Elon Musk To Drive Tesla Model S Across America In Six Days

September 10th, 2013 by Important Media Cross-Post

Originally published on Gas2
By Christopher DeMorro.

The Tesla Model S has defied even the wildest expectations, shooting Tesla Motors stock into the stratosphere and increasing the profile of Elon Musk exponentially. So now is the perfect time for Musk to embark on a great American road trip. Musk claims that during a six-day road trip from Los Angeles to New York City, the Tesla Model S will spend just 9 hours charging.

Musk tweeted about the trip late last week, with details having been finalized. The trip will no doubt showcase Tesla’s network of Supercharger stations, which have been slowly cropping up along America’s coast. But America’s heartland is devoid of Superchargers, so how Musk plans to spend just 9 hours recharging at Tesla-exclusive charging station has me scratching my head.

The 3,200 mile journey will require a minimum of 11 refills, even if Musk manages to wrangle 300 miles per-charge. Musk claims that they will spend just 1.5 hours a day recharging, the same amount of time they would spend at rest stops or tourist attractions.

Fair enough, but Tesla’s own Supercharge map shows wide swaths of the country remain uncovered. Am I missing something here? Probably. I know enough not to doubt Elon Musk when he says he is going to do something.

Source: Elon Musk’s Twitter (embed below)

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 5, 2013

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Tags: Elon Musk, Elon Musk news, road trip, Tesla, Tesla Model S, Tesla Model S road trip, TESLA NEWS, Tesla stock, tesla stock 2013, TSLA

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Corbin Holland

Does anyone know when he plans on doing this?
Docyo

The only car I would consider buying for 100 000 $.
Bob_Wallace

Here’s Tesla’s Supercharger map. Run the slider out to Winter 2013 and you’ll see the coast to coast map.

I don’t know why some spots are red and some grey, perhaps the reds are already in place and the greys expected by the date chosen.

http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger
Kent G

Yes, like some others here, im willing to bet several new Superchargers show up before his trip. Tesla conquered Norway with Superchargers in one day recently (or at least announced them all on same day; they probably took several days or weeks to install).
Wayne Williamson

fun…afterwords we get to see how he did it. Wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve added some super charger/battery exchanges along the way….
- RobS
  
  Wouldn’t surprise me if a few strategically placed single place superchargers open up just prior to this trip, the full supercharger can be rolled out later. It’s definitely in Tesla’s interest to make this as trouble free as possible. For many this is the holy grail of EV limitations, if this can be broken then cost and ideology are largely all that’s left. For a trip like this ~500 miles between superchargers is fine, charge at your hotel overnight, 250 miles to the next supercharger and lunch break, then 250 miles to the next overnight hotel charge.
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    Cross country in an S has already happened. Perhaps more than once. The crossing I followed used hotel charging at night and RV parks during the day. It took longer because there were no rapid chargers.
    - RobS
      
      Yeh, it involved close to a dozen ~6 hour waits at RV parks during the day often with nothing to do but sit under a tree due to a lack of walkable sights. It also involved many very early starts and very late finishes and still took about 10 days. They were good initial explorations and early proof of concepts, however they were completely impractical as family trips, you’d have a wife and children in frank mutiny within the first few days. This needs to be a practical trip involving hotels and charging primarily overnight, during stops at an attraction or during a meal break. For mass acceptance the car needs to work within your life not the other way round.
http://www.dudesustainable.com/ Dude, Sustainable!

Should be a good test for his Supercharger stations, although it’s a big jump from California to Colorado, and then again to Illinois.
Alex Danko

According to Tesla web site, 30 minutes charge gives Tesla S 200 miles of range. 1.5 hours of charging a day would mean 600 miles. He plans to drive 540 miles a day. It is feasible.

It becomes even more feasible if he leaves on first day with full charge and stops overnight in hotels with charging options. That will add ability to go extra 200-250 miles on daily trip, making it not only feasible but with an option for detours.
Of course, that might be sort of cheating because overnight charging won’t be included into “9 hours spent charging” – but that is not really cheating. If on your trip your car charges overnight when you sleep – that time shouldn’t be included in extra trip time. You do need sleep after all.

I don’t know if Elon really plans to charge his car overnight in hotels but he should consider it and hotels that did install chargers for his trip will get nice boost of publicity.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  It sounds like the statement should be “will drive across the continent and use only nine hours of potential driving time for charging”.
  
  Too bad Tesla didn’t put multiple cords on each charger and a decent place to eat nearby. You could plug in and take 30+ minutes for a meal break rather than waiting for the charge.
  - RobS
    
    They have positioned all superchargers near a meal break option as far as I know. It’s a key part of the model.
    
    Elon would be mad not to charge overnight when there is only benefits to doing so. Also the 9 hours of supercharging ignores the fact that most of that will be at lunch breaks where on the average family road trip you would stop anyway.