And I brought the Model X back home to Manhattan. The takeaway: When it comes to road trips in the SUV of the future, TRUST THE TESLA.
Homeward bound. We made one less charging stop and got home in two hours' less time than on the drive down.
We eventually got to our destination and were rewarded with a glorious following day. Everybody forgot what and idiot their father is and realized that blaming the Model X was pointless.
And while you wait you can hang out and take in the sights. Our first stop was in Pennsylvania and we debated about dining at this burger joint.
Look, there's no way around it. In a Tesla, you can't just pull into a gas station and in ten minutes get another 400 miles of range.
BUT you can trust Tesla's onboard algorithms to perform good range-to-charge calculations. I really should have accepted that the Model X knew its batteries better than I did!
Why? Because it's going to take us TEN HOURS to make a six-hour trip. Grrrr!
I was scarred by my previous long-range Tesla drive, when I "ran out of gas" and had to make use of some rather slow charging options to make it home.
We will need to charge up a few times between suburban New Jersey and our destination in Maryland.
For the trip down, I decide to err on the side of caution and make an extra stop, defying what the Model X says it needs.
This feature will wind up being helpful. It graphs our real-time power consumption against how far we have to go before we can stop to recharge.
Electric cars invert the consumption patterns of gas vehicles. An internal-combustion engine requires less fuel to maintain a steady 55-65 mph pace, so on the long trips, fuel burn is optimal.
EVs, by contrast, use more power to maintain high speeds and don't have regenerative braking to fall back on for little recharging bumps. So if our Model X says it has 250 miles of range, and most of that is highway, we're going to use up that power. The graph here should help avoid any surprises, though.
Yes, we used Autopilot during the trip. I was useful, but I also found myself taking over the steering quite often.
Read about Autopilot versus the competition here.
The app also lets you drive your Model X like a remote control car, "summoning" it to move forward and back.
.. and keep track of how much more charge a trip will demand. The app will alert you when you're charge cycle is nearly finished so you don't incur Supercharger "idle" expenses.
Supercharger access for new owners has been free for the life of ownership, but Tesla is going to start charging a fee to recharge as the mass-market Model 3 begins to hit the streets.
For what it's worth, I also downloaded the Tesla iPhone app, which linked with our Model X, nicknamed "Lil' Scrappy." Apart from keeping track of charging ...
We have a nearly full battery to start out, with a range of over 250 miles (the max range is 290 miles).
We will spend a lot of time interacting the with the massive central touchscreen. Almost all vehicle functions are controlled with it. The navigation system will route us through Tesla's Supercharger network and, helpfully, let us know how many stalls are open at a given location and calculate how much juice we need based on how far we have to go.
And don't forget the frunk! Yes, because there's no engine, the entire front bay can be used to haul stuff. This came in very handy.
The X would — on paper — provide plenty of room for two adults, three kids, a dog, and enough luggage to cover us for a few days.
Row three, seating for two. Or in our case, a single kid. I folded down one of the seats to increase the cargo area.
The seats themselves are extremely comfy. They feel as if they're made of memory foam. The leather was butter-soft. I'm not sure how much punishment a white leather memory-foam interior can handle, but we'll find out.