I have a Model 3 and have gone on multiple long-distance road trips (>1,000 mile) with it. It's an absolute pleasure to drive with AutoPilot. Plus, most people already stop every 3-4 hours for bathroom/food breaks anyway, so if you use the in-car nav system (Google Maps), it will make it so those stops are at superchargers. The supercharger stops are almost always in high-density places with plenty of restaurants and usually are ~30minutes which I've found is the perfect time to do all the bathroom/food purchases you would need for the next leg of the trip. Plus with Supercharger V3 rolling out in the next few months, those stops will shrink to just 15 minutes for 80% battery.
on longer trips it can be a bit annoying, having done a sixteen hundred mile round trip my advice is, travel when stuff is open. That was you will have something to do on the thirty to forty five minute charges. Fortunately for me my US route; mostly along I75 but crossed Ohio and back; meant the super chargers were located in shopping centers where some place to spend time was a simple walk across the lot
I know people love to say, we all stop for this, that, and the other thing, but the truth is on most longer trips most people just want to get to the end and adding stops of thirty minutes or more can impact a schedule. I cannot imagine it without access to the charging speed my TM3 can do let alone its range. Since a destination is not always guaranteed to have charging opportunities you are pretty much anchored to the closes SC.
with regards to AP. Love it, so nice to have a system always aware. my usage is to turn it on but act as if I were driving. it certainly has removed any panic issues where you take your eyes off the road and the situation changes badly.
Are there any problem on long trips if it is to some event that is drawing a lot of people?
A couple years ago, when I was planning a trip to the middle of some rural area to see a total solar eclipse, I checkout out of curiosity what the electric charger situation was to see what the trip would be like in an EV.
At the time the Tesla network was sparse enough in that area that you'd need to get pretty full charges to make it from charger to charger. After the eclipse you'd have everyone leaving at about the same time, and so arriving at chargers at about the same time, and so it seemed you might get some long lines.
30 minutes to charge isn't bad if you can plug the car in and go eat or use the bathroom while it charges. But if you have to wait for two or three cars ahead of you do their 30 minute charges, can you do something while you wait or do you have to stick with your car to move it up whenever the line moves?
In situations like this regular gas stations also can have lines, but usually you can drive a bit away from the main highway and find a less busy gas station.
> But if you have to wait for two or three cars ahead of you do their 30 minute charges, can you do something while you wait or do you have to stick with your car to move it up whenever the line moves?
This seems like an ideal use for self driving technology - park at the tail end of the queue and your car moves itself forward.
You can always have an attendant plugging and unplugging the cars (at the busiest stations where queuing is necessary), until that technology is ready.
Some gas stations still have pump attendants, after all!
I can't speak about the solar eclipse specifically (though, my drive in an ICE vehicle during that went from what should have been a 4 hour drive to 12 total), some events do cause backups at chargers.
Having done this drive after the eclipse (and beaten the wave of traffic back to Portland on US-26), using a Model S you might have been able to make it, definitely with the P85 battery pack and no AC (which was not necessary in Madras).
The main concern would be not getting trapped in traffic hell, like any other driver. Getting slightly north of Madclipse and other camps, then immediately getting on the road post-eclipse meant almost empty roads for us. Alternatively, waiting till that evening to leave worked for our friends.
> Getting slightly north of Madclipse and other camps, then immediately getting on the road post-eclipse meant almost empty roads for us
I was in that general area. I was in a farmer's field that had sold overnight parking spots for $50, and allowed sleeping in your car. Here's where it was [1].
I heard the first cars starting to leave the instant totality ended.
I waited until about 4 PM to leave, but still got seriously bogged down on 26 heading north only a mile or so away. It stayed bad through the reservation, then got pretty good until it turned to stop and go for large parts of the way through Mt. Hood National Forest. Cleared up well before Portland and was doing great up until Washington, at about 7 PM, where it was crappy most of the way to Tacoma. I'm on the west side of Puget Sound, so that's where I split off to 16, which was fine. It looked like 5 going from Tacoma to Seattle was still terrible...and this was something like midnight.
Ah, we left the campsite in Madras an hour before the eclipse, stopped off in Warm Springs for food and got north of there before the eclipse. Stayed in Portland the rest of the day (people to see and such), avoiding any traffic on I-5.
Unfortunately, it's not true. On a standard (US) home outlet (120volts), you charge a Model 3 at about 5 miles of range per hour. So, if I get home from dinner after work at 8:00pm, and have to leave for the office at 7:00am the next morning, my car only adds about 55 miles worth of charge.
As an example, I went for a longer drive on Saturday, and it took 37 hours to charge at home (right through Monday morning.)
(I live in a place where I'm currently unable to install a high-capacity charging outlet.)
My Model 3 adds 17km/h at 220V (EU). => 200 km range if you arrive at 6pm and leave at 8am. THis is not a full charge, but it is more than enough for my daily routine.
But I understand, there might be some use cases where this is not enough.
Random road trips? AutoPilot? Random stops at high-density places to get ready for the next leg of the trip?
Seriously, what kind of heaven do you people live in? I can't even travel 2 kilometers without getting lost in unhabitable middle of nowheres or being asked for a visa and turned back.
Driving from Dallas, Texas, to San Diego, California, is a three-day drive if you stop overnight, or 19+ hours if you drive without unnecessary stops. And that's only halfway across the USA, essentially horizontally. A drive from Seattle to Miami or San Diego to Portland, Maine, would be much longer.
The US Interstate Higherway System means that even on long stretches of road where nobody seems to live, the roads are still maintained, with stops every so often.
And of course, no visas or even passports required. Just a driver license if you're driving, or no ID at all if you're a passenger.
