Telemetry · 12 days, 100 drives
Where it actually goes.
Not a route planner and not a map of everywhere a Model Y could go. This is 1,469.5 real miles across 100 drives, aggregated to city level on purpose.
Operating area
Eight towns, twelve corridors. Line weight is trip count, so the thick line is the one that pays for itself. Orange rings mark places the car has actually charged.
measured from 100 drives. Corridors are city to city only. Per drive coordinates and departure times are deliberately held back: the clusters resolve to a home and a regular destination, and CLAUDE.md forbids publishing either.
Miles per day
08/31
measured. The peak is a 156.2 mile day running down to Unionville and back.
What it costs to park
08/25
measured. Range lost while parked, 109 miles over 12 days. Nobody publishes this number. It is roughly 9 miles a day of standing still.
Miles driven by the car
97.4%
1430.1 of 1468.8 miles, across 61 of 77 trips. On the most recent charge cycle it was 97%.
Every corridor
| Corridor | Trips | Miles | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brentwood to Franklin | 16 | 38.7 | 2.4 |
| Brentwood to Lebanon | 7 | 291.6 | 41.7 |
| Franklin to Lebanon | 5 | 210.7 | 42.1 |
| Lebanon to Nashville | 4 | 104.4 | 26.1 |
| Brentwood to Nashville | 3 | 48.7 | 16.2 |
| Brentwood to Unionville | 1 | 31.7 | 31.7 |
| Murfreesboro to Unionville | 1 | 27.4 | 27.4 |
| Lebanon to Smyrna | 1 | 33.1 | 33.1 |
| Eagleville to Lebanon | 1 | 45.9 | 45.9 |
| Eagleville to Unionville | 1 | 7.8 | 7.8 |
| Franklin to Unionville | 1 | 30.7 | 30.7 |
| Franklin to Nashville | 1 | 23.0 | 23.0 |
measured. Short hops inside one town are counted separately and left off this table: 9 in Lebanon, 6 in Brentwood.
Case study: the daily commute
This car's current owner drives a fixed weekday commute from the Brentwood, TN area to Lebanon, TN: about 41 miles each way, 82 miles round trip. Departure runs 6:55–7:00am, arrival 7:34–7:40am, so the door-to-door drive is 35–40 minutes each way. Return trips leave at 5pm Monday and Tuesday, 4pm Wednesday through Friday. Home and work addresses aren't published here; the mileage and timing are what matter for the numbers below.
One constraint shapes every charging number below: this owner has no home charger. They live in a townhouse with open, unassigned parking, not a driveway or garage, so there's no dedicated spot to install one. Every charging figure in this case study reflects real public charging, workplace Level 2 and Supercharging. There's no home-charging fallback for this car.
Time
82 miles a day, 5 days a week, works out to 410 miles and roughly 6.25 hours behind the wheel every week for the commute alone, before any errands or weekend driving. Nothing about an EV changes the drive time itself: traffic is traffic. What changes is how much of that time is spent actively driving versus supervising. See "The true experience" below.
Cost: what this commute actually takes in charging
410 miles a week at this car's real-world efficiency (300–360 Wh/mile, established in What this car costs to run) works out to roughly 125–150 kWh a week for the commute alone. With no home charger available, what that costs depends on how much lands on workplace Level 2 versus Supercharging:
| Charging pattern | Per week | Per month | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mixed: 2 days/wk Level 2 at work, rest Supercharging | ~$14–49 | ~$60–214 | Work covers 160–240 mi/wk free; remainder at Supercharging rate |
| All Supercharging (no workplace charging that week) | ~$33–82 | ~$142–356 | This car's own 8–20¢/mile Supercharging range × 410 mi |
| All home charging (off-peak) | ~$10–18 | ~$43–78 | Reference only, not available to this owner: MTE's real NITEFLEX off-peak rate × 410 mi |
That home-charging row is what this commute would cost with a driveway and a Level 2 charger installed, useful context for a buyer who has one, not a description of this car's real bills. This car's own first Supercharging session (see What this car costs to run) came in at $0.56/kWh, toward the high end of the Supercharging range above, so treat that row as realistic rather than optimistic.
This owner's real charging picture: no home charger, Cool Springs as the backstop
This is this car's actual situation, not a hypothetical for a different kind of buyer. Cool Springs, TN, has a dense cluster of public charging nearby, Superchargers and third-party stations around the retail corridor, which is what makes the no-home-charger reality workable rather than a dealbreaker. The optimization questions are cost and time, not access:
- Charge to 80%, not 100%, on a normal week. Charging speed drops sharply past 80% on any lithium-ion pack, so the last 20% takes disproportionately long for not much extra range. Save 100% charges for actual road trips.
