Is Road Tripping a Tesla a Dream or a DISASTER? The Answer Actually Surprised Me!

[Music] um there's this kind of a scary pickup truck behind me that's been kind of circling what that's about it it actually starts hailing I might have to stop and pull up underneath the overpass hey guys I recently read two different articles and they were very different one said I road trip my Eevee and it was a complete disaster that was a model Y and the other one said I road trip 18 000 yes 18 000 miles in my EV and it was a dream that was an ionic five so is it a dream or is it a disaster road tripping an EV and that's a question I plan to answer because this is our long-term Tesla Model 3 Performance and Tommy who's behind the camera say hi Tommy hi guys just did a cannonball where he drove it basically from Disney all the way in Anaheim California to here in Florida and that video of course is coming up today and actually tomorrow and the next day Andre and I are driving non-stop from California to Florida in a new electric car to try to beat my dad and Nathan's record they set last year foreign I feel like it could take down a mig-22 right now if we're going to El Paso it says control your speed stay below 70 miles per hour to reach your destination so it thinks we're using too much energy basically 75 miles an hour and now we are completely stopped because we've been here for over an hour and nobody has moved and that exit looks to be closed it potentially means something really awful has happened it's really not a good thing went to bed in Texas and we woke up in Texas and it just never is I say we're not my calculations say we're right on the money so even with that two hour delay I think we still might take Victory today okay but now I get to drive this car 2053 miles back to Colorado and the question is is this going to be a dream or is it going to be a disaster now Tommy you are going to give me some tips on how to make this more of a dream and less of a disaster so why don't you show me I'll take the camera and show me the tips that you guys learned doing the Cannonball okay Across America I think that's a good plan you want to hop in Dad yeah let's hop in so your trip home is going to be a little different than our trip because Andre myself and our videographer Cole we drove non-stop from coast to coast we didn't stop to sleep we didn't stop at hotels we just stopped to charge um and to go pee basically whereas you're gonna stop for the night and you're gonna have a couple of days to do this trip but I think I still learned some valuable lessons on on how to road trip these cars effectively yeah tell me because I'm gonna need every bit of lesson I can well the first thing you need to know is that the Tesla Route Planner is very very effective so this is a in-car piece of software that looks at your trip in this case back to Boulder Colorado and tells you exactly where to stop and for how long so of course Tesla has thousands of superchargers throughout the US and the Tesla Route Planner looks at all the supercharger superchargers and determines where you need to stop and for how long um and then uh you know it calculates your trip based off that so let's look at my trip so I'm here basically in Marco Island Florida which is directly across from Miami if you guys are wondering on the Gulf Coast Southwest yep and I'm gonna drive through Atlanta right yep and then you can see all the different stops so you're going to stop in Brandon Florida then you're gonna stop in Lake City Florida then you head into Georgia you're going through Tennessee Kentucky Illinois for just a little bit and then you're heading west through Missouri and of course Kansas um and then back into Colorado now the nice thing is it tells you what percentage of charge you'll have when you arrive at each supercharger yeah and it also tells you how long you need to go and charge now what I found is that it does a pretty good job of finding a route and this route will definitely get you there and these percentages usually are pretty spot on but what I don't like is that sometimes if you look through here Dan it makes you stop for 45 minutes 45 minutes 55 minutes in Topeka Kansas and what is having you do there is essentially get a really deep charge into the battery which sounds fine until you realize that electric cars charge slower up top than you done low yeah so I'm starting with an 84 battery which is fine I don't need to be 100 no but my point here is that um if you're super charging right you really want only supercharge in my opinion to 50 60 percent because if you go over 60 speeds really slow down and then you just end up wasting a lot of time and so what you're saying is a charging curve on this particular Tesla is you get a lot of power right up front and then the deeper you go into the battery in other words the more percentage you put in the battery the less energy it's soaking up and the longer you're sitting there waiting so look at all the superchargers that it's having to avoid right the red Chargers are the ones you're going to the gray ones are just potential superchargers basically now let's look at some of these bigger stretches right like through Topeka Kansas in some of these stops it's having you stop for like 55 minutes where's Topeka here it is instead of stopping for 55 minutes in Topeka Kansas what I would do stop there for 15-20 minutes and then stop again in Abilene Kansas stop there for 15 minutes because that's a 250 kilowatt supercharger and then stopping Haze and stop there for 15 minutes so rather than doing this really long stretch where you have to wait nearly an hour to charge the car stay in the lower percentage of the battery range and then stop for less time so I find that that's to be a good tip now another good tip is you have to kind of be mindful about where it's guiding you so let's look at this supercharger here in Columbia so it's taking you here in Colombia but if you look at the stats on this charger you'll notice that is a 150 kilowatt charger which is pretty quick but not up to the potential what the car can do now if you drive just a few miles down the road to the other side of Columbia you'll notice there's this 12 stall which is rated at 250 kilowatts so why not drive just a little bit further down the highway granted this one's a little bit further off the highway but not too bad and charge much quicker than you would be if you had stopped here at this first supercharger so it's important to look at that or you can skip superchargers and go right to Concordia which is right on the highway and that's a 250. so you kind of got to be mindful of where it's guiding you and and what it's recommending like look at this one that in Topeka this is a great example in Topeka it's taking you to a 150 on the west side of town but if you go to the east side of town that right there's a 250. now I can see all the non-electric car people like screaming like why do I even need to deal with this because if I just used a gas car then you know it would be much simpler because there's a lot more gas stations but think of it this way um charging even at 46 cents which I think Tesla's charging that for kilowatt is still so much cheaper than filling up with gas for the same amount of mileage that you're covering so I think you know I was looking at the charges that you guys have every time you supercharged yeah it was like between 10 and 20 bucks every time Here's To be honest Eddie if you're super charging long distance like this it's really not that cheaper than gasoline it depends on the cost of gasoline yeah but it's pretty equal I mean because we were we were stopping for um 15 to 20 minutes being charged 10 to 20 yeah and honestly the amount of range we're getting is pretty similar to what we'd be paying for well if you guys are if you guys are wondering about that okay you can actually see can I show you that yeah it shows you the price per kilowatt hour and it's different on every station 33 cents 37 cents yeah because it's varies by state it varies by state it even though it's by utility that one's 35 right so it depends greatly on this one is actually um uh variable 16 to 84 right look at this one in Chattanooga 23 cents to a dollar 25 so it can vary a lot depending on the stall but if you charge at home it's a lot cheaper if you're road tripping I think you'll find it's not going to be that much cheaper than gasoline well you know if you're curious about that uh Tommy and Andre just finished the Cannonball and we're going to have all those stats in that video oh yeah so you know you can look at that for me I'm not trying to break a record uh I'm just trying to get home and I'm trying to kind of compare it to doing it in a gas powered car and seeing how you know painful or painless it is so is it a dream or you know is it um a disaster I'm about to find out over the next 2053 miles another thing I'll tell you here's another great example is having to stop in Lake City yeah where it's a 156 stall that's a really small kind of crummy station yeah if you go up the road to Jasper you get an eight stall 250. can you tell that you want to go there instead well what you can do is you just keep driving and then it'll rejoin you okay now the other thing too you'll notice is it's having you arrive um to these Chargers with 17 15 17 