This video demonstrates a 3,571-mile cross-country road trip in a 2015 Tesla Model S with 480,000 miles, showcasing how electric vehicles can successfully complete long-distance travel through strategic charging stops, proper battery management, and understanding charging infrastructure limitations. The presenter upgrades the original 70D battery to a 100D pack, which significantly improves charging speeds from approximately 50 kW to 140 kW peak, enabling more efficient road trips. Key challenges include managing thermal loads during charging (particularly AC compressor issues), selecting routes with adequate charging infrastructure, and adapting to third-party charging stations with different protocols. The trip achieves an efficiency of approximately 3.05 miles per kilowatt hour, demonstrating that EVs can be practical for long-distance travel when properly planned and maintained.
Moving Cross Country w/ My 480,000mi Tesla Model S!Added:
Hello and welcome to another AutoSpec motoring video. For those of you who haven't been following the AutoSpec Renew YouTube channel, uh I run my electric vehicle repair shop, Watt Works, here in Portland, Oregon, but I'm getting ready to move to the track in North Carolina. Um so I've actually gotten my whole shop packed up and I am ready to hit the road. Uh, my moving trailer actually just left this morning and I just had my walk out inspection in the shop here earlier today and uh, I've had my car charging up here and we're about ready to hit the road. It's going to be about 3,000 miles, a little over 3,000 mi total for the whole trip uh, to get from Portland, Oregon here to the out ofspec track in Gary'sburg, North Carolina. And of course, my trusty steed here is going to be my ride to get there. Uh, for those who don't know anything about the history of this car, this is a 2015 Tesla Model S. It was originally a 70D. Now it's a 100D. Uh, I upgraded the battery on this last summer, so not quite a year ago. Um, and this car, believe it or not, has got almost 480,000 miles on the clock. We'll get a little bit more into the history of it as we get into the video here. Um, but yeah, let's get going here.
So, before we hit the road here, I just wanted to show you guys my old shop here in Portland. So, this was my shop. It's a just a 3,000 ft² shop space. And if we head inside here, I can show you what we've got going on inside. And of course, I've locked the doors. So, let's go ahead and get in here. And here we are inside the shop.
The new tenant that's taking over the space is actually purchasing the three lifts from me. And they've also taken some shelves and a few other things, but it's looking awfully empty in here.
Over here, I had my office. Got some little waiting area benches and that kind of stuff.
But yeah, that's pretty much it in here.
The only thing that I have left to do before I can hit the road is I've got to drop off my keys uh to the landlord.
so that they can be handed off to the new tenant here. So, that's going to be my last errand to run here today. I'm not going to be driving too terribly far. I'm actually just going down to visit my folks in southern Oregon.
They're in a little town called Merlin, which is near Grant's Pass. Um, so that's only going to be about 4 4 and 1/2 hours drive, about 250 mi. So, we've got a short day ahead of us today. I'm gonna spend uh the weekend there a few days and then we're going to hit the road from there and get to North Carolina. So in total we're probably looking at with the trip down to see them probably about 3300 miles. I'm going to guess something like that. I've already gone ahead and reset my trip computer if we can get in the car here perhaps.
There we go. So, you can see I've already reset my trip computer. Oregon to North Carolina. And there's our total odometer to 477,000 mi. Um, I had a fun little issue that popped up as I was in the midst of packing up my shop. I actually had a problem with the driver side door harness on this car. And, um, it's kind of a known problem on higher mileage cars with the door opening and closing so many cycles. uh you can end up with wires breaking in the part of the harness that goes between the body and the door itself. So, I actually had a broken uh wire in there that was preventing basically almost all the functions on the driver's door from working. So, I kind of just bodgeged it together. Hopefully, that'll hold up for the trip. Um fingers crossed. If not, we we might have to do another bodgege fix on the road. Uh but let's go ahead and get things together here. I'm going to go ahead and pull the car out. We'll lock up my gate here and we will hit the road. All righty, we're hitting the road. I just said bye to my neighbor there. You may have just seen his Durango there in the back corner.
They're a a used car dealer and they've always got all kinds of different stuff.
Um, but anyway, we're hitting the road.
I'm on my way to the landlord's office.
So, I'm going to drop off my keys and then we'll be able to really hit the road and uh we'll uh we'll see how everything goes for our trip here. Uh but as you can see behind me, we're loaded up heavy with all kinds of stuff. Um there were a few things that I wanted to take with me and not go in the truck because the truck is going to arrive after I do probably by I would guess a week or so. So, I wanted to make sure I had enough stuff with me that I can actually still get a little bit of work done and start kind of setting things up. Um, but yeah, so I'm going to continue on my way to the landlord's office here. Once we hit the road from there, we'll uh I'll tell you guys a little bit more about the history of this car. All righty. We're officially on the road now. I'm just coming up to the freeway and we're going to go on our way south down uh to Merlin. I think we'll probably just have one charging stop in between. If I drive slow enough, I can make it without stopping with this car. Um but uh yeah, we're just going to blast through. It's probably just going to be a real short like 5 minute charging session. Um but yeah, so a little bit on the history of this particular car since I'm sure a lot of people are wondering. Um I purchased this car from the original owner about five and a half years ago. I think it was um I think it was September, early September of 2020 that I purchased this car. And he was a full-time Uber driver, which is why this car has so many miles on it. So, uh it was just a hair over 5 years old uh when I bought it. And at that time, it had 408,000 m on it. So, the guy basically did 400,000 miles in 5 years with that with this car. Um, of course, in the 5 and a half years that I've had it, I've only put on about 70,000 miles. Uh, so I clearly don't drive as much as the last guy did. Um, but the car's actually been very reliable for me in the time that I've had it. Very, um, few just a few minor issues like, you know, window regulator.
Um, what else have I had go wrong? Uh, I think a door handle, uh, controller.
um 12volt battery. The door harness issue is one of the more major things that's happened with it that I talked about earlier. Um which hopefully I've mitigated that at least for now. It's probably going to be one of those fixes where it's temporary unless it works. Uh the the real proper fix is to to replace the whole door harness. Uh because what happens over time is as the wires in the door bend back and forth is copper work hardens and it starts to become more brittle. as it gets more brittle when you keep bending it back and forth, eventually the wires can break. And that's what happened here. So, more than likely after, you know, that one wire breaks, there's probably going to be other ones, uh, you know, down the line that'll continue to break as well. So, hopefully my splice there at least holds up for this trip. Uh, cuz it would certainly suck to lose our driver door controls and functionality. Um, but yeah, what other stuff has been done to this car? Of course, I mentioned that I upgraded the battery on this. So, it used to be a 70D um and now it's a 100D.
So, originally it had the 70 kWh 350 volt battery pack and uh charged real slow. Um I mean road tripping this thing was pretty painful. If you'd plug it in at less than 10% you might hit 100 kW for like 5 seconds and then uh it would very quickly just you know taper off.
Usually you were lucky to still be pulling 50 kilowatts by the time you hit 50% state of charge. Um so that's, you know, kind of what you're looking at.
It's basically not much better than Chevy Bolt charging speeds. Uh but with the 100 kWh battery that's in it now, uh it charges much better. Uh if I plug in starting at 10% state of charge, uh it adds basically twice the amount of capacity in a given time frame. I've tested it over like a 15 minute time frame specifically like a test before and after and yeah in a 15 minute charging session starting from 10% uh 10% challenge style uh it added almost exactly double the amount of capacity in the same amount of time. So it's much more road tripable now. Uh of course it still doesn't charge quite as fast as something more modern like a Model 3 or or a newer generation Model S would. Um, but it does charge pretty reasonably well. Uh, it'll peak at around 140 kW and, uh, it'll hold 100 kW uh, until about 60% give or take. Um, so it charges pretty decent overall. Um, and that's kind of the the frame in which I would typically use this car is, you know, plug it in at uh, you know, around 10% or so and then charge it up to about 60%. Uh, when doing road trips, that's kind of, you know, the typical fashion that I would do things in. So, that's more or less what we're going to be doing on this trip.
Um, the big limitation for charging speed on this car is because it's an old pre-refresh car. Uh, it's got the old style high voltage system architecture.
So, it's actually kind of bottlenecked because of the rapid mate system on the battery. Um, and more so than that is the uh the fast charge contacttors. Um, so this car has a separate high voltage junction box which houses the fast charging contacttors. Uh, if you go to a post refresh car, they move from uh that setup to a third generation onboard charger which has the fast charging contacttors built into it. So it's sort of an all-in-one unit. And uh with one of those, with this particular generation of battery that I have, I could potentially see close to 200 or maybe even slightly over 200 kowatt charging speeds peak. Uh but the curve would, you know, it would it would peak really high and then it would kind of die off and then the curve would stay more or less the same. It wouldn't really make a huge difference uh for overall road tripping. It might save me like, you know, two or 3 minutes per charging stop. So, it's really not worth the effort to try and retrofit that stuff into it. Um, I've considered it before, but there's a lot of other hardware dependencies. You'd have to change all the high voltage cables and stuff, too. So, it'd be a pretty major ordeal, and I don't think that it's really worth it. Um, so I've just been sticking with it as it is.
Um, and yeah, that's uh that's pretty much the story with this car. But we're going to continue on with our road trip here and I'm just going to kind of eat up the miles. Um, I it looks like I'll probably be making it to my folks place probably a little before 6:00. Uh, so basically uh in time for dinner, more or less. So anyway, I guess I'll see you guys down the road.
Heat. Heat.
All right, we're getting ready to pull off at our charging stop in Myrtle Creek, Oregon here. So, we're pulling in with 15% remaining.
And that's our exit right up there. So, we'll go ahead and get pulled off the freeway here and plug it in. All right, we're backing into our charging stall here and we'll go ahead and get plugged in.
And something that I didn't mention before about this car, this has free unlimited supercharging forever.
So charging at all the superchargers cost me literally nothing, which is pretty sweet.
All right, let's see what we're going to hit for charging speeds here.
Ramping up. I'm expecting we've got pretty nice temperatures and stuff, so I'm expecting we're probably going to hit35ish, something like that.
All right, so it looks like we ramped up to 132. It might rise just a little bit as the voltage starts to come up. Um, I've actually found that I always hit my highest peak speeds on this car. If I actually plug it in over 20%. If I plug it in under 20%, my peak speeds are actually are not quite as high, which is kind of interesting. But anyway, we've just got a real short charging session here. I just need a little bit of energy to make it to my folks place. And uh yeah, so it's going to be like a 5minute charging session and then we'll hit the road. All right, we've got plenty enough charge to continue on our trip. So we'll go ahead and unplug. I didn't want to push it too low on this leg uh because I'm not totally sure uh if I'm going to be plugging in right away when I get to my parents' place. I might wait until tomorrow to plug it in.
So, I want to make sure I've got a little bit of a buffer so the car can sit overnight and isn't going to have any issues. Um, but yeah, so we're going to go ahead and hit the road and continue on our way south. All right, we're coming up on the exit to get off the freeway to head to my parents' place, but as you can see, we've got a pretty low tire here. Um, it's getting to the point where it's low enough I really don't want to continue driving on it. Um, so I think when we take this exit here, I know that there's a big pulloff. We'll pull off. I'll add just a little bit of air to the tire. I've got my little portable compressor with me.
Um, and then I guess sometime while I'm at my parents place this weekend, I'll have to see if I can find the leak in that tire and put a plug in it. Um, this tire has had a slow leak, but it seems like it's uh gotten progressively worse here.
So, we'll get pulled off here. I'll add a little bit of air. We're only like 15 minutes away, so I could probably limp it there uh without any issues, but just to be on the safe side, I'm going to pull off in this sort of gravel lot right here, and we'll add just a little bit of air to it to be on the safe side. All right, I've got my compressor here, but I noticed as I was kneeling down next to the tire, I could actually hear the leak.
and it's right there. So, it's right in the middle of the tread. We should be able to put a plug in it, no problem.
But, I'm going to go ahead and run the compressor there. Just let it get it back up to pressure and then we can deal with the tire plug hopefully tomorrow.
