A few days ago we embarked on a four day, nearly 1600 mile cross-country drive, in my 2026 Tesla Model Y. Over the next few blog posts I’ll highlight some of the sites, experiences on the trip, as well as my thoughts on road tripping in an electric vehicle.
Although I’ve been an EV owner since 2022, this is my first proper road trip in one. As much as I tried to prepare and educate myself beforehand, nothing taught me better than the actual experience of getting behind the wheel and driving—or should I say supervising the car as it drove itself.
Throughout the entire trip to Sedona, Arizona Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD v14.2.2.5) did about 98% of the driving for us. We simply typed our final destination for the day into the car’s navigation system and the computer calculated where we should stop to charge and how much charge would be needed at each stop. FSD even pulled the car into the charging stalls when we arrived.
I used the online Tesla Trip Planner to plot out our entire trip and then we chose our nightly stops in close proximity to the last charging stop for the day.
This series won’t be a Tesla fan boy glossing over what features of the car and the tech could be better. In this series I’m going to try to put it all on the table and explain what the tech did right and also where it failed. I’ll also share some of the practical and useful things I’ve learned about during my first long road trip in a Tesla.
In the end I'll be sharing some stats like how much it cost us to charge the car during our trip versus what we would have paid for gasoline and how much time charging added to our trip.
Our first day of driving was from Minnesota to Grand Island, NE and just shy of five hundred miles and almost 9.5 hours on the road. We quickly learned that Nebraska was known for a couple things—corn and cattle.
Thankfully, Nebraska didn't have as many of the the huge corporate feed lot operations that we experienced on previous drives through Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
I charged the Model Y to 100% at home the night before we hit the road. We pay about $.18 per KwH on our home charger so this would equate to about $4.00 to top the battery off in preparation for the trip.
The Tesla navigation told us we needed to charge three times during our drive.
As you can see from the photo above the computer had us arriving at the last three charge stations with only 10% charge (30 miles of range). I wasn't comfortable cutting it that close so I added another 15% at these stops so we'd be arriving at the next charger with at least 25% of battery life (75 miles of range).
If I were to have one complaint our first day it would be I wish the navigation system didn't cut it quite so close. Although you can set your battery percentage upon arrival at your final destination you can't set arrival percentages at each Supercharger. I think this would go a long way to help novices with range anxiety on long road trips. Elon, if you're reading this, this the ability to set arrival percentages automatically at Superchargers is on my wishlist for future updates. Better safe than sorry I say. Veteran Tesla road trippers will tell you to "just trust the tech" but without having much experience with these kinds of drives I'm not quite there yet.
Charging Costs
The costs to Supercharge along the route our first day of driving were as follows:
Worthington, MN - $8.00
Sioux City, IA $9.78
Norfolk, NE $5.86
Total: $23.64
Total distance driven- 485 miles.
For comparison, our Subaru Forester Hybrid gets roughly 40mpg on the highway. If we had driven it instead it would have used about 13 gallons of gas at an average price of $4.80 a gallon or $62.40.
Cost savings was a huge win for the EV, especially when gasoline prices are hovering around $5 a gallon.
Drive Time
The trip would have taken around 7hrs, 12min in the Forester plus stops for restrooms and food.
In the Tesla it took 8hrs, 9min. Additional stops (which we would have had to do in the Forester too) and charging a little extra made it more like a 9hr, 40min day of driving.
Gasoline wins here.
Total Fuel Cost Savings - $38.76
Total Time - The Tesla added about 1.5hrs to our driving day over a gasoline powered vehicle.
Final Thoughts
I can't tell you how impressed I was with how well the Full Self Driving performed. It did all the driving and I felt more like a passenger in a train than a driver of a vehicle. I could relax and take in the sights around me. I arrived at the end of the day feeling so much less stressed and fatigued.
Although the day's drive took longer in the Tesla the additional stops made the trip feel less hectic and gave us the chance to get out and stretch our legs more often, which we both liked. There were lots of restaurant options around most of the Superchargers as well.
Stayed tuned for Day 2 of the journey, coming soon!
If you have any questions about road tripping in an EV please drop them in the comments below
Also, if you're considering seeing what the Tesla experience is like for yourself please consider using my referral code for three months of Full Self Driving for free (a $300 value).
All for now. Thanks so much for reading.