We've had our Model Y about 2-1/2 months and this week took our first trip in it. This will be long but if someone is following the thread and curious about buying this might be informative.
We drove from College Station to Fredericksburg on Friday for a four day weekend, coming back today. Two couples and associated luggage so a full car. I had done a lot of research on charging in Fredericksburg before we left and I was glad I did. Simply put there's not a lot there, as in no superchargers at all. Several wineries had home chargers or what Tesla calls Destination Chargers onsite for free if you're at their winery. Those add about 40 miles/hour of charging. I only found two paid chargers, one at HEB that was much slower than a Supercharger and one at the event center that was much slower than a home charger. What I learned after we booked was that the VRBO app will let you filter for EV chargers and that's something i'll use in the future. There are a lot of VRBO that have Destination Chargers and that solves everything because you can charge overnight like you're at home.
We left CS with a 100% charged battery. We stopped in Austin for lunch at a place adjacent to a group of superchargers and filled back up to 100%. Not necessary but I didn't want to get there and have to figure out charging immediately. We charged at two different wineries on Saturday just because it was there then didn't charge again until this morning when we were ready to leave. We hit several wineries Friday on the way in and several more Saturday. Sunday we went to Enchanted Rock before parking downtown and walking the rest of the afternoon. My buddy and I took it to breakfast each of the three mornings we were there.
The only frustration really came this morning when trying to charge up to drive back home. The "fast" charger at HEB isn't fast, meaning 50 kW. For reference the Tesla chargers are pushing 150 to 250 depending on their age. It took about an 1:15 to go from 40% to 100% but we both had our laptops and made good use of the time. I got confused by an error message on the charger and thought it wasn't working when it was so we went to the event center and found an awful charger before going back to HEB and finding out it was actually working fine. Our plan had been to set the car to charge and walk to breakfast and had I known it was actually working that would have been perfect. We drove home without issue and arrived with about 25% left including a detour in Austin to pick up something for our daughter.
As to driving it was fantastic. My wife has a 2015 Cadillac SRX and to me it was comparable to that car as far as road manners. Smooth and powerful with confident handling. A very good driving experience. I have the full self driving and used it for probably 80% of the highway miles and 40% of the Austin and Fredericksburg miles. I'm not confident yet in how it will handle around town stuff but it was flawless for very long stretches of highway even when it was misting Friday and today. During the 90 or so miles from CS to Austin I bet I didn't intervene twice. Same experience from Austin to Fredericksburg. We kept commenting on how incredible the system is.
My $.02 for those considering a Tesla is that if your life revolves around your home town and you can install a home charger it's an easy yes. I work from home but if I had to commute each day i would just charge at home each night and it would be great. Not sure I've had a better car and now that the first trip is behind me I won't even flinch at taking it out of town.
A fearful society is a compliant society. That's why Democrats and criminals prefer their victims to be unarmed. Gun Control is not about guns, it's about control.