Well, we we might just run the fan tick out of juice here. You can see we're down to one bar on the battery with 36% or 36 PSI in there. Uh, this thing wasn't fully charged. I probably it was probably below half um cuz I've used it I think I used it the other day and I haven't charged it in a little while. So, but we're at least getting to the point where we should be good enough to at least limp it in uh the last 5 miles or so. I noticed looking at um our leak here, I think that's where I previously put in a plug that must have failed. I do have a plug kit with me. with some rubber cement.
And this has had a real slow leak for a while now.
Uh but I guess that it uh it got worse. Oh yeah, we're definitely going to die there.
But we're at least up to almost 40 PSI, which uh yeah, like I said, should be good enough to at least limp us in. I do have a fullsize spare in the trunk.
Uh but needless to say, it's slightly buried under stuff. So, I don't want to have to dig that out if I can avoid it.
But I do have some tools and stuff with me to swap that out if needed.
I'm just going to let this go until it dies and then I'll plug it in into the car so that it can get charged up.
And then of course we'll have to deal with plugging the tire at some point.
Don't know if I'll do that tonight or tomorrow. If I don't do it tonight, it'll probably go flat though, which wouldn't be ideal.
So maybe I should do it tonight.
Uh in any case, I'll let this continue and then we'll hit the road.
All right, we're hitting the road and continuing on. As you can see, we got up to about 41 PSI uh before the compressor finally died.
Speaking of which, I should probably plug it in. Uh I'm kind of amazed how long this thing held on. I didn't think that it would get it over 40 after looking at how low the battery got, but it kept just kept chugging there for quite a while.
There we go. Get some juice in that.
It's probably not going to charge up very much in the remaining 10 minutes or so we've gotten on our drive. Well, there you can see our tire pressure is already dropping.
Well, hopefully we can make it before it gets too low.
I'd like it if it doesn't get below 30, but we'll see what happens. Anyway, I'll see you guys when I get there, hopefully.
All right, we're in the final stretch to my parents' place here. Looks like we're down to 28 PSI. So, we did all right on that tire there.
Um, yeah, I think I'm probably going to have to do something about that tonight or at least jack the car up or do something uh to to mitigate that issue. Um, but anyways, yeah, we've pretty much made it. And let's see how we did for efficiency here.
Uh, 320 watt 321 watt hours per mile there. So, just a little over 3 miles per kilowatt hour. Not too bad.
Jesus, that sun is blinding. Um, but yeah, so I'm just about to pull into the driveway now and uh like I said, I'll be spending the next couple of days here and then uh I'll try and get this tire patched up and then we'll be hitting the road to head all the way out to North Carolina from here. Well, I might make a stop in Oklahoma to see some family there, too. Haven't quite decided if I'm going to do that yet or not, but I'm strongly considering it. Anyways, I'll see you guys when we're ready to hit the road again. All righty. It's Monday morning and we are hitting the road. Uh my car does say it has low tire pressure, but I actually did plug the tire uh on Friday night when I arrived.
Got fully charged and we are hitting the road. So, my goal tonight is to make it to Berley, Idaho.
I've actually already made a reservation at a hotel there. And so, we're going to be on the road on our way there.
So, yeah, I am going to make a quick pit stop here in Grant's Pass. Uh my sister actually works at a at a little coffee shop here. So, I'm going to stop by there on my way out of town and then uh we'll be hitting the road and hopefully eating up some miles. So, off we go. All right, we're hopping on the freeway here, although not for very long. We're actually going to be getting off the freeway here soon. Um because of the route that we're going here from we're coming, you know, kind of from the Grants Pass area, there's not really a direct route that we can take going east um that has charging. So, the normal route that we would go if we were in a combustion car would be to go through like Clamoth Falls um and uh kind of continue east and end up like in Winnamaka, Nevada. But there's no charging infrastructure basically at all between Clamoth Falls and Winnamaka, which is over 300 miles.
Um so yeah, without driving super slow or something, it's just not possible to do in this car. And that's also a super desolate drive. It's not not a great place to go driving through. Uh so we're actually going to end up going north or northeast to Bend, Oregon, and then we're going to kind of drop back down into Idaho. Uh and I think we'll end up at the Idaho border kind of near Oh, I can't remember what city it is. Uh but anyway, so we're on our way here. Um the recommended charging stop in the Tesla Navigation is a supercharger in Chamol, Oregon.
And um if if we were to stop there, we would have almost 40% state of charge.
But we also probably can't quite make it to Bend. Um and I'm also not going to be going through Bend. I'm actually going to be taking a turn off slightly south of Bend. So I don't really want to go all the way to Bend to charge. So, we're actually going to stop at a uh an EV Connect charging station in uh Leine, Oregon, which is I don't know, maybe 40 minutes south of Bend or something like that. So, that's our goal here. I've got that input into the navigation here, and we're just going to continue on with our drive here, and I'll see you guys when we're getting to Le Pine, unless I come across something else interesting.
Heat. Heat.
All right, we're about 2/ird of the way to our first charging stop. And as you can see, we're actually just north of Crater Lake here. Uh I've never actually really been up this highway before. It's a beautiful drive through uh through the forests here. Uh of course here higher elevation we get a bunch of these much shorter trees, but back uh a little while ago we were in uh much taller kind of old growth forests. But yeah, so we've got about another 60 mi to go to get to our first charging stop and uh then we'll of course be continuing on from there. But everything's going good so far. It looks like uh my tire patch is holding up. So, we're still holding good pressure there on all four tires, of course. But yeah, so glad to see that's holding up.
And we're just going to continue pushing on through and I'll see you guys when we get to Lepine. All right, we're just coming into our first charging stop here kind of at the north end of Leine. I think it's right next to this Chevron station.
So, we'll pull in here.
Yep, I see it in the back corner of the lot here.
We'll go around.
Let this guy go.
And there we can see it back there in the corner.
So, I'll get my CCS adapter out and we'll get plugged in and start charging.
This actually looks like it'd be a good spot to be able to charge uh if you were towing cuz you'd be able to pull in sideways kind of coming around to the bend here.
All righty. We'll get her plugged in.
All right. Well, apparently I left my mic attached to the seat belt when I actually plugged in here, but I plugged in went inside the store to uh use the bathroom and grab a snack. And it looks like we're only charging at 35 kW.
So, that kind of sucks. Um, so I think that what we're going to have to do here is I am going to have to go up into bend, which I wasn't planning on doing. I was planning on just taking this cut off here and sort of bypassing bend itself, but I think we're just going to have to go up into bend to use the supercharger. Uh cuz yeah, it's not worth sitting here at 35 kW and we've got a long ways to go to get to Burns.
So, I'm just going to unplug here and we're going to move on uh and head up to Bend, I guess. All right, we're hitting the road again, I guess. I was really hoping that this was just going to be a good convenient stop to save us a little bit of time, but as it turns out, it wasn't. I did look at the reviews and stuff on Plug Share, and it looked like people were getting full power out of this location.
Um, but apparently not. I was getting an alert on the screen in the car that said CC that said the button was not intended to stop the charging session.
Um, so I don't know, maybe there was something wrong with it. The shell was definitely missing on the connector on the station, but yeah, not really sure what was going on there, but we're going to continue down the road and head on up to Bend.
Just about another 25 minutes and we'll get charging up at the supercharger there. All righty, we're rolling into Bend and we're coming up to our charging stop here. It's at a uh a Fred Meyer store, actually. So, I'm just going to turn into the lot here. I don't see it yet. Oh, there it is. So, it's off over in that direction.
We'll just wait for traffic to clear here. I'll pull into the lot and I'll get us plugged in.
All righty. We're here in Bend. We'll go ahead and get plugged in. I believe these are V2 superchargers. Yeah, cuz we just have A and B stalls. So 150 kW not a big deal for me because I can't even hit 150 kW with this car. So we'll uh charge it up here. I believe our next stop is going to be in Hines. Yeah, Hines is going to be our next stop. So it looks like we've got to charge here for about 20 minutes and uh then we'll move along. Let's see what we get for peak speeds here.
Hopefully, we should be hitting somewhere north of 130.
There's 132.
All right. It'll probably slowly rise a little bit as the voltage comes up. We probably won't hit much more than maybe 135. Um, but we might even go a little bit higher than that. Uh but anyways, yeah, our next stop is going to be Hines. So, or yeah, Hines, that's our next stop. Um and then Tesla has us going to Ontario, but uh I know that when I did the ABRP route plan, that had us going a different direction.
Let's see if I can pull up ABRP here.
There we go.
Yeah. Let's see. So, that had us stopping in Hines and then we were going to go to Jordan Valley instead of Ontario. So, I'll show you guys what the difference is with that.
So, that's Ontario.
Um, Jordan Valley is down here someplace. Yeah, down there. So, I don't know why ABRP wanted us to go down this way, but it did.
I don't know.
Going to Ontario probably makes more sense, it looks like.
Yeah, I think we'll probably stick with what um what the Tesla route planner is saying and go to Ontario.
Um, and basically all these charge stops we're targeting around 60% give or take.
So they're all, you know, roughly 20-minute charge stops going to 60%. But yeah, so we've got Hines, Ontario, Mountain Home, and then from Mountain Home, we'll go all the way to Burley.
I've booked a hotel there that has overnight charging, so we should be able to get a full charge overnight there uh before we hit the road again uh tomorrow.
But yeah, that's kind of the plan as it is right now. We'll see if anything changes on the fly. But yeah, so I'm just going to let this thing charge up and then we'll continue on our trip. All right, we're just up dipping below 100 kW here and we've added what 36 kilwatt hours in just under 20 minutes. I'm going to go ahead and unplug and we are going to move along to our next stop down the road.
finished getting our free juice.
That is one really nice thing about road tripping this car. While it might not charge quite as fast as some of the other newer cars out there, the charging is free on the superchargers. So, I'm going to hit continue trip there and I will see you guys in Burns.
All righty. We're rolling into Hines, Oregon, which is uh kind of the sister city with Burns, if you can really call it a city. Uh but yeah, Hines and Burns.
We're going to be stopping at the Hines Supercharger, which is kind of right in the middle of the two towns. Uh so we've got about another 2 miles to go. We're rolling in a little bit lower than what I was originally planning to, but that's all good. Um so yeah, I'll see you guys when we're ready to plug in here. All right, we're rolling into the superchargers here.
Take our little turn off here.
It looks like we're all empty other than the Model Y that just left. So, we'll go ahead and back in and get charging. All righty, we're plugged in and charging.
Or at least we should be charging here very shortly. There we go. Starting to ramp up.
Good stuff. I'm going to go and find a bathroom here someplace. Get myself a little restroom break. And we'll let the car charge up here. And I believe I said our next stop was going to be Ontario, right? Yep. That's what it looks like.
So, two more charging stops to go after this before we get to our hotel for the night. I got a little bit caught up in a phone call there. We've got an estimated arrival of 12%. And as you can see, we're down to only 85 kW at 60%. Before we would have been real close to 100 kows if we would have plugged in at a little bit higher state of charge. So that's why I try and target at least a little bit above 10%. But we are ready to go ahead and hit the road.
And this will be our last charging stop in Oregon. Will be that one in Ontario.
So let's go. All righty. We were on the road again. Uh just getting into Burns now cuz we were sort of right in between Hines and Burns. And uh we're going to be taking a little turn off of our road here uh in Burns.
And uh yeah, so as you guys have been seeing in the time lapses and stuff, we've got gone through a lot of different kinds of terrain. And that's kind of one of the cool things about Oregon is um there's a lot of uh sort of different biomes and ecological areas. It's actually one of the most diverse places in the US when it comes to different regions. You go to the southern coast and you've got kind of temperate rainforest. Then you've got your, you know, um sort of Cascade range. You've got the western Cascades and the eastern Cascades which kind of have their own different climates.
you've got a little bit wetter um kind of fur uh you know forests that have a lot of fur trees and then on the east side you get uh a little bit drier climate where you get a lot more ponderosa and sugar pine and that kind of thing. Um, and then as you continue going even further east here in the southeast part of the state where we're at, you get into high desert and uh, you know, sort of scrub land, brush land, sort of badlands. Uh, further north on the east side of the state, you get a lot of plains. Um, and then, you know, some of the higher elevation areas, you even get kind of into what's almost like tundra type terrain. Uh so it's it's really just kind of cool to how much stuff there is just within, you know, a couple hundred miles drive. You go through so many different areas uh within the state. And that's kind of something that's kind of cool. Uh just kind of wanted to mention that. But anyway, we're going to continue along our route here and uh I'll see you guys when we're getting to Ontario.
