Great seeing the trip back from your eyes! What a fun trip. Need to do something like this again! Maybe Full Self Brian will be a little more mature by then. :)
I'm afraid the engineers may have reached a local maximum on FSB, but there may be point releases. 🤣 Would definitely do it again, thanks again for everything! I know it was a huge load off of Ellie's mind knowing I wasn't doing those drives alone.
Another fun video, Brian! One interesting video collaboration you could do with Jim is to do a moderate ranged trip, maybe 400 miles or so which can either be a big loop around your state/neighboring states, or a long straight drive like going through North or South Dakota, and test out the "supercharger hopping" method. You can explain to people what it is and how it saves time in the long run because you're riding the charging curve and charging fast every time you stop. One of you would just charge exactly as the Tesla vehicle tells you, going only to the ones it says to go to, and charging for exactly as long as it suggests. This method is to show people that are worried about not having enough charge that they can trust the car's judgment on how much charge they'll need and don't have to think too hard about it, especially in light of the issues EV's and lots of Teslas were encountering in Chicago during a polar vortex in mid-January 2024. The other one could stop at most if not all the superchargers along the way, and then leave as soon as the car says you'll reach the next supercharger with 5-15% battery. I know A Better Route Planner can display this theoretically too. But it'd be fun to compare and contrast a real world test, and see how much faster the supercharging method is, barring unforeseen problems like all the superchargers being full, or you get stuck in heavy traffic trying to reach a supercharger that's far off the main interstate. On my own trips in my Model Y it usually meant I left at around 50-65% instead of 80%. In some cases I'd skip certain superchargers if they were really far away from the interstate, such as Cheyenne, WY and Sioux Falls, SD.
@@brianriebedriveselectric Ooh, another one I just thought would be interesting. Brandon Flasch mentioned that at a V3 supercharger, the cabinets are linked and can assist other cabinets with power if they're not being used at the time but several Teslas are charging at the other stalls. I think you mentioned something along the lines of this too in one of your older videos, where there would be tremendous power demand if all of them were being used and outputting 250 kW on each stall. So the topic of this video is, "what happens if all of the V3 supercharger stalls were plugged in at the same time by Teslas who had between 5-10% battery?" Would all of them get 250 kW, or would the superchargers slow some cars down while giving others the full 250 kW speeds and then split the power in a similar fashion to the older V1/V2 where it splits the power but gives the lower state of charge Tesla more power until they're more full? Obviously this one would be harder to organize and coordinate as you'd need to get enough volunteers to do this, and you may want to wait until warmer weather and hopefully do this in the evening or even later at night when there's less demand for superchargers so as not to inconvenience other Tesla drivers who may need the charge. This would be fun to do too on V4's once Tesla installs the hardware needed to make them capable of 350+ kW.
Great trip! Shows both the ease and comfort of making a long trip with Tesla and some of the deficiencies of sites without 24/7 facilities, still at 150kW power levels, or just plain a bit too far to make it without a longer charge session. I think your point about how comfortable it is to road trip an EV should be emphasized. I understand that some want to simply get in their vehicle and go 400-500 miles in a sitting, but I dont think I've ever been that driver. Now, with kids on board, there's no way we could ever get beyond 200 miles without a comfort break! The quieter running and smooth ride also make a big difference over hundreds of miles. I did 100+ miles in the Volt recently and came to dread the moment it ran out of battery charge and switched over to the engine... "rattle anxiety", I suppose you'd call it. Thanks again for the excellent content out of this epic trip!
Thanks Steve! 24/7 facilities would have made a couple of those stops much easier. Hopefully that's more emphasized in future developments as they have to compete with places like the Pilot/Flying J installs where there's a little more for travelers. I love the 'rattle anxiety' term. Comfort is a huge benefit. In another reply I was mentioning that we could have done the trip faster in our 2008 Prius, but the experience would have been considerably worse. Plus the stops forced us to switch drivers before either of us got dangerously tired. Also, as you mentioned there's no way I could have gone much faster if this had been a family trip no matter what we were driving.
Great show as always. Reminds me of my first road trip in a Model 3 LR. Our Son-in Law in LA took delivery of his car on a Saturday in March of 2019 and had to be back in Atlanta for work on Monday so he flew Lana and I to LA and we drove his car to Atlanta for him. My test drive of a Tesla was 2100 miles. Took us five days but we didn't drive more than 500 miles per day. No issues other than I didn't pay attention to the car's navigation recommendation and drove on to Quartzite, AZ for the first charge stop. Was down to 15 miles of range and the car had sent an alarm to both my daughter and son-in-law. We were charging by the time they called but didn't do that again! Crossing Texas from west to east was too much of the same thing for way too long. Otherwise, was a very uneventful trip and I was hooked. We took delivery of our Model Y in July of 2020. No regrets other than I wish I would have bought the white interior. After over three years and 46K miles, I still look for excuses to drive it. BTW, he flew us to Atlanta a week before Christmas of 2019 and we drove it back to LA when his production in Atlanta was finished. Texas is still Texas but my favorite charge stop is at Lindale, TX.
