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by theluketaylor 1757 days ago
I tend to road trip in very unpopulated areas, so in my experience there isn’t much route choice. There is only 1 highway you could ever use. I also find the only times I’d bother with an alternate route are inside a single battery charge (either under 300 km or the start/end leg of the trip).

Your use case is quite interesting. Got an example?

The lack of waypoints in the Tesla navigation is their biggest missing piece of software currently. The navigation is extremely good about recalculating both the directions and charge plan as as you go even if you deviate from the suggested route. I sometimes cheat a little by navigating to a midway point. For example, I set Orangeville as the destination leaving Kitchener-Waterloo for Sudbury since I didn’t feel like going through Toronto.

1 comments

In the mountain West of the US, there are semi-frequent major highway closures due to weather conditions, serious accidents, etc. It is not uncommon for the shortest paved detour to add 120 km to your trip. That's not a big deal in an ICE vehicle, since every one-horse town near the detour route has a gas station. That fact has saved my bacon several times even with proper planning. People who live out there are accustomed to this reality. Adventurous people can sometimes find much shorter alternative routes using ranch/mining/forestry trails but those don't always exist and you definitely won't be driving your Tesla on those roads.

The worst detour I've experienced in recent years was a serious accident in the middle-of-nowhere Utah, which closed the highway in both directions for almost 24 hours. The shortest paved detour around the accident added 150km of nothingness to the trip.