Hotel charging will be frustrating for a while.

[scottf200]

I just completed our annual pilgrimage to an unnamed lake in Idaho. 780 miles in one day in our Sienna with 250k miles. We normally do the return leg in 2 days but we are dropping our son off at college today. (last one)

So if I get my CT by 8/1/25 can I make the trip easily? This route goes over the continental divide a couple times and is 80 mph most of the way. I suspect I will be lucky to get 230 miles using 95% of the battery.

This plan would have to go perfectly. After work , drive to Idaho falls and supercharge while eating dinner to 80%. Drive another 190 miles to a hotel near Butte. So I am approximately half way at this point at 11 PM. I think this is were my plan might fall apart.

I assume hotel reservations will include a level 2 charging option by this time and I will have needed to schedule this months in advance, but I can do that.

Besides defective chargers which would really suck I think many hotels will utilize shared circuits. They will start with a 48 amp circuit or even a 30 amp which will get cut in half when 2 EV are plugged in. So if I leave by 7:00 AM. I won't have a full charge. I am guestimating 25 miles per hour of charging at this rate. So if I roll in with 10% remaining I might get to 85% capacity. So this is not much better than supercharging. Now if they make a 500 mile version right away you definitely won't be able to charge from 10-100% at the hotel. Very few will have dedicated 60 or 80 amp circuits. I guess the solution might be to pull into town and supercharge for 20 minutes before you plug in at the hotel, but more planning, timing and worrying.

So if and only if I manage to leave the hotel with a full charge I should be able to supercharge once at lunch and make it the rest of the way.

SO HOTELIERS. FIGURE THIS OUT. DIFFERENCIATE YOURSELVES. UPGRADE YOUR POWER SYSTEMS NOW. BE ABLE TO GUARRANTEE XX CHARGE RATES. MAYBE DO A CHARGING SERVICE WHERE YOU HAVE SOME DC CHARGING AND THEN MOVE THE CAR AT NIGHT TO TOP OFF ON A DEDICATED LEVEL 2 TO CHARGE TO 100%. WE NEED TO LEAVE YOUR JOINT WITH A FULL CHARGE AT A REASONABLE RATE.

As a side note, I am not sure if our Sienna will make it to 2025 , so if we replace it with something it will probably be a Plug in Hybrid like Highlander or something. Honestly I don't know if I can justify the Cybertruck with that in our driveway. My other car will be a model 3 or maybe even an Aptera so we will be 85% ICE free over the course of a year, but........maybe no Cybertruck for me.

I just picked a couple of town and got 747 miles as an example.
ABRP didn't show it to be any problem and I used 100% for the reference speed (doing speed limit). I'm very familiar with road tripping and have driven 15K in the past year or so.
It is very rare that I charge at hotels. When I stop overnight it is reasonably near a Supercharger.

Plenty of Supercharging spots already along that route.

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[tidmutt]

On some recent road trips over the summer in my Y I would charge at the supercharger closest to the hotel when I first arrived in that area and the hotel charger status was unknown. Once I established the reliability of the hotel charging I could adjust if I was staying in town.

Stopping for a quick top up at the supercharger didn't take much additional planning or stress, I simply added it as a stop in the Tesla nav. I might just top it up to 50-60% so I had plenty for any overnight loss due to Sentry mode and plenty to get to the next supercharger in the morning.

Totally agree that hotel charging, destination charging in general, needs to greatly improve though. I think Tesla should extend their service organization to level 2 chargers as well (assuming they don't have that option already) so the owner of the level 2 charger has ready access to servicing. Or make it automatic.

 

[Tinker71]

I just picked a couple of town and got 747 miles as an example.
ABRP didn't show it to be any problem and I used 100% for the reference speed (doing speed limit). I'm very familiar with road tripping and have driven 15K in the past year or so.
It is very rare that I charge at hotels. When I stop overnight it is reasonably near a Supercharger.

Plenty of Supercharging spots already along that route.

Last I heard supercharging past 80 percent is slow. At 300 miles of range 20 percent gives you 60 more miles. I like the thought of a dual purpose stop, sleep and 100 percent charge.

The more I think about it hotels with a supercharger and a 30 amp destination charger would be ideal. Either the hotel could manage it or you could. The US fleet is only 3% BEV now but will explode to 10% in 2 years. Lots of changes coming.

 

[scottf200]

Last I heard supercharging past 80 percent is slow. At 300 miles of range 20 percent gives you 60 more miles. I like the thought of a dual purpose stop, sleep and 100 percent charge.

The more I think about it hotels with a supercharger and a 30 amp destination charger would be ideal. Either the hotel could manage it or you could. The US fleet is only 3% BEV now but will explode to 10% in 2 years. Lots of changes coming.

Re: 100%
If I stay at a hotel near a Supercharger (parking lot or walking dist) then I only charge to 90% at night and then the next morning go move my car to the Supercharger and charge until we leave. ie. before breakfast or shower or whatever. Ditto when I'm home and leaving at 100% the morning we take off.

Re: > 80% at waypoints
a) That is certainly true. I only really do that on the road when we are eating ... then the next stop is shorter as well.
b) It is just one of 5 settings in ABRP to do different types of stops (see below).

