People from Boston are special. If you don't believe it, just ask us. Or better yet, take a look at the story, This Tesla (barely) climbed Mt. Washington, to see just how special we are:
... And while that is certainly an impressive show of how the Supercharger network supports the car during long one way trips, here in New England, we make day trips. Day trips outside of the current Supercharger network. Day trips for bumper sticker badges of honor. So we put the Tesla P85D to the ultimate New England day-trip road test, for any car: climbing Mt. Washington.
Fair enough, sounds like fun. As you know, we have a soft spot in our hearts for 'ol Mount Washington, (not to mention the 40th anniversary of the ALT Energy Summit is coming up on the 25th of July!), so we're in for a nice road trip. But what follows is more instances of the term "range anxiety" being used gratuitously in one story than anything else we've ever read on the interwebs. Really, guys?
...complete with an anxiety meter...Uh oh. Not quite enough for a round trip. +1 to range anxiety...Front desk confirms. -10 to range anxiety....maxes out at approximately 26 miles of range per hour.+3 to range anxiety...we turn around. +25 to range anxiety...won’t get us where we need to be for this to be our last stop. +100 to range anxiety. We’re off the chart, people...
You get the idea. Whine, whine, whine... Oh, but we're reading Boson.com, that's right, isn't it? Just for a little context, for a True New Englander, a story of a day-trip in a Tesla for a "badge of honor" bumper sticker would read: "Got in the cah. Drove to Mt Washington. Came home. Traffic sucked. It was wikked pissah."
Never mind that there are charging stations everywhere in the Mt Washington Valley (we know, we keep a map), never mind that they disparagingly called the Clipper Creek station at the Base Lodge of the Auto Road "...a Level 2 station that usually charges the center’s Smart Car" (hey, that's our "Clippy" you're talkin' bout) never mind that they covered around 320+ miles and climbed the Northeast's highest peak (the home of the "worst weather in the world") on a glorious day (rare in New England, especially if one has decided to embark on a "day trip") in one of the coolest cars on the road with essentially no incident other than their own self-induced "anxiety", never mind that only a short few years ago a trip like this would be unthinkable...
Ah, well. It is what it is. The Boston Globe and Boston.com have been striving desperately to be, uh, relevant, and their strategy has been to try to be younger, "edgy", and even more snarky, hipster and nonplussed by almost anything, than a lot of the denizens of Boston come off as naturally... gotta love 'em. Our buddy Greg Murphy (Content Director - Boston Globe Media) knows how to get links (he got ours, right?) and he concludes, at the end of the story: "Next time we’ll take the mini-van."
Be our guest. We'll be sure to wave when we pass.