Lack of range anxiety... What was your moment?

[Yellow Buddy]

Whenever I get something new, there’s always a period of time where I’m not quite settled yet. Sneakers, baseball gloves, cars…all need to be broken in before I’m comfortable with it.

Today, I realized I was comfortable with my R1T and put Tesla and their supercharging network into my rear view window. How do I know this?

4:30AM, I got ready for my next leg of my trip and got this:

I looked over at my phone at the PlugShare map:

And decided…I’ll be fiiiiiine.

So at 4:30 in the morning, being conscious of the stupid decision I just made, I hit “Go Anyway” and decided that it was cold. So I turned on my heated steering wheel, heated seat, turned the heat up to 74F and set my cruise control at a conservative 85mph and set off, occasionally seeing what the GPS showed.

It was not happy..

At this point I closed PlugShare. It was pointless as there were no chargers around. I had Waze up but that’s as all.

Before I knew it the truckthrew a preconditioning message up. I looked down this:

I was making good time AND I had plenty of range left. Approximately 20-25% by my estimates. So I did what any sane person would do…I hit “END” and set the destination to the next charger….an additional 60 miles away.

Perhaps I was channelling my inner Kramer, but it was at that moment I realized I had a good amount t of comfort with the truck now.

What was your moment?

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[COdogman]

74 degrees!? Put on a sweatshirt!

 

[Yellow Buddy]

74 degrees!? Put on a sweatshirt!

I’m a sleep in the cold person. So the heat helps me stay awake and alert. I normally travel with the heat off or set at 68F, not that it matters because I’m pretty sure my heat (or temp sensor) is broken.

I had a compression undershirt, long sleeve over it, and a Sherpa lined soft shell hoodie on top of that. I was definitely warm, but awake.

 

[ccmun]

I hear you. I cant say I am 100% anxiety free, but I dont get too worried. I live in the Republic of Florida where DCFC is woefully inadequate. We are too busy banning books and slaying the Woke mob. But you can usually find 50KW chargers to get enough juice to keep going.

 

[Dark-Fx]

What did you start at? Important info that's missing here.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

What did you start at? Important info that's missing here.

70% charge - ~233 Conserve / ~210 AP I believe. I’m on 22s, rainy and 43F, continued to drop as I went up north. I had an open bed with a load of wheels in the bed.

 

[WSea]

How many miles left at charger arrival? 19? I bet slightly more

 

[Rivla]

Love the post, OP. Funny and entertaining read, but more than anything it validates my decision to leave Tesla in the rear view mirror after 10 years. None of my Teslas have ever gotten anywhere near rated or estimated range regardless of driving style - just one of Tesla’s many misleading practices imo. I’m stoked to make my regular trips to friends/family/destinations without needing to charge along the way.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

How many miles left at charger arrival? 19? I bet slightly more

I ended up stopping after another 30 miles. My bladder couldn’t take anymore, but I’m also not sure it would’ve actually made it another 60 miles. Traffic built up and it seemed like there was elevation.

 

[WSea]

I recently had to make a choice. Head my preferred route home with predicted 8 mile buffer to charger or a 35 mile longer route but charger 10 miles closer. Took preferred route and arrived at charger with 14 miles left.

 

[goldburger]

So if I’m understanding, first the truck said you didn’t have enough charge, then it says you’ll have 79 miles left, so you decided to skip it and go 60 miles further?

Why was it wrong to begin with? What’s a preconditioning message look like?

I have so much range anxiety lol

 

[Thedude]

What’s a preconditioning message look like?

It’s just a message that pops up on the dash when your navigation is set for a fast charger, something along the lines of “preconditioning battery for charging”.

 

[NWCamper]

For me it was the realization that the truck is really what it is advertised to be and does a surprisingly good job at it. The estimates tend to be more real than not, and if anything conservative.

I think you know your truck. That's the moment.

 

[Yellow Buddy]

So if I’m understanding, first the truck said you didn’t have enough charge, then it says you’ll have 79 miles left, so you decided to skip it and go 60 miles further?

Why was it wrong to begin with? What’s a preconditioning message look like?

I have so much range anxiety lol

Your understanding is correct.

It’s not that anything is wrong per se. The trucks nav is just extremely conservative and recalculates based on your actual driving once you get going.

If you have range anxiety, I recommend you run your car to almost empty at least once. The reason being that you’ll know just how far you can go which helps. If it shows 50 mi on the GOM I trust it to go another 40 miles at least.

I’ll add one more. I drive from the NYC area to Columbus OH. It’s roughly 500 miles. I do that enough to know, it’s a one stop trip with 8-9 hours of driving. So now in my head I kind of go - well is it farther than Ohio?

Will I be driving for more than 4 hours straight? If so I’ll need to charge at some point so I’ll need a DCFC.

 

[Mister Person]

Thanks for the post. My primary road trip will be a 360 mile drive to northern Michigan and this helps me understand how it might go. When you do the NY to Ohio drive do you typically charge to 100% before leaving?

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