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.