A second long trip on Tesla Model Y

As I wrote before I did a 1000-mile trip in a Tesla Model Y and it was no difference in time if I did it in a traditional car. In fact, it will take longer because petrol stations are rarely close to any good food places like restaurants, so I will have to refill my car and then drive to restaurants while in Tesla I can drive to a supercharger and a restaurant is always nearby.

But my first trip could be a fluke and it could be a perfect combination of different factors. But recently I did a second trip to the same place and back, I just did circle in different direction. And as in first time I was never waiting for my car to finish charging.

We left home with a 99% battery charge. We made our first stop after about 3 hours of driving. We need to visit the restroom and we want our coffee before it is too late in the day. It took us about 15 minutes to do it and we had way more charge to go to our next stop.

90 minutes later we stopped for quite a late lunch. The car finished charging to its limit (99%) and I left my wife to pay because I had to take it off charging to avoid a parking fee if your car is staying on charge after it finished charging.

Then we traveled to our destination and put the car to charge there while we were doing shopping for the evening in the hotel. Our car didn’t require a charge but because the supercharger was located in the parking lot of that shopping place, we put it on charge.

The next day we drove it to the supercharger again and we started planning our breakfast. We had to return by 3:30 pm to pick up our relative so we found a good place at around 40 minutes driving but opens quite late in the morning, so we had to wait anyway. It was quite cold so we rather spend time in the car.

After breakfast, we returned to the charging spot at around 2 pm and started waiting for our relative to call us. I explored shops nearby because I didn’t feel good sitting 1.5 hours in the car before the 7-hour drive. Our relative was able to finish later, so we left that place at around 3:20.

Even though we planned to drive around 3.5 before stopping for dinner, we stopped in about 1.5 hours for a restroom break. That stop took us around 20 minutes to find the restroom and we found a good shop nearby and we did a little bit of shopping.

Then in around 2 hours, we stopped at our planned stop to have dinner. The place was close to full, so it took a bit more time to finish eating and the car was charged at 99% again when we started to drive our last leg. We arrived home with around 25% of battery charge.

All the time there was plenty of space on superchargers. All of them were working at the advertised speed and there were no issues at all. As I wrote before I never had to wait for the car to finish charging and its fact it was the opposite case. We had to rush to the car to avoid parking charges.

It was also cheaper to charge than to fill it with petrol. According to the Tesla app, I spent $146 on charging, and it was over 1000 miles. I would say petrol will cost me at least $160. Plus, around 20% of my next service interval for a regular ICE car which will cost me around $200.

And lastly, I would like to state, that Tesla is just fun to drive. We took a different route and there were a lot of hills. Other cars have 2 choices to go uphill: press it hard and loud and keep 55 miles per hour speed or do it quiet and crawl at 40 miles but quiet. But Tesla is still fast and quiet. I just press acceleration a bit more and it overtakes everyone.

It is also much better to overtake trucks on a single-line road. I had to wait quite some time until I could legally overtake it and those spots didn’t last long. With Tesla, it will take only a couple of seconds. This allows more cars behind me to do the same.

In conclusion, I would like to state that the road trips on Tesla are fun, and they are not any longer than in an ICE car unless you can drive many hours without a single stop which I consider is not safe at all. There are plenty of superchargers and they are located at convenient places. We did two quite long trips at different times of the year, and I think it proves that normally there are no issues or delays with charging Tesla. And you have always the convenience of charging it at home and saves a lot of time and money.

I hope it helps someone.