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The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Tesla Model S P85D Road Trip

42 points by woobar 11y ago

stillbourne 11y ago
The title seems to be a little overboard considering the actual content of the article. It didn't seem that vehemently bad.
- agscala 11y ago
  The title seems to be a play on the title of a book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day"
  - atonse 11y ago
    Is that a well known book? Because I had the same impression. Since I'm not familiar with the book, I thought their headline was way too much link bait.
    - tytso 11y ago
      I thought it was pretty well known. I gave a good chuckle before I clicked on the link, and after reading the article, I thought it was actually pretty accurate. My reaction was, "well there's $140,000 that's going to stay in my bank account". :-)
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Is that a well known book? That, and, over the years, an HBO animated special, a musical stage production, a non-musical stage production, and, most recently, a box-office success as a movie last year. The title has been a fairly frequent pop culture reference with the "Alexander" at the beginning and the "day" at the end replaced with other things, e.g, on the Daily Show, etc.
      - atonse 11y ago
        Ahh I had no idea, thanks.
rollthehard6 11y ago
So many of these complaints seem to focus on edge cases, what proportion of car journeys would really trigger 'range anxiety'? Even in the US I imagine such long trips are the exception for the majority of car owners.
- greglindahl 11y ago
  In the US, the overwhelming majority of long trips have a lot better supercharger coverage than this particular one.
  - rpcope1 11y ago
    I'm not so sure this is actually the case. If you look at the supercharger map: http://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/49.38,-66.94,25.82,-124.39,d?search=supercharger&name=us http://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/49.38,-66.94,25.82... you'll notice major corridors like I-64 from Lexington to St. Louis have no intermediate chargers, and from St. Louis to Kansas City on I-70 is similarly devoid. It would look like if you don't live on the north east coast or out in California, you'd be in real trouble. The chargers probably don't have to have the same ubiquity as gas stations, but having 400-500 miles of _interstate_ (god forbid you need to go somewhere like Ithaca, NY where no interstates run) without any way to refuel the vehicle still would certainly make me nervous driving it cross country.
    - mikeash 11y ago
      From the St. Louis supercharger to the one in Kansas City is 213 miles. No problem in an 85kWh Tesla. Lexington to St. Louis is not doable on superchargers, and you'd either have to go by way of Indianapolis, or find a friendly CHAdeMO charger in between. Ithaca would depend on where you're coming from and where you're going. It's well within range of the supercharger at Paramus, NY or Syracuse. Coming from Pittsburg you'd have to detour through Buffalo.
      - rpcope1 11y ago
        I guess it just goes to show that Tesla (or whoever ends up betting the farm on electric cars) still have a lot of way to go before we see something approaching critical mass. All of the chargers are placed OK assuming you don't leave the interstate, but I think we're going to need to see some serious infrastructure upgrades before electric cars become totally viable alternatives (for some of us that often go cross country, anyways).
sqrt_minus_1 11y ago
What's security like at Tesla Supercharger stations? Some of the pictures make it seem like they're a bit isolated and unpopulated. Needing to wait for half an hour or whatever with your car plugged in (non-operable) would seem to make one a possible crime target. Plus, it'd be a safe assumption that you have money, given what you're driving around in.
- jbob2000 11y ago
  Talk about fear-mongering... that could happen anywhere!
- jonknee 11y ago
  That's not a real concern. They're normally right off an interstate next to places to eat.
  - sqrt_minus_1 11y ago
    I assure you, my question is sincere and I don't appreciate being dismissed like that. From the article: the Tesla predicts 40 minutes of charging is required to juice the battery to its 230-mile-ish “daily limit”—and no meal coinciding with the stop, I’m left to pace around an empty Hobby Lobby parking lot. I can't say either way, but that doesn't sound near an interstate exit with places to eat (but I'll grant that enthusiast press often embellishes for effect, could have been right next to a Waffle House). Compared with a gas station, an empty parking lot seems to be a riskier place to be waiting around.
    - jonknee 11y ago
      It would be stupid to steal a Tesla for anything other than a joy ride and unless you're talking a hostage scenario I don't know what about a Tesla driver suggests they have a large amount of cash on them. As for the specific place they author was at, it's directly off the interstate and other than the Hobby Lobby there is an Outback Steakhouse and a bank directly by the charger. As well as a Home Depot, a movie theatre, McDonalds, Wendy's, Best Buy and tons of other stuff. It sounds like an awful suburban strip mall, but not a place where you should be worried about a car jacking. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tesla+Supercharger/@41.313652,-81.5171032,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x4b9387b54bccf0b4?sa=X&ei=4wCgVc7kB8fwoATmqYCgBg&ved=0CIQBEPwSMAs https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tesla+Supercharger/@41.313...
