By Roy L Hales

A Tesla Model S has driven more than half way across North America. Tina Thomas and Peter Soukup left Portland, Oregon, on December 25 and their last tweet, posted twenty hours ago, states “And into Alabama as the sun sets :).” They are expected to reach New York City by January 7th or 8th.

They picked up a friend close to LA. Ruba Loytburd wrote, “This was my first day on Electric Road Trip S, but day 5 for Tina and Peter. After leaving Erin and Dave’s (thanks again, guys!) we headed out to Tesla’s supercharger at Hawthorn CA for a quick charging “top off.” A supercharger charges up the battery to full in about an hour as an opposed to about 8 hours on regular 50amp stove outlet. So I started out the trip pretty spoiled.”

They are writing an online blog, but have not recorded anything since New Mexico. The tweets, posted in the right sidebar, are more recent.

This is already a record making trip, surpassing last September’s Los Angeles to Vegas in a single charge. (There is, however, a father and son team who drove their Model S 423.5 miles on a charge.)   

Image credit: 2012 Tesla Model S digital screens. The central bottom touchscreen shows a google map view with live traffic updates, and the top screen shows tesla.com site – Steve Jurvetson, courtesy Wikipedia Commons