Tesla Day 1

Last night I decided to go to a grocery store a few towns over last night. The nav unit was odd. It tried to take me all over the place but I didn’t listen to it. Negative initial points to the nav unit. Handling was great. Wasn’t thrilled with the headlights. I guess I was use to my BMW with headlights that turn and super bright Xenon headlights. I also miss my heads up display. On the way home we tried the autopilot system. It was cool but a fail. It handled the road well for awhile and then the car started to turn in the wrong direction, so we had to take over. I was heart broken.

Today I went to the Sands Casino in Pennsylvania. The drive wasn’t bad. I guess I am starting to get use to the car. When I got to Sands I parked at a Tesla charger. Cool!

Let’s take a step back. I have major range anxiety.  Will I be able to make it from point A to point B and back home. If you have a internal combustion engine (ICE) car, you can get gas almost everywhere. Electric Vehicles (EV) must find a charging station. Tesla has a network of chargers. With range anxiety I tried different web sites to see if I can make it. It sounds strange. A charging station might be blocked by ICE cars. The station might not be working.All sorts of things could go wrong. Sites like ETripPlanner, EVJourney and PlugShare help plan the trip for me and showed me different places I could charge my car. I selected the Sands Casino because it had a Tesla charger and I have driven there many times before. There was also a SuperCharger nearby and I wanted to see what a SuperCharger was like.

Charging at the Sands Casino was a pleasant experience. Now on to the Allentown SuperCharger. After a twenty minute drive I was near the SuperCharger. I had found images of the SuperCharger and the mall it was in so I was able to find it. Make sure you find pictures, these chargers are not easy to find (read lots of forum posts). Anyway, I charged for a few minutes. It was really easy and the drive home was fine. Day one was a success.