paulsutter 11y ago
I'm a huge Tesla fan but I have to admit that the Tesla doesn't seem great for such a road trip. 15 hours instead of 9 is a big deal. Of course most Tesla owners keep a gasoline car too. So everyone already knew that.
- dokument 11y ago
  I'm a huge kayak fan but I have to admit that they don't seem great for transatlantic voyages. What the article talks about is 100% expected due to the target market of the Tesla and the current state (still building infrastructure) of the charging stations.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    Actually it's not expected, as evidenced by the fact that kayak^WTesla owners routinely take transatlantic^Wcross country voyages right now with no fuss and a great deal of enjoyment. There are some destinations which are inconvenient right now, but most road trips can be done easily. Much of the trouble the author had was avoidable with a bit more forethought.
- mikeash 11y ago
  The trip planning feature sucks as currently implemented. It is just plain stupid. It will keep you from running out of charge if you obey it, but it may give you terrible routing within that constraint. I saw a photo the other day from somebody who was driving ~150 miles in Alabama, well within range of a single charge, and the trip planner gave him an epic 4,000 journey across the US connecting the supercharger dots to get from A to B. However, if you're wiling to do a bit of your own thinking and the supercharger network accommodates your trip well (which it mostly will at this point, there are some holes but most people won't have trouble), the Tesla is a fantastic road trip vehicle. It's quiet, smooth, and comfortable, which means you won't be as fatigued. Superchargers are located at convenient locations so you can get a snack or a meal while you charge. My experience so far is limited, but range anxiety for me has been less, not more, because I know in advance exactly where I'm going to stop, rather than trying to search for a gas station in just the right spot, trying to find a cheaper price, etc. And of course paying $0 and not being bombarded with carcinogens is a big bonus. I don't know if most Tesla owners keep a gas car. I didn't, and not keeping one seems pretty common. Unless you plan to take trips into the relatively few supercharging deserts, you really don't need it.
api 11y ago
Nothing surprising here. People don't buy Teslas because they want the same thing as those who buy an expensive gas-powered luxury car. They buy them because they want to be early adopters of cool new stuff. If I bought one I would not expect the ease of road tripping afforded by gas -- at least not today and not for a while -- and thus would not be disappointed for not getting what I never expected to get. The review seemed gratuitously negative. Fact is that almost everyone in the traditional car industry wants Tesla to fail. I know some folks "back home" who are into cars, and when they talk about electrics it's like mockery mixed with a tinge of dread. If you're a CS/software person, imagine if a new computer came out that is far superior to existing computers but has almost nothing in common. The way you program it is alien to anything you're accustomed to. That's the situation car people will find themselves in if things go electric... not to mention the waves upon waves upon waves of bankruptcies as entire swaths of the economy find themselves obsolete. Electric vehicles are armageddon to what probably accounts for a double-digit fraction of our economy.
- joshuapants 11y ago
  > If I bought one I would not expect the ease of road tripping afforded by gas -- at least not today and not for a while -- and thus would not be disappointed for not getting what I never expected to get. Exactly. I'm bullish on electric cars, and the next time I car shop I'll probably get one, though at the moment they are better suited as town/station cars. The typical person doesn't need much range day to day, but it can be pretty difficult to take a long trip in one. If I got a BMW i3, for example, I couldn't take it for a weekend trip down the shore because I'd run the battery down halfway home, and there are no public charges near the beach I go to.
  - JohnBooty 11y ago
    Another Philadelphia area resident, I see!
- MBCook 11y ago
  > The review seemed gratuitously negative. I disagree. I think Teslas are interesting, and I never tend to road trip so it's an edge use case for me. But the descriptions of the navigation system are just flat out baffling. That's a horrible fault in a car that can't be easily/quickly charged at tens of thousands of gas stations. A navigation system should never have you drive FURTHER BACK to the PLACE YOU CAME FROM rather than the SHORTER distance to the NEXT supercharger. That's insane. And having him get off the highway to stop at a supercharger where he needed "0 minutes" of charging? Why wasn't that cut from the route? I understand him losing mileage to the A/C, but it's a connected car. If it knows where it is, where you're going, and can access it weather it should be able to predict you'll probably end up using the A/C and adjust the expected range accordingly. That should't have been a surprise either. At the end of the article he said he could do the trip in about 12 hours if he planned by hand with 3 stops instead of 6-8 stops and 17 hours if he let the Tesla software plan it. That's a disaster. This sounds like one of those cases where bad software ruins (or significantly detracts from) an experience that shouldn't otherwise be that bad. This article is an indictment of the navigation system. I'll also say it sounds odd that you can set the car up to control the heat and sunroof and such with the phone app when the car is driving. If it's moving, why allow that? If you're driving or in the car you already have access to the controls. Sounds ripe for abuse/pranks (as happened in the article).