- Stack charging on top of something else already happening. Cool Springs' Superchargers sit at retail centers, so a 20–30 minute charge during a grocery run or errand costs zero extra time out of the day.
- Navigate to the Supercharger through the car's own trip planner rather than driving there directly. Routing through the car's navigation preconditions the battery for faster charging on arrival, especially in cold weather.
- Without workplace Level 2 that week, budget for the all-Supercharging end of the table above: roughly $142–356 a month for this specific commute, before any other driving.
The real question without a home charger isn't whether this works, it's how often the car actually needs to plug in. Running this commute's own numbers (24% battery = 87 miles one morning, the same real data point used below) forward across a work week, starting from an 80% charge and losing about 22.6% a day to the round trip:
| Day | Zero mid-week charging | One mid-week top-up (Tue night) |
|---|---|---|
| Mon | 80% → 57% | 80% → 57% |
| Tue | 57% → 35% | 57% → 35%, recharges to 80% that night |
| Wed | 35% → 12% | 80% → 57% |
| Thu | 12% → runs out | 57% → 35% |
| Fri | already out of range | 35% → 12% |
Zero mid-week charging runs this car out before Thursday's drive home. One mid-week stop, Tuesday night is a natural choice given Cool Springs' retail-corridor Superchargers, keeps the whole week above a reasonable margin, ending Friday around 12%. That's the real cadence without a home charger: roughly two charging sessions a week, not a nightly ritual. A different rhythm than a driveway owner's, but a manageable one.
Adapters worth buying
- CCS1-to-NACS adapter (~$200 from Tesla's own shop, or a ~$230 installed bundle on some Model 3/Y configurations): opens up non-Tesla DC fast chargers (Electrify America, EVgo, and similar), which matters more in a charging-dense area with multiple networks nearby than it does for someone who only ever uses Superchargers.
- J1772 adapter, for non-Tesla Level 2 stations: what ships in the frunk or glovebox has changed across model years, so check there first before buying a duplicate. If it's missing, Tesla's own shop sells one.
Battery care for a commuter without a home charger
- Charging to 80% in fewer, larger public sessions is still a healthy pattern, per Tesla's own guidance, a different rhythm than a driveway owner's nightly top-up, but not a worse one. Roughly two sessions a week, the cadence worked out above, keeps this pack comfortably inside the range Tesla recommends for daily use.
- Charging to 100% occasionally, before a longer trip, is fine. Living at 100% or routinely running the pack down near empty is what actually stresses it over years, not the size of any single charging session.
- Relying on DC fast charging instead of slow overnight charging is a real tradeoff, not a free one: Supercharging twice a week is somewhat harder on a pack over many years than a nightly trickle would be, though Tesla's thermal management (see winter range, below) mitigates most of it. It's a reasonable cost of not having a home charger, not something to worry over on a car this new.
- A concrete illustration from this car: at 24% and 87 miles of rated range one morning, with a 41-mile drive to work ahead, that leaves about 46 miles of buffer on arrival, but only about 5 miles of buffer if driving straight home again without charging at all that day. That's the real margin this owner manages without a driveway to fall back on.
Supercharging membership: what's actually available
There's no discounted Supercharging plan available to Tesla owners. Tesla's $12.99/month membership exists specifically for non-Tesla EVs to access the Supercharger network at a reduced per-kWh rate; Tesla vehicles already charge at the standard member-equivalent rate by default, so there's nothing extra to subscribe to. The honest weekly budget for this commute, without a home charger to fall back on, lands around $14–49 in a week when workplace Level 2 comes through, or $33–82 in a week when it doesn't.
The true experience: what FSD actually changes on this drive
Per this car's own Self-Driving Stats (see FSD, software & connectivity), FSD is engaged for 97.4% of recent miles driven. Applied to this specific commute's roughly 6.25 hours a week behind the wheel, that's on the order of 5 hours a week where the car is handling the steering, braking, and lane-and-turn decisions on a route it drives every day, while the driver supervises rather than actively operates. "Supervised" is the operative word: this isn't an unsupervised or hands-off system, and attention is still required throughout. What it changes is the kind of effort, active moment-to-moment driving versus monitoring, on a route repetitive enough that the difference is felt daily rather than occasionally.
FSD value: short-term versus long-term
Short-term, the value shows up as reduced fatigue on a repetitive, unavoidable drive: less continuous steering and pedal input on the same predictable roads, five days a week. Long-term, the value compounds two ways. FSD ships as a subscription tied to this car's current account rather than the VIN (see FSD, software & connectivity), so its cost is a monthly decision, not a sunk one, and it can be dropped or restarted as priorities change. And because the underlying hardware is confirmed HW4 (see This car, verified), this specific car is positioned to receive whatever capability improvements Tesla ships to that hardware generation going forward, on a commute where more capability has a daily, not occasional, payoff.
