North Bound - Day 19

Today we drove to Hartwell Georgia to visit with Hap & Allison. Hap and I met as freshmen at Auburn in 1977! So I've know him for quite a while. They are in the process of moving from their cute 1910 house in Atlanta to Hartwell Lake.

This is the same area that my mother was born (just one town over). The back roads are where I learned to drive! This lake is where I went fishing with my grandfather. While we are here, I'm going to visit the family cemetery and the old houses in Lavonia.

The whole trip so far:

Total: 3,705.8 Miles, 1321.5 kWh consumed = 357 Wh/mile

Today: 395.8 Miles, 6:53 driving, 128.6 kWh consumed = 325 Wh/mile. 

Here is the detailed data:

Around the farm - Days 7-17 & 18

After 12 days at the farm seeing everyone for Thanksgiving and getting some things taken care of, we are off to visit Brian & Debbie in Florida. While at the farm we drove almost 400 miles to a bunch of the towns nearby.

Total: 3080.0 Miles, 1112.7 kWh consumed = 361 Wh/mile.
At the farm: 359.2 Miles, 128.8 kWh consumed = 358 Wh/mile.  

Day 18:
Brian & Debbie are in an apartment near the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. We will only be staying one night to give them both big hugs and support them on their long hard road ahead. It was delightful seeing them and it was proven (once again) that Brian can drink my skinny ass under the table.

Total: 3310.0 Miles, 1192.9 kWh consumed = 360Wh/mile. 
Today: 230.1 Miles, 80.2 kWh consumed = 349 Wh/mile.

East Bound - Day 6

We are at the farm! Sarah & Greg arrived about an hour after we did. We all got unpacked and they ran off to the grab some groceries (& something for dinner). It was so nice to sit around with them and just talk about stuff.

Years ago I installed a 50A welding outlet in the parking area (under the tree house) and so I plugged in to charge the car back up. We arrived at 18% and I told it to charge up to 90%. The travel charger is limited to 32 Amps, so it could deliver 7.8 kW and charged the car from 18% to 90% in 6.5 hours (completing overnight). I'm guessing that I won't have to charge until the weekend. Maybe sooner if we decide to take some longer trips around the area to see family & friends.

As I was plugging in the car, my second cousin David came up (he and his brothers lease about 40 acres of our land and grow crops on it). He was checking on the cotton harvest. He said it was pretty good this year, but the deer were eating a lot of the crop this year. We lease out the rest of our land to other cousins to hunt the deer, and hopefully keep their numbers down.

It's hard to get a feel for the scale of those "modules". They are 40' long, 6' wide and 6' high of cotton that has been so compressed that it's a brick. Later a truck will come by and slide the whole thing into a trailer to take it to the cotton gin.

We will just be hanging around the area for the next two weeks, so I'm not planning on posting a blog entry every day. But I will if there's something interesting that I think you would like to see. The next trip we will be taking will be to Jacksonville, FL to see Brian & Debbie, at the end of next week.  

The whole trip so far:

Total: 2,720.8 Miles, 983.9 kWh consumed = 362 Wh/mile

Today: 227.1Miles, 4:04 driving, 76.7 kWh consumed = 338 Wh/mile. 

Here is the detailed data:

East Bound - Day 5

Today we drove to Auburn Alabama. This is where we lived when I was in grade 6 through 8 and where I met Larry, who lived two houses down. We quickly became best friends. We shared a lot of common interests and I was accepted into his family like a third son. After we moved to Houston, we drifted apart but we reconnected again in the 2000s, and I've visited him every time I can when I'm in the area. We had a wonderful dinner of homemade chicken & dumplings that Anne made from her grandmother's recipe (it takes 3 days to make!). Jake, his older brother, was there too along with his girlfriend, who was very nice. We stayed up and talked until after my bedtime so I'm posting this the next morning.

Today we drive to the farm, another short-mileage day. My daughter Sarah and her husband Greg (and their two fur babies) are arriving today too. They were in Charlotte visiting Greg's mom after driving down from Michigan earlier in the week. It will be great to see them and to start the process of collecting the family together for Thanksgiving.

The whole trip so far:

Total: 2,493.8 Miles, 907.2 kWh consumed = 364 Wh/mile

Today: 228.1Miles, 4:46 driving, 79.3 kWh consumed = 347 Wh/mile. 

Here is the detailed data:

East Bound - Day 4

Today we drove to Meridian Mississippi, which was 550 miles. More than the day before, but less than the first two days. This will be a shorter than usual entry, it's late and I'm tired... 

When we got to the hotel the heater wasn't working in the room, so they had to move us. We grabbed a bite to eat and a cocktail and then, once Suzanne was in the new room, I went to charge up the car to be ready for the trip. When I came back to the parking garage, I noticed that there was a EV charging station right there... So I could have just parked in the garage and not gone to the superchargers. Now I know.

The whole trip so far:

Total: 2,266 Miles, 827.9 kWh consumed = 365 Wh/mile

Today: 549.4 Miles, 8:53 driving, 201.7 kWh consumed = 367 Wh/mile. 

Here is the detailed data:

East Bound - Day 3

We chose the hotel in Tucumcari because superchargers are in the parking lot. So this meant that we could charge to 100% right before we left. It was an easy day today, only 6 and a half hours of driving. 

