Blog

Buying an electric vehicle has many advantages – like saving money on gas and being environmentally friendly. But do they stack up when it comes to traveling from city to city?

One TikToker is telling his viewers to beware of buying a Tesla if they plan to take long trips with it. However, many in her audience disagree.

Musician, TikTok user, and new Tesla owner Cyny Carter, aka Cynybaby (@cyny.cyn), shared his take on his car’s long-distance capabilities in a June 7 video. The TikTok post now has over 376,000 views and growing.

In the video, which Carter titled “Things I wish I knew before I bought my Tesla pt. 2,” she states that she thought, “I’ve got 300 miles on a charge. I’ll charge a little; I will be taking a trip to Arizona.

However, Carter says things didn’t turn out exactly as she planned. “If you want to go further than 200 miles… [a Tesla is] not the car,” she claims. She states that stopping to charge the car along the way “will add hours to your travel time.”

She says her trip to Arizona “was supposed to take two, about three hours” but “took seven hours” because of the charging time.

Some of Carter’s viewers agreed, like Saint Lou (@saint.lou) who commented, “If Tesla says you have 300 miles, you really have about 220-180.”

“Agreed. Adds so many hours to travel,” another viewer added.

However, many viewers chimed in to disagree with Carter’s claims.

FFFjey (@fffjey) wrote: “It’s no different to go on a long trip in an EV. Even in a gas car, you have to stop to get gas after about 3 hours. During this break you will use the restroom and buy a snack.

One viewer wrote: “Just got mine in Vegas. I stopped at some cool roadside stuff while charging. It all depends on how you use that time.

Another stated, “We made 10 trips from Denver to Las Vegas and back in a rental Tesla. added some time but not 7 hours. we also climbed some pretty big mountains.”

The Daily Dot reached out to Tesla via email for a statement.

@cyny.cyn Boy was I hot and tired 😩 never again! #teslay #tesla #teslareview #modelyreview #teslalongdistance ♬ Tell Me Again Freestyle – Cyny

Carter’s viewers aren’t the only ones who take issue with her observations. In a 2022 article on the electric vehicle community and news site Electrek, writer Jameson Doe claimed to have taken a “2,200-mile electric road trip with no preparation” and “only ‘spent’ about 25 minutes waiting for the car to charge in total throughout the journey.”

Dow offers the caveat that the “25-minute number” indicates “the amount of time spent waiting to charge and doing nothing else productive. If we were getting food, it was “free” time to refuel since we have to eat anyway. In other words, the time spent charging that would otherwise be spent driving if we weren’t charging.”

Doe added that he and his companions had “selected hotels with chargers (via a PlugShare ticker),” allowing them to charge overnight.

A similar post on CleanTechnica notes that the author “relies on Tesla Navigation to map our route through Tesla Superchargers” and will arrive “at any charger with anywhere between 5% and 20% charge remaining, charge to 80% or 90 % and move again.”

In an August 2023 Business Insider article, a Tesla Model Y owner said it’s essential to be comfortable with the car’s learning curve.

“After the first trip out, when I was very careful and charged to a higher percentage than necessary at each stop, I learned to trust what my Tesla was telling me about the state of charge, my expected range and that there were chargers the way” , he told Insider.

The Daily Dot reached out to Carter via a TikTok comment and Instagram direct message for further comment.

The internet is chaotic, but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the web straight to your inbox.