While range limitations may cause anxiety to some, for others it’s little more than a speed-bump along the way, a sort of temporary limit that can be creatively overcome. To that end, tempered resolve, forward planning and a bit of geographic luck are allowing growing numbers of electric car enthusiasts to take longer and longer road trips…continuing long after others would have had them give up and get towed home.
Tesla owners are increasingly taking their cars on longer and longer trips…and a brace few are even going coast to coast.
One recent electric car is more suitable than most, for such trips. Tesla Motors‘ electric sedan, the Model S, has an EPA-rated range of 265 miles in 85 kWh form. What better way to test this than by a coast-to-coast trip through the U.S? Driving from Portland to New York is a long distance for any vehicle, but for the Electric Road Trip S, getting there via Arizona, Louisiana, Virginia and other interim states is certainly taking the long way around.
After setting off on December 26, drivers Peter Soukup, Tina Thomas and Luba Roytburd have driven down the West Coast, making best use of the network of charging stations in Oregon and California. A trip to the Tesla plant in Fremont beckoned, before heading on to Los Angeles. Along the way, they’ve also used some of Tesla’s new Supercharger stations, described on Twitter as “so easy they make me feel like I’m cheating!” Since then, the car has made its way through Arizona, made stops in Albuquerque and Austin, and the team’s Twitter feed revealed their last position was just shy of New Orleans.
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The Electric Road Trip S is actually the second such journey in a Model S, following Tesla Model S XC last September. That trip took drivers Steve and Jesse from San Francisco, all the way to the Tesla Store in Washington D.C. Somehow, we doubt both trips will be the last we hear of Model S owners attempting long journeys…
We offer the best of luck to the team over their remaining miles!
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