yeah don't be afraid to go lower than that you know if you show up at a charger with seven or eight percent it's still fine right and the the route planner so on the money with your percentage of state of charge you're going to be remaining with you can be really kind of liberal with how you um adjust your speed to bring that state of charge lower right here why don't you take the camera so guys um I'm about to start this road trip it's 10 o'clock here in Florida and uh I think it's supposed to take like uh gosh I forget how many hours but how many hours what it's like 30 hours 30 hours to get there so ideally I could do this in two days if I were in a gas powered car because it would take me a lot less time to actually fill up the tank I don't know if I can do it in two hours leaving here I mean in two days it might be a three day trip so um you know join me and you know I'm excited it's beginning of the trip let's see how I'm doing uh tonight after having driven the whole day and charging and driving and charging and driving and charging and driving which may sound unpleasant but actually I kind of like stopping after a couple hours especially when I'm by myself stretching my legs maybe getting something to drink so we'll see what that's like all right let's hit the road Tommy you're staying here actually you're flying back you're gonna beat me home because you're flying back tomorrow night so you should be home before I will even though you're leaving tomorrow afternoon all right Dad well safe journey off you go thanks dude [Music] all right I'm starting my journey it is uh 10 10 Eastern Time right now and um you know I've been doing a lot of thinking about electric cars and keep in mind we've owned as a company at least maybe a dozen now and that includes this is our fourth Tesla so we have Road tripped uh but not recently Tommy and I I drove a Porsche ticon from LA to Colorado we also drove this is quite interesting a mini electric car from Albuquerque back to Colorado that had about 100 miles of range 104 to be exact that was quite the trip but let's see if it's improved over those few years now this is the thinking I've been doing electric cars unfortunately have become political right it's no longer about what's the better technology but it's about what my political belief set is in America that would mean am I a Democrat or am I a Republican and for the most part if I'm uh this isn't 100 true but you know if I'm a republican then electric cars are un-American even though Tesla is American go figure uh and I got the right to drill for as much oil and burn as much of it in my big old Hemi V8 as possible and I'm being a little funny and satirical but you get the idea and if I'm a Democrat The Stereotype is we need to do something immediately because the world is on fire and I love hugging trees so electric cars are cleaner and there's been all this misinformation out there about where the minerals come from how hard it is to charge a car even those two articles how can you have two articles where one says it's a dream and the other one says it's a disaster right they're not articles that are meant to show you what it's like to actually drive an electric car even though ostensibly that's what they're saying or at least road trip what they are are articles meant for you to click on them that confirm your personal set of beliefs but I can tell you this if I were to say to you and now let's take out the electric versus internal combustion part just a car if I were to say to you hey I have a car that you can do three things in three three things in and I'm gonna tell you what those three things are number three you can fill it up at home you never have to go to a gas station ever again number two I like to go in the tfl order three two one number number two not only that but if you fill it up at home it's gonna cost you eighty percent less than it would cost you to fill it up at a gas station so it's eighty percent cheaper to operate and number three you'll never have to go to a dealership or hardly ever again because there's no maintenance there's no fluids to change now just one of those things would be a potential Game Changer a disrupter in the automotive world 20 years ago but three of them and I think whether you are you know somebody who loves the environment or somebody who loves V8s or somebody who loves both those three arguments which are basically safety and economic arguments are gonna rule the day because who doesn't want a vehicle that's cheaper to operate can be filled up at home and doesn't need any maintenance now you can make all the arguments you want about you know the rest of it but those three arguments alone to me represent the core of why I believe that electrification in the automobile world is the future now if you disagree with me I have no issues with that I'm not once again trying to get political here I have no interest in taking you know the V8 out of your cold dead garage I love the eights as you know we also own a raptor r ow I love v12s v16s even but as an everyday driver as something where it costs much less to operate and I don't have to deal with all of the you know baggage that comes along with stopping at a sketchy gas station at 10 o'clock at night in a neighborhood that I'm not familiar with like I said all three of those are potential game changers now does that mean it's easier to road trip I don't know but I think we're gonna find out and that's what this video is all about all right let's um check back with you guys in I don't know the first supercharger which according to my little uh thing here is let me look here isn't Brandon Florida uh at 12 58 when I'm down to 17 and I'm gonna have to check to make sure um that uh it's a 250 uh kilowatt charger and not the 150 in other words a version three not a version two and we could talk about that for all of you uh Tesla newbies out there which according to the latest news is going to be all you uh ladies and gentlemen who now own Fords and GMS because you're going to be using the Tesla Supercharger Network at some point which is much larger than the CCS Network so we'll talk about that when we get to it [Music] foreign all right well my first supercharging session is happening and I did what Tommy suggested I skipped 150 kilowatt supercharger and I went to this one I think it's Lando Lakes and check this out I'm getting 253 kilowatts of charging which is about as high as this car can ever um hopefully get I got here with five percent the car said I would get here with five percent uh and uh yeah that's frankly about as quick as you can charge in the Tesla Model 3. uh here's how much I'm paying so far two dollars my charge limit is set to 100 which I won't go to and Tesla says that I need another 25 minutes to continue this charging session and the nice thing about this charger like I said is it's a version three charger which means that um it's not shared with the other cars so the V2 Chargers those are 150 but the Chargers are shared so you're really looking at 75 if there's somebody next to you and you can tell that because they're all numbered and lettered so this one is 2D right there over there you can see is 2C and so forth and so on the other thing about this charger which I wasn't aware of is it was one space left and it is being taken by this model y so whoever comes here next is going to have to wait to charge and that's interesting because in Colorado the Tesla superchargers aren't that busy but here in Florida and I certainly know in California they get very busy so what will happen when Tesla opens up all these Chargers the car is like the bolt the Silverado the lightning people are going to be waiting at least you're waiting at a Wawa so there's food to be had but so far the trip has been a little stressful like I said I skipped the charger they suggested which was in Braden Braden and I went here to uh Lake Orlando Lakes I think it's called which is just a little bit farther uh but it didn't get me into the 250. uh supercharger and let's see how long it's holding that 250. I bet it's already going down by now because see you already 193. uh and it's uh one o'clock right now so I think I'm gonna get some food use the bathroom stretch my legs a little bit I've got 25 minutes to wait here and then continue the trip well guys uh so far it hasn't been a dream or a disaster it's just been kind of a long road trip here in Florida you know these things just go on and on and on it's a big country but let's see how I feel uh you know as we get down further down the road and start traveling North toward Atlanta all right now I'm down to 164 already all right well I got a text saying that I have charged enough to continue my trip so let's see how much charge I got it's been about 30 minutes and the great thing about Tesla is that their numbers tend to be spot on so figure it said I'd be here 30 minutes and I've been here 30 minutes and I'm up to 78 percent right there uh and uh I'm down to 59 kilowatts which is you know pretty darn slow uh but right here I've got my message you have enough energy to continue your trip so uh let's continue it okay all right and then my neck next stop is uh where am I gonna go about to pull it down here kind of shows me there you go there's my next stop uh right there so I'm right here and I'm going to