9 years ago
2
What Running Out of Power in a Tesla on the Side of a Highway Taught Me About the Road Trip of Tomorrow
It's 209 miles from the parking lot of a Chili's in Barstow, California, where we are, to the parking lot of a Carl's Jr. in Kingman, Arizona, where we need to go. I'm in a rented Tesla Model S, a sleek, battery-powered electric vehicle, with a travel companion. We're just about fully charged, and the car estimates it can travel 247 miles before we need more juice. That's a buffer of 38 miles, which should be more than enough to reach Kingman. We'll soon realize it isn't.
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I just want to say something about the "psychotic" truck driver, the most dangerous place for someone to be while driving on a highway is right beside another driver. If one of the drivers is in a big rig the danger increases, the driver wasn't psychotic...he was pissed off the the car was increasing the time that the two are in the danger zone. If you can't pass in a timely manor then don't pass! And if the truck driver ever did catch up and wanted to take the time to confront the car driver I would imagine the conversation would be the trucker educating the car driver about highway safety and "buffer zones". Simple rule - shit or get off the pot.
yeah, author is an ass. "It's the car's fault that I didn't get the estimated range based on previous usage of a rented car." "when I started running out of power, instead of pulling over so I could switch it to neutral when a tow truck showed up, I ran it completely out of juice". "Hertz and Tesla and AAA left me high and dry until Hertz and Tesla could find someone to come jump and move me".
Not saying that it doesn't suck that he ran out of power, but if he didn't know how far the car would go, he probably should have pulled off a couple exits early and borrowed an outlet from someone. Also, not driving at night may have helped (power draw of headlights), though then he would be stuck driving during the day (AC) -- Which he doesn't even mention as a power suck, who knows if he disabled that or kept it going full blast.
It read to me as someone with an axe to grind and decided that the Tesla was going to fail, and made that come true.