This is my first post so I hope this is the right place to post!
Three of us (myself + two friends who own a Tesla Model 3 with a lot of road trip mileage) just completed a round trip from Toronto to the Gaspe peninsula in Quebec. It was 8 days, of which 5 were spent driving between cities/towns. In total, we drove over 3100km in my 2019 SL Plus, and not surprisingly experienced rapidgate firsthand.
I knew about the issue before buying the car and so did my friends before we went on this trip; my main objective is to provide some information along with some subjective observations/comments.
The short summary is that rapidgate is very real, and in practical terms limits the distance you can travel in one day to about 500-600km. This is highly dependent on a combination of how favourable the conditions are, and your own patience/tolerance:
-An aggressive driver (75mph/120km/hr) combined with hot conditions may need to charge sooner and only once, resulting in about 400km usable (225+175)
-A conservative driver (60mph/96kmhr) who is patient should be able to charge twice and drive 250+175+175 = 600km. Note this may be awkward if the roads you drive on has a 100km/hr speed limit which is the case for the 401 and most of Autoroute 20/40.
-A three charge journey is only really possible if you can tolerate either shorter intervals (e.g. 100-150km) or progressively longer waits (creeping up to 50+ minutes to drive 175-200km at a time)
Here are some observations having fast charged 15 times over the trip:
-On the first charge, I observed charge rates as high as 75-80kW at the 100kW stations
-50kW stations can reliably reach 45kW
-100kW stations don't make any sense if you plan to charge to 60+%, as I found that the tapering was much more severe and so getting to 70+% took almost as much time whether charging at 50kW or 100kW
-Charging up to 70% (usable range of 150-175km unless at end of trip, where 200km is possible) would generally enable at least two sessions averaging over 40kW; I do not recommend charging to 80%
-Driving at 90km/hr appears to allow the battery to cool enough over a 1.5 hour drive to keep charging times somewhat tolerable; I saw the temperature gauge drop when driving at this speed and keeping the power gauge as close to neutral as possible (e.g. limit regen and accelerate gradually)
-I almost never hit the red zone temperature wise, noting that highs were in the low-mid 20s (70s for Americans).
The most exhausting experience was the drive back from Quebec City to Toronto which is about 800km and took about 15 hours (left 11:30am and arrived at 2:40 the next morning). The hotel valet failed to charge my car (should have just parked in public parking with L2 like I did in other cities), and so I started the 800km trip with 17%. I estimate this extended my trip by at least 3 hours; 1:45 for driving around looking for an L3 station in Quebec City + waiting at a busy station + the actual process of charging. Another 1:15 is the ripple effect of the raised temperature caused by the first avoidable fast charge. Even if my car was 100% charged with good battery temps, the drive would still take about 12 hours; it's possible I could have cut another hour by driving a bit faster if the temps held up and if I had less range anxiety (generally targeted charging at 20%)
You can find as much information as I had available embedded in the following spreadsheet:
https://1drv.ms/x/s!AtaX91DszJ_zi4QRtps_KOPfR5mCsg?e=bh2Cf0
Happy to answer any questions or hear any comments/feedback.
Some other details/comments:
-I decided to inflate my tires (stock Ecopias) to about 40psi
-Total passenger weight was about 500lbs + 100lbs of baggage
-My friends were pleasantly surprised by how roomy the interior of the Leaf is; it might be a bit roomier in the back than the Model 3
-They were also impressed by how quiet the drive was
-The driver assist features were very useful; we spent probably 70+% of the time with adaptive cruise control + lane keeping on and it worked basically flawlessly
-There was some random thunderstorms/rain where having physical controls for wipers, climate control, etc. made life easier
-There was a wide range of energy economy averaging about 17.5kWh per 100km; during periods avoiding heating the battery too much by minimizing the absolute value of the battery discharge rate, I could average in the low 15s, but the Gaspe region is quite hilly and we were averaging close to 19 for some segments.