pass Ocala national forest and then oh shoa I know I'm mispronouncing these things I apologize if you're from here and I'm killing it but that's my next stop let's see what that one is uh that one five style six stars it's 150 kilowatt Max which once again maybe uh what we'll do is we'll see what other ones there are along the way um and maybe we'll stop as you can tell right there so that one is that's a 250. so for some reason that one is a 150 it's keep picking the 150s for me to stop at um you know it might be smart to stop at that one uh that's a 150. how about that one yeah that's a 250. so maybe that's the one I go to instead of the 150 uh and we'll see if that's doable because usually that number of how much energy I have when I get to uh the supercharger usually that's right on 14 so I should be able to make the one that's a little bit farther anyway there you go that's how it works I don't know why Tesla keeps running me uh to the uh push the button plug it in I don't know why they keep writing me or why the system keeps running me to the the 150 stalls I think car driver did a story like that how cool is that I thought I was the only red car here but there is a black car so black and a red for a second there I thought wow that's pretty cool picture dang the black car but yeah I don't know why it does that but like I said car driver or Road and tracker motor is trying to lose to the story and they said that the difference between the 150s and the 250s is not a lot a couple minutes maybe at most but you know I'm kind of a typical American and that is when I go to a 150 when you can go to a 250. let's put as much energy in this car as fast as possible so you can get as far down the road as possible maybe that's my type A coming through but uh anyway that's what goes and Wawa Alex and her team is from Philly he always goes to these uh they're really good actually quite clean quite enjoyable and so far so good all right so how far is my next uh stint two hours and 17 minutes time to listen to some podcasts I've been listening to the intercooler right now I've been listening to Motor Trends as well and Monday means that Jason camisa also has his podcast I'm gonna listen to those and uh yeah we'll see you guys at the next [Music] I am about 21 miles short of my next charging stop which is Jasper Live Oak and uh I'm almost through Florida thank God what a long State uh and so far so good so let's talk about a couple things that I am learning about driving across country an electric car now like I said before um Ford and now GM have both made a deal with Tesla to uh use their supercharger Network which is going to make it a lot more crowded starting probably next year but as things stand currently Tesla is the only car that can not only use a supercharger network but check this out with this adapter that you can buy from Tesla for about 250 dollars you can also use the CCS standard which is Electrify America for all you newbies to uh car charging so with that I also have the ability to charge at an EA station or any other of the other any of the other ccs Chargers which gives me the ability to do what I'm doing now or gives me more Comfort to do what I'm doing now which is actually um skip the suggested charger the Tesla sing in the route which would have had me charge right about now at 15 percent but skip to the next one which is a 250 uh and uh Tesla says I'm gonna get there with about six percent charge now last time it's at five percent charge and it was pretty close so I trust us the other thing that gives me Comfort and going way down into the battery like that is the fact that uh the supercharger is unlike the EA stations and the other chargers are usually really good I can actually click on the charger and it'll tell me not just how much money it's going to cost me but how many of the styles are free and of course how much power it's putting out so that lets me go much farther into the battery what I mean by that is down to five or in this case six percent and not feel like I'm gonna be stranded on the side of the road begging for electricity with a empty socket and that's good and then the other thing of course the Tesla does is this which is autopilot and autopilot is the basic autonomous software you get when you get a Tesla uh you can upgrade that to all the way up to full self driving which is very expensive basically if you pay for monthly 199 dollars a month and that lets you do things like you know signal and then the car will change lanes for you or you know you know Drive in certain areas with your hands off the wheel with this autopilot I gotta keep my hands on the wheel if I keep them off the wheel for too long and start yelling at me and then what happens is eventually uh if I don't put my hands it will disable autopilot until I cycle the car in other words since I turn it on and off and then it comes back so yeah you know I find that either traditional adaptive cruise control or even autopilot as long as you keep your hand on the wheel and apply a little bit of pressure the torque sensor in this wheel that knows if your hands on the wheel works pretty well but we're in this weird world of uh you know between level two and level five and level two is kind of like hands on eyes on the road but hopefully at some point we'll get to both hands off the wheel and eyes off the wheel under any conditions but that's a long way away um so if I want to make a lane change let me demonstrate I signal because I don't have full self-driving and basically this engages autopilot so then I can make the lane change now because I haven't paid for the monthly fee I gotta do this again and we're back on uh autopilot once again autopilot is hands on eyes up on the road um and then you know if you don't hit traffic or construction which of course you will on any road trip it's just a very pleasant way to while away the day because you see a lot of the world you get to listen to your favorite books and so even though today's a work day I'm kind of enjoying this road trip and I'm very glad that I get to be paid for what I would do for free which is Drive so next up like I said Jasper Florida or Jasper Live Oak I don't know if that's a Florida or Georgia but I'm only 14 miles away 14 minutes away 16 15 miles and yeah I can't wait to get there and stretch my legs a little bit that doesn't mean I can't stop somewhere else along the road but I'm kind of one of these type A people that wants to get behind the wheel I just want to keep going all right I'll see you at the rest stop actually supercharger [Music] okay well let's see what the supercharger looks like it's always kind of fun to pull into a supercharger you can actually click on the supercharger it'll tell you what's around it which is also a nice feature you know I can tell you what's around all the electrified America's without actually having to use an app because they're all of course around Walmarts and Tommy just did the Cannonball Run in a Tesla but when I did it with Nathan we used the ccs so that meant that what was around was Walmart's so here are the superchargers next to a Shell station this seems to be a white Tesla day so we've got two white Teslas plenty of spaces for me to pull into uh and then obviously there's a Wendy's and a bathroom which is all very very good so I'll just pull in here I think the last one might as well since I got plenty of room and I'll see how many uh kilowatts were sucking up uh this I don't know I forget how many kilowatt battery kilowatt hour battery this model three performance has I want to say it's in the 70 range 70 kilowatt hours so I'm at six percent so um I think I think the the software told me I'm going to need to charge here for about 20 minutes but the great thing about Teslas is it's very simple you don't need to do anything except I showed you last time just you know plug it in and let's see how much power this is putting in it also knows to precondition the battery um because it knows I was going to the Supercharger so it automatically gets to picture of the battery so that it is uh hopefully sucking up the most juice possible um and right now that number is pretty big 168 it's still going up 172 hopefully it'll get up to 200 like I said the charging curve and this is pretty strong uh starts off very strong 185 now and uh eventually also drops off very quickly 208 look at those numbers oh 239 251 well we reached 253 250. I'll take that yep I'll take that any day of the week all right uh it's four o'clock I said I did forget to reset my um come on give me this I did forget to reset my navigation but so far since I already said it I've got 149 miles you probably had about 200 to that so I probably got about 349 out of my 2000 mile trip so yeah I got a ways to go already at 10 percent at 251 how cool is that and if you're curious uh let's see here we go back to trips um this also tells you energy used uh and total energy consumed and unfortunately it won't be for my whole trip this number up here is me this is Tommy so I don't pay attention to that and this is since the last charging all right I'm gonna go uh hit the bathroom and then continue the journey I'm not going to borrow you uh with any more Super charging but uh you know what I'll see you when it gets dark and I'm hopefully pulling into my hotel and if all goes