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Trip Report - Bay Area to Sierra Drive

965 Views 8 Replies 4 Participants Last post by everiklevine, 5 mo ago

everiklevine

Discussion Starter · 6 mo ago

Hi All -
Last night we drove our Lightning for the first time to our cabin in the Sierras (between Yosemite and Tahoe). Some stats:
Fully charged (100%) in Bay Area (sea level) got us 250 miles on the GOM
Arrived at cabin with 40 miles left on the GOM. Battery capacity said 27%.
Actual mileage was 164 miles.
Elevation gain 5200' (there are two other passes, Sunol and Altamont, each at around 1000' but both also descend back to basically sea level)
Temp ranged from low 50's at departure to low 30's at arrival
Per the Trip Meter, the average efficiency was 1.7 mi/kWhr
At 131 kWhr full charge, that should equate to 35 kWhr arrival, so, 96 kWhr consumed
At an average of 1.7 mi/kWhr that's 163.2 miles - pretty darn close

Some thoughts:

It was not as frigid out as the rest of the country is now! 🥶 But probably close to our usual drive up here in the winter (a bit warmer)
I bought the Lightning so that I could drive all the way here from Bay Area without stopping and still have some mileage left in case I have to bail back down the hill. It met that purpose. Going much further may have made me a bit more anxious.
I didn't get a photo of the cargo load we hauled up before we unloaded it, but I would guess in addition to two adults, a dog, a cat, we had 500# of 'stuff.'
We did stop for dinner just before heading up the pass. We chose not to stop somewhere with a charger. We could have found somewhere close to a Lvl 2 or 3 if we needed but that would have limited where we wanted to eat. We certainly had the time to get the truck back to full charge with a Lvl 3.
Yes, leaving the Bay Area, we had horrible traffic (note that this route is easily 3 hours in no traffic, it took us 4:20 ). Outside of traffic we were going mostly around 70 till we hit the hill going up then was back down to 40-50 mph.
Portable charger got us from 27% back to 80% in about 9 hours (@ 240V). Will be hooking up new Lectron 48A V-Box later today
Looking at the trip energy consumption, it looks like we used 9% on climate control and 2% on accessories (radio?) - so, if wanted to be a bit more frugal, I guess we could have put on more jackets and talked to each other.... then the efficiency would have been 1.9 mi/kWhr (including the exterior temp which we have no control over). That would have led us to a total of 252 miles, which is what the truck said at the start of the trip (sorry, I'm an engineer and like it when math works out). Our drive up here must not have been very different than my driving history prior to this trip. I get what the GOM is trying to do. After 2000 miles, I assume the algorithm has dialed me in and is getting a pretty good estimate - again, assuming no luxuries of life like a heated seat 🥵 or Sirius Radio 📡🛰
For the record, we have a 2011 Leaf at home, so we get the limitations and advantages of an EV. So far, we are loving this vehicle.
I'll post sep about this, but yesterday, before the trip, I had a leak in one of my new tires 🤬. Piece of road granite punctured right between one of the outward horizontal treads. Luckily I was able to get a plug installed (thank you America's Tire!!!). Short story - I am NOT impressed with those GT AT tires! We'll see how they perform on snow in the next week.