Long car trip, rent a Tesla for free.

[Bill Dufour]

My wife talked me into renting a Tesla model 3 from Hertz for a 800 mile road trip. Unlimited milage for one week is only $200. A little less with AAA discount. You have to pay to charge it up.
It will cost less to rent then to pay for gas for our SUV.
Bill D

We were going to the LA area but had to cancel. All roads are closed due to snow, ice and rock slides. Maybe in the spring. The hotels from booking.com, with no refunds, refunded our reservations, no problem. Supposedly they refund all the time you just have to ask.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

That is some wild weather you are having! Glad you are not out in it. I wonder if the charging stations are adequate to get from the midwest to the east coast. I will look in to it.

[Bill Dufour]

Several Target stores near our route will add superchargers by summer.
Hertz claims 260 mile range. I would not want to start onto Tehachapi pass in a blizard with under 60% battery in case we got stuck with 3,700 foot rise in elevation. That could use up a lot of energy.
Bakersfield has no charger so it would be 64 miles, from the town of Tulare supercharger, before reaching bakersfield on highwway 99. So 126 miles from Tulare to Mojave including 3,700 foot rise running the heater and headlights. Probably very safe in summer but in snow and ice? I just have no idea how much battery the climb will eat up nor the heater.
The only information I can find is climbing or towing will reduce range to some extent. Also cold weather reduces battery capacity as well. But I can find no one who shows actual numbers. That is one reason I posted about this here.
The model three has " camp mode" that runs the heater while parked and has a campfire video on the big screen
Bill D

https://www.tesla.com/en_eu/supercharger

[Bill Dufour]

The Hertz car includes a cord with a dryer four prong male end. Also some kind of adapter for non Tesla chargers. No idea what kind it will mate. No 120 volt cord
Bill D

[Bill Dufour]

Just looked at charging network for the subaru/toyota BEV. Their chargers are only 50Kw. while Tesla supercharger is 250KW. So five times faster. Very few in California probably worse in the middle of the USA. None in Nevada or east before Denver.
Tesla anounced last week they will open up their chargers to other makers.
Bill D

[roger wiegand]

Post your questions over at the TMC page (Tesla Motor Club), you can probably get first hand experience from people who have made your exact trip. On two long trips in the east and midwest (1600 and 600 miles) in our new Model Y charging has been a complete non-issue. I need to stop somewhat more often than the car does anyway, and charging is typically complete or nearly so by the time I've take a bio break-- typically ~20 minutes to go from ~15-20% up to 80%. Get a subscription to the app A Better Route Planner, it will help you find non-Tesla chargers on your route and also sort them both by capacity and real-time usage. It also takes into account real time weather and the elevation changes in your trip.
FWIW, the onboard chargers Toyota is using are pretty terrible. To charge efficiently on a trip you want a high capacity DC charger and a car that can make use of it. The cars are typically more limiting than the chargers, assuming a 150-250kW rating.

[roger wiegand]

The Hertz car includes a cord with a dryer four prong male end. Also some kind of adapter for non Tesla chargers. No idea what kind it will mate. No 120 volt cord
Bill D

You'll get old before you get any significant charge at 120V, though non-hertz Teslas come with an adapter. Ideally they'd give you a CCS adapter as well as the J1772 that has come standard, that would cover almost all circumstances at non-Tesla charges. Tesla superchargers are the best, CCS are pretty good.

[roger wiegand]

Just for a giggle I plotted a route from Modesto to LA in my car using ABRP leaving right now. Here's what it gave me, I think it's weather assumptions might be optimistic. You could be more conservative by charging to higher than the recommended levels.

Screen Shot 2023-02-23 at 8.27.05 PM.png

[Maurice Mcmurry]

This is fun looking at the Tesla trip planer. I never would have thought to rent one. I can't get a result for the trip we need to make. Columbia MO, Grafton, NH, Boston MA, Brunswick Ga, Durham NC, Columbia MO. Doing it in the Prius will work well enough but I won't be able to bring many tools. We hope to get a Nisan Leaf. For the out east loop it looks like it will have to be a plug in hybrid.

[Ronald Blue]

I just looked out of curiosity. Not even available in St Louis at least not at the airport. That was looking out one month. There are a handful of electrics in the area but they don't do well in the cold. Even my hybrid drops 10 to 20 per cent.

[Bill Dufour]

Avis and Enterprise claim to have BEV's but none near me. I was surprised Hertz actually had several here. It may just be a trial location since we are around 50 miles from San Jose and less then that from the Tesla factory in Fremont. My Niece's brothers in law commute to the factory from this town. Local Target store recently got 12 superchargers.
Bill D

[Alan Lightstone]

I rented a Model 3 in Albuquerque last fall. No one at Hertz knew how to open the trunk. It was amusing. There was a supercharger in town, so no issues. And I saved a ton on gas heading up to Santa Fe and back.

The strangest/worst part was that the "autopilot/cruise control" maxed out at 80mph. At that speed, I was passed by literally hundreds and hundreds of cars on I-10 where the speed limit is 75mph and there are lots of stretches with truly nothing around you. It started to feel a little dangerous.

Was also amusing that they gave you a water bottle with the rental. Probably a lesson there if you got stuck. I filled it.

Not new to me driving a Tesla. I've been driving one for 9 years.

[Bill Dufour]

Alan the glovebox is locked with a pin number. I asked when we turned it in and they will not tell you the pin. So no glovebox for some reason.
Bill D

[Brian Elfert]

My wife talked me into renting a Tesla model 3 from Hertz for a 800 mile road trip. Unlimited milage for one week is only $200. A little less with AAA discount. You have to pay to charge it up.
It will cost less to rent then to pay for gas for our SUV.

Teslas apparently rent for a lot less in California than in Minnesota. After seeing your post I checked into renting a Tesla from Hertz for a road trip later this year. The cost was over $600 a week. I'll put the miles on my car for that kind of money.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

Our HyVee grocery stores have impressive supercharges in their parking lots.