well I can find a hotel where I can get a level 2 charger because I have something else here look at this uh this is also something pretty cool all right all right glove box look at that I have this that's an adapter for level two charging so what I can do is I can go to a level two charger and plug in overnight if there's not a Tesla destination charger and uh hopefully beat 100 to start my trip tomorrow now um You may be thinking to yourself gosh Roman this is just a lot of like stuff I gotta know that I wouldn't have to deal with if I were in a gas car and the answer is yes it is No Way Around It by the way guys uh you know it also takes some other things to for instance drive a truck like with that DF view it DEF fluid diesel emissions fluid so you gotta know other things while driving other types of vehicles besides electric vehicles so for all of you out there like hey all I need to do is put uh gas in my truck well not if it's a diesel you can also pay for that now the thing about Tesla superchargers is they're very straightforward just the cable links to your car but I do miss a screen I don't know I think uh you know having to do everything through an app on your phone um is uh very handy until your phone is dead um For Better or For Worse that sounds Tesla has decided to make things happen [Music] all right I have made it to Marietta Georgia and uh I've been on the road almost 12 hours now and let's see if I can tell how many miles I've driven unfortunately like I said I forgot to um reset it so I'm on B so 429 really 629 miles I've driven and about 200 to that and I've used a total of 129 kilowatt hours it's 9 30 at night and I'm gonna rid of this I'm gonna try to make it to is it Mount or mount or Mount Eagle Tennessee where I'm gonna spend the night and then I'll be on my way tomorrow the goal of course hopefully is to make it back in two days but two thousand miles in two days especially when you have to supercharge is not easy um it's just you know probably so far I've added maybe two hours to my trip uh you know having a supercharge but the nice part is I do like two I'm gonna walk around stretch my feet a little bit and see what there is to see sometimes it's hard to know where like the food is and like here you can tell it's just a very busy supercharger I think there's 12 stalls in all but two are full but if you go up there and just take a walk up there there's a whole bunch of restaurants that's also the nice thing about superchargers they tend to be in places where there's food or Starbucks and I know there's food at Walmart but uh having spent two and a half thousand miles charging at Walmarts it's nice to have like local fare beautiful night here in Georgia perfect temperature not humid that I got away from the humidity of Florida but yeah one more session to go and then I'm sure it'll stop for the night and grab a bed I called ahead booked the hotel room so I've got a hotel room book because I'm gonna come in at midnight of course which is late and uh I think it lost a little bit going through downtown Atlanta not not hard to do actually pretty easy to do unfortunately but I've kind of managed to follow the navigation get my way back to here and still arrive here with plenty of power and that's the nice thing about what Tesla does it doesn't push you to five percent which is what I've been doing come on open up sometimes it just doesn't work oh he's a little oh come on like the app doesn't recognize the fact that I'm here so there goes that guy so I gotta make sure the app is running come on yep let's make sure Tesla up Tesla app for you Tesla app okay and for some reason my app uh last seen 12 hours ago it's not updating it so I can't use my app to figure out how much charge I have left which is kind of frustrating now it opens up of course so I don't know what's going on there there's something going on with it but I haven't been able to figure it out but I haven't really cared that much because like I say I've been just trying to keep driving so next one um Marietta last one Marietta Georgia that's where I'm at next one there right now I would arrive there you can see with zero percent so I'm gonna charge nine more minutes and that should get me there with enough to keep going and hopefully I can charge overnight at the hotel and start the uh our lease next to the hotel Supercharger so I can start the trip if there's a treasure at the hotel and it's not occupied 100 or next to supercharger I can just start and charge the car and then continue the journey all right see ya in um Tennessee so I made it to Mount Eagle as you can tell it's uh well it's actually 11 01 PM I've now switched over to Central Time which is great so I've gained an hour versus um being 1201 which is really what it is uh but uh I decided to charge the car here before going to the hotel which is here because the car conditioned itself so I thought might as well take advantage of that 221 kilowatt hours and uh you know this is where you have to admit that it would be much easier to be in a gas powered car because you don't have to condition it you just go fill it up but like I said with electric cars the rules are a little different and once upon a time I used to help people relocate when I lived in the Czech Republic and we had a real estate office and what I used to tell them and I'll kind of share it with you now is when they would come to Prague there were things that were not the same as the U.S for instance you couldn't Buy anything at any time of night you couldn't get Diet Coke you had to go to Germany for that um and if you were used to the convenience of Life in America because you were relocating with a company to Prague that turned out to be difficult and there were two reactions some people thrived and some people hated it and some people left because of it so when I figured out quite quickly was that the best way to let people not hated was to tell them you know what it's not better it's not worse it's just different now I know that goes against what I said about there being three killer apps oh God 12 13 hours ago that an electric car has but I think it's a good way to end the evening as I'm pretty darn tired and I'm ready to go to bed and hopefully continue this journey tomorrow the goal is to make it by Tuesday night back to Colorado but I think I've gone about 700 miles which leaves 1300 miles to go and that is probably too much in one day definitely too much especially when you're trying to do it in an electric car we add a half hour every two hours of driving so I'm doing the best I can to get back as early as I can but the reality of the situation is I may not be able to make it tomorrow maybe more like Wednesday but it is a long way and uh yeah I'll be happy to be home all right I'll see you tomorrow morning guys [Music] all right good morning good morning it's about uh six o'clock in the morning and uh day two of my road trip so what is it like to road trip an electric vehicle is it a disaster or is it terrific well one of the things I can tell you right now is I'll be much happier if this hotel the Quality Inn here I think it's Mount Eagle just outside of Nashville Tennessee had electric car chargers instead of these gold platinum and Diamond member parking no I didn't park here I just parked here to get my luggage so as you know I did charge up last night to about half battery but I would have been really nice if I could have you know gotten a charge overnight which I wasn't able to do all right let me look at the app and this is a problem I've had the whole trip if you look over here you can see that the app is not talking to the car last seen 21 hours ago now why that is a pain in the butt is because when I go to the bathroom and I'm charging or go to a restaurant the car unfortunately doesn't communicate with the app so I don't know what state of charge it's in I think it's the car because Tommy's app is also not working I did try to reset the app so there is something I could do which would be to basically hit this button at this about the same time and do a hard reset uh to the car but in the last time I did that if you recall I was in the Hummer EV and that didn't turn out so well if you want to watch that video just um go to alltfl.com now if you're wondering where I'm at I am right there and I have to make it to Nashville right there to that supercharger I've got about 48 of the battery because I did charge last night uh and uh I've got 1260 miles to go that's about 18 hours of driving without charging so I'm gonna try to make it home but that's a really long way the one thing I do remember about road tripping is America's just a really big country and you sometimes forget about that until you try to road trip uh so yeah so going from here to here uh and um hour and 33 minutes and then charge up I'll get there with uh 12 of the battery um and uh charge up and then uh finally I think I make the turn west and I head to uh Colorado so I suppose the next time we'll talk is uh talk about what it's like to actually not road trip on EV but road trip a model three how is that on a long road trip is it roomy enough is it comfortable does it uh you know provide a good living car or I guess that's a bad way of putting it is it is it a great place to spend a lot of time let's put it that way all right let's hit