Tesla Model S Cross-Country Trip, Without (Many) Superchargers: Days 1-3

With our daughter off to college, my wife and I recently became empty-nesters.

Suddenly, there was no more reason to endure the wretched winters in New York’s Hudson Valley.

California, here we come: We rented a cottage for February and March in the small beach town of Carpinteria, an hour north of Los Angeles.

Fly or drive?

For Lisa, the answer was easy: fly.

But for me, the opposite answer was just as obvious: I would drive our Tesla Model S out there to meet her.

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We’d save two months’ car rental in California, and I wouldn’t be forced to drive some wheezing, clunky gas-burner out there.

I could bring along my road bike and golf clubs.

And the trip out would be an adventure, a chance to see the country and visit some friends along the way—as well as a challenging test of the Model S for long cross-country journeys.

Choosing the route

Obviously, I would take advantage of Superchargers, the ultra-quick (up to 135 kW) Tesla DC fast-charging stations that can refill half a Model S battery charge—good for 100 miles or so—in as little as 20 minutes.

But I quickly eliminated the one coast-to-coast route that's fully fitted out with Superchargers along its entire length. That route follows I-90 across South Dakota.

If there’s one state I didn’t want to be driving through in January, it’s South Dakota.

A middle route that follows I-70 is about 90-percent Supercharged. But it’s still subject to severe winter weather.

Hey, the whole point of this exercise was to escape the cold and snow, including the travel time during my relaxed road trip.

Go south, young man

The southern route I eventually chose—New York to LA via Charlotte, Atlanta, New Orleans, Austin, Oklahoma City, Albuquerque, and Flagstaff—offered the advantage of generally benign winter weather.

But it also added almost 1,000 miles to the journey. And it had three major Supercharger gaps that would force me to forage for kilowatt-hours at charging sites that would be painfully non-super.

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No problem. This was not a race. I figured it would take me a leisurely 10 days, with four stops to visit friends and relatives along the way.

With Superchargers proliferating at a brisk clip these days, it might even be my last chance to face the bracing challenge of cross-country Tesla travel sans Superchargers.

Piper Cub trip planning

Planning for a long trip in a Model S is nothing like planning for a regular car, of course.

In fact, it reminded me of a coast-to-coast flight I made many years ago as a private pilot in a 1946 Piper J-3 Cub.

That epic journey, at an average ground speed of about 60 mph, took nine days and 41 stops for gas.

Like the Cub trip, for the Model S I had to pick a specific destination for each trip leg, measuring distances carefully to assure it was within the real-world range of the vehicle. (Model S about 220 miles, Cub about 120 miles).

In both cases I had to take into account the wind, temperature, cruising speed, and elevation changes--all of which have major impacts on range.

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And in both cases I had to allow for a safety cushion, just in case. Because stuff happens, in the air and on the ground.

For the Tesla, I planned to start each leg with about a 50-mile cushion, gradually working it down to about 20 miles by the end.

Supercharger gaps

My route had three Supercharger gaps: 350 miles between Burlington, North Carolina, and Atlanta; 450 miles between Greenville, Alabama, and Lake Charles, Louisiana; and a daunting 835 miles between Corsicana, Texas, and Gallup, New Mexico.

(In fact, as this is being published a month or so after my arrival in California, two new Superchargers have come on line to help fill those gaps--and two more have begun construction.)