Wow, an epic first test drive, and then to do it again later in the year, incredible! Crossing Texas sideways is a challenge in anything. Glad it got you hooked though!
Loved the vid. Here in the SE, I find SCs are mostly in either strip malls or anchor malls. Your trip had lots of much better stops with attached amenities. Seems like Tesla is starting to add SC locations with amenities in mind. Also, love seeing that huge Tulsa one again. Thx for the vid. I enjoyed watching.
Thanks Walter! It seems like the Supercharger rollout has gone in 3 phases. 1st, wherever they could convince someone to add them (why so many early V2s are wedged behind strip malls or hotels). 2nd, as they gained some clout, Big Malls and retailers, but now some of those malls are closed and retailers aren't always open 24/7. 3rd and current, Better travel plazas with more amenities, open 24/7 as the ideal, but also anywhere they can add them to grow the network. So the last couple installed in MN are in smaller towns in gas station lots, but it's at least filling gaps.
Thanks Paul! Yeah, that was a lot of driving and not much sleep that week. 😄 You can definitely hear it in the clips when one of us has just been sleeping.
Sure, tough to do in text here, so I’ll do a video on it so you can see an example. But basically let the car plan the route, but then look at its choices and see if there are really deep/long charges. If you can nix those in favor of charging more often at stops that are right off the highway and will start at lower states of charge where the battery will add mileage faster you can save overall time. For example, in this video we stopped at Denison TX for just over an hour to get to 100% because there was nothing on the route until Tulsa. A good chance for us to get a nap, but most of that time was charging between 80 and 100%. If there had been a supercharger midway we could have unplugged after 20-25 mins, jumped to the next one and done 20-25 mins there. It’s an extra stop, but would have shaved 20-30 minutes off of our overall time. We used that strategy best in Iowa before dropping Jim off when we had 3 consecutive short stops (Des Moines, Grinnell, Cedar Rapids) but it was faster than one long charge to 100% in Des Moines. I hope that makes sense. Again, a good topic for another video. Thanks for the idea!
It is a little weird to get used to. They had some reasons they saw it as an advantage. I can't recall the reasons, but the Lytehorse rep talked about it in the interview Zac & Jesse did on the Now You Know Channel. I think one of the reasons was it made it harder for the vehicle to roll over on the driver or the driver to get pinned beneath it. I don't know how valid that is, I was in a motorcycle accident years ago and stay away from this stuff as a general rule. It took a lot of peer pressure for me to try these.
That would drive me crazy. Can't we just have a really cheap, simple, easy to repair electric car for local driving, and keep our petrol cars for longer trips? There is no way I'm ever buying a long range EV. Yikes.
Sure, that’s one way to do it. Our other car is a Prius which could have covered the distance faster and only slightly more expensive than charging (had I been paying for charging). But the Model Y is much more enjoyable to drive and on a week like this with so much driving it was nice to get out every couple hours to stretch & wake up a bit. Especially toward the end it was good to have set spots to switch drivers as we got more and more tired. With adults only a hybrid would be faster, but usually I’m traveling with my daughter who needs longer at stops than the car, so there’s no difference. More range would always be great and give you more options, we’ll probably see ranges go up in the next few years and more charging put in making it easier all around.
@@brianriebedriveselectric How much were you paying for charging. At 30 cents per kwh that's about 75 dollars more than it would cost in my Camry. Happy you had a good trip, even though I was cringing with range anxiety. LOL
@@spuriouseffect I've got free supercharging from the referral program right now, so unfortunately I don't have an accurate cost for what it would have cost for this trip. I wish I did because I like to do that comparison with the Prius. I know I have done road trips where the Prius would have edged out the Model Y on cost, but day to day driving when I can charge at home is way cheaper. It'll be a while before a full EV works for everyone or is a better cost option, especially if you can't charge at home. Thanks for watching!
Great seeing the trip back from your eyes! What a fun trip. Need to do something like this again! Maybe Full Self Brian will be a little more mature by then. :)
I'm afraid the engineers may have reached a local maximum on FSB, but there may be point releases. 🤣 Would definitely do it again, thanks again for everything! I know it was a huge load off of Ellie's mind knowing I wasn't doing those drives alone.
Another fun video, Brian! One interesting video collaboration you could do with Jim is to do a moderate ranged trip, maybe 400 miles or so which can either be a big loop around your state/neighboring states, or a long straight drive like going through North or South Dakota, and test out the "supercharger hopping" method. You can explain to people what it is and how it saves time in the long run because you're riding the charging curve and charging fast every time you stop.