the road and uh uh keep going because like I said I'd really love to make it home tonight I don't like spending uh time at these roadside motels I spent 150 bucks to spend the night here uh you know it's one of those hotels where the room is clean but um it smells too much of disinfectant you wonder what's hiding underneath that smell all right let's hit the road and keep on well in this case not trucking uh but keep on driving [Music] so it seems like my cutting plan to uh make it home tonight by stopping an hour outside of Nashville kind of backfired as you can tell I'm in stop and go traffic um trying to go the wrong way into Nashville and because you know I have to kind of stick the superchargers I have to kind of go on this route so I've been stuck in this traffic now for about the last 20 minutes uh it certainly slowed me down ironically there's an ho relay next to me but uh it just says HOV two more it doesn't say anything about 80 so I'm not trying to use that and don't want to actually um do it without having the proper permissions so uh yeah yeah it's all coming to a grinding slow start for day two unfortunately you can see the traffic way out there I mean let me kind of zoom in for you here we go yep that's the traffic morning Nashville traffic it is seven thirteen a.m here I came here for the first time like 12 years ago when Nissan moved here uh and they moved to Franklin which is I guess a road that I'm on actually you know it's such a sleepy little town and now of course Nashville is booming um and um I'm stuck in the boom all right well you can't you know you can't have it all the uh zipping along at the highest freeway speed sometimes uh you hit a bump in the road in this case I've hit you know a lot of bumps in the road [Music] all right a bit of a snag I made it to uh I made it to Nashville and the supercharger here uh and as you can tell I'm charging at 165 kilowatts which isn't you know horrible but isn't great and now it says 45 minutes it continues the trip which uh is you know pretty long probably the longest that I would ever spend charging I think the plan if I can is to hopefully let me grab the key to my car here which is my phone okay there we go got my phone the plan is to see where the next one is and hopefully not spend 45 minutes here uh charging and that's really been the biggest disappointment on this trip so far I think that's a bank uh at the shopping center uh that's kind of a loafing jug I think gas station but really um you know no place to use a bathroom I mean take a look at the shopping center maybe go in the grocery store to use the bathroom so tons of superchargers here in a grocery store but convenient no a disaster no as good as you know stopping along the highway without having to go uh find this supercharger that's probably been the hardest and most disappointing part on this trip I don't know how many times I've charged maybe 10 so far and I got to tell you uh even though the navigation takes you there these superchargers aren't exactly obvious uh and so compared to finding a gas station certainly much trickier and not nearly as convenient so I'm gonna go try to find a bathroom now and then I'm going to see on my route if there are any other superchargers I really don't want to spend 45 minutes sitting here waiting for this to charge to continue the trip that's almost an hour that seems crazy and maybe I can somehow work you know the system where I can spend more time driving and less time supercharging and maybe that's not possible but hey now it's becoming more of a challenge and less of more of an adventure unless it's just a road trip all right let's see what let's see what's going on here actually before you find the bathroom let's see if we can figure that out so so I'm right there I'm supposed to go there and that one is seven stalls available in Marion Illinois it's a 250 which is a good but let's see if there are any other others along the way yeah there are others let's see what this guy is that guy is a 150 eight stalls and that's in uh cudawa Kentucky so there is another one along the way which uh you know I probably wouldn't need uh the charge is far to get to any others along the way no that's about it so I can either go to that one which is let's see can you see where it's at these are all these are all near me you see the one in cudawa I don't see a supercharger Huntsville so that's 102 miles so I'm gonna need a lot more than 37 percent to get there but maybe what we'll do is instead of spending 40 minutes here we'll go for that one uh and then yeah I think I might that may be the pun even though it's only 150. we'll see let's see how much power I have when I get back from using bathroom but uh yeah a lot fewer superchargers now that let's see what this one is that one is a 157 stalls Mount Vernon Illinois that's also along the trip so it's getting a little less sparser now that I'm kind of in rural Kentucky or at least rural I mean rural Tennessee once I get out of Nashville so there you have there you have it terrific no disaster no less convenient and longer than gas hell yeah so I just got back from the grocery store I bought some bananas and uh you know what uh I'm down to 75 kilowatts charging right now and I've got 30 more minutes to continue the trip and there's a supercharger along the way so I'm not going to sit here and wait for another 30 minutes to basically fill this car up so that I can make it this long stretch when there's a supercharger along the way I don't know why Tesla doesn't want me to stop at the one along the way but that's what I'm gonna do I just makes a lot more sense than sitting here while you know getting deep into the battery and the charging slows down so give me a second I'm gonna unplug and hit the road all right I'm back now patience has never been one of my virtues so keep that in mind guys but I'm gonna say you know here in this parking lot next to a shopping center with a grocery store and you know a defunct Indian restaurant um and no garbage cans and no place for really if you have kids for them to go to a playground is not exactly what I would call Ideal location to set spend 40 minutes at all you really have to do is you know sit in the car and be on your phone or I guess you could play some of the games that the Tesla has built into the system but you know I've heard in Europe that they have these really great charging centers where there's like workspace and places to relax and coffee shops uh you know a space for the kids to go and play in a park with picnic benches this is a far cry Far Cry this is a far cry from that uh and uh not exactly ideal as a you know a 40-minute stop on a 2000 mile Journey you know is a Bucky's better yeah it's better but also not great uh if you're in a gas powered car by the way gas was 3.23 cents a gallon there in case you were curious so I I kind of feel like uh there's a lot of potential here for improvement to make the charging experience and the driving experience in an electric car much better is that really going to happen yeah probably not uh but you know I think it's probably going to get worse before it gets better as more and more people get electric cars and it's more and more non-tesla's actually start using Tesla superchargers and I'm a little bit disappointed right now obviously because um I don't know why the system made me sit there for another 30 minutes while it uh you know try to get me deep into the battery when there is a supercharger along the way that might be a much quicker option so I don't know maybe that's a slower option I don't know the system obviously has a lot of experience with you know other Teslas coming through here but uh I just well that's this is a great thing about this car 0 to 60 in 3.1 seconds left the Maverick in the dust uh and really that's when it gets fun uh using a Tesla uh but you can't do that that often right oh shy so more traffic along the way yeah yeah look at this downtown Nashville traffic again I just want to get out of Nashville this has been the worst part of my trip by far see had I known this I probably would have ended up supercharging more let me show you guys this is what I'm looking at there you go zoom in see maybe I would have stayed at the supercharger longer I had enough sticking traffic but anyway that's enough of that I've got probably another thousand 1200 miles to go so uh yeah maybe this is this is the uh you know every trip has its ups and downs and maybe this is a down part of my trip and hopefully um next time you see me I'll be uh zooming along making up time and not being so grumpy about uh you know where I'm supercharging and what the system is doing to get me to Colorado as quickly efficiently as possible all right let's hit the road again [Music] all right I am just outside of St Louis actually I'm in St Louis where the Tesla oh for God's sake stop with the uh come on let's turn that off for a second took me to the supercharger 250 kilowatt that's good but it's an area called Green Street and there's a dog park that's over there so I need to use the bathroom and get some food because it's like lunch time so me and those people walked over there and they said we are an off-leash dog park so if you want to use a restaurant or the bathroom or even come in you gotta fill them out this form and I was like well