Family completes first cross-country Tesla Model S drive using free energy

Range anxiety has been a hot topic when it comes to electric vehicles. Tesla has fought hard to convince skeptics that EVs remain a viable option for everyone, not just for those that never leave the confines of their hometown. One key ingredient in achieving this is Tesla's "Supercharger" network — a matrix of free, solar-powered charging docks that provide range for about three hours of highway driving in just 20 minutes. And with 71 Superchargers now in place, the question has been when a Model S owner could drive from coast to coast using only free Tesla energy.

That historic voyage wasn't completed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk or a group of his employees. The feat was achieved by Model S owner John Glenney and his daughter Jill on Sunday, making the coast-to-coast trip in less than a week.

Glenney, 62, has been a Tesla owner for three years, originally buying a Tesla Roadster and driving it from Washington D.C. to San Francisco in October 2011, charging the car via any outlet he could find while waiting hours between charges. As an owner of three Model Ss, Glenney thought it would be fun to attempt the trip, retracing the journey Musk and his brother took back in college, with his daughter Jill, 26, by his side.

For Glenney, the voyage began in Kentucky, where he drove to Jill's home in Hoboken, N.J. to pick her up and establish the east coast starting line. From there, the drive required traveling through South Dakota, rather than the more direct route through Nebraska, due to the current location of Tesla's chargers.

Perhaps the biggest issue faced by the father-daughter duo, though, was the incredibly frigid weather, playing havoc on the Model S's 85 kWh battery, spending days of their drive below zero degrees. The roughly 270 mile range of the Tesla was depleted, in some case, to around 150 miles. This meant arriving at charging stations with as low as 11 miles of juice left.

One Supercharger was blocked with snow, leaving it completely unusable. After a panicked phone call to Tesla, the man on the phone told the pair to get some sleep and he'd see what he could do. By the time they woke up, the pump was cleared and ready to charge.