Tracking an interesting Tesla Motors powered roadtrips from afar

It’s another year that we’re committed to things around Southern California, so, we’re missing the East Coast festivities for the Tesla Roadtrip (2016 theme is “Future Meets the Past”.) Typically, as the weather warms up, many of my Twitter friends start driving around.

The Tesla Roadtrip guys started out as the group from DC to disprove the John Broder, New York Times “review” that painted the “horrors” of supercharging in the early days.  These Tesla aficionados set out with a few cars to show that John Broder was “less than accurate” in his depiction.  Subsequently, they also had a big caravan that headed out to TMC Connect 2014, I forget which year, and were the guys that served as the inspiration to our coast to cast drive last year. (Here’s Day 1…)

When we’re unable to make a nice long drive in our Tesla, I like to use Twitter and the forums to read about folks who are taking nice long drives in their cars.  I’ve tracked @EnduranceDriver and @p85ddeena set some records last year. Not the sort of coast to coast driving that I’m accustomed on doing. But it was entertaining to see this team break the Cannonball Baker or Cannonball Run using Autopilot in a P85D Model S followed with another drive that went from LA to NY to LA. Similar to this new one that caught my eye recently.

A more reasonable pace of driving is often done by Mark (@mgmbeatle). He is often seen around Twitter adding to his miles. (180k+ miles last time I read on Twitter.) He’s DC based, though one wouldn’t know with recent tweets placing him in Seattle, California, Texas, and the like (on two separate trips.)

Which brings us back to the latest trip to catch my eye.  On May 1 in the United States, an interesting Twitter account popped up on my timeline.

I was intrigued… A Tesla Model S owner in Perth, Australia has just started a trip cross-country (in Australia) from Perth to Brisbane. To put that into perspective to my fellow Americans and those geographically challenged, that’s like going from San Diego, CA (I picked that on purpose, ’cause Perth, AU reminds me a lot of Southern California and San Diego in particular) to Baltimore, MD (or thereabouts) It’s basically 100 miles or so shorter than the Cannonball Run (from the Red Ball Garage, Manhattan, NY to the Portofino Inn, Redondo Beach, CA (the same one that @endurancedriver and @p85ddeena hold EV records in.)

One BIG thing to note with these guys trip is that the Superchargers in Australia are only currently between Melbourne and just North of Sydney.  That distance is approximately the distance between driving from the Tesla Supercharger in Redondo Beach, CA to the Tesla Supercharger in Grants Pass, OR plus an additional 40 or so miles.  This means that the majority of the drive for this team will NOT be on Superchargers.  They won’t experience the joy and speed of supercharging their car until they reach Melbourne and the one at the other end of their journey in Brisbane is “in permit status” according to supercharge.info.

In doing further research into this trip, I notice that Nullis Arbor, Unum Tesla was hashtagged on the second tweet for these adventurers, and being a Latin Scholar (2 years of high school) I translated this to be no trees, one Tesla.  This interesting hashtag is how I found out that the team doing this drive is also posting their adventures on teslamotorsclub.com from the account MDK.

Here are a few of the first few Tweets from the @TransOzTesla account.

Like a good EV Citizen, the guys are also adding in to some of the user contributed EV charging network apps by verifying and inserting available charging plugs for future drivers to know about.

As I write this, I assume they’re sleeping (Perth is GMT+8 and I’m located PDT=GMT-7/BST-8) and recharging the driver(s) and the car (it was at 70%) when I looked using the Visible Tesla link that he provides on his tracking website.

Either way, here’s the link to the trip announcement and some initial details.  And the first day’s drive report is posted here.  Until we head out on a few of our long distance drives, I’ll have to just enjoy reading and tracking other Tesla drivers doing the same.  Good luck to MDK and his driving companion and looking forward to reading more on this multiple monthlong journey to Brisbane and back to Perth (dare I propose that this route be called “Cannonball Australia” unfortunately, it looks like that’s already claimed.)  (MDK’s drive is definitely not the same kind of trip that @EnduranceDriver and @p85ddeena do)