While we were doing our West Palm Beach to Toronto road trip last weekend, I started wondering how much longer the trip would be taking had we been driving a Tesla. The drive, according to Google Maps, is normally about 20 hours and 46 minutes. It’s a long one. About 2,288 km. The mountains in Virginia are nice, though.
The route I threw in is West Palm Beach to Junction House (2720 Dundas St W, Toronto):
According to Tesla, this same route using a Standard Range (400km) Model X SUV is now estimated to take 34 hours.
The additional travel time is a result of charging time (anywhere from 20 – 70min per charge depending on the device) and the fact that you need to go where the chargers are. In this scenario, you end up driving an additional 155 km. However, you will end up saving money on gas.
This reminds me of something that Bill Gates argued in the talk I recently posted. Electric vehicles are the future of personal transport, but they’re not great for commercial applications: planes, boats, and so on. The battery capacity simply isn’t there, and it’s unlikely to be there anytime soon. But perhaps the charging times can be brought down. That would help.
I’m not planning on doing this drive again anytime soon. But if any of you are, you may want to leave the Tesla at home if you’re in a rush. However, using an EV would, of course, be the right thing to do for our planet.
BRANDON DONNELLY 
Great comparison Brandon and a useful one for the many Canadians that drive to Florida. EV in its many different forms has the potential to change how we do things. I just returned from Austin and was amazed at how relatively quickly electric scooters have integrated into everyday life. There are several options from Bird, Jump, Lyft and others. This was my main form of transportation for the week as I whisked to restaurants and shops near my hotel. I know there is a lot of controversy associated with this but after seeing students, business people, kids, and others zip around, many of home would have otherwise been in cars, I hope this form of transportation sticks around.
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Andrew, I am shocked we don’t have electric scooters in Toronto yet. I would use them.
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The ICE time doesn’t factor in stopping to eat/stretch, which you should be doing anyway. If you just plan those eat/stretch breaks at superchargers then that’ll reduce the difference between ICE and electric. If you stopped every ~300 km or so for 45 minutes in an ICE that adds nearly 6 hours.
I’m also skeptical of the 34 hour estimate. A 400km Tesla should only have to charge 6-7 times. And 155km is 1.5 hours at most. It should be closer to 28.5 hours, not 34. With those adjustments the difference is negligible.
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Good point. Need to eat.
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comparisons like this are silly and scare away prospective EV drivers when realistically how often do you do long haul trips like this or even Toronto -> Montreal, maybe 1-3 times per year max for most people if at all? 95% of driving in the GTA could be done by EVs and this just hurts the adoption rate, its not like the planets on f@cking fire or anything SMDH.
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Probably 0 times per year for me
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