 taking a road trip in a Model 3. So this was a little bit of an adventure and I tend to overthink things. And this is a new car, so I was like, okay, you know, not worried about it in terms of will it get there in reliability? But of course, this is a electric car, so I have to charge it. So what's it like to go somewhere further than the mileage of the car? Well, I took a road trip from Detroit to Pittsburgh and to go visit my friends and it was pretty cool, had a great time, I'm back. And the first thing I'll say is I didn't have any range anxiety at all once I stopped overthinking it. That was the first key to this. So stopped overthinking and said, all right, how am I gonna do this? And first the car will plan the trip for you. So there's the first thing I learned about Tesla. I was like, oh, I can just tell it a destination. It says, hey, here's a supercharger along the way. So it's roughly 280 miles and the car has a 300 mile range, but because I was at a car show the night before I left, I didn't have a full charge because I was out late goofing off and didn't plug the car back in anyways. So hit the planning right away. It tells me where to stop. So okay, I stopped in the first supercharger. Now, if you're not familiar with the superchargers, they are fast, hence their name superchargers. So when I charged this car at my office, which actually where I'm back right now and charging for every hour parked, I gained 37 miles. So it charges at 37 miles per hour parked, but superchargers can charge at up to like over 500 or 400 miles per hour. So this car can be completely charged in under an hour. And of course, you're usually not rolling in on empty. So you charge up really quick and the supercharging stations are easy to use. You just plug it in, like just pull up, plug in and away you go. And I kind of laughed on my way. There was a charger that pulled up next to me while I was charging. And the guy was really nice. The parking lot was shared. So there was a sign that says, someone can non EV cars, non electric vehicles could park there. He wasn't, as they refer to a phrase I learned is ice jamming or internal combustion engine. Ice is apparently what they call the cars that are non EV cars. And ice jamming is where they try to block in spots to keep people from charging. Apparently that's a thing. An odd thing at that, but either way. But the other interesting thing was before I left, I obviously had to book a hotel. And the hotel, when you go to hotels.com, and I think a few other sites do this as well, I have no particular affiliation with hotels.com that was just, they had a good deal. And you can choose on the amenities, charge points. And the hotel I stayed at was the Holiday Inn. Holiday Inn had a EV charger there. Had a Tesla charger there too. So I thought that was kind of cool. So I could just plug in my Tesla and I was parked next to other Teslas. They had other chargers for other electric vehicles. They had two for like your standard chargers and two Tesla chargers. And the hotel people I said, they use a lot of use. And they said, yeah, they pretty much regularly use. I said, so there could be some good and bad there as this becomes more popular. The problem could be that you may not have the convenience of being able to charge. Cause well, they only had four in the hotels. Well, a lot bigger than four people. So that maybe could be a concern, but not that big of a deal. And the real convenient thing of having it at the hotel though was wake up in the morning and I have a hundred percent charged car because it was charging in about the same 30 something miles per hour. It was a nice, you know, higher wattage charger. So I was able to get there. Now a couple of other things about the road trip. The car with the autopilot. Wow. I don't want to ever drive on a freeway without autopilot again. Now I've been enjoying the autopilot locally on a freeway here, but obviously, you know, you're in a car for quite a while when you're driving about 300 miles. And people are aggravating that is the problem of driving. You're doing something very mundane which generally not everyone's good at. So maintaining speed and maintaining lane for a long period of time is boring. And I know cruise control is a thing, but before this car, my other car didn't have what other vehicles may call adaptive cruise control where to adjust the speed of the car based on the cars in front of you. This has that, but then the autopilot in a test that goes a step further to say, hey, we're going to keep you in the lane and as long as you maintain a little bit of pressure on the wheel, it doesn't bug you. Or if you do take your hands off the wheel, it will say, hey, you should put your hands in a wheel and you just roll little rollers and you're back in business. It does that every now and then. But a little tension on the wheel, a good audio book to listen to and you can kind of take in a scenery. Take some of that stress out of driving. Now I will address because this came up and I was very curious because this happened just before my road trip is the barrel video. The barrel video is someone who apparently fell asleep and I guess if you're a sleeper and you can sleep easily and I don't think I really fall asleep in a car but it could happen and you keep your hand on the wheel, the car will just kind of keep doing its thing, staying in lane. Well, this person fell asleep and there was barrels, not a line, but the barrels where making people get over. And obviously this is a good visual cue for you to see and go, hey, I should get over but if you're not paying attention, well, because you're asleep at the wheel, this becomes a challenge. Apparently the car, the radar as I understand is used and these has trouble seeing the plastic that's in the barrels at high speed. I noticed this because while driving and doing the construction here in some of the construction areas, there were barrels that were on the other side of the line and the car will warn you when things get too close to the car, especially other cars when they swerve into your lane which is also something you notice a whole lot more when your car is like locked into the middle lane, you notice how much people kind of wander from one side to the other versus this Tesla locks and once it determines