furyg3 11y ago
> Of course the Model S can be road-tripped. Whether it can be accomplished with the sort of ease we assume buyers of a $140,000 luxury sedan expect, well, that depends on your planning. On the other hand he paid $0 for energy, which would be very different had he brought along a comparable gasoline-powered car (Audi RS6?). In my experience taking long road trips in expensive cars is a fools errand, electric or not. Expensive cars are either fast, heavy, or both, and get horrible milage. Sure, an Audi RS6 would have had fewer stops which also would have been quicker, but you'd be there in the same amount of time at a quarter of the cost in a Miata, which would have been a lot of fun at the race track, too.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  This is a good point, but you also have to assume that people who drive cars that cost more than a modest house are probably not overly concerned about the cost of gasoline. Even if it were a car attainable by normal middle-class drivers, I believe most people would rather be confident that they can reach their destination safely than fret over a hundred bucks of gasoline (and a tow costs at least $75). Maybe the moral of the story is that all Tesla owners doing long-range driving should invest in a AAA membership for the inevitable occasion when the battery jumps down to -22% before reaching the next charging station.
  - greglindahl 11y ago
    It's likely that no Tesla owners have AAA, because the car comes with roadside service, including towing. I know people on HN love to discuss things they aren't personally familiar with, but this is really getting out of hand!
    - cookiecaper 11y ago
      It was a quip. Relax. It doesn't really matter if they get included roadside service or not, since they'll still have to sit around, wait for a tow truck to show up and rescue them from the middle of nowhere, ride in the truck's cab or possibly have to get a separate taxi to wherever the car is being towed, and wait to get charged. This has to happen whether one uses Tesla, AAA, or any other entity (including themselves) to coordinate the tow. It doesn't materially change the argument.
11thEarlOfMar 11y ago
The point of this post is simply to (anectodally) measure the usefulness of the Tesla as a road trip vehicle in July, 2015. One year from now, the experience will be different, and likely different enough to move a percentage of prospective owners from waiting to buying.
sologoub 11y ago
One thing I don't understand is the requirement to use superchargers. From what I can tell, paid charging stations are much more prolific and while not offering the same convenience, will keep you from traveling via a flatbed...
- tlb 11y ago
  Paid charging stations are common, but they are generally 6 or 10 kW charge rate, compared to a supercharger's 80 kW, so they're an overnight proposition.
andyl 11y ago
Former GM employee here: Michigan's Big3 and their Media partners hate change. And change is coming: electrification, self-driving car-as-service, direct sales, diminishing per-capita car miles. Tighten your seat-belts Big3.
jblow 11y ago
As recently as four years ago, the rhetoric was "there's no infrastructure for electric cars, building one is totally infeasible, therefore elextric cars will never work." Now the rhetoric is "waaah, the charging stations are kind of inconvenient." Anyone who writes this kind of article without looking at dsituation/dt is being dumb.
- MBCook 11y ago
  Did you read the same article I did? His complaints didn't seem to be "charging is inconvenient" as much as "the navigation/trip optimization system caused me drive an extra 5 hours and make 4 extra stops that were totally unnecessary".
  - bigdubs 11y ago
    Pretty sure "extra time" falls under the "charging stations are not convenient" header.
    - MBCook 11y ago
      But time wasted due to bad/unneccessary directions is not the inconvenience of the charging stations, it's just bad directions.
    - soylentcola 11y ago
      I'd imagine that more infrastructure (in the form of more charging stations) would make route planning and navigation a much less painful affair. If there was a charger in every town over (x) population, you wouldn't need to take those much longer routes or deal with drastic detours and backtracking if the range needs to be recalculated due to changing circumstances (air conditioning use, ambient temp, driving speed, etc.)
- xutopia 11y ago
  Not to mention that they test it with a road trip... how often do we do road trips? 98% of our driving is done within a few miles from our homes.
sunstone 11y ago
I doubt Car and Drive gets a lot of electric car advertising.
rickdale 11y ago
