Garlic Mom and I were lucky enough to be offered a tour of the Tinaja Hills Demonstration Area last February. We came down to visit some of our Caterpillar Friends, who were doing training there.
Garlic Mom and I had a great trip from Imperial, California to Phoenix. We flew Southern Airways, which operates nine passenger Cessna Caravans from Los Angeles to Imperial and from Imperial to Phoenix. The flight only cost $98.00 each way, cheaper than driving! It is about an hour’s flight from Los Angeles to Imperial and another hour from Imperial to Phoenix.
On one leg, we were the only passengers in the plane! A private flight over some of the most beautiful desert and coastline the world has to offer!
Since Garlic Mom always points out every Tesla we see on the road, I thought she might enjoy seeing how they run, so we rented a Tesla at Phoenix for the two hour drive to Green Valley, just south of Tucson.
Garlic Mom was not impressed.
We arrived at Phoenix and picked up our Tesla about lunchtime. We drove the 120 miles, to Green Valley just south of Tucson, arriving about 3:00 pm. We checked into our hotel and though we located a charger for the Tesla, which was just about out of battery.
We met our Caterpillar friends for dinner at the Longhorn Grill and Saloon. It was really good. After dinner, we returned to our hotel and attempted to connect to the charger which was available at a Ford dealership nearby.
Unfortunately, their charger was not functional. Luckily, our Caterpillar friends had showed us there was a 110 Volt converter in the trunk, so we thought we would charge the Tesla all night at the hotel. That should get us at least some mileage, right?
The car showed 16 miles remaining when we plugged it in. We left it plugged in to the 110 volt outlet for ten hours. After that ten hours of 110 volt charging, it showed 18 miles remaining!
So much for that idea. I scrambled and searched on my phone for other nearby fast chargers. I located on a few miles away and was able to successfully connect to that one early in the morning.
Our Caterpillar friends kindly picked us up and took us on a tour of the Education Center for the morning while the Tesla charged.
The facility is, as you would expect, world class. There is a beautiful training center with auditorium, many classrooms and cafeteria so that those who are here can focus their entire day on product education.
There are many demonstration areas for each of the types of equipment and types of jobs which need to be trained or demonstrated. Areas include dozing, grading, asphalt paving, above ground mining, underground mining and many more.
After the tour, they gave us a ride back to our Tesla, which by then was showing about 100 miles available. We gave it another hour to charge by walking to some nearby shops and having some lunch.
By now it showed 140 miles available. We needed to return to Gold Canyon, near to Phoenix, to visit my Aunt and Uncle, so 140 miles should give us a bit of a margin.
We left and tried to drive easy and follow trucks to Gold Canyon. The closwer we got to Gold Canyon, the more the available mileage shrank. Eventually it dropped into the 20 mile range and started giving us warnings as we were within about 20 miles of Gold Canyon.
There were no chargers shown on our maps between Tucson and Gold Canyon, but there was one within a mile of our destination.
We kept driving, and the available mileage kept dropping. After it got below 10 available miles, the warnings got more stern and started saying things like permanent vehicle and battery damage may result if we didn’t stop immediately.
We had no choice but to continue, as there were no chargers between us and our destination.
We finally made it to Gold Canyon and our destination with three miles available. The car was not happy, but did continue driving.
Then we found out the charger listed in Gold Canyon was private and not available to us. The next nearest charger was in Apache Junction, about twenty miles away.
We had no choice. We gritted our teeth and drove. The car made it, but under extreme protest. We left it to charge for sixteen hours on a fast charge while we visited my Aunt and Uncle.
When we returned, after sixteen hours of charging, it had about 50% charge, but plenty of miles to get us to the Phoenix airport.
We returned it and flew home. We think we can cross off operating a Tesla from our bucket list now!
Pete
