. We didn’t have this option when we were here in the winter. Also note that it was so cold when we were here in the winter, that the L1 charger didn’t achieve anywhere close to 1.5% per hour.

Using Level 2 Destination Chargers here in Watkins Glenn - we have managed to use 2 destination chargers so far on this trip and will probably use the ones in town tomorrow morning as we are exploring town before we leave. The state of NY has them in many of their state parks, which is awesome. Unfortunately, the one park we spent more than an hour at on Saturday, which was a perfect opportunity for us to get some juice, was so busy, that all of their chargers were occupied (only 2 plugs). Not only were the 2 plugs they had full, their were at least 3 more EVs nearby waiting for a chance to charge I assume. The parking lot was not far from a swimming and recreation area in the park, with plenty of picnic tables and such. It is the sort of place people could easily spend 3-5 hours or more. We did manage to use the set down in Watkins Glen just behind the Harbor Hotel on the waterfront. $1/hour = $0.14/kWh which is cheaper than most people pay at home and only slightly more than I pay for my night time charging. A great deal honestly. We did this while we explored town for about an hour yesterday and added about 10%. We’ll probably go back there tomorrow. The other one was at the burger and dogs joint on the other side of the lake (FLX Weinery…great food…didn’t feel so great afterwards though…). That was a pretty short stop and only added about 5% while there.

Despite all the charger challenges, we have done pretty well. We arrived at the house with 57% and currently have 62%. Emily’s car is over 75% right now as her car has mostly been sitting since we have arrived except for one trip they made in her car. We took her car this afternoon and left my car on the charger back at the house.

It would be nice if more locations here added Level 2 chargers, particularly the wineries here in the region. For example, we drove 110 miles on Saturday and used about 50% of the battery while doing so (some of that % was keeping the car cool while at the wineries to keep our purchases cool), and we drove 75 miles yesterday, using about 30%. Each day, we stopped at two or three different wineries and were at each for an hour or more. We could have easily added 20% total for the day at each, combined with our 110V charging at the house, would be more than enough to not have to ever worry a single second about having enough power to get around. The ideal solution would actually be for more rental properties in the area to start putting in 240V charging options for their guests. At a minimum, providing a NEMA 14-50 plug, is all that is really needed. Most EV owners that travel have their own travel chargers that would work with a NEMA 14-50 outlet. An even nicer solution is property owners providing on-site EV Charging units. Hopefully this starts to happen more quickly as more people become EV owners, and the rental businesses recognize that being an EV friendly rental is going to give their business the upper hand.

Pro Tip #2: I highly recommend traveling with a 12V electric cooler (refrigerator basically)…they are amazing. The great thing about traveling in an EV is that the 12V outlet can be left on to keep the cooler running while not in the car.