Everything is impressive about Tesla. I am sure it will get better in the future, but I would go crazy having to wait 40+ minutes for my car to charge during a road trip.
- mixmastamyk 11y ago
  On an eight hour trip that gives you time to eat.
josinalvo 11y ago
I might be wrong, but it seems silly to try to get a lot of mileage out of an purely electric vehicle. I mean... Most trips (probably over 90% of the distance ran) are very short, for city people. It seems that you could get pretty much all the enviromnental benefit, and nearly all the savings, using a smaller battery pack. And authonomy would come from an ICE to rechange the pack So, maybe the volt (or at least the idea behind it) is more resonable than tesla?
- josinalvo 11y ago
  To get the question really interesting, we could try to weight the pollution of the bigger battery pack (production and discarding) versus the pollution of the (relatively few) trips with more that 50 kms...
- mikeash 11y ago
  The Volt itself doesn't really compare. Only four seats compared to 5+2 in the Tesla, and terrible cargo space. I loved the idea of the Volt but when I actually thought about getting one, it was just not practical for me. How about the idea of a plug-in hybrid, but done better? Maybe. But you're talking about two separate drivetrains, which is going to inherently hurt things like cargo space. There's nothing silly about road tripping in a Tesla. The charging infrastructure is great and road trips are smooth. The author just didn't do his very well.
  - malyk 11y ago
    I believe the 2016 volt will be a 5 seater. I have a '14 and the storage space seems fine to me. No kids though. I did put 14 large bags of mulch in the back once... The Volt also does a really great job with range vs. the driving habits of it's owners. According to Chevy[1], 80% of volt trips don't use any gas. Could be some confirmation bias there, but my personal rate is somewhere in the 70% of trips don't us gas. [1] http://www.cheatsheet.com/automobiles/2016-chevy-volt-may-be-the-total-green-car-package-at-27k.html/?a=viewall http://www.cheatsheet.com/automobiles/2016-chevy-volt-may-be...
    - 11y ago
qdog 11y ago
This was more about the pains of learning driving habits for a Tesla, and also building confidence in the distance one can go in a Tesla. Gas-powered cars require little such planning, as there are many gas stations, so a lead-foot isn't a big deal. He noted at the end that he thinks he could get the same road trip down in a pretty reasonable time.
greglindahl 11y ago
It's interesting to compare the single data point in this article to a more global measure: [1] "Tesla Motors Inc. drivers were more likely than Porsche owners -- or anyone else -- to say they’d buy their cars again in this year’s edition of the closely-watched Consumer Reports buyer survey. "Tesla’s Model S luxury electric sedan topped the U.S. survey a second year in a row, scoring 98 out of a possible 100. The No. 2 brand, Porsche, scored an average of 87 out of 100 across its model lines." 1: http://www.autonews.com/article/20141203/RETAIL03/141209918/tesla-model-s-beats-out-porsche-in-owner-satisfaction-survey http://www.autonews.com/article/20141203/RETAIL03/141209918/...
- mikeash 11y ago
  Yes, and Tesla owners forums like Tesla Motors Club are full of stories about road trips which fall into one of two categories. Either they say "Taking the Tesla was awesome and I never want to deal with a gas car on a road trip again" or they say "I had to take the gas car because I was going through one of the few remaining supercharger deserts and it was awful and I hope I never have to do that again." Road tripping a Tesla does require a bit more forethought. You can't depend on the trip planner at this point and get good results. That is a serious flaw and I hope Tesla improves their trip planner soon, because it can be terribly stupid. But if you can apply that extra forethought and you're taking a trip within the charging network, it's a fantastic road trip vehicle.
- anon4 11y ago
  You should also factor in the fact that if you're an electric car enthusiast, you probably want a Tesla and have no other high-class options, plus a lot of Tesla owners are electric car enthusiasts.
anon4 11y ago
Interesting... would it be possible to charge from the outlet at regular gas stations? Assuming you carry an electricity meter to be able to pay for the energy you take. Alternatively, what about a small generator that you fill with gas in the event you need to top up and there's only a gas station nearby?
- mayoff 11y ago
  There's already a standard EV charging port, called J1772, and the Tesla Model S comes with a J1772 adapter. A Tesla Supercharger has a maximum output of 100 kW (400V, 250A). J1772 level 2 has a maximum output of 19.2 kW (240V, 80A) but I believe most don't put out the maximum amps. If you have an EV with a small battery and you're trying to get around town, a J1772 stop might be useful. For a Tesla on a long distance trip, a J1772 stop won't be worthwhile on its own unless you're desperate. (If you're stopping anyway for some other reason, you might as well plug in if it's convenient.)
mattbeckman 11y ago
Perhaps he should do it again once the planned superchargers for 2015 are in play. From the perspective of a non-owner who doesn't live near Ohio/Virginia, it appears to me that there are a lot more scheduled for install before the end of this year: http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