Heat.
Hey, Heat.
All righty. We're in Ontario now. So, we're still in Oregon, but we're basically right on the Idaho border. In fact, it's just right across that river there. Uh, a lot of agriculture in this area. Um, I think that they grow mostly uh onions and potatoes in this region.
Pretty sure. Not 100% certain on that, but I think I've seen uh a bunch of different things for onions and then uh yeah, I think potatoes as well. Uh but anyway, we're coming up to the charger here in just another about a third of a mile. Uh, I believe it's at a hotel.
So, I guess we'll look for a hotel. Um, let's see. Maybe if we zip that down.
Yep. Holiday in Express. So, it's at a Holiday Inn down this street right here, apparently. So, we're going to make a left here. Oh, yeah. There's the Holiday Inn.
There we go. Holiday in.
And it looks like it's going to be on the back side here. Yep, I see the stalls.
Um, I'd really like to clean the windshield. Don't know how well that shows up on camera, but it's covered in bugs. Unfortunately, it looks like we're not going to have a good option for that here. My windshield washer is also my fluid is low, so that kind of sucks. Um, but yeah, maybe I'll try and see if there's some place I can walk to nearby and get some windshield washer fluid.
And uh, yeah, I would at least like to get it topped up so that we can still clean the windshield on the go. I'm going to back into our spot here and we'll get plugged in.
Bingo.
All righty. And we're at 13% which is just about right where we want to be for optimal charging.
And these are V3s.
And let's see what we get ramped up to here.
And I believe what was our next stop going to be? Mountain Home. So that that'll be in Idaho.
And yeah, you can see we're basically right on the I guess the map doesn't really show the border, but the border basically goes right down along here. But yeah, we'll be we'll be crossing into Idaho here shortly. I believe the river here is the border, so we'll cross over on I 84.
And let's see what we get to for peak power. Still ramping up.
Are we going to hit 130?
We are indeed.
And it will probably creep up just a little bit as the voltage comes up. And hopefully we can still pull some good power all the way up to probably about 60% I assume is what we're going to be getting to here. Uh it says it's a 15minute charge remaining. So yeah, and I believe yeah, our Mountain Home charging stop is going to be a little bit longer. I think that we've got probably a pretty decent elevation gain maybe from Mountain Home to Burly. Or maybe it's just a little bit more distance, I guess. Or perhaps a little bit of a combination of the two.
In any case, I am going to see if I can find anything nearby to get some washer fluid that I can walk to. And uh yeah, if possible, I'd like to try and get some of the bugs off the windshield here. All right. Well, no dice on finding washer fluid nearby, but pro tip, little bit of bottled water and just a snow brush. And I was able to get almost all the bugs off the windshield.
So, that worked out great. I do still have some washer fluid left in the tank, but not much. So, hopefully that'll last. And maybe I can get some more in Mountain Home if there's a gas station or something there nearby. I guess I can zoom in and find out here. Oh, yeah.
It's at a chevron. So, that works out great. There's not any gas station anywhere super close by right here. The only one is on the other side of this highway. And there's just not an easy way to walk there and back, at least within the time frame that I have for charging here. So, we're just going to try and get some at the next stop. And uh yeah, so I guess I'll see you guys again when we're getting ready to hit the road. It looks like we've only got about 7 more minutes here before we're going to move on. All right, we're ready to hit the road and our next stop will be Mountain Home.
Hang that up and off we go. So, it looks like we should get there probably in about an hour and 20 minutes. So, it's not too terribly far. I'll see you guys when we get there.
All righty, we're pulling off here in Mountain Home for our next charging stop. So, just getting off the freeway here and it is just right off the exit.
I believe it's right at that Chevron gas station right there. So, we'll pull in and get charging and hopefully I can find some washer fluid to top up my reservoir on the car and maybe I can do an actual windshield cleaning. Although, I have to say the snow brush with the water actually did work pretty good. Uh, but yeah, we'll get pulled in here and plug it in. All righty. Plug it in here in Mountain Home. Got a nice V3 Plus location.
Make sure it starts charging.
And there we go. It's starting to ramp up. All right. I'll run inside, see if I can get some wiper fluid, and uh we'll get charging up here. All righty. We're hitting the road here from uh wherever the heck we are now, Mountain Home, and we are on our way to Berley. So, that is our stop for the night.
So, we'll go ahead and get out of here, hit the road, and I'll see you guys there in about an hour and a half.
All righty. We're just exiting the freeway here in Berley.
which is there's a weird divider because of the construction lanes. But anyway, we're off the exit now. Our uh hotel is just off to the right here. So, I'm going to get checked in there and we should have a uh a charger here on site.
That's specifically why I booked this place. So, hopefully it is open and available and we should be able to get checked in and charged up overnight. All righty. All checked in.
And the charger is going to be kind of around the back side of the building here, it seems like. So, let's see.
Yeah. So, it should be on this side over here, I believe.
At least according to the little diagram that I got drawn for me.
Oh, yep. I see him right back over here.
Right next to this white F-150 here.
All right, cool. I'll get backed in, plug the car in, and that will be awesome because we should be all charged up overnight and ready to go for the morning.
It looks like maybe only one of them has got power, so we'll pull into that one.
Sweet. All right, so there's our charger. Just a Clipper Creek. Looks like the one on this side here is not powered. Although these are Oh, okay.
So, there's actually three EVSes here.
So, we've got one there and two on this post. This one is powered, but the one on the front side apparently is not. So, at least two out of three are working.
But, we'll go ahead and get plugged in.
I'll stick my adapter in there.
And sweet. All right, we'll get my suitcase in, head inside, and I will see you guys tomorrow. Good morning. It is bright and early here, and I've had the car charging all night. I also let it precondition a bit this morning when I went and ate breakfast. Um, but yeah, I guess I didn't really go over our trip stats for yesterday. Um, so I don't know the exact mileage that we drove yesterday, but our total trip so far is just a hair under 950 mi. It's almost 250 mi from Portland to my parents' place uh where we stayed last night or you know over the weekend and uh so yeah that means we did about 700 miles yesterday and it was just about bang on 12 hours exactly. Um our next stop for tonight is going to be Lyman, Colorado uh which of course is a bit east of the Denver area. So, yeah, that's basically the plan. Um, as of right now, we're at 99% state of charge. And, uh, I'm going to go ahead and get unplugged here, and we'll hit the road. Looks like our next charging stop is probably going to be in far west, although, man, we would be arriving there with 33%. So, we might want to push even further.
Although there might not be another option that's further that we can make it to. The next next place to make it to is is that Evston, Wyoming, I guess. Yeah.
So, we might not quite be able to make it to there without stopping. And there's no other charging stops in between, at least not for superchargers. There might be some third party charging stuff. Um, I might take a look at that on the road and see if there's a different place that we can stop along the way that makes more sense. Um, but as of right now, the plan is to stop in Far West.
Um, I'm actually a little bit familiar with that area. I was actually born in that part of Utah and I've got a bunch of family that lives in that area as well. So anyway, I was actually there last summer uh picking up my Selectria Force, which uh I don't know if that ever actually got uploaded to uh to the motoring channel here, but I did a road trip with that. I actually flat towed that car behind this car. Um and that was before I had upgraded the battery in this to the 100 kilowatt hour. So, that was still with the 70 kWh pack, uh, which only charged about half as fast.
Um, anyway, we're going to go ahead and hit the road here.
All righty. We're coming up to our exit here in Far West Utah. Oh, got someone pulled over here. We'll try and get over a little bit there. Um, yeah, we're coming up to our exit here in Far West, and the supercharger is just right off the exit there, as you can see. So, we're going to pull off and get plugged in. Uh, like I said, I've actually charged at this very supercharger uh a few times when I picked up my Selectria Force last summer uh with this car. So, yeah.
back again and we'll get charging up here. This is going to be a real short charge stop. I think we're probably only going to charge here for maybe 15 minutes or so at the most. Uh I did burn off a little bit of our excess energy there. Um Idaho's got high speed limits, so we were able to burn off some energy and get it down to 28%. still higher than what I would normally target, but there's really nothing else further down the road that makes sense to stop at.
So, uh, the only other thing is like a 50 kowatt charge point. So, obviously, we're not going to do that. So, this is what makes sense. And, uh, I believe after this, we're going to be stopping.
Yeah. Evston, Wyoming, I looks like, but yeah. Oh, yeah. Only 10 minutes here, I guess. So, we'll get over to the charger here. get plugged in and uh charge it up.
All right, here we go. This is another V3 Plus location.
So, we'll get plugged in there.
And like I said, real short charge stop.
We'll probably only be here for about 10 minutes.
Um let's see what we ramp up to when we're this high in state of charge. It'll probably hit close to 140 actually.
Um potentially it's a little bit on the colder side. It usually does best if the battery is nice and warm. Although we were cruising along pretty good there on the freeway, so the battery might be up to temp enough.
never quite preconditions to the maximum temperature, but if it's warm outside, it'll get plenty warm enough to hit max speeds.
But let's see if we do indeed hit 140 here.
Well, 136.
It's up there a bit. on 137.
Maybe that's as high as it's going to go. I'll keep an eye on it and we'll see. Oh, no. It's still creeping up as the voltage is coming up a bit.
Oh, 138 might be it.
Probably would have had to have been just a touch lower to hit 140. probably maybe around 25% it probably would have hit well it is back up to 130. No maybe it will hit 140 or maybe not.
Anyway, you get the idea. So, short stop here. We'll uh continue charging up and hit the road here soon. Dang, look at that. Oh, it just fell off. But it did.
Oh, there we go. We did hit 140. It's kind of fluctuating up and down a little bit, but it did actually hit 140 peak.
So, that's cool. Good stuff.
All righty. It is time to hit the road here from Far West. And our next stop is going to be in Wyoming. So, like I said, this was a pretty short charging session. We're only going a little over 80 miles um over this next stretch.
So, yeah, let's hit the road and I'll see you guys in Wyoming.
All righty. Well, I uh missed an exit here. So, we're taking a little bit of a detour on uh sort of some back highways.
Uh I was supposed to get off of 15 onto 84 and uh yeah, missed that exit. So, that's not setting us back too much. Uh it's just a just a couple mile detour, but uh we're going to get on to it looks like 193.
I guess that's a state route. Yeah, East Highway 193. So, yeah, little bit of a detour off the freeway here. I guess we'll see. It looks like it mostly just kind of goes.
Yeah, it just kind of goes through town here and then we'll end up back on I-15 here in what, maybe about 5 miles or so.
All righty. Good stuff. All righty. We just crossed into Wyoming a few miles back and we are coming into our next charging stop here in Evston.
So, just off the freeway here and uh oh, I've got a phone call coming in. I'm going to get pulled into the charger here and I guess I'll grab this phone call. All righty. Well, we're plugged in here. I just got finished with my phone call. We've been charging here for I don't know, probably 10 minutes or so, maybe even longer than that. Uh but our next stop is going to be Rock Springs and uh we'll be we'll be moving on here in about another 5 minutes or so. Uh, but I'm actually going to try and see if I can run in here and use the bathroom real quick before we hit the road. All right, we are on the road again. Got about an hour and a half to go. By the way, this is uh my setup for driving on autopilot. I've got just an umbrella on the wheel here. And uh it kind of allows you to be hands-free with this. For those that don't know, AP1 is kind of like almost a cross between basic autopilot and enhanced autopilot. So, I can actually do lane changes with blinker activation.
