Drive to Las Vegas in your EV

Every EV driver in Los Angeles has been asked the annoying question "What if you want to drive to Las Vegas?". Now you can answer "Oh, I take my electric car".

At least you can if you have a tzero with Li-Ion batteries. We recently drove to Las Vegas to attend the SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) Show, one of the biggest automotive exhibitions in the west. We drove the tzero, and although we stopped in Baker, CA for a strawberry milkshake at the Mad Greek, we did not charge at all until we got to Las Vegas.

As far as we know, this was the first ever drive from Los Angeles (County) to Las Vegas in an electric vehicle without stopping to charge.

Interstate 15 to Las Vegas includes two climbs, the Cajon Pass and Baker Grade, both with about 3500 feet of elevation gain. The tzero never faltered and arrived in Las Vegas, 245 miles from AC Propulsion headquarters in San Dimas, with at least 40 miles of reserve range.

The tzero’s Li-Ion battery and high energy efficiency got us to Las Vegas. Its onboard, plug-in-anywhere charger kept us going. We stayed with friends right in town, and upon arrival plugged into the outlet for their electric clothes dryer, had dinner, talked and went to bed. In the morning the tzero was fully charged. That’s the great thing about electricity, it’s already available just about anywhere.

The return trip was equally uneventful. We drove faster, 65-75 mph, since we had so much reserve range on the outbound leg, but we hit bad traffic coming out of Barstow and that shot our trip average speed. Back in San Dimas with about 10 % of charge left we could still pull 350 A on a hard accel.

And the SEMA Show? - it was worth the trip. SEMA caters to the automobile hobbyist and every type, persuasion, and cult of automotive enthusiast was represented.

Most of the people we talked to, when informed that we were in the EV business, said things like "cool", or "it’s gonna happen", or "that’s the next thing". At SEMA, they don’t really care what you do, as long as it’s a little bit weird.