42 points by woobar 11y ago

The title seems to be a little overboard considering the actual content of the article. It didn't seem that vehemently bad.

agscala 11y ago
The title seems to be a play on the title of a book "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day"
- atonse 11y ago
  Is that a well known book? Because I had the same impression. Since I'm not familiar with the book, I thought their headline was way too much link bait.
  - tytso 11y ago
    I thought it was pretty well known. I gave a good chuckle before I clicked on the link, and after reading the article, I thought it was actually pretty accurate. My reaction was, "well there's $140,000 that's going to stay in my bank account". :-)
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Is that a well known book? That, and, over the years, an HBO animated special, a musical stage production, a non-musical stage production, and, most recently, a box-office success as a movie last year. The title has been a fairly frequent pop culture reference with the "Alexander" at the beginning and the "day" at the end replaced with other things, e.g, on the Daily Show, etc.
    - atonse 11y ago
      Ahh I had no idea, thanks.

rollthehard6 11y ago

So many of these complaints seem to focus on edge cases, what proportion of car journeys would really trigger 'range anxiety'? Even in the US I imagine such long trips are the exception for the majority of car owners.

greglindahl 11y ago
In the US, the overwhelming majority of long trips have a lot better supercharger coverage than this particular one.
- rpcope1 11y ago
  I'm not so sure this is actually the case. If you look at the supercharger map: http://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/49.38,-66.94,25.82,-124.39,d?search=supercharger&name=us http://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/49.38,-66.94,25.82... you'll notice major corridors like I-64 from Lexington to St. Louis have no intermediate chargers, and from St. Louis to Kansas City on I-70 is similarly devoid. It would look like if you don't live on the north east coast or out in California, you'd be in real trouble. The chargers probably don't have to have the same ubiquity as gas stations, but having 400-500 miles of _interstate_ (god forbid you need to go somewhere like Ithaca, NY where no interstates run) without any way to refuel the vehicle still would certainly make me nervous driving it cross country.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    From the St. Louis supercharger to the one in Kansas City is 213 miles. No problem in an 85kWh Tesla. Lexington to St. Louis is not doable on superchargers, and you'd either have to go by way of Indianapolis, or find a friendly CHAdeMO charger in between. Ithaca would depend on where you're coming from and where you're going. It's well within range of the supercharger at Paramus, NY or Syracuse. Coming from Pittsburg you'd have to detour through Buffalo.
    - rpcope1 11y ago
      I guess it just goes to show that Tesla (or whoever ends up betting the farm on electric cars) still have a lot of way to go before we see something approaching critical mass. All of the chargers are placed OK assuming you don't leave the interstate, but I think we're going to need to see some serious infrastructure upgrades before electric cars become totally viable alternatives (for some of us that often go cross country, anyways).

sqrt_minus_1 11y ago

What's security like at Tesla Supercharger stations? Some of the pictures make it seem like they're a bit isolated and unpopulated. Needing to wait for half an hour or whatever with your car plugged in (non-operable) would seem to make one a possible crime target. Plus, it'd be a safe assumption that you have money, given what you're driving around in.

jbob2000 11y ago
Talk about fear-mongering... that could happen anywhere!
jonknee 11y ago
That's not a real concern. They're normally right off an interstate next to places to eat.
- sqrt_minus_1 11y ago
  I assure you, my question is sincere and I don't appreciate being dismissed like that. From the article: the Tesla predicts 40 minutes of charging is required to juice the battery to its 230-mile-ish “daily limit”—and no meal coinciding with the stop, I’m left to pace around an empty Hobby Lobby parking lot. I can't say either way, but that doesn't sound near an interstate exit with places to eat (but I'll grant that enthusiast press often embellishes for effect, could have been right next to a Waffle House). Compared with a gas station, an empty parking lot seems to be a riskier place to be waiting around.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    It would be stupid to steal a Tesla for anything other than a joy ride and unless you're talking a hostage scenario I don't know what about a Tesla driver suggests they have a large amount of cash on them. As for the specific place they author was at, it's directly off the interstate and other than the Hobby Lobby there is an Outback Steakhouse and a bank directly by the charger. As well as a Home Depot, a movie theatre, McDonalds, Wendy's, Best Buy and tons of other stuff. It sounds like an awful suburban strip mall, but not a place where you should be worried about a car jacking. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tesla+Supercharger/@41.313652,-81.5171032,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x4b9387b54bccf0b4?sa=X&ei=4wCgVc7kB8fwoATmqYCgBg&ved=0CIQBEPwSMAs https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tesla+Supercharger/@41.313...

