My 4000+ miles Tesla road trip to visit the national parks in Texas & New Mexico
You have a Tesla and want to do an epic road trip to visit the national parks in Texas and New Mexico. You looked at the supercharger network and it seems like it is not doable :(. Is there a way to do it? The short answer is Yes and I would not wanna do this epic trip with another car. I will explain how I completed my 4081 miles road trip with no issue whatsoever. This blog post only includes the information about how and where to charge your car in the absence of known charge destinations. If you are also interested in learning what to do in each of these park, you can read it here.
Before we get started, few things to keep in mind and do:
- First thing first, buy a NEMA 14–5O adapter. You can get it from Tesla, link here. Do not forget to bring your Mobile Connector that came with the car.
- There are multiple things that impact the range and strong winds are one of them. I visited these parks during the “High Wind” warning time ( late December and early January) so If I could do it, you can do it. Get excited, we are starting.
Until Deming, New Mexico, you really do not need me. Just follow your heart AKA your car :). But things get tricky from Deming.
Deming → White Sands National Park → El Paso (Supercharger)
Finding a charge difficulty level — Medium
The whole trip is 201 miles plus the sight seeing you will do in the White Sands NP. Here is what you need to do:
- Make sure you charge all the way when in Deming and in any supercharger after this point.
- Drive below 65 miles an hour. This definitely changes based on the total range your car has. You may need to go slower to preserve the battery.
- If for some reason, you think your battery will not take you to El Paso, there are charge points in Las Cruces. (I did not have to use them)
El Paso → Guadalupe NP → Carlsbad Cavern NP → Van Horn (Supercharger)
Finding a charge difficulty level — Hard
Not counting any of the sightseeings you will do in these parks, the total mileage is 295 miles. When I hit Pine Springs Campground in Guadalupe NP, I had 171 miles left out of 330 fully charged battery. After two days of camping and doing some epic hikes, I lost more range by simply having the car exist. So here what you need to do:
- There is a RV campground right before you enter the Carlsbad Cavern National Park. It is called White City RV Park and they offer car charging for $10 and if you stay there with your car, it is $22.5 as you would not need a full hook up.
- You will need a NEMA 14–50 adapter here and your Mobile Connector that came with the car.
- Drive below 65 miles an hour and close your sentry mode when camping.
Van Horn → Big Bend National Park → Marfa → Van Horn (Supercharger)
Finding a charge difficulty level — Harder
Without counting the sightseeings you will do in Big Bend NP which can be a lot based on what you want to do, you need 344 miles. Here, you actually start getting warnings from the car saying “you are too far from a known charging location” as you drive. But, do not worry RV Parks are here to save the day. Big Bend is an amazing place, you can soak in the hot springs by the river, do a quick hike in Santa Elena Canyon and many other things. So you will need a full charge.
- There is an RV campground called BJ’s RV Park in Terlingua where you can charge your car with a NEMA 14–50 adaptor. The cost is around $50 a night. They have hot showers for free and a closed kitchen area. There are other RV parks in Terlingua and one in Big Bend NP. You can check them all out and make reservation based on your needs.
- On the day you are leaving make sure your battery is full. For me, I spent some more time in the park then hit the road. On the way, it was again so windy that I had to stop at Marfa to charge at a destination charger.
- You may look at the map and see if you can directly go from BJ’s RV Park to El Paso. I would recommend you not to risk this at all. There are multiple factors that affect the battery range and some are out of your control like high winds. Have peace of mind and hit Van Horn and if you experience high wind like I did, you can always stop at Marfa to use the destination charger and maybe visit the famous Prada Marfa while you are close :)
Once I hit back to Deming, I continued to drive to San Diego instead of directly driving back to Mountain View and had no issues with the chargers along the way.
All in all, Tesla is the ultimate road trip car. Hopefully, things will be even better when more superchargers and EV charging points are available nationwide.
Thank you Tesla Motors for this amazing car that makes 4000+ mile road trip a delight.
Thank you for reading and if you have any tips for Tesla road trips, I am all ears, please share in the comments sections.
Just incase if you want to recreate the map, below is the link. In general, Google maps let you add up to 10 destinations but using only the url you can increase the number of destinations you can add to Google Maps. Below I have 13.