Um, but it doesn't do anything more advanced than that, right? It won't navigate or take exits on autopilot. It just does lane keeping and it will do uh lane changes with blinker activation.
Uh, but it's pretty nice. And uh yeah, and actually another nice thing about AP1 is it actually has a higher speed limit than uh the newer autopilot version. So newer autopilot versions are speed capped to 85. AP1 will actually go all the way to 90 miles an hour uh for its speed cap. Of course, here I'm going to bump it down a little bit because our speed limit here is actually only 75 even though the car says it's 80. Um but yeah, anyway, we're going to cruise along. We've got what maybe about an hour and 20 minutes to go to our next stop in Rock Springs. So, just kind of charger hopping at this point and uh we'll keep on cruising and I'll see you guys when we get to Rock Springs. All righty. We're just hopping off the freeway here in Rock Springs. I believe that's where we are. Yeah, Rock Springs, Wyoming. We're heading over to the Supercharger. Uh pretty impressive efficiency considering the speeds we were going on this stretch. I was doing an average of about 85 m an hour for this whole last stretch uh since our last stop and we're probably just slightly over 3.2 m per kilowatt hour give or take. Um so pretty impressive for the speeds. Uh I think we've got a pretty good easterly tailwind so that's definitely helping us out a lot. There is a slight decrease in elevation um through this stretch but it's not much.
It's like maybe 3 or 400 ft total. Um with a lot of hills up and down. So anyway, uh pretty pretty impressive uh efficiency for that stretch. Uh but we'll get up here to the supercharger and we'll get plugged in and charging. I think this is going to be another relatively well, I don't know. I guess it's a 20-minut stop, so not that short.
But we'll get charging up here and then we'll hit the road again. All right, we're all plugged in and charging here.
I guess this is just kind of a little strip mall basically. Pretty empty station other than uh a new Highland Model 3 Performance over there. But yeah, we'll get charging up here for the next 20 minutes or so. And then I believe our next stop is going to be Rollins.
Yeah, Rollins will be our next stop. So I'll see you guys when we're ready to hit the road. All righty, we're finished charging up here. Next stop is Rollins.
So, we will hit the highway and make some time.
All righty. We're hopping off the freeway here in Rollins and we're going to get plugged in at the supercharger here. It looks like it's not too far off the freeway. So, we're just taking the exit.
Big pretty tight loop uh on this exit ramp here.
And we're just going to pass under the freeway here. And then it should be on our left. And I believe this one is also at a hotel. Uh looks like it's at the Fairfield Inn. So, we'll pull in there, get plugged in, and it looks like we're going to charge here for about maybe close to 25 minutes. All right, it's looking like these are old school V2s based on the cabinets back there.
Not that that matters for us, but we'll get plugged in and charge up. All righty, we're hitting the road. I kind of overcharged at this stop. Um, the car actually cut the Laram charging stop out of the navigation, so I thought I needed to charge longer than I did. Uh, but that's all right. It is going to be much more time efficient to stop there than to skip it because otherwise we would have to go basically most of the way to Denver. Um, if we were to do it any differently. So, this way makes more sense. Um, I did notice I ran to the gas station across the street over here and I noticed uh the sign for the freeway uh said that it's closed to campers under 20,000 lbs due to 40 mph crosswinds uh between here and Laram. So, that ought to be fun. Um hopefully that doesn't mess around with us too much. Um yeah, there you go. You can see the sign there. 40 mph crosswinds.
So, that's fun. In any case, we are going to want to hop back on 80 east and continue on eastbound and down.
And uh yeah, this will be our last charging stop in Wyoming. Then we'll be stopping in Colorado next. We should only have one charging stop somewhere in the Denver area. I haven't 100% decided where I want to stop there. I just know that that's going to be the area we're stopping in. Uh maybe if we get lucky, we'll get to see some of the the other out of spec crew there. Uh Andreas and um and Colton and whoever else might be around. Um yeah, we'll see when we get there, I guess. Uh but I'll kind of let them know what my arrival time is looking like to get there. Maybe we can meet for a bite to eat before I move on out. I'm not going to be staying in Denver. I'm actually going to be continuing further east to um uh Lyman. Lyman is where I'm going to be staying tonight. So anyway, onward we move All righty. We're hopping off our exit here in Laramie for our next charging stop. And uh this one's going to be fairly short, just a 15-minute stop, unless I decide that I want to stop someplace else in the sort of north of Denver area. The Tesla navigation wants us to go to John'stown, which is at a BIES, um which I wouldn't mind going to Bies, but Oh, I got to turn this way. I wouldn't mind going to Bies, but it also means that we have Well, I guess it's really not that long of a charging stop there. So maybe that is a pretty good option. Um I'll take a look at the options on the map and see where we end up, but it's looking like that's probably going to be a pretty ideal place for us to go. All right, so while we're juicing up, I'm taking a look at the map here. So this is our recommended stop on Tesla's Navigation, which is John'stown.
Um and our route kind of goes around Denver here.
There's not really any charging options in this area. Everything else is quite a ways off the freeway. So, that might be our best option. I might look and see on Plug Share if we've got some other options that are right off the freeway that are convenient. Uh, but it's looking like we might just stick with the Johntown charging location because I think that just makes sense. Unless we want to go someplace like here.
Yeah, I think that's what's looking like it's going to make sense. So, I'll do a little bit more looking. Uh, but we're probably going to be moving on here pretty quick if that is ultimately well, we've got another 10 minutes, but yeah, I'll take a look around and just see if there's anything else specifically that we want to look at.
Um, but that's looking like it's going to be our likely place to stop. All right, we're moving on. I decided we are going to stop at the Bies there in John's Town. Just makes sense. And it's perfect for uh right around dinner time.
So, I can run in there and grab something to eat. And we'll have plenty of time to do that since it's a decent decently longish charging stop. And then of course our last stop is going to be our overnight in Lyman. Our hotel there does not have a charger for overnight. Uh but it happens to be right across the street from uh the supercharger. So once I get checked in, I'll just go plug the car into the supercharger for say an hour or so. And then uh that way we can get it nice and at least relatively close to fully charged for tomorrow. and then we'll be able to hit the road and I should be uh going all the way to uh my folks place in Oklahoma that I'm visiting. I've got uh some cousins there and uh some other family that I want to uh meet up with for uh at least part of a day and then from there of course I'll hit the road all the rest of the way to North Carolina. But anyways, we're hopping back on the freeway now and we'll continue on our way south.
All righty, folks. We're pulling off the freeway here into the land of bies.
And you can see the sign up there.
But yeah, we've just got to make a right here. And it looks like uh go around a a roundabout and then we'll be at the bies and plug it into charge.
This is an interesting intersection.
All right. Well, I've got a red light here. So, I'll see you guys when we're actually at Bies plugged in and charging. All right. We're plugged in and charging here at Bies.
Uh, I actually initially plugged into this stall and that cable has got something stuck in one of the pins. So, I moved over to a stall and plugged in here. I'll run inside, grab something to eat, and we'll hit the road here in about 25 minutes. All right, we're going to unplug here from our charger at Bies and it's time for our last leg of the day. I think I overcharged a bit here while eating, but that's all right. So, we've got what about 120 miles to go.
So, let's hit the road and I will see you guys when I get to Lyman to my final stop.
All right, we're hopping off the freeway here in Lyman, Colorado.
And uh I think I mentioned this once already before, but the hotel we're staying at here doesn't actually have a charger on site. Uh but there's a supercharger right across the street.
So, that's basically my plan is I'll go check into the room and then I'll go take the car, plug it into the supercharger, and uh just let it charge up for probably an hour or so, get it up to at least 80%.
And then uh and then it should be good to go for tomorrow. I might even um uh before before taking off in the morning, maybe I'll go and even take it over to the supercharger and plug it in while I grab breakfast or something just to try and top it up a little bit more.
We'll see. Um but anyway, yeah, that's the idea. So, we're headed just up the road over here and uh we'll get checked in and then plug the car in. All righty. plugged in and charging. My hotel is just right up the road here. So, I'm just going to leave the car here for an hour or so, let it charge, and then I'll come back to it in a little while. Good morning, folks. It's bright and early, just after 7:00 a.m. We got charged up at the supercharger last night. Actually, a bit more than I had anticipated, 89%. It actually was at 87 when I unplugged and then uh the car kind of recalculated up to 89. Uh couldn't help but notice I spotted another Model S in the parking lot here towing a U-Haul trailer in uh titanium. Rare color. Um but anyways, we're ready to hit the road. So I'm headed to visit some family in Chelsea, Oklahoma, which is kind of to the northeast of Tulsa. And uh right now it's looking like we should get there around 6:00 p.m. We'll see if that uh changes. Seems like usually I end up arriving earlier than what is projected is typical, but you never know if we could have some issues along the way.
Um, but yeah, so we should be able to make it pretty far. It looks like uh looks like the navigation in the car wants to stop in Oakley. I don't remember if that's where ABRP wanted to stop or not, but it looks like that's probably what makes the most sense. Um cuz there isn't anything else between Oakley and Hayes.
Um and actually that's Hayes and Salina.
So when I was a kid, I think I was in second grade. No, maybe first grade. Uh, we lived in Kansas and I believe it was just to the west of Salina in a little town called Wilson.
That's Ellsworth. There it is. Wilson.
So, I used to live in this little tiny town right here just for a short time.
Just just a year. Um, yeah. World's largest hand painted Czech egg.
Cool. We'll see if maybe we want to take a little detour and drive through there.
I probably won't. Um, I actually drove by there and looked at the house uh about a year and a half ago after we did the I90 surge. I drove the old Model S in that race from uh Seattle to Boston.
And then on the way back from that trip, I actually drove the Ionic 6 from Boston all the way back to Colorado and I took I7 along that route and I actually stopped in Wilson and uh took a look at our old house there. But anyways, um yeah, let's go ahead and hit the road. And looks like our next next stop should be Oakley.
All right, we're coming up on our first charging stop for the day here in Oakley, Kansas.
So, we're going to go ahead and hop off the exit here. And it looks like it's just going to be on the right here somewhere. Uh I believe it's at a Sonic, which I do see a Sonic over there.
So, we'll go get over to that side, plug in, and get charging up. All right, we're plugging in here.
And there we go. We should be charging Flat Kansas. This is actually not a bad stop. We've got a nice little dog park here uh right next to the Sonic.
Not a whole not a whole bunch else.
We've got a truck stop right here, probably with uh you know, convenience store and stuff. So, not too bad of a stop, actually. All righty. We're hitting the road back on the I7. Looks like our next stop is going to be Russell, Kansas.
Or no, sorry, Hayes, Kansas.
And uh yeah, so not very far away, only about 80 little over 80 miles. So it's only going to take us about an hour to get there. But that's kind of the way it goes with this car is basically just hopping charger to charger. Um and yeah, so onward we move.
Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey.
All righty, we're coming off to our next stop here in Hayes, Kansas. So, just hopping off the freeway here. And I'll be passing underneath and it's actually going to be at the Applebee's right on the other side of the freeway there.
Don't know if you guys can see it in the background, but we'll head on over there, get plugged in, and uh I need to do a little bit of planning.
um in terms of what um in terms of what I'm going to do in terms of stops for tomorrow. I need to decide what route I'm going to go because there's a couple different options and we need to kind of figure that out um in terms of what's going to be the best way to go. Um, so yeah, I'm going to take a look at a few different options on the map and kind of make a final decision because that's going to play a little bit into how we want to charge for the later part of the day here. Um, cuz I I won't be able to charge at my folks place in Oklahoma where I'm staying. So, I need to have enough charge from there to get to the next charger depending on what our rout's going to be. So, anyway, I'll see you guys at the charger. All righty, we're plugged in and charging. This is an old school V2 charging site. Got one other Model Y charging here. Um, but like I said, I want to take a look at our route. So, this is ABRP that I've got pulled up here. And, uh, this is the route that it's recommending. It actually wants us to stop at a Rivian Adventure Network charger here uh, later on in the day. Um, I believe this is actually Hayes, isn't it? No, that's Russell. So, we've actually already kind of deviated off of the ABRP route. Um, but basically we have three different options for routes that we can go. So, it's recommending this route which kind of goes through the southern part of Missouri um and then into Kentucky.
