Park City, Utah

The Efficacy of Tesla Road Tripping

One of the great advantages of driving a Tesla cross-country is that Tesla Destination Chargers at hotels are free. For the Model 3, it is only the Superchargers that cost money and you do not need a credit card to pay. The fees are charged to your credit card on file with Tesla. The charger knows when your car is plugged in.

Today (July 7) we started with 247 miles on the battery and we drove 526.65 miles, charged at 4 Tesla Superchargers for a total cost of $18.04, and ended the day with 127.4 miles left on the battery. The breakdown in the Supercharger fees (including tax):

Loveland: 30 kWh for $6.60

Rawlins: 44 min for $4.84

Rock Springs: 24 min for $4.84

Evanston: 8 minutes for $1.76

We have been on the road now 8 days. We have plugged into a total of 5 Destination Chargers for overnight stays at a cost of $0.00:

• Casa Blanca Inn (Farmington, NM)
• DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton (Durango, CO)
• Private Residence (Telluride, NM)
• Hotel Jerome (Aspen, CO)
• Montage Deer Valley Resort (Park City, UT)

plus a total of 7 Tesla Superchargers for a total cost of $35.31:

• Holbrook (AZ) on day 1
• Aspen (CO) on Day 5
• Silverthorne (CO) on Day 6, and
• Loveland (CO), Rawlins (WY), Rock Springs (WY), and Evanston (WY) on Day 7.

So far, our road trip has cost us $35.31 to drive 1,463 miles (less than 2.5¢ per mile).

For a comparable gasoline-powered automobile using an average 25 miles per gallon and a gallon of gas costing $2.90 (average for the states we travelled), the cost would be $169.71 (11.6¢ per mile) and we would be spewing greenhouse gasses all the way. Generally, the cost of driving electric versus gasoline is a factor of 3. Electricity is one-third the cost of gasoline. But factoring in the free destination charging brings it down to a little more than a fifth of the cost of gasoline.

The free destination charging is the game changer. How many hotels you have ever stayed at where they offered to fill your gas tank free of charge?

Right?