that kind of sucks so um I'm gonna see if there's any other superchargers along the way yeah there's many more hopefully maybe not looking for superchargers I'm just gonna get the hell out of here it's like an industrial area around St Louis not a good supercharger location um and uh yeah nothing here just uh construction and unfriendly dog park people so I'm gonna get the heck out of here let the Tesla we rock me I'm thinking about actually uh potentially using uh I'll let you find America stuff but this has certainly been very unpleasant uh and I don't know why they put a charger here in this industrial park but uh yeah this part I would call a disaster yeah definitely a disaster Tesla no fun no bueno here gotta pee like a racehorse and you took me to an office complex with an office with the dog park what the hey all right I have just left the supercharger just outside of St Louis and it rerouted me to another supercharger I think in Columbia um but I gotta tell you um that was a very bad experience here's the problem with road tripping a Tesla by yourself I have to drive obviously which means that um I can't be doing all of the kind of Rob planning so I have to rely completely on Tesla's Rob planner and I found the Tesla's Route Planner does a really good job and a really crap job depending on how it feels I guess the last stop it wanted me to charge well into the battery well past 80 percent having me sit at a gas station for 50 minutes which is just stupid you never want to charge past 80 on a road trip I'd rather charge to 80 because that last 10 percent is going to take you as long as the first 90 percent so I'd rather charge the 80 and then drive and charge again and drive and charge again but instead it keeps trying to get me to charge as high as possible basically maximizing the amount of time I spend at gas stations or in this case uh in you know industrial park with no bathrooms uh the supercharger so um that's really the the trick to this it's hard by yourself because you really can't be doing rock climbing on the Fly because you're in traffic and you're trying to keep from obviously hitting other people and crashing the car if I had like we did with the D2D and like Tommy had two other people we could actually plan this out much better I could actually be using Electrify America stops I could be picking my my superchargers where there are bathrooms and where there are places to eat that I want to eat as opposed to places to eat that Tesla thinks I want to eat so I'm gonna go out and say right now that that part is a complete disaster um you're basically stuck on a route plan that you didn't plan and even though you can't add superchargers the problem is to do that you sit there longer trying to figure out you know where you should be stopping I would think the Tesla would be smart enough or hopefully create a route plan in such a way that it would put me in places where there's food and gas stations and restaurants and toilets and people maybe even you know interesting things and usually the superchargers are in those places I mean let's face it a bunch of America places are always Chargers are always at Walmart but um yeah this part of it's been a disaster so we know that now has has it been a dream when compared to The Cannonball that Nathan and I did where we went from Disney Anaheim basically Disneyland Disney World it's a dream because we're not stopping at EA stations that are in every Walmart so I guess that is even worse because a lot of those are like way off the beaten path so you're adding a lot of miles to your journey because you're driving remember in San Antonio we basically had to drive 20 miles out of our way just to get to the EA because it was downtown San Antonio or some not downtown it was somewhere in the suburbs of San Antonio whereas you know we were on the highway uh so in that regard um it is you know much nicer now um let's just be honest about this it sucks still compared to a gasoline car there's just no way around that you can do it you can plan around it but complete compared to a gas car it sucks because now I am depending on route planning and I am depending on a very limited amount of superchargers or EA stations compared to the millions of gas stations that you know dot everywhere so I am on somebody else's agenda basically versus being on my own so in that way it is a disaster at least compared to a regular ice car um I'm looking at another 12 hours of driving at least another four hours of supercharging and here's where the rubber meets the road if I were in a gas car at this point I could get home at one o'clock basically but because I got a supercharge and I gotta stop my time to get home from St Louis is turned into a 14-hour trip which puts me in at sometime four in the morning and I could drive to one and I could sleep in my own bed but because of the supercharging and because of you know the fact that it's going to take me at least another two hours or three hours of added time I'm gonna have to now basically spend another night at a hotel and last night wasn't Grand because like I said it was so over perfumed that I was wondering what dog took a dump on the carpet and I was hoping to spend the next night in my own bed so right now disaster or the dream at least when compared to an internal combustion engine car and all of you people out there might be saying well you know at least you're spending less money you're not polluting with you know the fact that all these cars around me are obviously putting a lot more funk in there yeah but I just want to sleep in my own bed and I think the economics of it are such that a lot of people will want to sleep in their own bed and the cost like Tom you said when you're supercharging is pretty much at three dollars and 20 cents a gallon is not that much cheaper so let's see how I feel as I keep driving and um thanks for joining me but uh I'm not home yet [Music] all right so I made it to Columbia and uh I am not as grumpy as I was in St Louis simply because possibly because you know you get a lot of chance to think on a road trip and let's face it every time I've pulled up to a supercharger there's been plenty of places to supercharge I've had none that have not worked unlike the issues we had with Electrify America sometimes or some of the other services so they are reliable I'll give them that and so far they're plentiful in terms of you know I think there's something like one two three four five six seven eight like a dozen Chargers here which is a lot now the one thing that is odd though is uh the Tesla had me drive to a supercharger that was about two miles from here that was a level two 150 kilowatt and I decided to go a little farther go a little deeper into the battery come here so I'm about a mile and a half off the highway a little farther but these are 250s why wouldn't you why wouldn't you faster charge that's the odd thing but uh yeah a little bit less grumpy the car is very comfortable hi leaving height of locals but keep in mind guys I'm coming from a world where you know on tfl truck guys and gals like to have the big 36 gallon tanks because then when you're towing or when you're not Towing you don't have to stop as often or you stop when you want not when you have to and I think that's going to change over time I think Battery tech is going to get better what isn't going to get better is number of cars here I gosh I think we're going to see uh we're gonna be in for some interesting times when like I said Fords and GM started pulling up here and Tesla's like that guy over there are forced to wait for the Tesla charger I don't know if that's good for Tesla owners it probably is very good for Ford and GM owners and keep in mind we also have a bolt as part of the fleet all right well uh I'm gonna keep going it is now almost five o'clock Kansas lies ahead of me it's a long way through Kansas and not a very exciting way let's uh let's see where we're at charging I also understand why uh the Tesla would make you uh go deeper than 80 of battery never want to do that uh right now I'm at 71 percent and let's see uh I'm at negative one to get to the Topeka Kansas uh charger so very close to making that but let's see if I uh do that let's see how many uh Chargers there are along the way so I I think it's making me go to maybe that one yeah that's the one that's a 250 eight stalls uh oh no I'm going where am I going yeah that's where I'm going yeah that one right there got a little confused so that's good but next to it what's over here that's a 150. so this time it is taking me uh to the 250. uh that one is also a 250 a little bit ahead of it so I could stop at that one then over here you can click and see what kind of food there is let's move about dinner time when I get there so uh Godfather Pizza Express with that one yikes it's not Grand um go back come on tune the other ones uh how about this guy what does that one have let's look at food wise that one has oh shoot a lot more choices for food and it is nice that uh Tesla gives you all this information as to uh you know what's nearby all right now I've got my limit set to 100 I never go to that but that's where I have it set to and right now if I left right now I get there at negative I get there exactly at zero percent and then charge for 20 minutes and this is good next