Tesla drive to Whistler
My friend Gary and I drove my Tesla up to Whistler yesterday, I am glad to report we made it with no problems.
I gave my car a full charge in Range mode, did a top off, and reset the trip meter.
we left at 1:00pm with 246mi Ideal Range
every so often along the ride we recorded the following information: Time, Distance traveled, kWh used, Ideal Range, Elevation. You can find the raw data here.
We crossed the border at the truck customs at Blaine, WA with no problems, it was weird looking up at the customs agent, anyone who has exited a parking garage will know the feeling, except this time a gun and invasive questions were involved.
The first stop was at 3:20pm at the Pacific Border RV Park, they had a 50amp outlet and were more than happy to let us charge up. An electric car does not drive through every day so we got alot of attention and I passed out a bunch of brochures and answered many questions. We charged for 2 hours and got 48mi of extra range. We used about 12kWh @.08 we cost the RV park about a loonie. The managers Charlie and Vicky were very nice, they did not charge us for the power. It may be because I called ahead, they are just nice, or because I fixed their Windows XP computer cd drive issue.
We left the RV park at 5:45pm with 166 miles Ideal range, Whistler was ~110 miles away so we had a 50mi buffer.
our next stop was at 183mi at the Klahanie Campground this campground was my preferred charge up point because it has a great restaurant with a deck looking at the Howe Sound and Shannon Falls. It only has 30amp hookups so I did not want to risk using this site on the first trip.
we left the campground with 94 miles ideal range and only 40 miles left, still about a 50mi buffer, but the uphill was still to come.
the next major millstone was when we used 53kWh, this happened at 205mi about 18mi from Whistler at the Dam, proving beyond a doubt we could not make it in a single charge.
We arrived in Whistler at 8:45 with 42 miles of range left, the drive took 4:50min of driving and a 2+ hour stop for a charge. I think it is possible to stop at the Klahanie Campground and charge up for 2hours at 30amp and still make it, or only charge for 1 hour at the border, also the 40amp charger will lower the charge time to 45min.
