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| Start of the #TeslaElectricStartupSuperTrip |
About an hour into the trip, when
I was desperate for a fancy pumpkin spice latte from the non-existent Starbucks
on the empty stretch of I-85 in northern NC, I saw a Chick-Fil-A sign that had
the small reminder “Closed Sundays”. I then
added the lack of Chick-Fil-A to my complaint, to which LJ reacted with a word
(or two) I won’t type here. His response
prompted me to ask/state, “So you forgot today was Sunday, right? And you were looking forward to
Chick-Fil-A?” Luckily we were still in
the southeast so we substituted Bojangles for Chick-Fil-A and went on our way.
The weather is already having an
effect on the journey. But by weather, I
primarily mean wind. The front that dropped
quite a bit of snow on the mountains of NC and West Virginia is moving
eastwards across our paths, bringing sustained winds of 10-15 mph and gusts up
to 25 mph. Nerd time: the efficiency of
the Tesla battery usage is primarily a function of effective airspeed, or how
fast the car is moving through the air.
On a still, warm day, the air is less dense, meaning that the Tesla’s
aerodynamic shape can move quite efficiently at the rated speed limits of 65-75
mph.* But in the cold morning air with
strong winds, we had to drive a bit slower than our planned speeds to make sure
that we get to the next Tesla SuperCharger.
We made our first Supercharger
stop at the Ashland exit on I-285 just north of Richmond. Most of the SuperCharger locations in the
eastern US are on the edges of suburban strip malls and this first stop was no
exception. While the car charged, we
walked across the parking lot to the Panera Bread where I worked on this blog
and LJ did the dynamic trip planning necessitated by the excess winds. We ended up spending almost an hour (from
9:25-10:15) hanging out there and getting an almost-full charge before LJ
climbed behind the wheel.
Charge Stop #2 was at the
Hagerstown Premium Outlets in—wait for it—Hagerstown, MD. Not a place that I’d want to be trying to
charge during the Christmas shopping season but perfectly fine on a clear and
cold Sunday in early November. The food
court allowed us to multi-task by eating lunch waiting on the car to get
partially charged.
I drove the next 100 miles or so to
get to Charge Stop #3 at Somerset, which is in a Wendy’s parking lot. The Wendy’s was proud enough of the
SuperCharger station that someone had posted this article from early January of
this year. Fun fact: the article says
that at that time, the next nearest Supercharger was in Connecticut. Apparently Tesla has been putting in
SuperChargers at a crazy-fast rate this year, which you can see at supercharge.info.
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| Somerset Supercharger story |
Fun car game—the Tesla has a
station on its Internet radio called the “101 Greatest Cover Songs of All
Time”. There are so many songs on this
station that I never knew were cover songs.
“Always Something There to Remind Me” by Naked Eyes was the most
surprising of the bunch for me.
Random technology reference—LJ is
Facebooking this trip with a hashtag he just made up called
#TeslaElectricStartupSuperTrip. I
decided to start using my mostly dormant Twitter account and tweeted that
hashtag.
Stop #4 is in a mall sprawl in
Cranberry, a random town on I-76 in PA.
Tesla SuperChargers are behind the Hampton Inn and a short walk away
from a Starbucks, where we killed about 20 minutes charging. Stop #5 is in Macedonia, OH, about 150 yards
away from an Outback Steakhouse. Since
it was 6:30, that was timed perfectly as a dinner stop. We pulled out of the parking lot with an
almost-full battery (242 rated miles) and LJ drove the last leg to Bowling
Green, OH. We managed to score a pretty
cheap night at a Hampton Inn using some of LJ’s copious number of Hilton
HHonors points.
Day 1 stats:
776.2 miles in about 15 hours and
15 minutes for an average trip speed of 51 mph
3 random food/drink stops while charging: no cost to charge but ~$12 in drinks and snacks
45 minutes of napping in the car
for me
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| End of Day 1 |
*I plead the fifth here and will
not comment upon actual speeds driven.
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