couple I charge for 20 minutes 35 15 and then guess what I'm home so a lot quicker charging so I think I'm going to go with what the car is recommending um I think I'm gonna do that just because the charging seems to be much more reason but let's see what this one is touch it then when I can't tell if that's a 150. I wish they put the designation right there if it's 150 kilowatt or UNAM at one percent and usually I think what Tesla's going to want to make me do is go to like I don't know 12 or minutes maybe 80 so I have a little bit more cushion one percent probably means I won't make it there you don't want to get there with one percent um that's a nail biter no fun on a road trip so I'll give it another I'm probably have to go to 80 percent uh and I'll be comfortable with that uh just because anything above 80 just takes too long I'm charging in 70 kilowatts right now which is getting pretty low um but yeah yeah now it's going a little bit better listening to my books on tape enjoying that uh and yeah I really thank you guys for joining me on this trip uh it makes uh going 2 000 miles from Florida to Colorado a bit more fun knowing that I have you guys to keep me company all right uh let's see where we're at now oh two percent what percentage do I roll the dice certainly not a two I'll let it go a bit farther okay well that means I gotta the next Drive is two hours and 38 minutes good thing I went and got my iced tea so I'm about uh 400 miles from Denver as the Sun is setting on day two and I was hoping to make it home tonight but I've been traveling now for 14 15 hours which is a lot um but the nice thing about being in electric car is that you get to stop in this case about every hour and a half to every two hours not so nice thing is that there are bathrooms that there are bathrooms like I said I was a little frustrated tonight because uh well I couldn't find the bathroom and we gotta pee you gotta pee but there are worse ways to travel you know I think to myself that um we're probably just in the original days of the electric car you know this is barely out of Model T range right now you know unless the infrastructure greatly improves I mean greatly forget about you know what we have now double triple quadruple what we have and make it Pleasant and put in nice service areas with all kinds of amenities the gas car is still King and compared to an on Tesla I wouldn't say it's a dream but it's much better maybe it is a dream this is the emergency broadcast system this is not a test well it's uh raining very hard in fact so hard that it's hard to see the road luckily the lightning does a good job in Illuminating the road and I'm uh oh gosh about 100 miles due east of Hayes Alaska where I'm gonna spend the night and I grew up in the midwest in Chicago so um when you get this kind of weather you also worry about of course one other thing especially in Kansas and that's tornadoes uh let me zoom in on that you can kind of see how how hard it is to see where I'm going if it gets much worser it actually starts hailing I might have to stop pull it underneath the overpass but um you know in every uh trip a little Rain Must Fall and oh my God this reminds me of uh more than a little rain it certainly woke me up I've been on the road now for about 16 hours and and charging in Abilene and uh it's awesome lightning and now guess what Lightning's turn into this so here's another conundrum that I figured out um I called actually had Tommy come book me hotel in Hayes which is where I stopped for the night and um the problem there is that the hotel that had Chargers while Tommy's trying to book it sold out so now I'm faced with uh supercharging tonight when the car's battery is warmed up because I'll be at uh crb at 14 when I get there okay we're doing better now finally splitting up a little bit um yeah so supercharging tonight I'm already tired I'm gonna get there at 11 20. my hazard's off now there we go so I guess charged tonight while the battery is warm or wait there oh come on hazards turn off or what or wait there tomorrow morning while the battery warms up so I can charge now Tommy did find me a Walmart so I can use the 350 kilowatt instead of the electro High America instead of the 150 kilowatts um Supercharger so maybe I only have to spend that long charging tonight but these are things you would oh God here we go again getting bad again this is what you want to see just what you want to see anyway like I was saying I might have to supercharged tonight so I can get on the way earlier tomorrow morning as opposed to sitting around waiting for the battery to warm up at the EA at the Walmart so yeah yeah now it's getting interesting I kind of wish I had a raptor arm if I'm being honest and the crazy thing is here's a takeaway I probably spent close to five hours or six hours charging and I'm six hours from home so had I been in a rap car which admittedly only gets 13 MPG I have a 700 horsepower V8 I would have been home already in my own bed but now I'm dealing with this and then more charging before I can get my head into a pillow so these are the realities of cross-country tripping in a Tesla everybody says you know if you want to go across country get yourself a Tesla well I'm gonna tell you it ain't uh yeah you know it's cracked up to be forget about you know ccs Tesla still has a long long way to go in fact there's a culture we have a long long way to go oh my gosh all right guys I need to stop recording and concentrate on driving um I'll see you when I get to the hotel [Music] all right I made it to uh Hayes Kansas and uh to the supercharger because well the car has preconditioned itself so it should be uh quicker to charge now but let's see I might just go to the hotel I didn't go to the Walmart because I don't know where Walmart is like I tell you um yeah this is not Grand over here I mean if my wife were here hunting kind of this Tesla Supercharger is kind of right behind uh a restaurant Nobody's around [Music] um we're just kind of a scary pickup truck behind me that's been kind of circling don't know what that's about let me show you right there another pickup truck is scary but uh never know what that's about so yeah not a grand location for a Supercharger let's see how long this takes let's see what what this says this is a 150 so let's see if it goes up to 150 or not but yeah like I say power sitting over there I mean it's midnight now or close to it and uh really don't know you know what what's going on here so 13 kilowatts 26 sitting here at midnight for 20 minutes yeah 138 I think the plan is uh is just to go to the hotel I don't know this comfortable I don't know what those guys are doing over there in the pickup truck I don't know why they're over there but uh I don't like strange cars slowly driving around and parking behind me or in this case strange trucks like I said do so much better here in America than this we could do so much better I mean look at this really okay Tom you try to book me a hotel and uh my seatbelt on here so by the time you try to uh book me a hotel that had a charger oh that got snapped up as he was talking to me on the phone so we've got all these hotels here and I'm staying I think at the Hilton I'm fighting with his Expedia discount 130 a night which also seems a lot for Hayes Alaska but according to a plug share no charger of course why would there be a charger why would you want to put a charger in uh and I don't even know where the Hilton is they're just assuming it's right it could be left why would you want to put a charger in hey there's a Walmart that's got the superchargers maybe I can try those see how quick the car charges off the supercharger it's kind of late to be doing these tests but uh why not oh those are just the middle of the parking lot as uh not as spooky as the ones behind whatever restaurant that was oh and there's the uh that's a Holiday Inn Express that's not not the Hilton and when I get to the uh do I get to to the Walmart I'm guessing this way nope not this way [Music] I hope it gets this way I'm curious I want to try a supercharger seeth I can get more than 134. of course there's no way to get in there this way why would there be all right let's see so it might be this way and this way the back way maybe I can actually find the hill that's all this looks like it might be wall Marty Yep this is Walmart foreign ER I do have the adapter like I said I've only used it once so far but uh let me pull in here and this is a 350. so we should be uh and then on plugs here it says use two or four the way these guys work because they're all numbered so which one is this one that's a hyper fast yeah 350. that's four all right we'll try four all right let me give that a shot and see how that works all right so uh let's see what this guy's doing no I don't want to do that I don't want my phone number um really don't want my phone number anyway I had a struggle this cable didn't work the car said it wasn't cracking but here I've got the adapter so now I'm charging so we can see uh on the screen on the car how much power we're getting so we're already at up to 164 kilowatts with 350. I hope I can get a little bit more than that 55 inch remaining to 100 charge and I don't know if that's because I think I'm on yeah it says hyper so that's a 350. hyper hyper hyper up to 350. let's see