Example by moving the blue dot to the right.

 

[kbolt]

I just completed our annual pilgrimage to an unnamed lake in Idaho. 780 miles in one day in our Sienna with 250k miles. We normally do the return leg in 2 days but we are dropping our son off at college today. (last one)

So if I get my CT by 8/1/25 can I make the trip easily? This route goes over the continental divide a couple times and is 80 mph most of the way. I suspect I will be lucky to get 230 miles using 95% of the battery.

This plan would have to go perfectly. After work , drive to Idaho falls and supercharge while eating dinner to 80%. Drive another 190 miles to a hotel near Butte. So I am approximately half way at this point at 11 PM. I think this is were my plan might fall apart.

I assume hotel reservations will include a level 2 charging option by this time and I will have needed to schedule this months in advance, but I can do that.

Besides defective chargers which would really suck I think many hotels will utilize shared circuits. They will start with a 48 amp circuit or even a 30 amp which will get cut in half when 2 EV are plugged in. So if I leave by 7:00 AM. I won't have a full charge. I am guestimating 25 miles per hour of charging at this rate. So if I roll in with 10% remaining I might get to 85% capacity. So this is not much better than supercharging. Now if they make a 500 mile version right away you definitely won't be able to charge from 10-100% at the hotel. Very few will have dedicated 60 or 80 amp circuits. I guess the solution might be to pull into town and supercharge for 20 minutes before you plug in at the hotel, but more planning, timing and worrying.

So if and only if I manage to leave the hotel with a full charge I should be able to supercharge once at lunch and make it the rest of the way.

SO HOTELIERS. FIGURE THIS OUT. DIFFERENCIATE YOURSELVES. UPGRADE YOUR POWER SYSTEMS NOW. BE ABLE TO GUARRANTEE XX CHARGE RATES. MAYBE DO A CHARGING SERVICE WHERE YOU HAVE SOME DC CHARGING AND THEN MOVE THE CAR AT NIGHT TO TOP OFF ON A DEDICATED LEVEL 2 TO CHARGE TO 100%. WE NEED TO LEAVE YOUR JOINT WITH A FULL CHARGE AT A REASONABLE RATE.

As a side note, I am not sure if our Sienna will make it to 2025 , so if we replace it with something it will probably be a Plug in Hybrid like Highlander or something. Honestly I don't know if I can justify the Cybertruck with that in our driveway. My other car will be a model 3 or maybe even an Aptera so we will be 85% ICE free over the course of a year, but........maybe no Cybertruck for me.

Be aware that hybrids cost more to repair and catch on fire more often than either pure vehicle type. A hybrid is essentially the worst of both worlds.

 

[Tinker71]

Re: 100%
If I stay at a hotel near a Supercharger (parking lot or walking dist) then I only charge to 90% at night and then the next morning go move my car to the Supercharger and charge until we leave. ie. before breakfast or shower or whatever. Ditto when I'm home and leaving at 100% the morning we take off.

Re: > 80% at waypoints
a) That is certainly true. I only really do that on the road when we are eating ... then the next stop is shorter as well.
b) It is just one over 5 settings in ABRP to do different types of stops (see below).

Example by moving the blue dot to the right.

 

[Tinker71]

Thanks. I bought a model 3. But I have only supercharged for 7 minutes total over 9000 miles. I need to play around with it some more. That looks like you have the full speed limit plugged in and it isn't too bad. Stretching the legs every hour and a half is not a bad idea either. Maybe the destination charger isn't an absolute requirement.

 

[scottf200]

Thanks. I bought a model 3. But I have only supercharged for 7 minutes total over 9000 miles. I need to play around with it some more. That looks like you have the full speed limit plugged in and it isn't too bad. Stretching the legs every hour and a half is not a bad idea either. Maybe the destination charger isn't an absolute requirement.

It is unclear if you have used ABetterRoutePlanner.COM (aka ABRP). They have free version. You can learn a LOT by playing with it and settings. It takes into account actually speed limits of roads as well as elevation.

You can also experiment with ABRP settings by adjusting/comparing to what your TM3 says. ie. go to your car at whatever SOC % it currently is and put in a destination. Take a picture of the resulting route and stops. Now go to ABRP on your PC/etc and "duplicate" it (ie. starting SOC% and Wh/mi as a couple of obvious examples). HTH

 

[Tinker71]

Be aware that hybrids cost more to repair and catch on fire more often than either pure vehicle type. A hybrid is essentially the worst of both worlds.

I used to buy cars and plan on driving them for 15 years But I leased my M3. I think it was a wise decision, especially if the Highland price drops to less than $27k with incentives.

Same with a plug in hybrid. Max the little battery every commute and return it in 3 years. I think performance will go up and price will stay flat over the next couple years so buying won't make sense and I don't have to worry about long term maintenance or depreciation.

 

[Clat]

Anyone else curious about this unnamed lake? @Tinker71 is it awesome and you don’t want more people showing up?

 

[Crissa]

Getting to 80% without spending time going to a Supercharger means being thirty minutes to an hour further down the road.

-Crissa

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