Tesla 55 Goes to Yosemite

2009 May 14

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Thru the wonders of Google maps, I knew it would be 199 miles from my home in Redwood City to Yosemite Village. I've never gone that far on a single charge. And this would be uphill. So I decided to be conservative and plan some intermediate charging spots. Worse, I was unable to arrange for a suitable 240v recepticle in the Park. So my plan was to do most of my charging at an RV park in Groveland 40 miles from the Park. But Groveland is 150 miles from my home and I wasn't entirely confident of getting even that far. So I made a short detour to San Ramon where there's a Tesla 70A charger at the San Ramon Valley Conference Center (3301 Crow Canyon Rd). I have no idea why it's there or who made it happen but it worked perfectly for me. Someone deserves a big Thank You.

From San Ramon to Groveland is just 120 miles so that's easy. But I knew that every kWh that I used would mean many more minutes of waiting around so I drove pretty conservatively (read: agonizely, embarrassingly, ridiculously slowly: no more than the speed limit. The actual total distance/time came to 50mph including all the really slow spots in Oakdale, etc). It took 40.26 kWh (from Redwood City) or 254 Wh/mile which is roughly equivalent to a range of 209 miles. Groveland is at about 3000ft, about 1/2 way to the high point of the road into the Valley.
Bill Arnett