where the lines are it locks you in the middle. But being locked in the middle means I needed to and it's really easy to do. I disengaged the autopilot where there were a lot of barrels because some of the barrels from people bumping into them they would get bumped around and they were on the inside of the line. So the car would have came closer than I think it should have to the barrels. So I did take over in those situations. But other than that, trip there, trip back, no problem. The one thing the supercharger does when you're doing the planning it will tell you to stop at the supercharger and how many minutes to stop there but it's predicting so you'll get there with about a 20% battery. You may want when you get to your destination to drive around so alls you really have to do and this was pretty simple math to figure out it said, hey spend 20 minutes at the supercharger to arrive with a 20% battery in Pittsburgh. I stayed 35 minutes at the supercharger filled the car all the way up and then I had that much more battery when I got there. So a little bit of adjustment so it goes from 20 minutes to 30 minutes stop. So when I got to Pittsburgh, I drove around and hung out with my friends all night and didn't get done doing stuff until almost one in the morning and no worries about the car. The car did get the battery down after all of our driving around Pittsburgh and goofing off and of course everyone wants to know how fast is it? Well, I'm always ready to answer that question. It's really fast and watch the battery go when you're flooring it. Now, the other novel thing about Pittsburgh is the next morning I got a little bit more driving. Pittsburgh is home to some of the steepest streets and so the ups and downs of the streets were really wild to feel. Now, the car has regenerative braking which means you can just let off the pedal and it regens without touching the brake pedal it starts putting all that kinetic energy of moving this 4,000 pound vehicle into turning back into energy and slowing the vehicle down. So you actually can get a battery boost and going through the freeway was interesting because the car will do a trip plan and kind of predict what the battery will be when you get there. Every time I beat the battery's prediction one I wasn't speeding, I set it to the speed limit within a mile or two an hour over. So I was managing to beat the energy predictions of the car but when you go up and down them hills you're actually, because you're recharging the battery some of these hills were like a mile of downhill and so you can really see it going back into the car. And I was curious how it was handled because a lot of people burn up their brakes on these type of things and if you're not familiar driving through any highly mountainous terrain you'll see those emergency exits occasionally when you go through these areas because they are dangerous where people's brakes start failing because well they heat up. That's not an issue in the Tesla at all. Matter of fact you still had to put your foot on the pedal even at the steepest hills that I went down because the regen braking was so the car down slower than the speed limit and I was like wow. And you're actually watching where you can get a bump and percentage in the battery from all these down hills was just really kind of cool to see it in action. Like I knew it about it and it's really cool but seeing that in action was really neat. So another thing about if you road trip somewhere I'm so used to Detroit, it's very, very flat. Our terrain here in Detroit is barely, if you look at a topographical map you're not gonna see much elevation change in Detroit but dramatically different in Pittsburgh which of course made it that much cooler for road trip to the point where I'm going back. I told my wife after I got back to like we're gonna go there for a trip because I was only there to visit some friends for a project, tech project and I should have stayed for a couple of days because there's a lot to see in Pittsburgh. So shout out to Pittsburgh if you live there it's a cool place. But road trip no big deal on the Tesla. I know range, anxiety. Definitely the autopilot made the road trip beautiful because I could see things. Now comment on this glass you see above my head. It was a bright, clear sunny day driving. I didn't get roasted through the glass so this wasn't really a problem. I was worried about that because like even my other car had a sunroof and I liked closing not just a sunroof but like they had a little shade that went over it. It led a lot of light through. This is quite tinted and does not roast me but the big windshield great for visibility like the view in a Tesla is really, I like this wide view they have but having all that sun roasting on you granted we have a nice visor to stop but at some point I just, I don't like that much sun but the AC kicks butt in those things. So I cranked down the AC I was never hot but I think I'd mention it though that it's being in there. My other car is very different, has a very narrow, I had a scion TC very narrow windshield so I feel as though there's more sun and more light coming in but I think it's just bonus of the panoramic view which I think is a better deal but at least I'll note when I was driving directly into the sun visor help but at some point you're just like the sun's roasting. I had the AC cranked down to like 68 to really blowing right on me to keep me nice and cool. That's about it. Nothing bad to report, nothing no problems other than noticing the drivers and the speed thing but I will admit to absolutely no road rage for that person that randomly checks their brakes at the freeway and decides to go anywhere between five over to five under depending on their mood and how many miles we go. You notice that less when the car's taking care of it for you just kind of like, if you look at the speed you're like oh it's going up and down but overall you don't care. But that was it. It's quiet ride, nice smooth ride on a freeway and thanks if you have questions, comments, concerns leave them below and if you just want to argue to see that it's quicker to fill up a petrol for driving straight through, you're right. You win, I'm not debating that, I'm talking about it is practical to go road tripping in a Tesla. Thanks.