Vehicle comparison: gas, hybrid, and this Model Y
This car's owner briefly owned a Lexus ES300h (hybrid), five days, before switching to this Model Y. For a same-model, gas-only reference point, the Lexus ES350 is the ES300h's own non-hybrid sibling trim, same platform, different powertrain, which makes it a cleaner comparison than picking an unrelated gas vehicle.
| Vehicle | Fuel | EPA combined | Weekly fuel cost, this commute |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lexus ES350 (gas) | Gasoline | 25 mpg | ~$106–141/wk* |
| Lexus ES300h (hybrid) | Gasoline | 44 mpg | $60–80/wk (owner-reported) |
| This Model Y (electric) | Electricity | 300–360 Wh/mi, real-world | ~$14–49/wk, no home charger: workplace L2 + Supercharging |
*Estimated by scaling the ES300h's own reported gas cost by the mpg gap between the two Lexus trims: 44 mpg vs. 25 mpg means the ES350 burns roughly 1.76x more fuel for the same driving. Not an independently reported figure.
Case study: a weekend road trip
The commute above is home-charged daily driving, where this car's cost advantage is clear and consistent. A genuine road trip changes that math. Take a common trip from this area: Nashville to Gulf Shores, AL, a well-worn weekend and vacation drive, roughly 460 miles one way from the Brentwood area, most of it on I-65 South, then I-10 East, then local parkways into Gulf Shores and Orange Beach. A real source puts the Nashville-anchored version of this drive at about 470 miles and a little over 7 hours of driving; starting from Brentwood, a few miles closer to the interstate, trims that slightly.
Charging stops: the real math
This car's comfortable real-world range between fast-charging stops, running the same 20–80% pattern recommended for the commute (see above), lands somewhere around 250–270 miles at highway speed. A 460-mile leg needs roughly two Supercharging stops each way, about 25–35 minutes apiece for a 20–80% top-up on this platform. The route has real coverage the whole way: Superchargers exist along I-65 in Athens and Huntsville near the state line, Birmingham further south, and a Supercharger sits at The Wharf in Orange Beach, right at the destination. The car's own trip planner would pick the actual two stops from stations like these rather than this being a fixed, pre-mapped route.
Time: this trip against a comparable gas car
Door to door, that's roughly 7–7.5 hours of driving plus 50–70 minutes of charging, call it 8–8.5 hours total. A comparable gas car covers the same distance in the same 7–7.5 hours of driving plus one short fuel stop, 10–15 minutes. For a trip this length, the honest time cost of going electric is somewhere around 45 minutes to an hour, not nothing, but not the multi-hour ordeal it's sometimes made out to be either.
Cost: where the math actually flips
920 miles round trip at this car's real-world 300–360 Wh/mile works out to roughly 276–331 kWh. At this car's own real Supercharging rate of $0.56/kWh, that's roughly $155–185 for the whole round trip. Run the same 920 miles through the ES300h at 44 mpg and Tennessee's $3.64/gallon average, and gas comes to about $76. Through the gas-only ES350 at 25 mpg, about $134. For a Supercharging-heavy long trip specifically, this car can cost more to run than either gas comparator, not less. That's the flip side of the home-charging advantage documented in What this car costs to run: the savings live at home, on the commute, at the lower, off-peak rate. On the road, paying full Supercharging price for every mile, the advantage isn't guaranteed, and here it disappears entirely.
Case study: winter range
Everything above assumes mild-weather driving. Cold weather is real and worth accounting for honestly, using published data rather than guessing, since this car doesn't have a full winter of its own logged range data yet.
Recurrent's analysis of 30,000-plus real vehicles, using fleet telematics rather than a lab test, found EVs retain about 78% of maximum range at 32°F and roughly 70% at 20°F. Tesla specifically is called out as one of the stronger performers in that data set, largely because of the Octovalve thermal system Tesla introduced in the Model Y in 2021, which this 2024 car has. That means these percentages are closer to a conservative floor for this specific car than a precise prediction: it likely does somewhat better than the fleet-wide average, not worse.
| Condition | Range retained | Applied to this car's 310-mi EPA rating |
|---|---|---|
| Mild weather (baseline) | 100% | 310 mi |
| ~32°F | ~78% | ~242 mi |
| ~20°F | ~70% | ~217 mi |
Against the 82-mile round-trip commute above, even the 20°F figure leaves a wide margin; cold weather doesn't meaningfully threaten a commute this short. It matters more on the road trip case study above: at 217–242 miles of cold-weather range instead of the 250–270-mile mild-weather estimate used there, the same 460-mile leg would realistically need three to four Supercharging stops each way instead of two, adding real time to an already-longer winter drive.