One of you would just charge exactly as the Tesla vehicle tells you, going only to the ones it says to go to, and charging for exactly as long as it suggests. This method is to show people that are worried about not having enough charge that they can trust the car's judgment on how much charge they'll need and don't have to think too hard about it, especially in light of the issues EV's and lots of Teslas were encountering in Chicago during a polar vortex in mid-January 2024.
The other one could stop at most if not all the superchargers along the way, and then leave as soon as the car says you'll reach the next supercharger with 5-15% battery.
I know A Better Route Planner can display this theoretically too. But it'd be fun to compare and contrast a real world test, and see how much faster the supercharging method is, barring unforeseen problems like all the superchargers being full, or you get stuck in heavy traffic trying to reach a supercharger that's far off the main interstate.
On my own trips in my Model Y it usually meant I left at around 50-65% instead of 80%. In some cases I'd skip certain superchargers if they were really far away from the interstate, such as Cheyenne, WY and Sioux Falls, SD.
Thanks! That would be a fun and informative video. I’ll see if we can get something like that done. Thanks for the good idea!
@@brianriebedriveselectric Ooh, another one I just thought would be interesting. Brandon Flasch mentioned that at a V3 supercharger, the cabinets are linked and can assist other cabinets with power if they're not being used at the time but several Teslas are charging at the other stalls. I think you mentioned something along the lines of this too in one of your older videos, where there would be tremendous power demand if all of them were being used and outputting 250 kW on each stall.
So the topic of this video is, "what happens if all of the V3 supercharger stalls were plugged in at the same time by Teslas who had between 5-10% battery?" Would all of them get 250 kW, or would the superchargers slow some cars down while giving others the full 250 kW speeds and then split the power in a similar fashion to the older V1/V2 where it splits the power but gives the lower state of charge Tesla more power until they're more full?
Obviously this one would be harder to organize and coordinate as you'd need to get enough volunteers to do this, and you may want to wait until warmer weather and hopefully do this in the evening or even later at night when there's less demand for superchargers so as not to inconvenience other Tesla drivers who may need the charge.
This would be fun to do too on V4's once Tesla installs the hardware needed to make them capable of 350+ kW.
Great trip! Shows both the ease and comfort of making a long trip with Tesla and some of the deficiencies of sites without 24/7 facilities, still at 150kW power levels, or just plain a bit too far to make it without a longer charge session.
I think your point about how comfortable it is to road trip an EV should be emphasized. I understand that some want to simply get in their vehicle and go 400-500 miles in a sitting, but I dont think I've ever been that driver. Now, with kids on board, there's no way we could ever get beyond 200 miles without a comfort break! The quieter running and smooth ride also make a big difference over hundreds of miles. I did 100+ miles in the Volt recently and came to dread the moment it ran out of battery charge and switched over to the engine... "rattle anxiety", I suppose you'd call it.
Thanks again for the excellent content out of this epic trip!
Thanks Steve! 24/7 facilities would have made a couple of those stops much easier. Hopefully that's more emphasized in future developments as they have to compete with places like the Pilot/Flying J installs where there's a little more for travelers.
I love the 'rattle anxiety' term. Comfort is a huge benefit. In another reply I was mentioning that we could have done the trip faster in our 2008 Prius, but the experience would have been considerably worse. Plus the stops forced us to switch drivers before either of us got dangerously tired. Also, as you mentioned there's no way I could have gone much faster if this had been a family trip no matter what we were driving.
Great show as always. Reminds me of my first road trip in a Model 3 LR. Our Son-in Law in LA took delivery of his car on a Saturday in March of 2019 and had to be back in Atlanta for work on Monday so he flew Lana and I to LA and we drove his car to Atlanta for him. My test drive of a Tesla was 2100 miles. Took us five days but we didn't drive more than 500 miles per day. No issues other than I didn't pay attention to the car's navigation recommendation and drove on to Quartzite, AZ for the first charge stop. Was down to 15 miles of range and the car had sent an alarm to both my daughter and son-in-law. We were charging by the time they called but didn't do that again! Crossing Texas from west to east was too much of the same thing for way too long. Otherwise, was a very uneventful trip and I was hooked. We took delivery of our Model Y in July of 2020. No regrets other than I wish I would have bought the white interior. After over three years and 46K miles, I still look for excuses to drive it. BTW, he flew us to Atlanta a week before Christmas of 2019 and we drove it back to LA when his production in Atlanta was finished. Texas is still Texas but my favorite charge stop is at Lindale, TX.
Wow, an epic first test drive, and then to do it again later in the year, incredible! Crossing Texas sideways is a challenge in anything. Glad it got you hooked though!
