Outfitting EVs for the comfort of canines travelling the country

David Bennett, a proud member of the Electric Vehicle Association of Greater Washington DC (EVADC), has driven his Teslas over 180,000 miles around the U.S. with his 50-lb goldendoodles Tea and Toast by his side every mile along the way.

“I’ve made room for a dog pen by removing the front passenger seat of my Model S, and the middle bench of my Model X,” Bennett said, noting that Toast and Tea are very well behaved in the car as well as in the campgrounds and motel rooms where they’ve stayed.

“We’ve spent plenty of nights sleeping in the car, too,” he added.  “When I had the Model S, I folded down the back seat and put in a foam pad to make a bed for myself. In the Model X, I had the back seat bench removed and I have a bed in its place. It’s definitely been more comfortable in the Model X; the bed is longer and I have more headroom.”

Adventures in all directions

The ‘Bennett family’ electric vehicle (EV) trips, which have taken them to Canada and Mexico in addition to all 48 contiguous states, began in 2013 with a drive up to Maine.

“I was planning to move to Maine and I was committed to driving around the entire state to find the right place,” Bennett explained. “But there were no superchargers there at that time, and it would take me 4.5 days to charge using a 110v outlet. That was actually a good interval because it was enough time for me to pull into a new town, talk to some folks, visit some shops, and then ask myself ‘Do I want to live here?’ By the time I did all that, the car was charged.”

Bennett’s commitment to exploring all of Maine took him to the far northwestern area where many of the roads are owned by the timber industry.

“They charge tolls to drive on dirt roads, some of them designed for snowmobiles in the winter,” he explained. “The Model S handled it all very well. Believe it or not, the name of one of the towns we visited was Mexico, Maine. I’m not sure anyone there had ever seen an EV before. I had driven there from the Canadian border, so I like to say that I drove from Canada to Mexico without stopping!”

Ultimately, David dropped his plans to live in Maine. “In November, it got down to nine degrees. My car was plugged in at a motel, and I turned on the heater just to warm up the car, and even though it was plugged in, I watched my battery charge drop. I decided it was time to head south.”

Next trip involved homemade adapters

While in Maine, Bennett experienced frustration when he would stop at a town where he was unable to plug into 240v lines that were offered.

“I vowed I would make adapters to enable me to do that,” he said, explaining that some background in electrical engineering helped with that task.

The adapters came in handy on his next adventure with the dogs, to Key West in Florida. But then, on the third major outing, to Louisiana, Bennett came up short yet again.  

“I stopped at my niece and nephew’s house and parked in their garage to plug-in,” Bennett said. “But the outlet was an old NEMA standard that my adapters didn’t cover. Their laundry room outlet was yet another old NEMA standard I couldn’t use. That’s when I decided to build adapters for every NEMA standard, so that no matter where I was—out on a dock somewhere, in mining country, out in farmland in the Midwest—I would have the right equipment.”

Never a lack of challenges

Most of the adapters Bennett built have never been used, and probably never will be. “Now, I keep them all in a suitcase that stays at home,” he said. “There are so many superchargers on the road these days that I don’t need them anymore.”

Recently, David and the dogs zig-zagged across the country to visit his son, who lives in Burbank, California. “There were plenty of superchargers the whole way,” he said.

That trip enabled Bennett to continue fulfilling his goal to drive his EV to the farthest north, south, east and west points in every U.S. state. Just to the west of Nogales, he travelled to the southernmost point of Arizona.

“I drove on a steep and narrow road that was almost a cliff, with a very sharp drop off,” he explained. “The road was only there in order to service the border wall—it skirted the wall so closely that I could reach out my left hand and touch it. I did check with border patrol beforehand just to make sure I wouldn’t be arrested.”

In an earlier adventure to the farthest western point of Florida, Bennett was once again driving on logging lands, and this time the Tesla became lodged on a sand bar. It had to be hooked up with chains and dragged out while David, Toast, and Tea looked on.

When not travelling to remote corners of the country, Bennett can be seen in his Tesla with the goldendoodles around the Washington DC area, especially in Montgomery County, Maryland. Be on the lookout!