How far can a Tesla drive on one charge?

Two owners of the vehicles try to find out and set a world record

Tesla’s most fanatical super fans in Colorado — and arguably the nation — took off Friday afternoon on a trip that they believe will end with a new world record.

Erik Strait And Sean Mitchell, two members of the local Denver Tesla Club, did the math and figured they could drive a Model 3 for 600 miles on a single charge. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave the electric vehicle a 310mile range.

“We’ve calculated it out. And based on the Model 3 having a 75 kilowatt battery, that leads to 107 watts per mile. We’ll easily hit 600 miles,” said Strait, a Morrison resident who earned a free Tesla after referring 55 new owners to the automaker. “And when you come to a complete stop, you can use the car’s regeneration feature and the car’s motors put energy back into the battery, which hopefully will offset (energy used) when we start up again. We’ll start up really slow.”

Straight documented the whole trip, as per the guidance from the Guinness World Records.

According to Guinness, a modified electric BMW did hit 1,000 miles on a single charge, but the Denver Tesla is a regular production vehicle and no record has yet been set, Straight said.

Boulderbased Wunder Capital, which funds solar energy projects, is sponsoring the effort with “several thousand dollars” to cover expenses and the record submission, said Ilyas Frenkel, a Wunder spokesman.

To hit the 600mile mark, this won’t be a normal road trip. The duo started at the Denver Supercharger station near the airport and will drive a loop on nearby roads at 25 to 35 miles per hour.

It will take more than 28 hours, but slower speeds conserve battery power. As of 6:15 p.m. Saturday, the Tesla had traveled 495 miles and was still going.

“Similar things have been tried before, but there’s always been downhill sections. And that’s not what we want to do,” he said. “This is more like a typical route. We start and end at the same elevation. Any ups we do, we do the same downs.”

Mitchell recently completed a trip between Colorado and Kansas, traveling 516 miles on a single charge before getting to 10 percent battery remaining. The prep for this trip was to charge the car to 100 percent, tint the windows and never turn on the AC, even as Saturday’s temps are expected to hit 92 degrees.

Instead, the two men (“Extra weight could affect the test but luckily, we’re both skinny,” Strait said) will have battery packs to power USB fans and keep equipment charged.

They planned to end their trip at the same supercharger on Saturday evening.

“We just want to show what can be done and that a lot of things people say electric cars can’t do, they can,” he said.