paulsutter 11y ago

I'm a huge Tesla fan but I have to admit that the Tesla doesn't seem great for such a road trip. 15 hours instead of 9 is a big deal. Of course most Tesla owners keep a gasoline car too. So everyone already knew that.

dokument 11y ago
I'm a huge kayak fan but I have to admit that they don't seem great for transatlantic voyages. What the article talks about is 100% expected due to the target market of the Tesla and the current state (still building infrastructure) of the charging stations.
- mikeash 11y ago
  Actually it's not expected, as evidenced by the fact that kayak^WTesla owners routinely take transatlantic^Wcross country voyages right now with no fuss and a great deal of enjoyment. There are some destinations which are inconvenient right now, but most road trips can be done easily. Much of the trouble the author had was avoidable with a bit more forethought.
mikeash 11y ago
The trip planning feature sucks as currently implemented. It is just plain stupid. It will keep you from running out of charge if you obey it, but it may give you terrible routing within that constraint. I saw a photo the other day from somebody who was driving ~150 miles in Alabama, well within range of a single charge, and the trip planner gave him an epic 4,000 journey across the US connecting the supercharger dots to get from A to B. However, if you're wiling to do a bit of your own thinking and the supercharger network accommodates your trip well (which it mostly will at this point, there are some holes but most people won't have trouble), the Tesla is a fantastic road trip vehicle. It's quiet, smooth, and comfortable, which means you won't be as fatigued. Superchargers are located at convenient locations so you can get a snack or a meal while you charge. My experience so far is limited, but range anxiety for me has been less, not more, because I know in advance exactly where I'm going to stop, rather than trying to search for a gas station in just the right spot, trying to find a cheaper price, etc. And of course paying $0 and not being bombarded with carcinogens is a big bonus. I don't know if most Tesla owners keep a gas car. I didn't, and not keeping one seems pretty common. Unless you plan to take trips into the relatively few supercharging deserts, you really don't need it.

api 11y ago

Nothing surprising here. People don't buy Teslas because they want the same thing as those who buy an expensive gas-powered luxury car. They buy them because they want to be early adopters of cool new stuff. If I bought one I would not expect the ease of road tripping afforded by gas -- at least not today and not for a while -- and thus would not be disappointed for not getting what I never expected to get. The review seemed gratuitously negative. Fact is that almost everyone in the traditional car industry wants Tesla to fail. I know some folks "back home" who are into cars, and when they talk about electrics it's like mockery mixed with a tinge of dread. If you're a CS/software person, imagine if a new computer came out that is far superior to existing computers but has almost nothing in common. The way you program it is alien to anything you're accustomed to. That's the situation car people will find themselves in if things go electric... not to mention the waves upon waves upon waves of bankruptcies as entire swaths of the economy find themselves obsolete. Electric vehicles are armageddon to what probably accounts for a double-digit fraction of our economy.

joshuapants 11y ago
> If I bought one I would not expect the ease of road tripping afforded by gas -- at least not today and not for a while -- and thus would not be disappointed for not getting what I never expected to get. Exactly. I'm bullish on electric cars, and the next time I car shop I'll probably get one, though at the moment they are better suited as town/station cars. The typical person doesn't need much range day to day, but it can be pretty difficult to take a long trip in one. If I got a BMW i3, for example, I couldn't take it for a weekend trip down the shore because I'd run the battery down halfway home, and there are no public charges near the beach I go to.
- JohnBooty 11y ago
  Another Philadelphia area resident, I see!
MBCook 11y ago
> The review seemed gratuitously negative. I disagree. I think Teslas are interesting, and I never tend to road trip so it's an edge use case for me. But the descriptions of the navigation system are just flat out baffling. That's a horrible fault in a car that can't be easily/quickly charged at tens of thousands of gas stations. A navigation system should never have you drive FURTHER BACK to the PLACE YOU CAME FROM rather than the SHORTER distance to the NEXT supercharger. That's insane. And having him get off the highway to stop at a supercharger where he needed "0 minutes" of charging? Why wasn't that cut from the route? I understand him losing mileage to the A/C, but it's a connected car. If it knows where it is, where you're going, and can access it weather it should be able to predict you'll probably end up using the A/C and adjust the expected range accordingly. That should't have been a surprise either. At the end of the article he said he could do the trip in about 12 hours if he planned by hand with 3 stops instead of 6-8 stops and 17 hours if he let the Tesla software plan it. That's a disaster. This sounds like one of those cases where bad software ruins (or significantly detracts from) an experience that shouldn't otherwise be that bad. This article is an indictment of the navigation system. I'll also say it sounds odd that you can set the car up to control the heat and sunroof and such with the phone app when the car is driving. If it's moving, why allow that? If you're driving or in the car you already have access to the controls. Sounds ripe for abuse/pranks (as happened in the article).

