Tesla Road Trip Begins – Day 1

Day 1 Tesla Model 3 — Colorado through Pacific Northwest USA | 4600 mi Road Trip

Here we go!

I have done a lot of ‘car camping’ but never slept in the car. This would determine how the entire trip from Colorado to the Northwest and back again would go. Can we sleep in the car or do we need to set up a tent every night? We also had never not ended up at home after a day of driving. Time to leave the nest for the Tesla.

Packing

The first chore was packing the car. We needed to buy some camping pads to sleep on, so that was a quick trip to REI. We found some self-inflating pads that seemed to be suitable. We then went to Dick’s for an ice cooler, or an Esky as the Aussies say. We also packed a large quilt, 3 suitcases with clothes, shoes, etc. We have minimal food, just the basics you need every day, a backpacking camp stove and mess kit, our fishing tackle, rods, waders, etc. We also brought our tech with us: 1 laptop, 1 surface pro, 1 iPad, 2 phones, and all the plugs, wires and chargers.

The Pass

We could have just gone up I-70 and thru the tunnel, but we wanted to see what the Tesla could do going over Loveland Pass. High altitude, winding, cold, and a real challenge to any car.

The Tesla had no issues at all. Zoomed up the pass as altitude has no impact on an EV! The elevation change sapped some juice, but we got almost all of it back going down the other side. Awesome.

Heater was on the whole ride up. It was cold up there.

Silverthorne SuperCharging

We will do a little documenting on the Superchargers (and other charging) we do on the trip. This gives a good feel for the lifestyle of tripping in an electric car. I won’t use the words ‘inconvenience’ or ‘time to charge’. They don’t apply and reveal a mindset, not a report of real-life.

The Silverthorne Supercharger is right next to the Starbucks off Highway 9. It’s right behind the Wendy’s and across the street from the 7-Eleven, aka the ‘Big Gulp’ to Coloradans. We used it twice: once when we arrived, and once after we left camp the next morning. Very convenient. The car’s charge was always complete before we finished our coffee. Free WiFi was available, so in the morning, this was our new corporate office for a while.

The First Camp

We stayed at the Blue River Campground about 11 miles outside Silverthorne. I think the elevation is about 8000 ft (I may be wrong on that, but it is up there).

We got a great spot right down by the river. We just parked and rearranged some gear, put the food in the bear box, and that set us up for the night. Five minutes max. Let’s start a fire!

Sleeping in a Tesla

Now the big test. Can two relatively ‘large’ people sleep in the back of a car? I am 6-1 and Kathy is 5-10. We are not small people. We wanted to find out if we could do this.

Originally, we planned to use sleeping bags, but once we were there, we decided to just use the quilt. It was going down to 32 degrees overnight. That would have been ‘uncomfortable’ in a tent, but what about in the Tesla?

Setup was so much easier than setting up a tent: we just folded down the back seat and blew up our camp pads. We moved the front seats forward, but not all the way. We then filled the gap between the front and back seats with clothes and other soft things. I used the sleeping bag as a pillow (you can see that it’s small).

At first, getting in was a challenge, as there is not a lot of headroom. I tried crawling in from the trunk. It worked, but it was difficult. After a bit of experimentation, we discovered going through the rear doors is quite easy. It took a few tries to figure out which parts go in first. Hint: butt first. Grab the roof’s top ring for leverage and pivot your legs in. Oh, and remove any clothes that need to come off before the entry maneuver. Once in, it’s like being in a mummy bag. Tough to get off jeans etc., especially with two of you in there! 

The view from inside is spectacular. But with the moon out, it can be bright. It’s the first night. We’ll just have to see how it all works out.

Camper Mode

The Tesla Model S has a camper mode for sleeping in the car. The Model 3 does not. We wanted the car to maintain a comfortable temperature overnight but didn’t know what the impact would be on our battery level if we ran climate control all night. There was only one way to find out. Test it. 

This first night was an experiment. We started with about 70% and woke up every couple of hours to check the battery level. But once we knew how much charge we lost through that night, we’d have some idea how much charge to factor into the next nights’ camping plans for the rest of the trip.

Here’s what we did to manually put the car into ‘camper mode’:

1. Turn on climate. This keeps the climate control working. What we didn’t know and would learn is, after four hours, it shuts off automatically. Ditto if the battery level drops to 20%.
   
2. Turn off ambient lighting. The car tries to make things nice for you whenever you (your phone) is in the car. So while the lights are nice when driving, they are not when you’re trying to sleep.
   
3. Set the temperature. We thought if we set it low, it would save juice. We were wrong. We set it to 62 degrees. Unfortunately, that turned on the air conditioner because the interior temp was about 77! Initially, the outside temp was under 50. By the time the outside temp reached 32, the inside temp was 62 where we set it. Too cold, so we turned it up to 70. Lesson: Set the temp to something comfortable like 70 with the fan at about 1.
   
4. Lock the car. You want the big screen to turn off, the radio off and lights off. To do this, you need to turn the car off using your phone app. The screen then goes black.
   

You can use the interior roof lights (put right where you need them) to light up the car if you need something. We put the phones on the center arm rest and plugged into the 2 USB ports for the back seat passengers—perfect. It was easy to reach them, they were charged and ready to go in the morning with virtually no impact on the car itself. 

We used about 4% of our battery the first night. Not bad really. Way better than a tent!

The first leg was a complete success. We are off to Arches National Monument next.