Top 5 Mistakes When Traveling in a Tesla!

we just got back from a 700 Mile Road Trip in our new Tesla Model Y and we cut it close during this trip but my wife and I have been taking long trips in my Tesla Model 3 for years and we were once newbies to road tripping in a Tesla and we were scared at first but we've learned a lot of useful tips and tricks for having a successful road trip in a Tesla without ever worrying about running out of battery so if you want to have the most efficient road trips in a Tesla without stressing out here are the top 5 mistakes to avoid now mistake number one is not planning ahead traveling in a Tesla has become much easier over the last few years as a result of Tesla installing thousands of new superchargers but it's still not quite as easy as just jumping in a gas car and hitting the road and although Tesla Supercharger network is constantly growing and the vehicle automatically routes you to superchargers along the way it's still a good idea to do a little bit of planning ahead of time now before any big trip I first make sure I charge my Tesla to 100 so the night before I just changed it from my mobile app because it's usually set to 80 percent charging limit for daily driving I also like to use the free website and app called a better route planner which lets you really dial in a more accurate charging route based on your vehicle type and other custom settings and sometimes it's the same as what the built-in navigation and the Tesla shows but sometimes it's different and shows a more efficient route with different charting stops which may save you some time also you need to know if your destination has charging or not try to book lodging that has an EV charger on site if possible however many of our destinations in the recent past did not have an EV charger or supercharger nearby so it's important to know where the closest supercharger is in case you need it on our most recent trip we spent four days in Holland Michigan and the last supercharger stop was about 55 miles away so that meant I had to fully charge the model Y at the last supercharger which gave us roughly 330 miles of range but one third of that would need to be accounted for just to getting to our Airbnb and back to the supercharger on the way back home which meant we only had had about 200 miles of range to use over the period of four days but as you'll see from the rest of this video that 200 miles of range can easily end up being much less than that mistake number two is not optimizing efficiency range is the top priority when it comes to driving an electric vehicle and there are a number of things that negatively impact the range which is why it's important to try to maximize your driving efficiency so that you get as much range as possible driving too fast is one of the worst things you can do for your efficiency and it's something that I struggle with especially on long road trips because I'm on the interstate and I usually go about five to ten miles over the speed limit and when you're driving over 70 miles per hour it'll drain your battery much quicker than driving 65 miles per hour or under so try not to go too fast if you want to preserve the most battery another factor is your cargo be mindful of how much weight is in the car the heavier the load the worse efficiency you'll get which means less range try to take out anything you don't need before leaving for your trip and another thing to keep in mind is the weather if there's expected precipitation or cold temperatures then you can expect to take a hit on estimated range so you'll need to be conservative with your charging stop estimates what's cool though is Tesla supposed to be pushing out a software update soon that accounts for things like headwind and weather when calculating the estimated range on a trip now when I'm on road trips one of my favorite apps to use is today's sponsor blinkist which helps me understand the most important Concepts from over 5500 non-fiction books and podcasts in just 15 minutes if you're like me then you prioritize time and money and blinkist saves me from not only having to buy a lot of individual audio books but also lets me avoid wasting time because blinkist gives me the best parts from books and bite-sized content that's easily consumed while driving a very interesting title that I listened to recently is called Power Play Tesla Elon Musk and the BET of the century by Tim Higgins and it's all about the Journey of Tesla as a company going from a small ambitious startup to overcoming huge odds and becoming a global leader in the Auto industry and one of blinkist's newest features is called connect which lets you share your account with another person of your choice and it's almost like getting two Premium Accounts for the price of one so you can easily share blinks and shortcast with each other for example you could add your friend that doesn't know much about Tesla and send them this book and start a discussion with them about it you can use special link in the description below to get a seven day free trial and 25 off a blinkist annual premium plan mistake number three is not having the proper cable and adapters ninety percent of the time you can road trip without any adapters and be fine just charging out superchargers but there will be times when you'll need some type of cable or adapter to charge in a pinch I highly recommend keeping the mobile charger in your front when traveling for Times Like These this mobile charger used to come included with new Teslas but they started to make them an optional add-on for 200 but I think it's worth it because I've used this so many times not when charging in route but when I actually arrive at my destination I usually keep this mobile charger in the car with the included 110 volt adapter which allows me to connect to a normal power outlet and when I stayed at a secluded cabin in Red River Gorge I was able to run this mobile charging cable to an outlet on the porch and fully charge my car for free and that same exact scenario happened when I stayed at a lake house in Tennessee and although the normal 110 plug is a slow trickle charge that only recharges at a rate of a few miles per hour that adds up if you're