2021 West Bound - Day 26

We got up and out of Wilcox for our trip to Aptera to meet up with Steve. It was an uneventful drive until we were crossing over the mountains between the Imperial valley and San Diego. On the Valley side it was dry and sunny with some occasional clouds. In the mountains it was raining with visibility of maybe 40 feet at times. Everyone was driving with their hazard flashers on and crawling along until we got out of it. Once we got below around 1000 feet elevation it opened up and it wasn't raining at all.

It was another not great day for efficiency with a total of 347 Wh/mile bcause of the high speed limit (and speed) in Arizona (75) which means that we were going so fast (and not being efficient). 

Steve met us at the Aptera R&D facility and toured us around and told us about all the really cool progress they are making. Everything he told me was amazing, but unfortunately I can't tell y'all about it... You know NDAs and all. We visited the factory building too. It was big and empty. Almost ready for them to move in next month. We gave Steve the apple pie from Annie's in Wilcox and he had made some boiled peanuts for me. Wow! Homemade boiled peanuts...

Today's Drive:

The Drive West, so far (4,199 miles):

The total road trip, so far (7,297 miles):

The data for the drives today:

2021 West Bound - Day 25

Today was a long day and we really needed to be at Apple Annie's Country Store before they closed at 5:00... We made it with 15 minutes to spare. Whew. Suzanne's friends told us about the store when we were talking to them about Wilcox and our favorite Mexican restaurant - La Unica, so we picked up some pies to give to folks during our visit with Aptera tomorrow afternoon.

We are really looking forward to seeing Steve & Chris, and the other Aptera folks.

Today's drive:

The Drive West (3,650 miles):

The total dive so far (6,747 miles):

The details:

2021 - Getting Ready

This time we are planning on staying over in Texas at Suzanne's brother's house between Thanksgiving and Christmas. She hasn't seen her mother in 2 years (thank you COVID) and since I can work from there... why not?

We are leaving next week (on the 18th) so lots of checklists are being created and items checked off.

This trip will take the car past it's 50,000 mile basic warranty (it's at 48,000 miles now). The only issues with the car have been a weirdness with the passenger seat, and they upgraded me to version 3 of the AI computer. Mine had version 2.5 when I bought it. They came to my office and replaced the passenger seat in the parking lot. Super easy. Didn't even need to go to the service center. The warranty for the battery and drive unit is 10 years or 80,000 miles (and better than 70% capacity remaining). Since I've lost 20 miles of range over 48,000 miles (6.67%), I don't think the battery is going to be wearing out before the warranty.

Here's the battery degradation report from TeslaFi (what I've been using to gather data since I bought the car):

Notice that it dropped during the first 25,000 miles or so and has been pretty steady since then (with ups & downs).

Every time I make this trip I think of my friend Steve Fambro (also a Georgia boy) and his company Aptera. They are working on a 1,000 mile range car! If you are interest in getting one, please use my referral code when you make your reservation, so I can get credit for bringing you to them: https://lz953.isrefer.com/go/preorder/fUEnT8KV