Loved the vid. Here in the SE, I find SCs are mostly in either strip malls or anchor malls. Your trip had lots of much better stops with attached amenities. Seems like Tesla is starting to add SC locations with amenities in mind. Also, love seeing that huge Tulsa one again. Thx for the vid. I enjoyed watching.
Thanks Walter! It seems like the Supercharger rollout has gone in 3 phases. 1st, wherever they could convince someone to add them (why so many early V2s are wedged behind strip malls or hotels). 2nd, as they gained some clout, Big Malls and retailers, but now some of those malls are closed and retailers aren't always open 24/7. 3rd and current, Better travel plazas with more amenities, open 24/7 as the ideal, but also anywhere they can add them to grow the network. So the last couple installed in MN are in smaller towns in gas station lots, but it's at least filling gaps.
Great video! You can hear the fatigue in your voice as the hours passed by.
Thanks Paul! Yeah, that was a lot of driving and not much sleep that week. 😄 You can definitely hear it in the clips when one of us has just been sleeping.
Nice recap, I love to road trip. Good job
Thanks Dave! Looking forward to more trips in 2024!
Mn to Austin is about 17hrs by gas car. 8hrs for reroutes and charging is a fair amount. Thanks for bringing us along!
Thanks for watching!
“I charged there!” @ all the stops Tulsa and north.
🤣
Epic! Do Memphis next!
Thanks! Any reason for Memphis or is it just the Freebird of road trip destinations? Would be fantastic to get shots of Joan in Graceland.
@@brianriebedriveselectric Head to Graceland and wear a leather jumpsuit for the Brian Riebe Comeback Special!
@@thefivecount Now we're talkin! TCB 🌩
Thanks. Can you explain how to go about optimizing that trip back north that saved you 2 hours.
Sure, tough to do in text here, so I’ll do a video on it so you can see an example. But basically let the car plan the route, but then look at its choices and see if there are really deep/long charges. If you can nix those in favor of charging more often at stops that are right off the highway and will start at lower states of charge where the battery will add mileage faster you can save overall time. For example, in this video we stopped at Denison TX for just over an hour to get to 100% because there was nothing on the route until Tulsa. A good chance for us to get a nap, but most of that time was charging between 80 and 100%. If there had been a supercharger midway we could have unplugged after 20-25 mins, jumped to the next one and done 20-25 mins there. It’s an extra stop, but would have shaved 20-30 minutes off of our overall time. We used that strategy best in Iowa before dropping Jim off when we had 3 consecutive short stops (Des Moines, Grinnell, Cedar Rapids) but it was faster than one long charge to 100% in Des Moines. I hope that makes sense. Again, a good topic for another video. Thanks for the idea!
That stand-up thing is Goofy as heck. Why can't we just sit on a quad like normal?
It is a little weird to get used to. They had some reasons they saw it as an advantage. I can't recall the reasons, but the Lytehorse rep talked about it in the interview Zac & Jesse did on the Now You Know Channel. I think one of the reasons was it made it harder for the vehicle to roll over on the driver or the driver to get pinned beneath it. I don't know how valid that is, I was in a motorcycle accident years ago and stay away from this stuff as a general rule. It took a lot of peer pressure for me to try these.
Where is Ellie?
She had to work & hold down the fort at home. She’ll be on the next trip heading north.
That would drive me crazy. Can't we just have a really cheap, simple, easy to repair electric car for local driving, and keep our petrol cars for longer trips? There is no way I'm ever buying a long range EV. Yikes.
Sure, that’s one way to do it. Our other car is a Prius which could have covered the distance faster and only slightly more expensive than charging (had I been paying for charging). But the Model Y is much more enjoyable to drive and on a week like this with so much driving it was nice to get out every couple hours to stretch & wake up a bit. Especially toward the end it was good to have set spots to switch drivers as we got more and more tired. With adults only a hybrid would be faster, but usually I’m traveling with my daughter who needs longer at stops than the car, so there’s no difference. More range would always be great and give you more options, we’ll probably see ranges go up in the next few years and more charging put in making it easier all around.
@@brianriebedriveselectric How much were you paying for charging. At 30 cents per kwh that's about 75 dollars more than it would cost in my Camry. Happy you had a good trip, even though I was cringing with range anxiety. LOL
@@spuriouseffect I've got free supercharging from the referral program right now, so unfortunately I don't have an accurate cost for what it would have cost for this trip. I wish I did because I like to do that comparison with the Prius. I know I have done road trips where the Prius would have edged out the Model Y on cost, but day to day driving when I can charge at home is way cheaper. It'll be a while before a full EV works for everyone or is a better cost option, especially if you can't charge at home. Thanks for watching!