at a location for a few days just 24 hours of charging like this can regain about 120 miles in a model 3. I also keep the j1772 adapter in my front which is great for any public EV charging station if needed although I haven't used this at nearly as much as my 110 plug and another adapter that I recently got was this 30 amp adapter for RV Outlets which I haven't had the need for yet but a fellow Tesla owner said it's the most used adapter in his car when he travels to national parks and places where there are RV hookups and lastly this new CCS adapter from Tesla is not cheap coming in at 250 dollars but this allows you to charge at fast charging CCS stations such as Electrify in America now the CCS charging standard is what most non-tesla EVS use so this was something I thought would be handy to have because CCS Chargers are only going to grow in the future and with all the new Teslas hitting the road this adapter essentially provides three main benefits you can charge at a CCS station if a supercharger is full you can possibly charge faster at a CCS station compared to a shared stall at a V2 supercharger and you can possibly charge at a cheaper rate on a CCS if a supercharger is more expensive mistake number four is leaving battery draining features enabled especially if you're away from a charger for a few days like we were in Holland Michigan now first turn off cabin overheat protection turning this off prevents the car from automatically enabling the climate control when the car is parked in the heat if it's too hot I just use the vent feature on the app to crack all the windows which is usually enough to keep the interior from getting too hot and another setting to change is regarding speed enabling chill mode will prevent the car from being accelerated too quickly which will help preserve some battery since launching the car no matter how much fun it is uses a lot of energy but the main setting to change if you need to conserve battery for a few days is to turn off Sentry mode as much as we Tesla owners love our Sentry mode which is the surveillance system that automatically records video of any of the exterior cameras that detects motion this feature is a huge battery suck in fact if I hadn't turned off Sentry mode during our four days in Holland I would not have had enough battery to make it back to the supercharger and I would have had to travel an hour out of my way to charge in Grand Rapids so definitely be mindful of these settings when you need to optimize your range and can serve as much battery as possible finally mistake number five is not knowing proper supercharging etiquette first if you have a Tesla with an NCA battery then you do not want to charge past 90 percent for your daily driving if you have one of the newer standard Range model threes then it should have an lfp battery which you can charge to 100 for your daily driving but if you're driving any other model try to plan to only charge you about 90 or 80 percent during your super charging stops charging from 90 to 100 that last 10 percent will usually take a very long time so only charge it to 100 at a supercharger if you absolutely need to and it's usually more efficient to stop charging at eighty percent as long as there are more superchargers along your route if you have the choice try to charge at V3 superchargers these will show up on the map as 250 kilowatt Chargers compared to the older V2 superchargers which are 150 kilowatts now V3 superchargers will usually save more time when charging and this next tip will seem contradictory to my previous tip about not charging to 100 but there are times when you need to do this sometimes Tesla will automatically set your charge limit to 80 at a supercharger if it detects that it's a high usage supercharger it's done this to me and if your car reaches the maximum charging limit then you have to stop charging pretty soon after in order to avoid idle fees to avoid these fees I usually change my charge limit to 100 whenever I do see that message about high usage in order to buy myself some more time because there have been times where I'm eating food at a nearby restaurant and my car is about to reach 80 and although I don't technically need that last 20 to continue on my trip I'll change my limit to 100 on my Tesla app so that it buys me some extra time to finish eating and return to my car without being charged idle feeds last tip is regarding one of my biggest pet peeves most superchargers have an install that is a pull in spot instead of the rest of the Stalls which are back end spots these installs that you can pull into are specifically for Teslas that are towing a trailer please do not use these in spots if you are not Towing something I see so many Teslas charging in these spots that are not towing anything and it may not seem like a big deal but if someone is Towing up a trailer and if they pull up to a charger to charge a car and their spot is taken they will have to go out of their way to and then go through the hassle of unhitching their trailer and rehitching it so just be courteous and don't charge in these in spots unless it's the only salt open and you're able to sit in the car in case you need to move out of it quickly those are my five mistakes to avoid when traveling long trips in a Tesla hope you enjoy this video hope you got some use out of it what is your biggest tip that I didn't mention in this video let me know in the comments below my name is Andy thank you for watching if you enjoyed this video make sure you subscribe for more Tesla and Tech videos in the future I'll talk to you in the next one

Channel: Andy Slye

Views: 88,540

Keywords: tesla, tesla model 3, tesla model y, tesla tips, tesla supercharger, tesla charging, tesla supercharging, tesla charging tips, tesla supercharger cost, tesla travel, tesla travel tips, tesla road trip, tesla trip, tesla model x, tesla charger, tesla charging cost, tesla adapters, tesla ccs, tesla model s, tesla cybertruck, tesla trip tips, model 3, model y, tesla autopilot, tesla full self driving, tesla tips and tricks, supercharging, tesla battery, tesla range

Id: HdXbdM4HZKw

Length: 10min 25sec (625 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 03 2022