Three of us (myself + two friends who own a Tesla Model 3 with a lot of road trip mileage) just completed a round trip from Toronto to the Gaspe peninsula in Quebec. It was 8 days, of which 5 were spent driving between cities/towns. In total, we drove over 3100km in my 2019 SL Plus, and not surprisingly experienced rapidgate firsthand.
I knew about the issue before buying the car and so did my friends before we went on this trip; my main objective is to provide some information along with some subjective observations/comments.
The short summary is that rapidgate is very real, and in practical terms limits the distance you can travel in one day to about 500-600km. This is highly dependent on a combination of how favourable the conditions are, and your own patience/tolerance:
-An aggressive driver (75mph/120km/hr) combined with hot conditions may need to charge sooner and only once, resulting in about 400km usable (225+175)
-A conservative driver (60mph/96kmhr) who is patient should be able to charge twice and drive 250+175+175 = 600km. Note this may be awkward if the roads you drive on has a 100km/hr speed limit which is the case for the 401 and most of Autoroute 20/40.
-A three charge journey is only really possible if you can tolerate either shorter intervals (e.g. 100-150km) or progressively longer waits (creeping up to 50+ minutes to drive 175-200km at a time)
Here are some observations having fast charged 15 times over the trip:
-On the first charge, I observed charge rates as high as 75-80kW at the 100kW stations
-50kW stations can reliably reach 45kW
-100kW stations don't make any sense if you plan to charge to 60+%, as I found that the tapering was much more severe and so getting to 70+% took almost as much time whether charging at 50kW or 100kW
-Charging up to 70% (usable range of 150-175km unless at end of trip, where 200km is possible) would generally enable at least two sessions averaging over 40kW; I do not recommend charging to 80%
-Driving at 90km/hr appears to allow the battery to cool enough over a 1.5 hour drive to keep charging times somewhat tolerable; I saw the temperature gauge drop when driving at this speed and keeping the power gauge as close to neutral as possible (e.g. limit regen and accelerate gradually)
-I almost never hit the red zone temperature wise, noting that highs were in the low-mid 20s (70s for Americans).
The most exhausting experience was the drive back from Quebec City to Toronto which is about 800km and took about 15 hours (left 11:30am and arrived at 2:40 the next morning). The hotel valet failed to charge my car (should have just parked in public parking with L2 like I did in other cities), and so I started the 800km trip with 17%. I estimate this extended my trip by at least 3 hours; 1:45 for driving around looking for an L3 station in Quebec City + waiting at a busy station + the actual process of charging. Another 1:15 is the ripple effect of the raised temperature caused by the first avoidable fast charge. Even if my car was 100% charged with good battery temps, the drive would still take about 12 hours; it's possible I could have cut another hour by driving a bit faster if the temps held up and if I had less range anxiety (generally targeted charging at 20%)
You can find as much information as I had available embedded in the following spreadsheet:
https://1drv.ms/x/s!AtaX91DszJ_zi4QRtps_KOPfR5mCsg?e=bh2Cf0
Happy to answer any questions or hear any comments/feedback.
Some other details/comments:
-I decided to inflate my tires (stock Ecopias) to about 40psi
-Total passenger weight was about 500lbs + 100lbs of baggage
-My friends were pleasantly surprised by how roomy the interior of the Leaf is; it might be a bit roomier in the back than the Model 3
-They were also impressed by how quiet the drive was
-The driver assist features were very useful; we spent probably 70+% of the time with adaptive cruise control + lane keeping on and it worked basically flawlessly
-There was some random thunderstorms/rain where having physical controls for wipers, climate control, etc. made life easier
-There was a wide range of energy economy averaging about 17.5kWh per 100km; during periods avoiding heating the battery too much by minimizing the absolute value of the battery discharge rate, I could average in the low 15s, but the Gaspe region is quite hilly and we were averaging close to 19 for some segments.