Earlier this month Ryan Levenson and Ryan Kalb of The Kilowatts drove their 2018 Performance Model 3 from California to New York in an attempt to break the all-time EV Cannonball record.
While they fell 1 hour 17 minutes short of the mark set by Matthew Davis and Kyle Conner of Out of Spec Motoring set last year in a Long Range RWD Model 3, they did set a new record for an electric AWD vehicle.
Since Leveson drove from his home state of California to New York, he still had to get his car back. So he got in touch with Jordan Hart, a previous EV Cannonball record holder, who agreed to join Levenson on the drive back.
The pair left from the traditional Cannonball starting point, the Red Ball Garage, and quickly made their way across the country.
Unfortunately they were once again unable to break the all-time EV record, but they did break the AWD EV record Levenson had set weeks before, arriving at the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach in a time of 46 hours 21 minutes, beating the previous time by 12 minutes.
According to Levenson, the pair was mostly slowed down by the extreme heat encountered in several states, like Arizona where temperatures reach 118°F (48°C).
With the high heat, Tesla limits Supercharger charging speed, which is not what you want when you’re trying to get back on the road as quickly as possible.
Check out some images of their trip below, shared exclusively with Drive Tesla, showing their route and areas where they achieved good speeds (green), and areas where they stopped (red) or had to slow down (orange).
Here are a couple of videos for you to enjoy. In the first, Levenson talks about his experiences on both runs, and what kind of issues they encountered (like travelling 40 miles on 1% of charge).
Then if you also want to see what driving across the US looks like in just over 2 minutes, here’s a time-lapse video of their record-setting run.
