Tesla Chronicles #7 - Road Trip to State College

(Posted 7/29/2021)

Susan and I had a great trip to State College last weekend, and the Tesla was a champ. For reference, it is about 180 miles one way to get there. It required about 70% to get there and about 65% to get home (more of a climb to get there then back).

We stopped at the Harrisburg Supercharger along the way up for about 11 minutes of charge (about 12% added I think). I did this partially because I have free miles to use, and I love getting free charges, and partially because I wanted to make sure we had plenty of charge once we got to State College for our local driving to avoid having to have to charge up right away when we arrived. In hindsight, we had plenty to have made the trip easily without a stop and would have had plenty to get around for the day.

Finding free charging is a side game now - on Saturday afternoon, we parked at the Beaver parking garage. Sure, we paid to park, but we would have paid to park just about anywhere we would have parked, but this lot had free destination chargers by ChargePoint. At about 7kW, we got about 15% added to the car while shopping downtown and walking campus over a 1.5 hour period.

Unfortunately, our hotel didn’t have any charging options and I had about 37% charge….so that evening, I ran over to the nearby supercharger and got the car back up to 85% in about 25 minutes (got to watch 1/2 an episode of a show on Netflix on the screen). This was painless really, but in hindsight, I had enough charge to have just run around on Sunday as I mention below…..stopped at the SC SuperCharger to get just enough to get to Harrisburg with 10%…..then stop for a BIO break in Harrisburg and get just enough to get home with 10%….this would have been less than 25 minutes total likely…..Also, If we hadn’t decided on this trip last minute, we could have gotten a room at the Townplace Suites that had free destination charging that would have given me a full charge for free overnight.

On Sunday, we spent the afternoon in Bellefonte. The parking lot in town was not only free on Sundays, but it also had free destination chargers as well. We added 15% or so while visiting a cider place and getting a late lunch. By the time we returned to state College, we were down to 80% (basically recovered the amount we drove locally on Sunday), which was enough to get us home with an estimated 13% charge….. so we didn’t stop and drove straight through.

The Autopilot was a dream, makes the drive effortless for the driver….less fatigue for sure.

Also, every GPS I own tells us to stay on the PA TP for 2 extra exits….we never do this as the alternate, although it is country driving at 45-55 mph, is almost always equal time…..and I don’t have to pay the higher tolls for those two exits. Interesting side effect….as soon as we got off the TP and on our way on the alternate route, our SOC estimate at home arrival jumped up to 18%…..a 5% SOC “savings”. I wouldn’t have expected this at all. Which has made me start to think a little bit more about alternate routes I might be able to take for local and frequented longer trips that might avoid the highways (slower speed = less electricity used) when the alternative is about the same time. I have not found an app that exists that does this sort of routing as an option, but I have found that the ABRP website or App will at least allow me to enter the possible alternates which will give me the alternate route times and estimate kWh used for that path. It is a bit tedious, so if someone wants to make millions to develop an App like this that explores the alternatives and provides the time/kWh impacts for alternate routes automatically…. Please do this.