Uh there's not very much charging infrastructure in this southern part of Missouri. In fact, basically the only charger that we can really use between Springfield and whatever the heck this town was, Syon.
There's, you know, maybe a couple of other things along here, but this one in the middle.
Oops.
Can't see what I'm doing. This one in the middle is a little bit.
It's only 80. We can probably only get about 80 kilowatts out of it. I think it's like 200 amps or something. Um, says 90 kilowatt CCS. I guess it does have good reviews on Plug Share. It's a 10 out of 10 on Plug Share. When I checked it last night, um, there was someone who actually charged there that day. So, someone did charge there yesterday. Um, so I think that we're good there. I think it's two. There's two stalls there.
Uh it says four stalls, but it's really two stalls, I think. Um so anyway, that's that's option one. That's the shortest route to go.
Um and I've never really been that way.
Option two is to go up to St. Louis here and then um you know come across on this is probably oh 64. Okay. So we would go through West Virginia.
Yeah. So anyway, that's kind of that route. So we would go through West Virginia, Virginia, con northern part of Kentucky, a little bit of Indiana and Illinois, and you know, essentially that's the idea there. So that route would add an additional 40 minutes or so. The other option is to go south.
So we would go down to Tulsa and then go through Arkansas and then all the way through Tennessee and then basically all the way across the sort of state of North Carolina.
I've been on this route before. I actually went this way with Thyman. We went and picked up um one of the vans from um from Bonnie's place in uh in Tennessee.
So, we actually drove from the track all the way out her place is somewhere between Nashville and Knoxville. So, we drove all the way out there and then all the way back. So, I've actually done that route once before. Um, which I guess we could do again. Um, I guess we're kind of more or less taking a lot of that same route even with the default option here, just uh a little bit different take from this option. So, that's basically the options that we have on the table here. This is probably the safer option in terms of infrastructure and it might make the most sense.
Um, this option, like I said, we just don't quite have as much infrastructure.
Um, but I think that we're okay with this location. It's just a little bit slower charging. But as you can see, there really is just not very many options between Springfield, Missouri, all the way to Popppler Bluff, I guess.
And even there, the options are kind of off the beaten path. And probably well, I guess Francis, there's a Francis energy that's uh a relatively high-speed charger.
Um, but yeah, just not a whole lot of infrastructure in that region. So, and then I probably don't want to go this route going through Arkansas. But we could do it, but it adds over an hour to the trip and I don't really see any benefit in going that way. So, I guess I'm going to ponder this a little bit and try and make a decision. Um, and then uh yeah, I guess that's kind of the idea there. I'm gonna probably plug in I guess I'll plug the final destination here into um into the trip here. So, I'm going to go 310.
So, it looks like Tesla navigation would want to take us the southern route going through Arkansas and all.
Interesting.
Okay. Well, I guess I'll think about it a little bit. we don't necessarily have to make a decision right away, but that's kind of where we're at there. Um, I do want to put in the Rivian Adventure Network stop that was on ABRP here into our navigation. That's in Witchah.
Um, let's see. Does it show up on the Tesla navigation?
It looks like it does not.
Let's see. Rivian.
Oh, that's interesting. Is there a charger here on Rivian Adventure Network? There must be.
Um, I've never actually been to one before.
So, network.
I don't know if there's really anything that's great to see at the one in Witchah, but I suppose that we could Yeah, there is one here in Hayes.
Oh, in fact, it's just right over there, right by the old Chicago pizza place.
Interesting. Well, all right. I guess I'll try and decide what route we want to go. Um, honestly, maybe I won't end up stopping at that one, just because it's a little further off the freeway than the other option here. Oh, no.
Maybe it is kind of the best option going through Witchah. There's not very many that are right off the freeway other than the Rivian charger. So, this is this Tesla one I have highlighted. That's a destination charger. So there's really no other fast charging directly off the route in Witchah, unless we take a different route through here.
But even then, the only thing that's really right off the freeway is that stuff, which there isn't really an exit nearby. So h maybe the Rivian one is a good option there.
How many stalls are at this location? Is it four?
Six stalls. Okay. Well, maybe we will go there after all. Um H I don't know. I'll have to make some decisions here. All righty. We're hitting the road. Next stop is going to be Salina. And then after that, we'll stop at that Rivian Adventure Network charger in Witchah.
And uh I basically just have the Rivian charger in the navigation at the moment cuz Tesla does not recognize it as a charging station. So otherwise it screws up the rest of the route. So I'm just going to navigate straight there and then we'll adjust our navigation from there as necessary for the rest of the route. Um but anyway, wait for traffic to clear here and then we'll hop on the freeway.
Oh yeah.
All right, we're hopping off the freeway here at our next charging stop in Salena, Kansas.
And we had to go about a mile and a half further east than uh where our turnoff is to go south, but that's all right.
So, I think this one's also at another hotel, Holiday Inn. So, we'll head on over there, get plugged in, and then um yeah, after that, our next stop is going to be the uh the charger in Witchah. All right, we're plugging in here in Salina, and we've got a little bit of a charging stop here. It's quite windy, as uh you might be able to tell, the wind has definitely not been on our side for this last stretch. And since we're going to be going south and the winds are coming from the southwest, we're going to have a pretty significant headwind working against us. So, yeah, we only need to go 94 miles, but it says we need to charge here for half an hour. Um, which I guess we'll see about that. But since we're going to be here for a little bit, and it's about 1:00, I am going to try and walk up the road that way. Uh, there's a couple different places where I can try and get lunch. I think there's a Popeye's and a Subway and a gas station with a convenience store. So, I'm going to try and grab a bite to eat and we'll let the car charge up while we're waiting. All right, we're going to unplug here and hit the road again and our next stop is going to be the Rivian Adventure Network charger in Witchah.
So, we're going to hit the road and I will see you guys there. As we're making our way to the freeway, I noticed we've got strong winds forecasted from the south, which of course is the direction that we're headed. So, definitely going to have some pretty significant headwinds. I'll be curious to see what our efficiency drops to. It definitely wasn't great on the last leg.
I think we were close to 400 watt hours per mile. Um, so I'll be curious to see what we're looking at here. We've only got 94 miles to go and uh I charged up to 75%.
We really only needed about 70%. I overcharged a bit, but anyway, you get the idea.
And uh we're going to hit the road and hopefully we got no issues.
Oh yeah.
All right, we're just pulling off the freeway here to our stop at the Rivian Adventure Network. We're going to pass under the freeway here to the left, and I think it's at an REI store.
Um, so yeah, I guess uh we'll stop in there, get juiced up, and then we'll be on to the next, of course. All right, here we go. It is indeed at the REI co-op here, and we've got all the chargers in place.
Got a nice pull through stall for uh vehicles with trailers. So, that's pretty sweet. We're going to get backed in here and uh start charging. All right, I'm plugged in. And we actually got an error here. Says vehicle is not supported. Contact your vehicle manufacturer for support. That's interesting because this does have the CCS retrofit. Of course, uh here the other day I charged at a CCS charger and I've had no issues with that in the past. So maybe I can try a different stall or maybe I can try and do a different activation method. Maybe activate it first and then plug in. Um not sure. I guess we'll have to figure out our plan here. I figured it out there. We actually had to process our credit card first.
Um, which I would have would have realized if I would have actually paid attention to the screen. You can see on here it says plug in your Rivian to charge other vehicles. Tap payment card below.
So, have to tap first to activate it then plug in. So, it looks like we're charging now and we are ramping up in power. Kind of hard to see the screen there, but little bit pricey on the kilowatt hour rate on these. I think it's 55 cents a kilowatt for uh during the day, which is a little on the expensive side, but we'll get charged up here and then we'll move along to our next stop. Um, which I think is going to be somewhere in Oklahoma most likely. So, I'm going to take a look at my map and see what the plan is for the next stop. Well, foiled again. We're only charging at 43 kW and it's not ramping up past that.
So, I guess I am going to try and unplug and move over a stall and see if we get better luck on a different one.
So, I'm going to stop the session and I'll move over a stall down. All right.
Well, this is the third stall I've tried here at the Rivian Adventure Network charger. I don't know if there's a problem on my end either with the adapter um or maybe it's an interop bug with this station or maybe the station has some sort of a problem where it's limited. But it seems like I'm only pulling about 125 amps. It's gone up to 44 kW as the voltage has come up a little bit. Uh but it just won't increase past that. It might go up to, you know, 45 46, you know, as the voltage continues to go up, but we're definitely kind of hitting some sort of a limitation. So, I'm going to head out of here. I'm going to go to the Witchita Supercharger and then of course we're going to follow this route down the rest of the way. Um, originally I was planning on going straight across this way and then down. Uh, but I guess we're going to go this different route instead since that's going to be what's going to make sense with our uh with our charging limitations here. All right, we've moved on to the supercharger here in Witchah. So, we were up somewhere up this way at the Rivian Adventure Network. I didn't really want to come this far south into Witchah. I wanted to go across that way like I was saying before, but um yeah, charging issues being what they were, we ended up coming over here. So, we'll get juicing up a lot quicker and then uh we'll move on here probably in about 20 minutes or so and we'll go to Bartlesville.
Is that right? Yeah, Bartlesville, Oklahoma. And that'll be our last charging stop for the day before we get to Chelsea. Um although I need to factor in extra range to get beyond that tomorrow. So let me do some inputs in the map here and uh see what it spits out for additional charging stops. All right, we're hitting the road here again. And I just realized that our next charging stop in Bartlesville, Oklahoma is actually not a Tesla Supercharger.
It's a Francis Energy supercharger. So, uh, supercharger basically run by by a third party. So, it's run by Francis Energy, but with the Tesla Supercharger hardware. So, that's kind of cool.
That'll be my first time visiting one of those. Um, but yeah, let's uh let's go ahead and get on out of here and we will start heading that direction.
Oh yeah.
>> Okay folks, we are in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. rolling into our final charging stop for the day, which is a Francis Energy supercharger. So, third party supercharger.
And uh we'll just wait for traffic to clear here and then we'll be able to pull into parking lot.
And uh interestingly enough, well I guess not that interesting, but something of note, um my free unlimited supercharging on this car of course does not work at a third party supercharger since it's not Tesla billing the energy.
It's Francis Energy. So um yeah, I don't get free supercharging here unfortunately. And this is I think about 48 cents a kilowatt hour. So it's not particularly cheap. Um, but yeah, we're going to go ahead and pull in here. It's effectively a V3 Plus location.
We'll get backed in and get charging up here and then we should be able to move on to our destination for the night. Uh-oh, we've got a bit of a development here.
So, I just got an alert that popped up that says air conditioning reduced. in here for the last couple of minutes. I was just getting ready to turn on the camera and the car's been making some funny noises and it kind of seemed like it was a uh compressor issue. So, uh it seems like my AC compressor may have uh given up the ghost. So, hopefully it doesn't throw an isolation fault. If that's the case, and that could definitely leave us stranded. At least for now, we're still fully functional and we're still charging. Um, the AC is definitely starting to not not blow very cold. Um, I can try to put the car into service mode. However, I have noticed that on the legacy cars like this, it seems like when you just put them into normal service mode, it doesn't really show all of the alerts up to date, man. And the screen is flickering real bad on camera here. Let's go to service alerts. Oh, no. It does have the alert.
So, compressor overheat warning.
DC fast charging rate reduced. So, the compressor is overheating.
Interesting.
Well, I'll go ahead and turn that back on.
When you put it into service mode, it automatically turns off the HVAC.
Interesting. Well, we're going to continue charging up here.
Um, I need to charge for about another 10 minutes to make it to our next stop.
