My First Cross-Country Drive in a Tesla (Part 1)
A few days ago we embarked on a four day, nearly 1600 mile cross-country drive, in my 2026 Tesla Model Y. Over the next few blog posts I’ll highlight some of the sights, experiences on the trip, as well as my thoughts on road tripping in an electric vehicle.
Although I’ve been an EV owner since 2022, this is my first proper road trip in one. As much as I tried to prepare and educate myself beforehand, nothing taught me better than the actual experience of getting behind the wheel and driving—or should I say supervising the car as it drove itself.
Throughout the entire trip to Sedona, Arizona Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD v14.2.2.5) did about 98% of the driving for us. We simply typed our final destination for the day into the car’s navigation system and the computer calculated where we should stop to charge and how much charge would be needed at each stop. FSD even pulled the car into the charging stalls when we arrived.
I used the online Tesla Trip Planner to plot out our entire trip and then we chose our nightly stops in close proximity to the last charging stop for the day.
This series won’t be a Tesla fan boy glossing over what features of the car and the tech could be better. In this series I’m going to try to put it all on the table and explain what the tech did right and also where it failed. I’ll also share some of the practical and useful things I’ve learned about during my first long road trip in a Tesla.
In the end I'll be sharing some stats like how much it cost us to charge the car during our trip versus what we would have paid for gasoline and how much time charging added to our trip.
Our first day of driving was from Minnesota to Grand Island, NE and just shy of five hundred miles and almost 9.5 hours on the road. We quickly learned that Nebraska was known for a couple things—corn and cattle.
Thankfully, Nebraska didn't have as many of the the huge corporate feed lot operations that we experienced on previous drives through Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
I charged the Model Y to 100% at home the night before we hit the road. We pay about $.18 per KwH on our home charger so this would equate to about $4.00 to top the battery off in preparation for the trip.
The Tesla navigation told us we needed to charge three times during our drive.
As you can see from the photo above the computer had us arriving at the last three charge stations with only 10% charge (30 miles of range). I wasn't comfortable cutting it that close so I added another 15% at these stops so we'd be arriving at the next charger with at least 25% of battery life (75 miles of range).
If I were to have one complaint our first day it would be I wish the navigation system didn't cut it quite so close. Although you can set your battery percentage upon arrival at your final destination you can't set arrival percentages at each Supercharger. I think this would go a long way to help novices with range anxiety on long road trips. Elon, if you're reading this, this the ability to set arrival percentages automatically at Superchargers is on my wishlist for future updates. Better safe than sorry I say. Veteran Tesla road trippers will tell you to "just trust the tech" but without having much experience with these kinds of drives I'm not quite there yet.
Charging Costs
The costs to Supercharge along the route our first day of driving were as follows:
Worthington, MN - $8.00
Sioux City, IA $9.78
Norfolk, NE $5.86
Total: $23.64
Total distance driven- 485 miles.
For comparison, our Subaru Forester Hybrid gets roughly 40mpg on the highway. If we had driven it instead it would have used about 13 gallons of gas at an average price of $4.80 a gallon or $62.40.
Cost savings was a huge win for the EV, especially when gasoline prices are hovering around $5 a gallon.
Drive Time
The trip would have taken around 7hrs, 12min in the Forester plus stops for restrooms and food.
In the Tesla it took 8hrs, 9min. Additional stops (which we would have had to do in the Forester too) and charging a little extra made it more like a 9hr, 40min day of driving.
Gasoline wins here.
Total Fuel Cost Savings - $38.76
Total Time - The Tesla added about 1.5hrs to our driving day over a gasoline powered vehicle.
Final Thoughts
I can't tell you how impressed I was with how well the Full Self Driving performed. It did all the driving and I felt more like a passenger in a train than a driver of a vehicle. I could relax and take in the sights around me. I arrived at the end of the day feeling so much less stressed and fatigued.
Although the day's drive took longer in the Tesla the additional stops made the trip feel less hectic and gave us the chance to get out and stretch our legs more often, which we both liked. There were lots of restaurant options around most of the Superchargers as well.
Stayed tuned for Day 2 of the journey, coming soon!
If you have any questions about road tripping in an EV please drop them in the comments below
Also, if you're considering seeing what the Tesla experience is like for yourself please consider using my referral code for three months of Full Self Driving for free (a $300 value).
All for now. Thanks so much for reading.
That's awesome! Especially right now the cost savings are impressive. Time on the other hand is something I still think I would struggle with, but I think part of the reason I am always in such a hurry to get places is because I am doing the driving. If I were able to just be a passenger, I would probably feel a bit differently.
