BLUF
Drive 2 hours, cover 120 miles, supercharge 20 mins, repeat. Long winter drives, 20% range drop, short, 40%.
Intro
I work on electric powertrains for a living, so I know what happens to a lithium-ion cell at 10°F. I know the math on cabin heating energy draw. I also know that "EPA range" is measured in conditions that do not resemble Michigan in December.
Around the same time, my wife's brother was visiting from Australia, and we were helping plan his flight home. I suggested booking it out of LA instead of Detroit, then turning the domestic leg into a road trip: Detroit to Los Angeles in my Model Y, with a bunch of places along the way he probably would not get to see otherwise. Nobody was fully sold at first, but I eventually convinced them.
So the trip became part family send-off, part winter EV experiment. I was mostly curious whether what I know on paper would still hold up when I was the one behind the wheel on the way to Page at midnight, watching the percentage drop.
The route
Detroit → Chicago → Iowa truck stop → Colorado Rockies → Moab Arches → Page → Grand Canyon → Hoover Dam → Vegas → LA. On our way back, Vegas → Salt Lake City → Bonneville Salt Flats → Cody → YellowStone → Mt Rushmore → Wall Drug Store → Badlands → Sioux Falls → Minneapolis → Madison → Chicago → Home.
I drove a Model Y Long Range. Mine, not rented. I'm not going to pretend I didn't spend an embarrassing amount of time in Tesla's trip planner before I left, especially once the return route turned into the scenic version of "while we're out here..."
What actually happened to range
Michigan to Chicago on a 12°F morning: the car showed ~220 miles of projected range on a full charge, versus 330-ish in summer. That's about 33% reduction — which is roughly what the chemistry predicts. The battery management system does its job: it preconditions the pack before Supercharger stops if you've set a navigation destination, and it does this well.
The bigger drain isn't actually the battery losing capacity in the cold. It's the heat pump pulling continuous power to keep the cabin livable. On the long, cold stretches through the Midwest and the mountain states, I was burning somewhere around 1.5–2 kWh extra per hour just on HVAC. Seat heaters instead of cabin heat helps. Steering wheel heater. Anything that heats you instead of the air.
Supercharger infrastructure
Genuinely impressive on this route. The interstate portions were easy: Chicago, Iowa, Colorado, Vegas, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Madison, back through Chicago. The places that made me pay attention were the scenic detours: Moab, Page, the Grand Canyon, Cody, Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, and the Badlands. The chargers were there, but the spacing makes you think more carefully about arrival percentage, weather, elevation, and whether the next stop is a real stop or just a charger in the middle of the plan.
The Colorado Rockies, Utah, northern Arizona, and the Wyoming/South Dakota stretch were the best reminders that range is not just distance. Elevation, wind, cold, speed, and detours all show up in the number. The planner is conservative most of the time, which is the right call. When you're between national parks in December, conservative feels less like software caution and more like good manners.
What this taught me that the job doesn't
I calibrate control systems. I work on the software that decides when to draw from the battery, when to regen, how to balance state of charge against thermal constraints. I've done all of that work at a desk, with models, with dyno data.
Driving a winter loop from Detroit to LA and back through the Rockies, Utah, Yellowstone, the Black Hills, and the upper Midwest in a car I work on adjacent systems to — it doesn't make me better at the job exactly, but it puts the job in context. The numbers we optimize aren't abstract. They're the number on the screen on the way to Page at midnight, and whether it's big enough that you're not thinking about it.
The car handled it fine. Better than I expected on a few legs, exactly as expected on others. If you're an EV skeptic and you want to argue about this, I'm happy to, but you'll need to bring data.
LA
It was 72°F. I ate tacos and went to the beach. The car had full range again. Then we pointed it back toward Vegas, Salt Lake City, Yellowstone, the Badlands, and eventually Michigan, where it was 15°F when I got home. The circle of life.
TL;DR
Start your road trip at 90%+ charge, ideally charged at home overnight. Drive for 2 hours (Tesla Autopilot on highways), ~120 miles, pick up fast food on the way, stop at a Supercharger, plug in, restroom break, watch an episode of your favorite show (20 mins). Unplug and continue for another 2 hours, chargeup again at a Supercharger/hotel's Level 2.