furyg3 11y ago

> Of course the Model S can be road-tripped. Whether it can be accomplished with the sort of ease we assume buyers of a $140,000 luxury sedan expect, well, that depends on your planning. On the other hand he paid $0 for energy, which would be very different had he brought along a comparable gasoline-powered car (Audi RS6?). In my experience taking long road trips in expensive cars is a fools errand, electric or not. Expensive cars are either fast, heavy, or both, and get horrible milage. Sure, an Audi RS6 would have had fewer stops which also would have been quicker, but you'd be there in the same amount of time at a quarter of the cost in a Miata, which would have been a lot of fun at the race track, too.

cookiecaper 11y ago
This is a good point, but you also have to assume that people who drive cars that cost more than a modest house are probably not overly concerned about the cost of gasoline. Even if it were a car attainable by normal middle-class drivers, I believe most people would rather be confident that they can reach their destination safely than fret over a hundred bucks of gasoline (and a tow costs at least $75). Maybe the moral of the story is that all Tesla owners doing long-range driving should invest in a AAA membership for the inevitable occasion when the battery jumps down to -22% before reaching the next charging station.
- greglindahl 11y ago
  It's likely that no Tesla owners have AAA, because the car comes with roadside service, including towing. I know people on HN love to discuss things they aren't personally familiar with, but this is really getting out of hand!
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    It was a quip. Relax. It doesn't really matter if they get included roadside service or not, since they'll still have to sit around, wait for a tow truck to show up and rescue them from the middle of nowhere, ride in the truck's cab or possibly have to get a separate taxi to wherever the car is being towed, and wait to get charged. This has to happen whether one uses Tesla, AAA, or any other entity (including themselves) to coordinate the tow. It doesn't materially change the argument.

11thEarlOfMar 11y ago

The point of this post is simply to (anectodally) measure the usefulness of the Tesla as a road trip vehicle in July, 2015. One year from now, the experience will be different, and likely different enough to move a percentage of prospective owners from waiting to buying.

sologoub 11y ago

One thing I don't understand is the requirement to use superchargers. From what I can tell, paid charging stations are much more prolific and while not offering the same convenience, will keep you from traveling via a flatbed...

tlb 11y ago
Paid charging stations are common, but they are generally 6 or 10 kW charge rate, compared to a supercharger's 80 kW, so they're an overnight proposition.

andyl 11y ago

Former GM employee here: Michigan's Big3 and their Media partners hate change. And change is coming: electrification, self-driving car-as-service, direct sales, diminishing per-capita car miles. Tighten your seat-belts Big3.

jblow 11y ago

As recently as four years ago, the rhetoric was "there's no infrastructure for electric cars, building one is totally infeasible, therefore elextric cars will never work." Now the rhetoric is "waaah, the charging stations are kind of inconvenient." Anyone who writes this kind of article without looking at dsituation/dt is being dumb.

MBCook 11y ago
Did you read the same article I did? His complaints didn't seem to be "charging is inconvenient" as much as "the navigation/trip optimization system caused me drive an extra 5 hours and make 4 extra stops that were totally unnecessary".
- bigdubs 11y ago
  Pretty sure "extra time" falls under the "charging stations are not convenient" header.
  - MBCook 11y ago
    But time wasted due to bad/unneccessary directions is not the inconvenience of the charging stations, it's just bad directions.
  - soylentcola 11y ago
    I'd imagine that more infrastructure (in the form of more charging stations) would make route planning and navigation a much less painful affair. If there was a charger in every town over (x) population, you wouldn't need to take those much longer routes or deal with drastic detours and backtracking if the range needs to be recalculated due to changing circumstances (air conditioning use, ambient temp, driving speed, etc.)
xutopia 11y ago
Not to mention that they test it with a road trip... how often do we do road trips? 98% of our driving is done within a few miles from our homes.

sunstone 11y ago

I doubt Car and Drive gets a lot of electric car advertising.

rickdale 11y ago

Everything is impressive about Tesla. I am sure it will get better in the future, but I would go crazy having to wait 40+ minutes for my car to charge during a road trip.

mixmastamyk 11y ago
On an eight hour trip that gives you time to eat.