The cost savings was more than I anticipated. I was actually pretty shocked when I added everything up—I thought I missed something and went over the figures a couple of times. The time gain was a bit of an adjustment in mindset for me. Once you make the shift in mindset and begin bundling meals and bathroom breaks with the charging stops it's not that bad at all.
That makes a lot of sense. I think that if you aren't doing the driving it probably makes a big difference too.
Great that you've already put your Tesla to the test. Traveling for so many hours on the road has its charm, and doing it in a new car while listening to good music, like Si Tu Vois Ma Mère, is wonderful. Have a lovely Sunday and hugs!
The first long road trip definitely was an adventure. Now that I've learned to charge 10-20% above what the car's computer tells me to at each stop I think there will be far less range anxiety. I love that song. Thank you Nancy! I hope you're having a good start to the week!
I wouldn't be able to trust FDS, not having control when driving freaks me out, I don't even use cruise control, or rather I can't relax using cruise control in case anything happens. Basically I have quite a low trust in automation unless I'm very familiar with it. It's become more of a chicken and egg thing for me
The first time I used it I was uncomfortable, especially at four-way stops, but the car earned my trust pretty quickly. It's actually about 7x safer than a human driver at this point. It sees everything going on around vehicle and can respond in milliseconds. During our time here it's slowed down to let a coyote cross the road, slows down for speed bumps, even pulls over for emergency vehicles. It still occasionally makes mistakes though, which is frustrating because it works so well 99% of the time. I just don't know how it can perform so well most of the time but then still make these mistakes.
Here in Washington the gas is $6 for the regular gas... Our gas is premium so even more... The additional time is bad... though you could probably take that extra time to eat and stretch out...
$6 is insane! I think gas is around $8 in California now because of the additional taxes they have. Yeah, the additional time didn't take long for us to adjust to. Growing up whenever we'd take a road trip anywhere it would be like a race to see how fast my Dad could get us to our destination and that was kind of ingrained in me. Traveling by EV is a whole different ballgame. You stop more frequently but many of those stops are no more than ten minutes. We've been charging a bit extra and having a meal or a nice walk while the car's charging and it's been such a better way to travel.
The 'supervising the car as it drove itself' line captures the current state of FSD perfectly. The tech is good enough that you feel like a passenger, but the liability model still treats you as the driver. That tension is the core unresolved question for autonomous driving at scale.
1600 miles in a Model Y is a real test of the charging infrastructure. How was the Supercharger availability and reliability across the route? The gap between Supercharger uptime perception vs reality is one of those data points that matters for the EV adoption thesis.
Yes, FSD is to the point it feels sentient. It's pretty crazy. It even reacts to hand signals if there are flagmen in construction zones. It's not perfect though. I'm going to explain some of the mistakes it made on during our drive in the next few posts. Some of them were concerning.
There are no worries at all about Tesla's charging infrastructure. Their uptime is around 99.9%, overall. There are Superchargers scattered everywhere throughout North America as well. Although we never had to wait to charge I see congestion becoming a problem in the future as more people buy EVs. That is unless the local/state/federal government find a way to tax EVs so much that it scares people away.
https://x.com/i/status/2058864598774882492
#hive #posh
https://x.com/i/status/2059015497639760326
If someone said you can have any EV you want I would have a Volkswagen van. Now that would be good for a road trip. But I will never have the spare cash instead. I will have my beat up T5 forever and try to be proud of her. We live in a big country too and the problem here is having enough charging stations. I think it's okay outside of peak times, but when it's really busy during holidays, there really isn't enough charge points for everyone moving through. Of course, because of what your fuckwheat (I'm using speech to text and that's the way it's spelt that expletive but I'm going to leave it cuz it's kind of cute) president has done, fuel prices have gone up crazily so everyone is looking at electric vehicles now, but the vast majority of the population can't afford them, including us.
However, enough about me. I'm really glad that your trip went well and the Tesla lived up to expectations. I'm actually a little bit jealous of a road trip we haven't been for ages. We will be doing it in our diesel guzzling Defender. Diesel prices have gone up hugely here because it runs all our agriculture and heavy transport system.
Those are really cool but the limited range is what made me shy away from the Volkswagen ID Buzz. I love the design though. It would be an excellent everyday vehicle. Fuel prices are insane here too and it's affecting the price of everything. I've seen a lot of Defenders on this trip and every time I see one I like them a little more. They look like they could handle just about anything you'd throw at them.
Thanks, the drive down me appreciate the Model Y in different ways and trust it more. I hope you get to road trip soon! It's good for the soul.
I don't know much about them but yes the range on EV's is an issue in our big countries. I'm glad it's fulfilling expectations.
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