This week, I took my first real road trip in my Gravity -- and damn, this car is a roadtripping beast!
I drive between San Francisco and Palm Springs several times a year, and this was my first time making the trek since taking delivery of my Gravity Dream Edition last month.
On this inaugural trip, I backed out of my garage at my home in San Francisco at a 100 percent SoC, and arrived at my usual first stop (Kettleman City) for food and a restroom break, and still had an SoC in the high 20’s when I hit the Kettleman City offramp. In my Model X Plaid, I’d usually have to stop at a Supercharger in Firebaugh for about 5-10 minutes to top up if I had any hope of arriving in Kettleman City at my preferred arrival SoC of 10%. Super impressed with the efficiency of Gravity, especially considering I have a lead foot, this is a less-efficient Dream Edition and is running on the 22/23 summer tires.
Kettleman City also afforded me the ability to try an Electrify America EV Fast Charging station for my first time ever. I was expecting there to be problems given how much I’ve read about the miserable reliability of EA stations, so imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to plug in (using my supplied Lucid CCS to NACS adapter), watch the handshake happen (in mere seconds!) and the charging session started without me ever interacting with the touchscreen on the charger! Plug-N-Charge worked perfectly! The best I was able to pull at this 350kW station was 311kW, but that’s a lot higher than anything I’d ever experienced in my Model X. I was giddy
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Several people walked by to check out the car, and one nice couple who’d pulled up in a Volkswagen ID.4 gestured for me to lower my window. They said they’d heard production had started on the Gravity and were excited to see their first one in the wild. The husband was hilarious. He said “…I’m not going to ask you whether you love it or not, because I can see it written all over your face! Congratulations — enjoy it!” Then they took off.
I didn’t charge quite to 80% during the EA session because I knew I’d want to stop to try a Tesla Supercharger a little closer to my destination.
I ultimately stopped at Ontario Mills (for the uninitiated, it’s a massive mall in California’s inland empire — SE of Los Angeles). I chose this location because it was just over three hours’ drive, which I’ve learned is the limit of my bladder on these long trips haha!, and because they had new 325kW chargers. I arrived at such a ridiculously high SoC for a charging stop that all I was able to pull at a sustained rate was ~220kW, but it held that rate for a long time.
One interesting contrast between my Electrify America experience vs Tesla Supercharger experience — the people. At EA, people allowed themselves to be curious; culminating with that friendly couple in the ID.4. However, at the supercharger, I chuckled to myself at how the Tesla folks were actively (and some were aggressively) NOT casting even a passing glance at the Gravity. It was as if I'd infiltrated a Borg cube and for a time was out of phase with them and, therefore, invisible as they went about their robotic ways hahaha! I was actually relieved since I didn’t want to have to spend time answering more questions; especially from Tesla acolytes who may have been present. 20 stalls — all full (including my Gravity) and the people there couldn’t have cared less. Bliss.
I stopped charging at about a 60% SoC and drove the final hour and fifteen minutes to my house in Palm Springs, and DAMN, doesn’t the Gravity look GREAT in the driveway?!
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I’ve driven Interstate 5 between Northern and Southern California so many times that I can literally anticipate how each different bit of highway is going to feel; right down to the texture of the road surface on certain stretches, and can say this car manages those hundreds of miles of I-5 BETTER than any car I’ve owned. That includes a couple of very luxurious BMW 7 series variants (the last of which I'd dubbed
‘The Palm Springs Express’). My Gravity (Velocitron) has snatched the ‘Palm Springs Express’ crown from the previous wearer — the 2016 7-series.
Be it charging performance, efficiency, interior comfort or ride quality — I really can’t get over what a marvel of engineering this thing is. Sooo damned GOOD!
I am so looking forward to getting our Gravity ( in October PLEASE!)