So, hopefully our charging speeds aren't reduced by too much. And, uh, maybe just sitting overnight, this thing will get enough of a rest that it'll be functional. Hopefully this doesn't cause some more major problems for us cuz if so that could become a real issue. All right, it's time for us to unplug and move on. I just wanted to show you guys I plugged in with scan my Tesla and got um our coolant temperature for the battery. So, as you can see, our cell temperatures are quite a bit higher than what we would like to target for cooling. And of course, our charging speeds are suffering for it. Um, we've also got, um, if I go to signal lists, I can go to HVAC.
When I was looking at this earlier, um, before I actually turned the camera on the first time, the refrigerant temperature was over 100 C. It was like 127 C. It's cooled down quite a bit. Um, but as of right now, it still seems like the compressor is not turning on. I'm wondering if maybe the car power cycles, if maybe the compressor will turn off and back on again. I don't know. We'll see about that. Um, but I think for now it's time to unplug and hit the road.
I've only got about 45 minutes more to go to my destination and hopefully maybe just sitting overnight, we'll get some functionality again. Of course, I've still got at least a day and a half's worth of driving ahead of me to get all the way to North Carolina.
So, hopefully um this doesn't continue to be a problem cuz if so, then we might have to uh figure out something to do about that.
But, in the meantime, I'm going to hit the road and uh we'll play it by ear and see what happens.
Heat. Heat.
All righty, folks. I'm approaching my final destination here for the night and uh so I guess we're going to close the day out. Uh the alert for the air conditioning reduced is still there, which isn't too surprising. I'm hoping that maybe if I shut the car off and let it sleep even just for a couple of hours, but I'm probably going to let it sit overnight. um that maybe the alert will go away and the air conditioning will work again. I think that what we have here is beginning signs of a compressor failure. Um which is definitely a real bummer. So basically all that I can really hope for is that it will continue to hold up for long enough that we can get some decent charging speeds and stuff ahead of us.
Like I said, we've got another basically full day and a half at least of driving ahead of us from here. Um, so I was when I was looking at the charging routes that we could go, I think I had kind of decided basically to go through that kind of southern Missouri route um with the one third party charger there in between. I'm a little bit torn now because it's a shorter route probably with lower speeds. Um, which maybe is going to be beneficial. Um, but there's also going to be a lot less infrastructure. It's a lot more rural and if we end up having an issue, I don't want to get stranded there either.
So, I'm a little bit torn if I want to go that route or if I want to go for further north and kind of stick to the freeways where, you know, if we have an issue, we've got a bit more infrastructure to try and help us along.
But anyways, um I'm pulling into uh to my folks place here in uh in Chelsea, Oklahoma. So, I'm going to be staying here the night and I'm probably going to stay here like the first half of the day tomorrow, go and uh get breakfast with them or something and you know, just uh kind of have a good have a bit of a visit with them before I hit the road again. Um but yeah, I guess uh stay tuned. All righty, folks. We are hitting the road here.
Uh bit of a later start today. It's uh just past 11:30 here right now. had a nice uh nice breakfast with uh my family here in uh in Oklahoma and we're hitting the road now. So, I've got about 47%.
Uh the AC issue seems to have at least temporarily rectified itself.
Hopefully, it continues to hold up. I think the big issue is that the compressor overheated and uh I think I mentioned it before, but I tried to look at the live data with scan my Tesla and the refrigerant temperature was really high.
Um, and I think our big problem is that, um, I just didn't shut the car off and give it an opportunity to cool down.
Um, if I would have done that, I think it would have started working again because after I got in last night, um, I, uh, I checked a few, uh, I, you know, brought some of my stuff into, uh, into my cousin's place and I came back out to the car after a little bit to grab my backpack and I decided to check and see if uh, if things had reset and they had.
So, and that was after, you know, maybe half an hour of sitting at the most. So, um, yeah, I think all that I really needed to do was basically just shut the car off, let it kind of reset, and see if the refrigerant temperatures would come down. I'm not sure what caused it to overheat.
It could be a problem with maybe a blocked condenser or a bad valve or something. I did look at the condensers.
My louvers on this car don't work. They haven't worked in years and it it's never caused a problem even in much hotter temperatures than what we're seeing here today. Um, but the uh for whatever reason it it just overheated and kind of locked up. So, it might be a sign of impending compressor failure. So, we're just going to kind of have to play it by ear and hopefully things work out.
Um, I was kind of torn on what route I wanted to go for the rest of the trip here. And what I kind of ultimately decided, even though it's a route with less infrastructure, I think I am going to go the route where we're going to go kind of through the southern part of Missouri. Uh, there's a lot less infrastructure. Um, you know, kind of less cities. Um, but I think it's going to be less overall stress on the car.
we're going a shorter distance, less charging sessions, and uh also the one charger that the third party CCS charger is a lower powered charger. So, even though it's going to be a longer and slower charging session, um hopefully it's going to mean less thermal stress cuz we're probably only going to hit 75 or 80 kW max on that thing. Um, and that's actually going to be our second charging stop for the day. So, our first charging stop is going to be in Joplin, Missouri. We're about an hour out from there. So, uh, when we get there, we'll plug into the supercharger and fingers crossed everything goes well. Um, I'll probably try and pull up scan my Tesla and kind of look at some of the the info on there to make sure my uh condenser or my uh my refrigerant temperatures aren't too high. And as long as the temperature looks good, I'll probably let it be. If the if the temperature looks like it's getting pretty high, what I might do is I might shut off the AC for, you know, 10 or 15 minutes before and just let the system cool down and then restart it again before starting supercharging so that we actually get some battery cooling. Um, but anyway, we'll get to that when we get to that. Fingers crossed the compressor continues to hold up. We still have uh probably about 1,200 miles to go to complete this trip.
Um, so we're we're over halfway there.
In fact, we're about 2/3 of the way there almost. Um, but yeah, we we have a lot further to go and hopefully uh this compressor issue doesn't hold us up too much. All righty. We've been on the road for about 15 minutes here and we're about to hit a mileage milestone of 480,000 miles.
So, we're coming up on it here quick.
And I just wanted to catch it on video here.
There we go. 480,000 miles on the clock on this thing. We'll keep munching some miles. And uh so far the AC is still working fine. Uh I was just looking at the refrigerant temps with uh scan my Tesla and it seemed like stuff was all good. So, we'll keep an eye on it and hopefully it continues to hold up all right and I'll just have to keep checking in.
All righty. We've arrived in Joplain, Missouri here. Uh I did just check my uh refrigerant temperatures with the AC and everything looks good. Um I'm kind of thinking at this point maybe a likely failure point could be the condenser fans. Um because at least based on the limited data I have so far, uh it seems like everything works fine when we're moving at speed. Um, but our failure popped up when we were sitting at the charger last time. So, maybe there's a problem with the fans uh not pulling air through the condensers. That's just a theory at this point, but I'll try and take a look at that uh when we get to the charger here. Um, but yeah, it's going to be just down the street this way. Just got to wait for traffic to clear up here and I'll get moving down that way. We'll plug in and see if we can find out what's going on and hopefully we have a successful charging session here. All right, we pulled into the supercharger here at a nice uh Maverick convenience store or gas station.
We'll go ahead and get plugged in, get charging, and I'm going to try and see if I can check out the condenser fans here and make sure that they're actually functioning, cuz that's my theory at this point. All right, so I'm getting no radiator fans at all. So, I'm thinking that maybe we've got a problem with one of the relays. So, I've got this panel pulled off here, and our fan relays should be in this box.
So, the fuses are I think these two 40 amp fuses. And I believe one of these two is the fan relay, which I don't recall which one it is. I think it's the one on the bottom.
Yeah. So, K15 should be the fan relay.
This one. Not sure what it's for, but I'm gonna try and swap these and see if we can get it to work just by swapping the relays because that relay should control both fans.
So, we'll swap that around.
See if I get anything.
Fuse looks like it's intact. They don't have a multimeter on me.
But maybe I'll try and see if we can get the car to shut down and then restart here and see if we can get condenser fans to kick on.
We are still pulling full power.
Let's see what our condenser, our refrigerant temperature looks like.
Yeah, see the refrigerant temperature is creeping up. It's up to almost 70 C now.
So, I'm thinking maybe that could be our problem.
Um, yeah, it's still not creating an issue yet, but I've still got no fans.
So, either we have a control side issue or something else going on. So, I might have to do a little bit more investigation.
All right, we are moving on. Um, so the AC or at least the cabin AC stopped working again. I don't know if that's because I unplugged the relays, but what I have is a basically an air conditioning temporarily reduced message so that the car could focus on power cooling the powertrain. Uh, swapping the relays didn't seem to do anything for the condenser fans. So, not sure if there's something else going on there that we could have tried to mitigate.
Uh, but in any case, we're going to hop back on the road here. Hopefully my AC comes back cuz it is a little bit toasty here today. And uh I guess we'll see.
But I'll hop back on the road. If the AC doesn't come back, you know, within another 10 or 15 minutes, I might try and pull off somewhere, just let the car shut off for a few minutes and go to sleep and just kind of do a reset that way. Um and we'll see if it comes back cuz it seems to work just fine when we're on the road. It's when we come to a stop and start to charge that things seem to have a problem. and it seems like it's condenser fans that are creating uh the hiccup. So anyway, we're going to try and move on down the road and continue. Our next charging stop is going to be that third party charger at a Casey's which is going to be a lower powered charger. So hopefully that doesn't lead to any thermal issues. Uh we didn't have any thermal drate for charging here. Um we were able to full full power for the whole charging session uh without any issues.
Um, but we did lose cabin cooling unfortunately. So, I guess we'll see if that comes back here in a little while.
All right. So, we've been on the road for about 35 minutes. So, I just pulled off at this travel center. I'm going to try and see if we can do something about this cuz we still don't have HVAC back and it does not appear that the compressor is running at all.
So, I want to see if we have alerts. So, we've got HVAC limited. Then we have this solenoid outputs. So, I think that was from me swapping the relays around. So, it's possible we may have kind of screwed something up there, so to speak. Um, I am going to try and do a thermal system test and just see what result we get from that. So, I've got to unlock the gateway, which is foot on brake, right turn signal on, and you'll see unlocking.
And now we're unlocked. So, we'll hit run on that. We'll let it run the routine. And it'll probably take 5 minutes or so.
And then depending on what the results are after that, what I might do is I might just close up the car, let it sit for 5 or 10 minutes, and then uh kind of come back to it and see what happens from there. Um I guess we can hop outside here.
Okay, so we are getting condenser fans now. We weren't before.
So, I can feel that one pulling air.
Oh, and now they just shut off. So, I didn't get a chance to test if this one was pulling air or not.
But I guess we'll find out here momentarily based on our test results. So, I'll let it continue running here and I'll come back to you guys when it's finished. All right. So, we've got several failures.
The left and right condenser shutters, those I knew had a problem. We apparently also have a temperature sensor failure and then chiller and evaporator failures which are not ideal.
Um, interesting.
Well, let's try and see what happens if we turn climate control back on.
Do we get climate Okay, it's ramping up the fans. I think I can hear the compressor running.
I guess if I look on here, we should see refrigerant temps start to come up most likely.
Oh, yeah. It's blowing cold now. Well, no, not quite yet.
Oh, yeah. AC is not on.
Dang. We just might be down for AC at this point.
Yeah, I got nothing. Okay. Well, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go ahead and roll up this window, and I am going to just hop out of the car, shut it down, let it completely power off for five or 10 minutes. I'll just take a walk around or whatever.
I'll come back to it, and we'll see.
what happens next. All righty. So, we just left the last stop there. Uh I actually tried tried to film a little update there and I didn't hit record.
Apparently, I went through my whole spiel and didn't catch any of it. Uh but anyway, we left our last stop there. Uh powering the car off and back on again.
Um you know, just closing the door and walking away wasn't enough to get it to reset. Uh, so I tried kind of last ditch effort, which I figured would work, but I wasn't 100% sure. I did a 12volt reset. So I disconnected the 12volt battery. And normally I would disconnect the uh the service loop, which kills contacttor power. Uh, it's not super easily accessible on Model S. You have to take the um the vent out. I still had to pull the frunk tub out to get to the 12volt battery, but um I ended up just unplugging one of the other high voltage connectors that has an interlock loop in it. So that also kills the high voltage system. So we killed the high voltage system, 12volt battery, and then reconnected everything and powered the car back on. And now the AC is working flawlessly. So, um it's possible that at the last stop when I was unplugging relays, um maybe that's what locked the system out cuz it wasn't really giving any alerts.
