The Morro Bay West Coast Active E Wake


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On Sunday, March 2, 2014, I joined fellow Electronauts in Morro Bay, CA for the meetup of Active E Electronauts from Northern and Southern California to hold a wake for the departure of our beloved Active Es. This was the same drive that I alluded to in the previous year and ended up driving in an ICE because it was range “insane”.

This year, saying goodbye and commiserating about the departure of the Active E was done in all EV mode thanks to the Tesla Motors Model S and Supercharging at Buelton, CA. Basically the Active E Wake served two purposes for me.

1) Provided me with a way to channel my “grief” by commiserating with other Active E drivers and honor the Active E at the same time.

2) Provided me with a good excuse to go on a long, supercharger enabled trip and really get used to the Model S.

One could say that it was the perfect way to bridge my EV experience from an Active E for my daily driver to a Tesla Model S.

The first leg of the trip was from home to the Buelton Supercharger and the car performed well. I had several changes in elevation as there were several passes to navigate, so even though the trip was approximately 166 miles and I was charged to 264 miles… I arrived at the Buelton Supercharger with 55 miles left. The overall statistics were 165.8 mile trip at 351 Wh/mi (2.85 mi/KwH). A good chunk of that trip was sitting on the cruise control trying to do “my version” of trying to hyper-mile. However, as I mentioned earlier, there was a lot of elevation, and the road was just too open that early in the morning. In the end, there were quite a few stretches where I “enjoyed” the Model S too much.

On the way to the West Coast Active E Wake

On the way to the West Coast Active E Wake

The weather was appropriately overcast for such a solemn occasion.

On the way to the West Coast Active E Wake

We supercharged for approximately 40-45 minutes and left with 225 miles on the range and a 150 mile roundtrip to and from Morro Bay ahead of us.

Having driven this same route the “other way” from our Tesla Pickup Weekend (see lots of posts starting here), it was a comfortable trip to do to Buelton and having driven more than halfway to Morro Bay with the stop in Buelton it was important to have enough charge to get there, back and some buffer.

We met at the Blue Skye Coastal Cafe in Morro Bay. As with most of my photo hosting, check out flickr for photos. There will be photos at breakfast and shots by the “Rock”.

BMW Active E Wake at Morro Bay, CA

Even an homage to the Mini-E can be found on the hood of the Active E that served as stand in for all the Active Es out there.

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Here’s a shot of all the cars with their drivers. The truck is NOT with us, but one of the Active Es drove down with a Model S as well (the white one)…

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Another shot with a driver beside each of their EVs.

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One of the many residents of Morro Bay that was wondering what the heck we were up to, this one was having seafood for lunch.

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I didn’t log my drive statistics to Morro Bay from Buelton, but made sure to catch it on the Roundtrip to the Supercharger…

So, returned to the Buelton Supercharger with 56 miles left after 155.7 mile roundtrip to/from Morro Bay at 310 wh/mi (3.229 miles/kWh), drove more efficiently than the trip to Buelton from home. We left Buelton with 225 miles of range, so the “spoilage” was close to 19 miles of estimated miles.

Back at the Tesla Buelton Supercharger on the way home from the BMW Active E West Coast Wake

Back at the Tesla Buelton Supercharger on the way home from the BMW Active E West Coast Wake

This time around, I wasn’t alone at the Supercharger station. We had an homage to USA with a Red, White, and Blue Model S supercharging.

Back at the Tesla Buelton Supercharger on the way home from the BMW Active E West Coast Wake

For my readers outside of Southern California, this is an overcast day… Just to prove that it ISN’T always hot and sunny in California. Another shot of the Red, White, and Blue Tesla Model S at Buelton.

Back at the Tesla Buelton Supercharger on the way home from the BMW Active E West Coast Wake

This trip was somewhat therapeutic for the sense of loss for the Active E and reassuring that the EV future really is quite well represented by all the brands that fellow Active E Electronauts have decided to go to rather than wait for BMW to release the i3. Several still were deciding whether to get an i3 either in addition to the other EV that they may have also obtained.

BMW Active E Wake at Morro Bay, CA

This time, I figured to charge as close to full as possible, so we went to around 240 on the mileage gauge before we headed South at a more leisurely pace. We got home having consumed 48.7kwh in 170.6 miles of travel with an average of 286 Wh/mile (or 3.50 miles per KWh) amazingly close to what I would do on the Active E on an average day. The entire 492 mile trip was accomplished using 155.1 KWh of energy for an average of 315 Wh/mile (or 3.17 miles per KWh).

Final leg stats of trip to Morro Bay for West Coast ActiveE Wake

Amazing to think that about a year prior, I chickened out and decided to use an ICE car to do this same drive and took about the same amount of time to travel. The cost to “fuel” up this drive… $0.

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