Can a Tesla Model S make it from Washington D.C. to New England without riding on a flatbed truck?
The electric luxury car recently had some trouble making the long-haul trip up the Eastern Seaboard, running out of juice during a test drive conducted by the New York Times.
The subsequent review -- which affected Tesla's share price -- set off a war of words between the paper and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
What's being called into question isn't the car so much, but Tesla's network of fast-charging Supercharger stations. They're supposed to make long trips like this possible in a battery-powered car. Or, at least, in a Model S.
I asked Tesla if I could try their Northeast charger network myself on a trip from D.C. to Boston, and they agreed.
So far, so good. I just pulled into Tesla Motors Milford, Conn. Supercharger station with almost 40 miles still left on the battery.
The car's parked and plugged in, slurping Tesla's free electricity. Once I'm done eating this overpriced rest stop turkey wrap and writing this story, getting all the way to Boston will be a cinch on a full battery.
I've already gotten through what should be the most taxing part of the trip. Before reaching Milford, my last chance to fill the Tesla's roughly 270-mile battery pack had been in Newark, Del., about 200 miles back.
That mere 70 miles of buffer made me a little nervous, especially after I missed an exit and added a few miles to the trip. I followed Tesla's recommendations and kept the cruise control pegged to between 60 and 65 much of the way and kept the climate control at 72 degrees. And I minimized stops.
But I made it. And it wasn't that hard. Now, it would be even easier of Tesla would install one of their fast-charging Superchargers along the New Jersey Turnpike. (These charging stations can fill up a nearly dead flat battery in Tesla's longest-range cars in about an hour, enough time to stop for a meal.)
Tesla's working on that, spokeswoman Shanna Hendricks said, but the first priority was to install enough to make this trip, even if you had to take it easy much of the way.
I didn't have to take it easy the whole way, though. I started the trip at a Tesla showroom in downtown D.C. and the first charger was only 89 miles away. With a full battery, there was no need -- none at all -- to nurse the car's battery.
And I didn't. The Model S provides a pretty amazing mix of smooth and silent performance along with brain-squishing acceleration. And that acceleration comes from a dead stop or even when you're just going from too fast to way, way too fast. This car can pass like a monster.
The Model S has already won the Motor Trend Car of the Year Award along with enough other awards to fill its ample cargo bay and top off the "frunk" storage space under the hood, too. It's a really impressive machine.