It just said that HVAC was unavailable because it was prioritizing powertrain cooling. Um but the compressor wouldn't kick on at all even for powertrain cooling. And of course, when we ran our thermal system test, the chiller, I think it was the chiller and the evaporator failed. But I don't think the compressor ran at all during the thermal system test. So, I think somehow the compressor got locked out. Don't know if it was locked out because of what other problem the system has or if it was because of me swapping those relays around. Um, but in any case, we know that the condenser fans works, or at least the one that I was able to to feel while the fans were running is working. So, that doesn't seem to be our problem. Um, so we'll just kind of have to continue to play it by ear. Hopefully things work out. I've got about an hour and a half to go to our next stop at that Casey's, which is a third party CCS charger. And, uh, hopefully things hold up till then.
Obviously, that charger is going to be a lower charging rate. So, it's going to be less thermal stress on the car, which is one of the reasons I kind of picked this route to go. I guess we could continue to try and use lower powered chargers, but I don't want to have to do that the whole way. But I'm hopeful that, you know, at least that will do something for us. I'm going to keep an eye on the uh refrigerant temperatures and uh hopefully things work out. And I guess we'll just kind of have to continue to see as we go along here how things are going to work out. Um, I don't think it's a shutter issue. Obviously, our shutters failed, but the the shutters on this car haven't worked in the last 5 and a half plus years. They haven't worked the entire time I've owned it, and it's never caused any sort of a thermal efficiency issue, including in much higher temperatures than than what we're at now. We're at about 80°. I've traveled in 100 plus degree temperatures uh with no issues with with cooling efficiency. The louvers are a real common problem on legacy Model S and it honestly doesn't really cause that much of a problem. It's never bothered me enough to to actually do anything about it. Um yeah. So anyway, uh regardless of that, we're going to continue moving on and uh hopefully uh we can try and figure out some more stuff as we go. Maybe what I might try to do if we have enough time at a stop, I might try and see if I can pull some logs with Toolbox. Um, a lot of the time pulling pulling alert log history with toolbox can take a little bit of time though. So I might not actually be able to get anything right away. But maybe I can at least initiate a session attempt to gain log access, pull the log history, and you know, then over time we can let it load in and then maybe I can look at the data on the next stop or something.
Um, but yeah, we're definitely we definitely have some sort of issue with the AC system. Whether it's a compressor problem or something else that's causing uh the compressor to overheat, I'm not 100% certain at this type at this point. I kind of suspect it's compressor failure. Usually, when you have these compressor overheat messages, that's kind of a sign of failing compressor uh when it comes to these these older Model S's. But there are some other possibilities as well. So anyway, uh wish me luck. Fingers crossed. Hopefully uh we can continue to lift this thing along and uh we don't continue to have too many issues. All right, I'll see you guys at the next charging stop.
All right, we're off on the business loop going into Kabool, Missouri. And uh I think I have a game plan. So, the AC is still working just fine since our reset. And I think that what I'm gonna do in order to try and reduce the loads on the AC system in the car is when we park it and plug it in, I'm not going to sit in the car like I typically do on a lot of these charging stops. Or if I'm getting out of the car, a lot of the time what I'll do is I'll keep climate on. I'm not going to do that.
I'm just going to let the climate control turn off. If the inside of the cabin of the car, you know, heats up a bit while it's sitting. That's whatever.
But I want to reduce the loads as much as possible. We're also going to see a lot less heating loads from this charger just because it is going to be a slower charger. Um but yeah, other than that, um you know, hopefully everything goes well here. Uh what are we? We're about a mile away from the charger here. So I'll see you guys when we pull into there and get plugged in. All right, so we're here at Casey's and we've got some universal EV chargers apparently. So, we've got to get our adapter on here. If I can do it onehanded.
There we go. So, we are connected.
And let's see. Should I pay first or second? I'll try and plug it in first and then we'll try and pay. So, where is the payment terminal?
I guess it's just right here on the front, I believe. Oh, scan to start charging. Okay, I guess I got to get my phone out. All right, we're going to scan and then I'm going to try and activate via that.
Look at that. Charger is online. Session fees. Select charging connector to continue.
Oh, does that mean we just push that?
There we go.
System fault caused by enter admin page for detail. Okay.
Charger is online. Select connector to continue.
System fault.
Well, maybe we'll have to try and call or figure something else out here because we've got to figure out how to charge. We're successfully charging. I had to move over stalls. Apparently, that one is actually down. So, um, but we're charging now. It looks like we've ramped up in power.
It's still ramping very slowly.
We'll see what it actually peaks at. In theory, we're probably going to peak at 75 or 80 kilowatts realistically. So, we're going to be here for a while, probably 40 minutes or so. Um, but yeah, like I said, I'm probably just going to leave the car alone. Maybe I'll take a walk, go grab something to eat.
Um, if I can find an auto parts store nearby. Actually, there's one way over there, O'Reilly's. Maybe I'll walk down there and grab a couple things uh that I've been kind of wanting to try and grab. I'd like to grab some glass cleaner for one because my suction cup mount is leaving junk all over the glass that I haven't been able to clean. I might grab a few other things that I'm wanting to get for some other projects at the track once I get there. And uh yeah, so I'm just going to let the car be let it do its thing. Let it charge here. We are ramped up to 64 kW now. And it's still slowly ramping. So, very slow ramp on this thing, but it's doing the job and we'll let it keep doing it. All righty.
We're ready to unplug here and hit the road. So, we will go ahead and do just that. If I can get my adapter off.
There we go.
I overcharged just a touch, but that's all good. I did um I did come back and sit in the car for a little while. I kind of monitored the AC temperatures and it seems like everything's just >> working on the racetrack and charging it really fast.
>> We got batteries included playing there.
Um, all right. Well, it's time to hit the road. So, our next stop is going to be Sykes, Missouri. And I think that's pretty close to the Missouri Kentucky border. Yeah, I think the border's right through here somewhere. So, that's almost into Kentucky. And then I'm thinking this is saying we would get to Kawa, Kentucky at 900 p.m., but I think that's not accounting for the time change. I don't know where the crossover for that is, but I'm thinking that we might try to stay in Kadawa tonight. We'll see.
I'm not totally certain that I want to do that. Oh, you know what? That might be accounting for the time change. That might be why it's so much later. So, it might be close to 9:00 p.m. that we make it there.
We'll see. I would like to stay there if possible. We might stop earlier depending on how I how tired I am or how I feel about it, but we shall see. In any case, it's time to hit the road.
Heat.
Hey, Heat.
All righty, folks. We're rolling into the Sydon, Missouri supercharger. Uh we're getting very close to the border between Missouri and Kentucky. So, we'll be crossing over that border here pretty soon after this charging session. Um, but yeah, it looks like we're going to be just off to the right over here. Um, I believe this is at a hotel. This is another another hotel charger.
Um but yeah, we got clear traffic here and get over right here and then uh we'll pull in, get plugged in, and we will start charging.
Right. I guess I was wrong. This is not at a hotel. It's actually at this gas station called Break Time. Uh I think our next charging stop is at a hotel.
So, that's where I got confused. But anyway, we've got a nice uh V3 Plus location. What is this? Eight stalls.
Yeah, eight stall supercharger.
So, we're plugged in and charging. And uh once again, I'm probably going to try and keep an eye on refrigerant temperatures. Um I guess we'll kind of Yeah, I'm just going to kind of continue to keep an eye on it, feel it out, see how things are going there, and uh hopefully all goes well. Fingers crossed. All right, so as I've been sitting here in the car, I noticed that the AC compressor noise changed and our temperature started spiking. So I actually got out of the car, closed the door so that the HVAC would shut down and the temperature continued to spike.
When I first noticed it was high, it was maybe a little over 70 C. It went up to over 100 C. And there you can see it's actually back up to over 100 again. It started to drop there just a little bit just before I turned the camera on and now it's spiking again. So yeah, it's definitely definitely acting up yet again. So I am going to probably just try and step away from the car for a bit and let it try to cool down, shut the compressor off and see if we can get that refrigerant temperature to come down. But that's definitely our problem.
Um, we do have air flow through the shutters. I can feel air flow through them. This one, as you can see, doesn't really work, but it's still allowing air to flow through it. And I can feel the air flow there. And the fan is running.
And same on this side. So, the fans are running on both sides, but they're not running at full speed, which is a little bit odd.
And yeah, you can see our temperatures are increasing even more. I kind of almost wonder if I were to unplug the car and end charging if uh if the compressor would shut down.
We don't really need to charge much more to make it to our next stop. We're probably honestly even charged enough at this point. Just about.
Yeah, we are.
I'm going to let it charge for just another minute or so, and then I'm going to unplug it, close up, let the car sit for just a just a minute or two, and then we'll get back in, and hopefully our temps come down. Actually, you can see they're already coming down a little bit.
And now I hear the compressor ramping up.
Oh, yep. So, the compressor is ramping down and then ramping back up. It's ramping down to try and get the temperature to come down, but then as when it ramps up, the temperature comes up again. So, all right. Well, I'm going to go ahead and unplug cuz I think we've got enough juice.
Let's monitor those temps here.
I don't know if this will stay alive.
This might shut down after a few minutes without the car on.
There you go. So, the temperature is starting to come down. I'm going to wait until it gets down, I don't know, probably to 60 or 70 C before I try and hop back in. So, I'll just give it a couple minutes, see what happens, and uh hopefully all goes well.
But we almost got a full charging session without it derating. Uh we didn't have any D-Rate at the last session. Um but this time around it started to get a little bit unhappy. So clearly we have an issue and I might have to go over some logged data stuff in toolbox to really find out the true cause of this.
Um or I could try and run another thermal system test at some point. But anyway, just a little bit more drama. But this is going to be probably the last real charging stop for the night. Our next stop in some place in Kentucky. Don't remember.
It's at a at a hotel. I'm going to book that hotel and we'll charge at that supercharger after we check in. And then um yeah, then that'll be that. So, we'll uh hit the road here in a few minutes.
We're going to hit the road here. Uh the temperatures didn't totally come down, but what it looks like is happening is that the cell temperatures have hit a high enough temperature that it's trying to use the refrigerant bypass to do pack cooling. And the pack is cooling, but at a relatively slow rate. Actually, now that I look, my refrigerant temp is coming back down again. So, I think we're in the clear here. Um, but yeah, basically the uh the system's got just got to try and cool itself down. I think if I get on the road, that'll help get a little bit more air flow going through the condensers and everything. And hopefully that'll help actually cool things down a little bit rather than it just sitting there trying to suck air through with the fans. Uh, but anyway, we don't have too much further to go. about an hour and a half.
Um, so we'll be getting into this stop pretty late.
U, but hopefully that sets us up pretty well for uh a decent arrival time tomorrow uh to the track in North Carolina. So, that's the plan. And hopefully we don't continue uh having to deal with the AC uh compressor issues acting up, but I guess we'll see as we continue along.
Anyways, let's keep going.
Folks, we're coming into our last stop.
So, we're staying at the Hampton Inn right here. Uh supercharger isn't quite as close as I Oh, no. It is right there.