josinalvo 11y ago

I might be wrong, but it seems silly to try to get a lot of mileage out of an purely electric vehicle. I mean... Most trips (probably over 90% of the distance ran) are very short, for city people. It seems that you could get pretty much all the enviromnental benefit, and nearly all the savings, using a smaller battery pack. And authonomy would come from an ICE to rechange the pack So, maybe the volt (or at least the idea behind it) is more resonable than tesla?

josinalvo 11y ago
To get the question really interesting, we could try to weight the pollution of the bigger battery pack (production and discarding) versus the pollution of the (relatively few) trips with more that 50 kms...
mikeash 11y ago
The Volt itself doesn't really compare. Only four seats compared to 5+2 in the Tesla, and terrible cargo space. I loved the idea of the Volt but when I actually thought about getting one, it was just not practical for me. How about the idea of a plug-in hybrid, but done better? Maybe. But you're talking about two separate drivetrains, which is going to inherently hurt things like cargo space. There's nothing silly about road tripping in a Tesla. The charging infrastructure is great and road trips are smooth. The author just didn't do his very well.
- malyk 11y ago
  I believe the 2016 volt will be a 5 seater. I have a '14 and the storage space seems fine to me. No kids though. I did put 14 large bags of mulch in the back once... The Volt also does a really great job with range vs. the driving habits of it's owners. According to Chevy[1], 80% of volt trips don't use any gas. Could be some confirmation bias there, but my personal rate is somewhere in the 70% of trips don't us gas. [1] http://www.cheatsheet.com/automobiles/2016-chevy-volt-may-be-the-total-green-car-package-at-27k.html/?a=viewall http://www.cheatsheet.com/automobiles/2016-chevy-volt-may-be...
  - 11y ago

qdog 11y ago

This was more about the pains of learning driving habits for a Tesla, and also building confidence in the distance one can go in a Tesla. Gas-powered cars require little such planning, as there are many gas stations, so a lead-foot isn't a big deal. He noted at the end that he thinks he could get the same road trip down in a pretty reasonable time.

greglindahl 11y ago

It's interesting to compare the single data point in this article to a more global measure: [1] "Tesla Motors Inc. drivers were more likely than Porsche owners -- or anyone else -- to say they’d buy their cars again in this year’s edition of the closely-watched Consumer Reports buyer survey. "Tesla’s Model S luxury electric sedan topped the U.S. survey a second year in a row, scoring 98 out of a possible 100. The No. 2 brand, Porsche, scored an average of 87 out of 100 across its model lines." 1: http://www.autonews.com/article/20141203/RETAIL03/141209918/tesla-model-s-beats-out-porsche-in-owner-satisfaction-survey http://www.autonews.com/article/20141203/RETAIL03/141209918/...

mikeash 11y ago
Yes, and Tesla owners forums like Tesla Motors Club are full of stories about road trips which fall into one of two categories. Either they say "Taking the Tesla was awesome and I never want to deal with a gas car on a road trip again" or they say "I had to take the gas car because I was going through one of the few remaining supercharger deserts and it was awful and I hope I never have to do that again." Road tripping a Tesla does require a bit more forethought. You can't depend on the trip planner at this point and get good results. That is a serious flaw and I hope Tesla improves their trip planner soon, because it can be terribly stupid. But if you can apply that extra forethought and you're taking a trip within the charging network, it's a fantastic road trip vehicle.
anon4 11y ago
You should also factor in the fact that if you're an electric car enthusiast, you probably want a Tesla and have no other high-class options, plus a lot of Tesla owners are electric car enthusiasts.

anon4 11y ago

Interesting... would it be possible to charge from the outlet at regular gas stations? Assuming you carry an electricity meter to be able to pay for the energy you take. Alternatively, what about a small generator that you fill with gas in the event you need to top up and there's only a gas station nearby?

mayoff 11y ago
There's already a standard EV charging port, called J1772, and the Tesla Model S comes with a J1772 adapter. A Tesla Supercharger has a maximum output of 100 kW (400V, 250A). J1772 level 2 has a maximum output of 19.2 kW (240V, 80A) but I believe most don't put out the maximum amps. If you have an EV with a small battery and you're trying to get around town, a J1772 stop might be useful. For a Tesla on a long distance trip, a J1772 stop won't be worthwhile on its own unless you're desperate. (If you're stopping anyway for some other reason, you might as well plug in if it's convenient.)

mattbeckman 11y ago

Perhaps he should do it again once the planned superchargers for 2015 are in play. From the perspective of a non-owner who doesn't live near Ohio/Virginia, it appears to me that there are a lot more scheduled for install before the end of this year: http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger