Everyone’s experience is different, I suppose. Most of the hotels I stay at tend to be in very touristy areas here in Florida, and the parking lots are slammed. Or I’m at an AirBnB, since I’m travelling with kids.
To not get off the main point, most people want an EV that can handle their longest use between easy charging opportunities - not their average use. At a minimum, that’s their longest single-day drive (for me, the road trip to Orlando at ~240 miles). But it might also be the time period where they might be away from home for a long weekend or a road trip, and they might go a few days without convenient access to a fast charger.
For me, that would be 294 miles. Yesterday I drove one of my kids to college, and today I drove back home. The astounding thing is how good my efficiency was for each of the trips. Going there, we got about 223 Wh/mi, kid did the entire drive (all in “standard” FSD mode) and it was a 4:45 straight drive with no stops at all. Some very heavy rain for about 10 minutes that slowed us down from 70 mi/hr to 50 mi/hr. Left with 100% battery and arrived with 8% battery (photo 1).
Coming home, I got even better efficiency, even astounding efficiency to me, at about 194 Wh/mi, left with 100% battery and arrived with 21% battery. One quick stop for the bathroom. Total trip time 4:48. I did part of the trip in “chill” FSD mode, also mostly at 70 mi/hr. A 6.5 mi/hr 45 degree tailwind helped improve efficiency by about 3%. And no bad weather at all, and perhaps 10-15 minutes total of light traffic (I specifically chose my driving time to avoid traffic through any very populated areas).
When the rain got really heavy, and it was less than a minute after the first real drops (this is FL after all), I had him disengage FSD and take over driving himself. It (FSD) would have likely warned about visibility after a short time and asked him to take over anyway. But a few minutes later after we passed through the heavy part of the rain, he re-engaged FSD during the remainder of the light rain. It’s funny, I remember him asking me “will FSD still work in the rain?” I forgot that we did disengage FSD for a short time!