Okay. Oh, there's two superchargers here. That's why I got thrown off. So, there's one on the other side of the big road here at this truck stop, but there's also one at the Hampton Inn. So, my plan here is basically the same as we did the other night where I've booked a stay at the hotel here and I'm just going to plug into the supercharger. Um, so anyway, that's kind of the plan. I'm going to go to the hotel here and get checked in and then once I'm finished with that, uh, we'll go plug into the supercharger and then I'll probably run in and go take a shower and stuff uh before we can uh, come on out. And then that'll be that. So, I'll see you guys here in just a minute. All righty. All checked into the hotel here. I've got the car plugged into the supercharger back here. Uh these are just old V2 superchargers. You can see the the old style cabinets back there. I'm sure that whatever supercharger is across the road over there at the truck stop called Hu, they're probably V3s or 3.5s. Not sure which. Uh but these will do just fine for our purposes. Of course, we can't even max these out with this car. Uh, but yeah, I'm just going to go uh bring my stuff into the hotel, probably take a shower, and then I'll just come out and unplug it when I'm done. So, probably not going to film any of that. So, I will see you guys tomorrow. Howdy, folks. Good morning. It's just about time to hit the road. I've moved the car back over here to the supercharger and I'm going to plug it in uh just for the next little bit. Um, and then I'm going to go grab breakfast in the hotel. Uh, and I'll show you guys why I want to do that. First, we'll go ahead and actually get plugged in.
But the reason that I want to do that, we're sitting at about 85%, which is what it charged to before I stopped last night. But I want to try and get to a further away supercharger than where it wants us to stop, which is Mont Juliet, Tennessee. We'll end up there with 30%. However, if we stop at Cooksville, or do I already have Cooksville on here?
Maybe I do.
Yeah, I do have that on there already.
So, let's just go remove charging stops.
Come on. Yeah. So, you can see it would put us in Cooksville with 2%. Um, which of course arriving that low kind of screws up our charge curve, which is why I want to try and arrive a little bit further along. But if I just plug the car in for, you know, the next 15 or 20 minutes while I go grab a bite to eat from the hotel lobby here, uh, we should have plenty of juice hopefully to, uh, to make that stretch. So, that's the idea. Anyway, I'm going to go check out, grab a bite to eat, and then we'll hit the road.
All righty, folks. So, we just hopped off the freeway here in Cooksville, Tennessee. We've got about a mile and a half off the freeway here that we've got to go to get to the supercharger here.
Uh, but we'll get over there, get plugged in, and get charging up.
Hopefully, we don't have any more issues with the AC. It's a little bit cooler right now than it was when we started to have some issues yesterday. So, hopefully everything goes well. All righty. We're plugged in and charging here. Starting to ramp up. Uh got a nice uh Hummer over here. This is actually a V2 station though, so they wouldn't be able to charge here. Um and unfortunately, it's pretty full, so we're probably going to see some reduced charging speeds because of that. But we'll get charging up here, and our next stop is going to be in Knoxville.
So, yeah, we'll get going. And I don't know what we'll get for peak speeds, but it probably won't be a whole lot. Unless the whoever I'm sharing the post here with might be derated, but nope. Looks like we're only going to get about 90 kW. So, slower charging speeds.
We'll see if it ramps up if the person next to me leaves, but there were no open spots where it would be staggered enough to not have to share power, unfortunately. So, it is what it is. All right, perfect. Well, the Model 3 that was charging next to us just left. So now we are getting full speeds.
So yeah, that should reduce our charging time a little bit. We've only got about another 5 minutes to go here. And uh I haven't been keeping up with the AC speeds. I actually ran into the store real quick uh to use the bathroom there. And let's see if we pull up scan my Tesla.
Let's see what we get.
I don't want to look at the cell map. I want to look at temperatures.
So, what's our refrigerant temp going to be?
Maybe if it'll load the data. Sometimes it takes a minute for some of these data points to load in.
There we go. Yeah, 58 C. So, that's typically what it should be. Usually, it's going to be around 60C, but when when it starts spiking, that's uh when it becomes an issue. So, anyway, it looks like we're good for now. And uh I don't think that we'll have a problem with this charging session since we really don't have to charge for that much longer. Um but as always, I'll be keeping an eye on things and I'll let you guys know when we're hitting the road. All righty. I've just unplugged and we are hitting the road. So, next stop will be Knoxville and uh yep, I'll see you guys there.
Don't baby me.
We're hopping off the freeway here in Knoxville, Tennessee to our supercharger stop. So, we're going to go on Peppermill Road here, it looks like. And uh yeah, I'll see you guys when we're getting plugged in. All right, so we're going to plug in here. We got some good V V3 superchargers here, so we should get full power.
station is a little bit busy, but not too bad. It's about half full.
All right, I heard the contacttor's closed. We should be ramping up. I'm going to see if I can go find something to eat and I'll let the car charge here in the meantime. This is going to be a pretty longish charging session. And then uh after this, we'll finally be entering North Carolina. Of course, we still have a ways to go. All right. All right. Well, I got a burger from Five Guys and the chargers emptied out pretty much while I was there, but we're all finished charging and ready to move on.
North Carolina, here we come.
Don't.
>> All righty, folks. We have officially entered North Carolina. Actually, a fair ways back. Um, lots of construction here on I40. Um, especially like crossing over the uh the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. Uh, but we're here and uh this is our next charging stop. This is in Old Fort and it's at this Stuckies gas station which appears to be defunct.
I don't know if the gas pumps still work or not, but the convenience store is definitely all closed up, but we're going to get plugged in here and charge up.
And this is going to be our second to last charging stop. We still have a long ways to go. I think in total it's going to be well, my map just went away there, but I think we've still got well over 300 miles to go, maybe even close to 350.
Um, but in any case, we will continue along our route, get back into the supercharger here.
Boom.
All right.
Uh oh, that's to the next supercharger is 152 miles. Yeah. Anyway, I think it's over 300 miles we have to go.
But we'll get plugged in and charge up.
Not much to do here, but uh yeah, we'll just hang out here until the next stop along the route, I believe.
Yeah. So, the car wants us to charge here for quite a while. Do we have other charging infrastructure along the way?
We do.
We're probably almost better off to stop two more times instead of just once.
I don't know. I'll look around at the options and see what I can come up with if this is the best route or if we can do something else that makes more sense.
All right, we're getting ready to leave Old Fort here.
I opted to keep this stop short, which and add a closer charging stop, which I think was a good plan cuz it's definitely a little bit hotter today.
Bit more thermal load, and it was getting to the point where the uh um refrigerant temperatures were getting pretty high and starting to spike. So, I think that that's going to be the plan from here out is to try and keep the stop short. I'll probably even add one more stop after we get to Clemens.
Um, just to just to keep the stops as, you know, on the shorter side so that we don't overheat the compressor. I mean, at this point, we're we're almost home free essentially. Uh, but even now, you can probably hear the condenser fans are kicking in real hot. the cell temperatures. The the big issue is I think when it gets to the point that the cell temperatures start to um come up where it starts to request pack cooling, that's kind of what's overloading the uh the refrigerant system. So anyway, at some point I'll have to uh do some diagnostics and figure out what's actually going on, but that'll be a lot easier to do while not on the road. Perhaps you'll even see a video on that on out of spec renew. Uh but in any case, we are hitting the road and uh I'll see you guys when we get to Clemens.
All righty, folks. We're rolling into Clemens, North Carolina here. Little bit lower than expected. I'm at 6%, but that's all good. Um, let's see. I think we're going to make a right here and then a left just shortly up the street here and we'll get charging up here. And uh like I said, I opted to do two shorter stops rather than some longer stops just because things are getting a little bit warmer here and I don't want to overheat the compressor here kind of at the last minute. So, we're just going to play it on the safe side. Do some shorter stops.
And uh let's see how long are we going to charge here for.
Navigation says that Tesla wants me to charge here for 15 minutes. So yeah, I guess uh I guess we'll be here for about 15 minutes, give or take. So uh I'm actually in the wrong turn lane.
I need to turn a little further up here.
All right. Well, I'll see you guys at the Charger. All right. All right, we're pulling into the Charger here and uh there's a new Nissan Leaf.
First one I think that I've actually seen in the wild.
So, that's pretty sweet. We'll get backed in, get plugged in, and then we can finally make it to our destination.
All right, we're going to plug in here.
We got this totally slammed out Model 3 there.
I'm assuming it's on airbags.
Uh but anyway, we'll get charged up here for the next 15 minutes or so and then we'll hit the road. I put in Maybane. Not sure if I'm pronouncing that right. Mane. But that's going to be our last stop.
At least that's what I put in here.
That's kind of the last thing on this stretch here. Unless we wanted to go a lot further, in which case, yeah, I think that this one makes sense. So, that'll be our next stop and then uh we'll uh head around the other way. All right. I already kind of overcharged here, but we are good to go.
The compressor has definitely ramped up in speed, but no signs of it really quite overheating yet.
And now it's ramping down, of course, after I unplugged. So, I don't know. I'd be kind of curious to experiment with this a little bit after we're finished with this trip and see if I can get it to fail again cuz now I kind of almost wonder if it was just kind of a one-time deal and then screwing around with the relays and stuff, I think, is what caused the issues the second time.
But, I haven't actually gotten it to overheat again.
It hasn't actually gotten to that point yet.
Um anyway, yeah, we're back on the road.
Next stop is going to be that one in Nain at the Sheets. And uh that one's also going to be pretty short stop. And then after that, we're home free.
All righty, folks. We're pulling into our last charging stop here in Maybane, Mibbane, however it is that you want to see it.
But it's just across the street over here at the sheets.
So, we're going to pull in there, get charging up for just a short little session, and then we'll be able to make it the rest of the way to the track. All right, we're pulling into the charger here and uh there's a new Nissan Leaf.
First one I think that I've actually seen in the wild.
So that's pretty sweet. We'll get backed in, get plugged in, and then we can finally make it to our destination. All righty. It's time for us to move on. Our very last charging stop here. I think I can actually move out of the parking lot this other direction. And that way we don't have to wait for traffic at the light.
Dang, that sun is super bright. Anyway, this was our last charging stop. Uh I've got an estimated arrival of 6%. So, we're going to we're going to bring it in low. Uh but it looks like we should be there probably about 900 p.m. And uh yeah, last leg of the journey. Here we go. All righty. We're actually taking a little bit of a detour. Uh, I guess uh Kyle and Scott are out at uh the ranch and that is on my way to the track. I'm actually just taking the exit here now and I guess I just picked up a couple new donkeys today. So, get to check them out, I guess. And yeah, so uh looks like we've got about 20 25 minutes to get there. And uh yeah, so just a little bit of a detour before we get to the track.
Here we go. So, for one, I definitely massacred a few bugs. It actually doesn't even really quite show up on camera as much as it does in person, but the whole front of the car is just absolutely coated.
Uh, I didn't have any further AC issues yesterday. I'm think I'm going to probably try and do some testing and see if I can get it to act up again. um and uh figure out the cause of the issue if uh if it does indeed come back. Uh but let's go ahead and look at our trip stats here.
And I'm probably going to have to turn off the music. There we go. Um so yeah, our total trip 3571 miles. We used 1171 kilwatt hours and we managed to be over 3 miles per kilowatt hour. 328 watt hours per mile is probably probably not quite 3.1, but it's certainly over three. Let me get my calculator out here.
Um calculator.
Let's do 1,00id 328.
Yeah. 3.04, call it 3.05 miles per kilowatt hour.
And uh yeah, we racked up a few more miles on the odometer. I really have not driven this car all that much, especially in the last 2 years. I just haven't really taken the car much of anywhere. Um I've only put about well, I guess now close to 75,000 miles on this car in the last five and a half years that I've owned it. So, I really don't drive the car all that often, but we got a few more miles racked up on it. Uh, the trip definitely um definitely showed some issues that have popped up with the car. Obviously, our AC compressor issue that I'll have to take care of. And I didn't really mention this before on the drive, but the cars also developed a bit of a vibration. It might be a rear CV axle, which one of them had a torn boot and I just never did anything about it.
It may have started to develop a vibration from that or maybe we lost some wheel weights or something as well.
Uh but yeah, have a little bit of a vibration that I'll have to look into.
And uh yeah, those are kind of the main things I guess. Um I think I mentioned in the beginning of the video that I had to repair my door harness before leaving on this trip and it did hold up throughout the entire trip, but it basically has a butt splice right in this flexible joint in the door. So, uh, it'll probably just end up being one of those, uh, temporary temporary unless it works fixes. Um, because, yeah, it's still working. So, I probably won't do anything about it unless it starts to act up again. Um, but yeah, that's pretty much it for this whole trip. So, thanks for watching.
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