May Trip, Day 1

8 May 2024

I left the Springfield area at 10:30 this morning in heavy clouds and the aftermath of rains, and arrived in south central NY State in late afternoon under sunny skies. The car did really well on the first half of the trip … and then I hit the headwinds. Those were pretty steady at 15mph but with gusts to 35mph and they seriously cut into the efficiency for this drive.

Because I started the day with 100% in the battery, I drove 164 miles to Oneonta NY (on I-88) where I did the first charging, going from 32% to 80% in 15 minutes. Given the headwinds and not knowing for sure that I’d be able to charge at the hotel, I stopped in Binghamton NY at a charging location I was at in April and charged from 54% back up to 80%. With the headwinds, I arrived at the hotel at 47% and I’ll charge back to 100% overnight. There were no charges for electricity today 🙂

Overall, I’m at 3.0 miles/kWh for the trip but would have been around 3.3-3.4 had there been no wind. Since the car is rated at 2.8 on the highway, I’m perfectly satisfied (but hope to do better tomorrow).

I did feel particularly good about having invested in a TeslaTap connector just in case I needed to plug into a Tesla destination charger at any point. My hotel tonight has two Tesla chargers and one J-1772 charger, and the J-1772 was already in use. It felt really good to pull up to one of the Tesla destination chargers — essentially just a Level 2 charger with a NACS connector — and connect with my adaptor. That’s a great option! Teslas have J-1772 adaptors, so they can use any normal L2 charger, and now so can I.

Tomorrow, I’ll head the rest of the way into Columbus and my main task this evening will be to figure out where I’ll probably be charging. I expect to make the trip with just two “fill-ups” once again.