Tesla Service UK / Guides / Road Trip Planning
Road trip charging: planning tips
Where to trust the car's own planner, and where it pays to think ahead yourself.
Last fact-checked: . General guidance — always check your own model's specifics and current official sources before relying on it for a decision.
Trust, but verify
Should I just trust the car's own trip planner?
Tesla's built-in trip planner is generally reliable for choosing sensible Supercharger stops and estimating charge time, and for most UK trips it's a genuinely good default. Where it can fall short: it optimises primarily for its own Supercharger network, so it won't necessarily route you via a closer or cheaper third-party charger, and it doesn't always account for a charger being temporarily out of service.
When to plan yourself
When does it pay to check ahead yourself?
For a genuinely important trip — a long journey with a fixed arrival time, poor weather forecast (which affects both range and, rarely, charger reliability), or travelling somewhere with sparser charging infrastructure — it's worth cross-checking the planned stops against Zapmap or the relevant network's own app a day or two before, so you're not discovering a closed or broken charger only once you're already low on range.
A practical checklist
Before a long trip
Worth doing before setting off:
- Check the car's planned stops match your actual route and timing preferences, not just the shortest total time.
- Cross-check at least the first two planned stops on Zapmap for live status.
- Build in a genuine buffer for winter trips — see our range by season page for why.
- Know your backup option at each planned stop in case it's unavailable on arrival.