2016 Tesla Model X Review

DAN EDMUNDS: Tesla changed the game for electric vehicles. But it's not just the 230 something mile range they came out with initially. It's also the supercharger network. So you can go places in the CV, something that you can't do with other competitors. The Model X comes out, and it's got a tow hitch and a tow rating. It can tow 5,000 pounds with 20 inch wheels and 3,500 pounds with the 22 inch wheels that we have. What we've got here today is a happier camper HC1 fiberglass trailer. It weighs about 1,500 pounds, a little more than that with the stuff we've got in it, and we're going to tow it using our Model X on the supercharger network. Let's go camping. [MUSIC PLAYING] One of the unique features of the Tesla is the tow mode. Now you've heard of other cars having tow modes, but that's usually something that changes the shift points in the transmission. What tow mode does here is there's a little blue indicator light here, and it's blue, because when I plugged in the trailer, it recognized that I plug-in the trailer, so it's automatically checking all your trailer lights to make sure they're all working and that it's all plugged in right. We're towing a happier camper HC1, which is a small single axle trailer. They've styled it after some stuff that was sold in the 60s, but they've really funkifide it nicely. The thing I like about it, though, is something I didn't really notice when I first looked at it is it's got Windows front and rear that line up with my mirror, so I can see cars right behind me. I can see my bike. And the other thing is you may have noticed it has these fenders on the side that give it a little flair. There's two reasons for that. One is the fenders make it a little wider where somebody's sleeping, so you got wider sleeping area. But also the fact that they're cut low like that means that I can see out my mirrors here, because the trailer body where I need to see past it isn't as wide as it is lower down. [MUSIC PLAYING] We made it to Mojave, our first stop on our trip, and we have 65 miles of range left, which is more than I thought we'd have at this point. The trip up here was easy. I mean, there's a lot of hills. We gained about 2,500 feet in altitude. I just set the cruise at 55 miles an hour. I wasn't really sure what the range implications of towing this trailer were going to be, so I was taking it easy. But the thing about towing with an electric vehicle is there's no shifting. There's no real noise that's produced if it's working harder. Going downhill, going uphill, going flat ground, it all feels the same. There's no difference. [MUSIC PLAYING] We just left Mojave supercharger, the first one of the trip. We stayed there to get it absolutely full, because this run to Lone Pine is 118 miles. Which doesn't sound like it should be a problem, because this thing has a range of 230, 240, but we're towing a trailer. That about cuts the range in half. We may decide to peel off at Inyokern, which is an intermediate supercharger. It adds about 30 minutes to our trip to pull off, a splash of electricity, if you can call it that, and go again, But we may want to do it. But I'm looking at a graph that started when we left Mojave, and the gray line was it's prediction of my consumption when we left. And now that I'm on the road and it's kind of seeing how fast I'm going and the slope and headwind or whatever, it's made this new calculation. And it shows that I'll make it, but at 20% battery. And it's turned yellow, because it thinks 20% battery is a little iffy, and I'm not in disagreement with that. But if I switch to this consumption map instead, you can see that it's early calculation was probably based on this peak, which was me getting out of the parking lot and accelerating up to 55 and, kind of, climbing a hill out of town. And now that we're cruising, you can see it's actually really good. So I think if this keeps up, I should see these lines come back to where they were. And I'm less-- it actually just went up to 21 right there and went from yellow to green, so maybe we're good. But again, that's the thing with this car. It's a little bit of a math problem. You have to be comfortable looking at graphs and thinking about this stuff and, kind of, forecasting. I did a lot of that on other cross-country trips, and it looks like this trailer is forcing me to do it now. [MUSIC PLAYING] So we stopped in Inyokern, which wasn't the plan. We were supposed to go to Lone Pine just 118 miles up from Mojave. The battery that looked like it was going to be just fine with 22, 23% charge started to drop. And when it got to about 16, 15% and it was in the yellow, I thought, well, there's a chance if it keeps dropping like this that we won't make it. Decided to peel off, stop here quick like in Inyokern, probably only need 20, 25 minutes of charge, and then we're off. So the sun is pretty much directly overhead. It's noon, and this windshield/sunroof, I can feel more radiant heat. And depending on which way I turn, the sun's coming straight down. So we're going to deploy-- you may be thinking there must be some kind of cover or a sunshade, and the answer is yes there is and this-- this is it. So I'm going to pull this thing out, and there it is. Whoa, oh, turn it over. There we go, and that's what you get. So we're here in Lone Pine. We made it. It was really no problem at all, because we had that top up charge in Inyokern. Here it's not totally perfect, because the supercharger here next to the film museum, it's in a really tight parking lot. Technically, it's a nose in spot, and I wouldn't have to disconnect. But if I did that, none of those cars could get out. I've got to drop the trailer here, pull the car in, charge, come back, hook up again, and then it's off to the campsite. So we just left Lone Pine where we had some nice barbecue, and now we're headed into the place called the Alabama Hills where a lot of Western movies were filmed back in the day. Now we didn't have any problems, but it's not a quick way to travel, because the supercharger time is time that you wouldn't have to spend in a gasoline car. We always knew that with a Tesla. But when you're towing with a trailer, the charge times are just that much longer because you're using so much more electricity. It took us by my quick reckoning over 6 and 1/2 hours to go 200 and 12 miles, including the charges in there. Tomorrow's leg is probably the most difficult one of the trip. We're going to leave here and go to Mammoth. It's 95 miles, which isn't so bad. But it's almost 4,000 feet in elevation, so that's a lot of climbing. So we're just going to have to take it easy and not freak out, and we should be fine. [MUSIC PLAYING]