Road trip

Recently I drove a Tesla Model 3 on an electric roadtrip from Southern California to Portland and back. The total distance was around 2,200 miles, with the bulk of the driving happening over the course of five days (three up, two down), and I only “spent” about 25 minutes waiting for the car to charge, total, over the whole trip.

There are many travelogues and YouTube channels that go into deep analyses of efficiency and charging speed, with lots of detail on how exactly to plan an electric roadtrip. Though I typically do enjoy those sorts of details, I didn’t actually think to keep track of any of them during this trip, since they’re all sort of unnecessary at this point, because electric roadtrips are easy.

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[tweet https://twitter.com/TalulahRiley/status/450404266914500608]

It appears Tesla CEO Elon Musk and family are on their 3200-mile “elec-trek” cross country with his 5 children. Actress/wife Talulah Riley tweeted the above yesterday signaling that the trip has started and included what looks like the California Desert taken from the passenger compartment of a Model S.

Musk had previously tweeted some specs for the trip but those tweets have been deleted so they may not be up to date info.

Just finalized the LA to NY family road trip route in Model S. 6 day, 3200 mile journey with only 9 hrs spent charging.—
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 05, 2013

At 1.5 hrs/day, we will only ever need to charge when stopping anyway to eat or sightsee, never just for charging itself—
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 05, 2013

I wonder if Musk has the special 400 Mile battery in his car?

Update: It would appear that Musk and family are further along than thought?

Update 2: It looks like Musk&Fam might have taken an even more posh ride to South Dakota. Musk’s Jet flew from LA to South Dakota yesterday:

 

Update 3: Tesla did confirm to me that Musk is indeed on his roadtrip. A spokesperson told me:

While we can confirm Elon is on his road trip, I cannot give any details about the journey, his timeline, or location. You may feel free to gather information from his personal twitter feed.