Cars —

Driving the Tesla Model S through the countryside—watch out for autopilot

762hp + rural roads = awesome. But if you live in the countryside, is the Model S workable?

Reading about the Tesla Model S has become rather repetitive. Yes, it's an electric car. Yes, supercharging is free (well, for those who bought a car before 2017). Yes, autopilot is really cool (but really quite scary on country roads). And yes, the P90D (now the P100D) 0-60mph acceleration is truly insane.

But, when you get right down to it, how important are those things for everyday use, and how many of them are just technorgiastic concepts that drive lots of headline clicks?

I decided to borrow a Model S and find out.

Rural range anxiety

If you regularly travel by motorway in the handful of countries that have an extensive supercharger network, or your place of employment has charging points, owning a Tesla is already a lot less painful than you might think. Range anxiety is certainly a thing for the first few days and weeks, but it diminishes with time.

But what if you live in the countryside? Or, more likely, what if you're an urban dweller and want to spend the weekend driving your EV around Cornwall, East Anglia, Wales, Scotland, or any other region that's more than 100 miles from the closest supercharger?

The UK's national parks, with apologies to the Orkneys. The Lake District is circled. The grey lines are motorways, where most superchargers are located.
Well, as someone who has been in the north-west corner of the Lake District and wondered, as a cold night fell, whether I had enough juice to get back to a charger, let me tell you: it's pretty scary. I did make it back in one piece—I just had to dial back the number of 20-to-70mph blasts along those wonderful Pennine passes.


To the Lake District and back again

My task was simple: drive from London to the Lake District, potter around for a few days, possibly do a bit of environmental non-automotive ambulation (hiking), and return to London. My steed was a brand new Tesla Model S P90D (which has now been replaced in the Tesla range by the P100D) with "ludicrous mode" and all the various driver-assistance mod cons.

The journey north, from my home in Brixton to the Wild Boar Inn in the Lake District, is about 280 miles—too long for a single charge (though the P100D might just about manage it). I stopped in Birmingham for lunch and to recharge the car, and then again at a supercharger in Warrington, near Liverpool. In hindsight I didn't need the second top-up; it was just range anxiety from my first time driving a battery-only EV.

That's me, "driving" up north in a Model S.
Enlarge / That's me, "driving" up north in a Model S.
Sebastian Anthony

Otherwise, the journey passed without incident. Autopilot worked well on the motorways, letting me take in the lovely landscapes of the midlands and northern England. The car's built-in satnav system was okay, but not great (more on that later). After a while, I eventually sussed out the three (!) separate range estimators, and that lessened my range anxiety—though I still can't work out why the "perfect" (i.e. unobtainable) max range is shown prominently on the digital dashboard.

Once we reached the the hotel, there were two 7kW Tesla-branded "destination chargers" waiting for us. Destination charging is a fairly new initiative from Tesla that is designed to augment the network of superchargers, in an attempt to reduce range anxiety from wandering off the beaten tarmac path, and to open up new geographic areas for drivers. Tesla provides the destinations, which are generally hotels or shopping areas, with charging hardware, and then the destination pays for electricity usage. The strength of destination chargers varies from 7kW up to 22kW, but either way it should be enough to get a full battery charge overnight.

Parked outside the hotel.
Enlarge / Parked outside the hotel.
Sebastian Anthony

At the time of writing, there are over 100 destination charging locations in the UK, 1,000+ in the EU, and more than 3,000 worldwide. This number is set to grow rapidly, though: Elon Musk said in March 2016, at the Model 3 unveil, that there would be 15,000 charging units (i.e. probably ~7,000 locations) by the end of 2017.

It was pretty neat waking up each morning with full, free tank of "petrol."

Listing image by Sebastian Anthony

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