Shakeout Trip

In preparation for our three month summer trip (Maine/New Brunswick/Nova Scotia/Newfoundland/Labrador) we decided to take a “quick” two week trip to Maine and Quebec City.

tl;dr

New record for travel between charges while pulling the trailer...150 miles. And we still had 16% “in the tank on arrival”. Based on this we could have gone 180 miles before stopping for charging.

In Canada the speed limit signs are in km/hr. The Tesla autopilot cameras read the speed limit signs in kms/hr and display the speed limit on the dash in mph. No need to do math while driving.

(if you just reading for the poodle pictures you can skip this next section)

Geek Stuff
PA to Maine: The well worn path

Pulling the trailer to Maine has become second nature for us. It's about a 400 mile trip one way and we've done it as both one and two day trips. Since we were headed farther north in Maine than usual, around 550 miles, we decided two days would be better.

First day was around 300 miles. We stayed at a campground northwest of Boston. Charged at the usual supercharger stops: Tarrytown NY, Milford CT, and Auburn MA. Tarrytown was crowded so we ended up unhitching to charge. We didn't have to unhitch at either Milford or Auburn.

Total trip time including charging ~ 7 hours. Avg wH/mile ~ 460. (We decided to top off at Auburn instead of charging at the campground overnight. This added about a half hour to the travel time.)

Second day was about 250 miles to the campground in Northern Maine. We charged at Kennebunk ME and Augusta ME. No unhitching required at either! We left Augusta with a 75% state of charge(SOC) and arrived in Eustis with a 15% SOC.

Total trip time including charging ~5.5 hours. Avg wH/mile ~510 (~1000 foot elevation gain last 85 miles).

Campground charging: The path less taken

We arrived at the campground with 15% SOC. This meant we needed to add 85% over the next four days to have a “full tank” when we left.

The campground had 30A/120V service. Normally we can continuously charge at 24A from the 30A service. Charging at this rate adds about 3.3% to the SOC per hour. So about 26 hours to a “full tank”.

Unfortunately the electrical infrastructure at the campground was less than robust. Charging with any draw more than 20A would drop the voltage from 124V to less than 110V. The Tesla would either reduce the charging rate or stop charging when this happened. So I ended up setting the charging rate to 16A (about 2.2% to the SOC per hour). Time to “full tank”... 39 hours (not including the few hours overnight where charging stopped from the voltage sags at high amps).

Maine to Quebec City: A tale of two routes

This part of the trip we had two route choices...the shorter hypotenuse of the triangle or the longer two sides of the triangle. The advantage of the shorter route...it was shorter (about 165 miles). The disadvantage...we would need to travel 150 miles to the next Tesla Supercharger.

The advantage of the longer route...multiple superchargers along the way. The disadvantage...it was longer...270 miles total!

We decided to take the shorter route. The plan was to drive 150 miles straight through to the supercharger. The backup plan was that if it looked as if there was going to be a problem we would stop at one of the non-Tesla chargers along the way. These chargers are slower and would require about an hour of charging if needed.

It turned out that we made it straight through to the Tesla Supercharger in Quebec City and didn't need to stop. The combination of elevation loss and slower non-highway driving resulted in great efficiency.

Trip time three hours. Avg wH/mile ~430.

The 150 miles was the longest leg we've traveled between chargers while pulling the trailer. We started with a 97% SOC and arrived at the supercharger with 16% SOC. Based on this 150 mile trip we still had ~30 miles of range remaining for a total range estimate of 180 miles.

Poodle pictures