what this guy says [Music] okay let's see what this guy says now there we go 169 kilowatts better than the Tesla it's up to 270 now gone up by one um but yeah the problem with of course if you find America are these cables this is so this one this one's already the CCS DC fast Chargers already half hosed up um and I'm paying uh 37 cents a minute here so yeah so yeah normally I'd be at the hotel but apparently this one doesn't have a plug so ideally you go to the hotel plug it in and just you know have a charge overnight but because the car is conditioned to get the most energy right now I'm doing it tonight when I should be laying down or better yet when I should be at home laying down and the reason for that is because I've charged when the battery hasn't been pre-conditioned and you just sit there because the car tries to then heat up the battery and then it takes forever anyway um I think I've boarded you enough for today I'm tired been driving now for like 17 hours I just want to go to bed so I'm gonna get a little bit of a charge here go find a hotel and uh yeah guys I'll see you tomorrow day three of this epic road trip to get from Marco Island Florida to Boulder Colorado two thousand miles three days wow ouch about 173 now [Music] all right day three of my 2000 mile trip across America now I don't want this to turn into a grumpy guy review I mean certainly there have been challenges along the way getting from uh Marco Island to Colorado but another day a beautiful morning and uh I'm ready to get this done and I think part of my frustration has come from the fact that my life now for the last two days have has consisted of nothing but hey an electric charger here would be nice of nothing but Drive find the charger charge rinse and repeat and that gets really old after a while especially when people in all of these cars are just zipping by now all you Tesla fan boys and fan girls you're gonna of course find fault with me doing this you're like you're gonna should have spent more time planning you should have spent more time figuring out the route but these guys don't have to do that they go wherever they want and maybe that's the biggest lesson I've learned driving this uh model 3 Across America and that is uh if you're by yourself it takes a considerable amount more preparation and even though everybody in my community that I know and I'm talking about the automotive press things that uh the best road trip car is a Tesla because of the ubiquitous amount of superchargers what I realized on this trip is that they're nowhere near enough of them in the right locations now luckily since I did use the EA last night I'm ready to go I've got I think about 63 percent of the battery charged which should take me to the next one so I don't have to spend the morning basically [Music] warming up or preheating the battery well I sit at the supercharger waiting for enough charge to get to the next supercharger um so I guess I would say if you're a fanboy of our fangirl of Tesla think about the fact that that's what you have to do in that but you don't have to do it in that in fact that may have a Giant gas tank that lets you just drive as long as you want um but I guess what you give up inconvenience uh you make up for in silent luxury yeah it's true that all right so 63 percent of the battery I'm going to Colby Kansas where uh the next supercharger is I'm gonna get there with uh nine percent of the charge and that's usually pretty accurate uh and let's face it I've been driving if you've noticed a little bit above the speed limit maybe five to seven miles above the speed limit but I think that's pretty normal uh especially here in these vast open stretches of Kansas where there's you know a lot of uh that I mean John Deere tractors um and nothing else all right let's get this journey done I am ready to be done I'm ready to be home I'm ready to put an end to this video as I'm sure you guys are if you've uh made it this far into it all right um let's see here one more trick okay a trip let's see how far I've driven B 1500 plus 200 so 1700 so about 300 more miles to go uh and uh that's exciting because that's roughly five hours or so with charging maybe a little bit less all right hit the road Roman as I get back on the highway let's talk about full self-driving enhanced autopilot and of course autopilot now when we first bought this car we subscribed to full self driving which could be purchased for either fifteen thousand dollars yep that's right or 199 I believe per month uh and um what we found out was that we basically just got enhanced autopilot because apparently um you have to be approved by Tesla I think it's still true for false self-driving so we were like yeah what's the value of that uh Now with an air with an enhanced autopilot what you get is the ability well let me show you so I'm pulling up the highway I've said like I said my maximum speed about seven miles an hour um above posted speed limit and uh I just pressed out once and that basically turns uh adaptive cruise control so that the car now stays all right in my opinion too far behind the car in front of it but you know that's my opinion now if you want autopilot then you push twice I don't pilot gets engaged and now you can keep your hands off the wheel for a limited amount of time works great great Lane centering doesn't ping-pong back and forth but there is one issue and I know I'm getting to be grumpy guy again but if I keep my hands on the top or I like to keep my hands oftentimes because there's a torque sensor basically a sensor to see how much torque is being placed on the wheel but I just kind of rest my hands and let the weight of the Fall to my elbows the car seems think that I'm done holding up yeah it's weird you'd think that it would know that my hands are on the wheel some manufacturers actually I think have sensors steering wheel um will tell you that they know that there's Hands-On but Tesla does it with the torque sensor I think like cheaper and what ends up happening often is if you're driving like this or if you put your hand on the bottom of the steering wheel like this then I'll demonstrate the car will at some point yell at me and put my hands back on the wheel and that gets pretty pretty annoying but what you don't get with autopilot is the ability for the car to do Lane changes automatically so for instance there's a RV in front of me right now and obviously I don't want to hit him so I'm going to signal and then I'm going to disengage autopilot and now I'm back to just normal adaptive cruise control anyway that's uh autopilot in general uh it works as advertised um is it um brand no is it bad though it is what it is and I'm glad this car has it I think is something that Tesla has pioneered like I got to give them a lot of props for doing that I just wish they had called an autopilot full self driving and again the other manufacturers you know are really confusing it because I got a bunch of acronyms for all this stuff so I don't think anybody's really done a good job explaining to people exactly where we're at once again I know my hands are on the steering wheel please see this is what I'm talking about all right uh I've got uh let's see here got an hour 26 to the next supercharger 105 miles corn fields go [Music] look at this live in Colorado two minutes remain to continue trips I made it to my very last supercharger and uh yeah it's pretty exciting it's been a long trip and I made it back home and I am what's it say here one hour and 38 minutes away from finally getting home after three days of being on the road and I want to thank you guys for joining me on this uh very long road trip across 2 000 miles of the United States now I'm Gonna Leave You with one last thought you probably have been watching this if you made it this far and you know how I feel about what it's like to actually road trip across America in a Tesla so I won't bore you with a conclusion but I will leave you with one little bit of a conclusion let me spin the camera around and that is like I said before you know I would have been home by now if I'd been in an internal combustion engine car but if you're like me and you like to try new things then maybe the best way to look at this is not that it's better or worse but that it's different in other words if you're one of those people who loves the destination I'd stick with an eternal combustion but if you love The Journey this may be for you as always Roman Singh thank you for watching Remember check out all tfl.com for more news views and of course real world reviews and I will see you guys next time or maybe next time on the road once I'm kind of done and recouped from three days of of being in a Tesla Channel [Music] foreign

Channel: TFLEV

Views: 155,762

Keywords: tesla road trip, tesla model 3, road trip, tesla model 3 road trip, model 3, model 3 road trip, tesla road trip model 3, tesla, tesla model y road trip, tesla model s, tesla model y, model y road trip, model 3 rwd road trip, tesla model x, 2022 tesla model 3, tesla road trip tips, tesla road trip 2022, tesla model 3 road trip test, tesla model 3 road trip trip, tesla model 3 road trip tips, road trip in a tesla model 3, 2023 tesla model 3 rwd road trip

Id: t0ThYkpskw4

Length: 96min 42sec (5802 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 17 2023