TL;DR version: While cold weather will make our 229 mile trip up to Sugarloaf ME about 30 minutes longer than if it were warm weather, driving our Teslas up to northern Maine really isn’t much different than driving a gas-powered car.
The long version: Given that our weekend storm dumped about 2 feet of snow on northern New England, I think Robert, Carolyn, and I are going to drive our Tesla Model S and Model 3 up to Sugarloaf Mountain, Maine tomorrow for a couple days of skiing.
This 229 mile trip wouldn’t normally be remarkable, but the fact we’re doing it in electric cars introduces a couple twists that I thought non-EV folks might find interesting. Specifically:
Our destination is well within range of our vehicles. My Model S has a nominal range of about 290 miles, while Carolyn’s model 3 has a range of 305 or so. So we could make this trip without stopping to charge at all, assuming we are OK with arriving with a mostly empty battery.
Finding places to charge won’t be a problem. Arriving with an empty battery isn’t an issue because the Tesla charging network is second to none nowadays, even in northern Maine. Our hotel at Sugarloaf has two Tesla destination chargers, and Farmington ME has a 250kW supercharger for us to fast charge with.
The real challenge is the cold weather. What makes this trip interesting is that the temperatures tomorrow will be mostly in the high 20s and low 30s. Those low temperatures mean that we need to plan for range degradation of somewhere around 20%.
Taking the cold weather into account, EVTripPlanner.com estimates our drive will take about 4.5 hours including 25 minutes worth of charging in Kennebunkport, ME. That compares with a roughly 4 hour drive if the temperature were 70 degrees.
The reality is that the car GPSs do a great job of both observing the actual temperature and performance experienced during the trip and recommending charging spots and times along the way, so we don’t really need this degree of planning to make the trip successful. As an example, when I put Sugarloaf Maine into my GPS, this is its recommended route:
The car suggests charging about half-way for about 30 minutes and estimates we’ll arrive with 18% or about 50 miles of range left. We usually need to get out and stretch our legs along the way anyway, so this plan is much more to my liking; further, we probably would have stopped for a break about half-way there anyway. Regardless, I just thought folks might like to see how the cold affects EV driving and planning.