I planned for the days to be easier as trip goes on, and this is the first easy day. Tomorrow we go to Meridian Mississippi, which will be back to being a longer trip. But the next day will be quite a bit shorter - to visit my old friend Larry and his wife Anne. 

The whole trip so far:

Total: 1,716 Miles, 626.2 kWh consumed = 365 Wh/mile

Today: 439 Miles, 6:20 driving, 154.1 kWh consumed = 351 Wh/mile. 

Here is the detailed data:

East Bound - Day 2

We left the hotel a little later than I wanted (mainly due to the time change. We topped up at the Kingman supercharger because we remembered that this was a long run in the cold with a cold battery. We used 85% of the battery going 148 miles, and climbing to 6900' elevation to Flagstaff. The car and the battery started out at 34F! They both used some of the battery to get warmed up. This is the difference between parking in the hotel parking lot and in the garage at home.

Then, between Gallup & Albuquerque New Mexico decided this was a good time to lay some new asphalt on I40. The traffic was at a complete stop for about 30 minutes then we got to single-file our way past it. We got to see some excitement too, as the stopped line of cars was partly hidden by a curve and an 18-wheeler had to lock up his brakes to keep from hitting the stopped cars... He probably turned 5,000 miles worth of 18 tires into smoke.

The whole trip so far:

Today: 661 Miles, 9:58 driving, 240.4 kWh consumed = 363 Wh/mile. Surprisingly, better efficiency than the first day's drive.

Here is the detailed data:

East Bound - Day 1

We left the house at 6:30, so only a little late, but we got to Kingman Arizona later than we wanted because we took a different route to avoid a charging station (Needles, NV) that Suzanne doesn't like. The distance was about the same, but the terrain was much different. Since it included small windy backroads we didn't make the time we would have if we had taken I4. Also, the added terrain (10,000 feet of elevation rise) meant that we got into Kingman with 5% of range remaining...

Today's numbers: 615 Miles, 9:17 driving, 231.75 kWh consumed = 377 Wh/mile (not great efficiency, but I was driving 12 miles over the speed limit on the freeway). It's going to get worse when I get into Arizona with a 75 MPH speed limit & Texas with an 80 MPH speed limit...

Here are the pretty pictures:

Discussion of my trips in 2018, 2019, & 2021

As I'm getting ready for our 4th annual pilgrimage across the US, I thought it might be a good idea to have a summary of the previous three trips.

2018 was our first time to try this, so I was a little bit nervous and loaded the car up with my boy scout "be prepared" mantra. I also wanted some way to gather data automatically, since I knew that driving and keeping track of consumption was going to be too much. I searched around and found TeslaFi (https://www.teslafi.com) that connects to my Tesla account and get the data directly from the car. Perfect.

It summarizes the data wonderfully. Here are some details to geek out on:

https://www.teslafi.com/sharedRT.php?roadtrip=YOM3iKnjU7RUq40

1,669.74 kWh consumed over 6,113.25 miles = 278 Wh/mile

https://www.teslafi.com/sharedRT.php?roadtrip=1KHajDR6VgAUKlN

2.014.93 kWh consumed over 5,786,28 miles =  337 Wh/mile

Yes, there was no road trip in 2020 - the lost year.

https://www.teslafi.com/sharedRT.php?roadtrip=uac2Dnb5Bp1wMb3
2,495.30 kWh consumed over 7,765.75 miles =  321 Wh/mile

TeslaFi also has some other cool ways to look at the data collected over the last 65,000 miles. Everyone asks how long the battery will last and they have a battery range graph for that:

This is showing a 3.96% reduction in range in the 65,000 miles. So when do we say that a battery is "done"? When it has 80% of it's original capacity? When the range is 200 miles?  Let's extrapolate the data we have out to those two.

• I'd have to drive 329,798 miles to get the battery degradation to 20%.
• I'd have to drive 544,167 miles to get the battery to degrade down to 200 miles of range (33% degradation).

The ups and downs in the graph have to do with the battery management system (BMS). If you only charge it from 50% to 80% for a long time, it "forgets" that it can be used outside of these limits and it can be "retrained" by discharging below 20% and charging up to 90% a couple of times...

I imagine that the car will still be okay at these mileages. Cars are lasting a whole lot longer than they were when I first started driving. Back then when a car hit 100,000 miles it was DONE. Now, cars are just getting broken in at 100,000 miles. Of course, gas was $0.35/gallon then too - I couldn't put $5 of gas in my first car (66 VW squareback), of course I was making $1.17/hour at McDonalds... so $5 meant more than it does now.

Quick diversion on inflation. When people freak out about inflation being high now it reminds me that my first house's mortgage interest rate was 13.5%. We had a very long run at low inflation! More than 30 years. Cycles repeat. Get over it. If you have a low percentage home loan, rejoice.

2021 West Bound - Day 27

It's good to be home! We took the 101 instead of Interstate 5, because it's less boring and takes the same time to our house. It also avoids the grapevine, which I had heard required chains. Since I have single-use, fabric "chains", I'd rather not use them just to get out of LA...

The drive was straightforward and without incident. When we were in Oxnard Suzanne noticed that there was a Krispy Kreme Donut shop, so we got some for the road. 

Today's Drive (469 miles @ 351 Wh/mile):

The drive west (4,668.17 miles @ 334 Wh/mile): 

The full road trip (7,765.75 miles @ 321 Wh/mile):

Todays details:

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: