Charging a Model 3 Across Texas Cost $84.31 and One Dead Charger

Seven of eight stalls, dead, at 10:52 PM on a Friday. June 5, Fort Stockton, exit 261 off Interstate 10, and I am standing under a sodium light with moths around the fixture, watching a Tesla screen say charging delayed for the fourth time in a row. The trip was supposed to cost $84.31 in electricity. Stall 4B worked.

The hotel in Marfa was $189 a night, nonrefundable, check-in cutting off at midnight, and 94 miles of dark two-lane sat between me and the front desk. Range read 118 miles. The nearest alternate charger was 61 miles back the way I came, in a town I had already left once. My phone sat at 3 percent. The plan for the whole trip had fit on one index card, and none of it covered seven dead stalls at 11 PM.

The fix, when it came, took less time than the wait: a second Supercharger site two exits east, behind a Wendy's, one island, four stalls, every one of them alive. Nobody at the first site cited it. Nobody at the second site cited the first site either. The first site's screen offered a phone number. I dialed it. Voicemail.

packed to 97 percent, left at 91

Departure was 6:40 AM from a garage in East Dallas with the car packed to 97 percent on a wall connector overnight and an index card on the dash: Sweetwater, Midland, Fort Stockton, Marfa. The car is a 2021 Model 3 Long Range bought used in 2023 with 19,000 miles, now at 41,200. Round trip per the map: 1,148 miles. The index card said nothin' about redundancy, cuz the map showed one charger per town and I believed it.

Sweetwater, 19 minutes

First stop, Sweetwater, 19 minutes for 62 percent to 84 percent, $11.42, a wind farm humming past the fence in the dark. I clicked thru the charging screen while eating a gas station breakfast taco and left with 23 miles of buffer over plan. The taper above 80 percent is real: the first 60 percent of a session goes twice as fast as the last 20, which the index card did not know either.

Midland, 16 minutes and $4.10

Midland, 16 minutes, $13.18, and my one dumb fee of the trip. The session finished while I stood in a bathroom line, and the idle fee ran $4.10 before I plugged back into the payment screen. My fault, entirely, and now the car nags me at 92 percent instead of 100. The stall next to me had a crack running thru its concrete that could swallow a shoe.

seven gray lightning bolts

Fort Stockton, 10:35 PM, 118 miles of range left, 94 needed. Seven of the eight stalls threw the same gray lightning bolt and the words charging delayed, cycling, one after another, while a cabinet somewhere on that island ticked. I called the number on the screen at 10:48 PM and got a voicemail recording. A Cybertruck had taken stall 4B at 10:50 PM. I stood under the moths and did the arithmetic I should have done in Dallas.

40 minutes behind a Cybertruck

Stall 4B pushed electrons at 48 kilowatts, half speed, to a truck with a battery twice the size of mine, and the screen said 52 minutes. Forty of those I stood there, phone at 3 percent, car at 2 percent of its own patience, watching one working stall carry a Friday night. The in-car map got me out: zoom out two finger-pinches, and a second Fort Stockton site appeared, two exits east, unmarked on the index card. The town had a spare charger the whole time. I zeroed in on it and left stall 4B to the truck.

the plug behind the Wendy's

Exit 263, behind a Wendy's, four stalls, all green, empty. Plugged at 11:38 PM, 41 minutes to 88 percent, $21.60 on the session, frost on the charge handle at midnight in June cuz the cabinet vents cold. Marfa by 1:40 AM, check-in envelope taped to the door with my name misspelled. The hotel's destination charger took over at 6 kilowatts for free while I slept, which means the entire return leg began at 100 percent for zero dollars.

$118.12 of gasoline, last June

The comparison I ran in the hotel lobby: same trip, June 2025, my old 2016 Accord, 1,148 miles at 30.4 miles per gallon with fuel at $3.19 across West Texas, $118.12 on three receipts I still have photographed. This June, eight stops total, seven paid: $84.31, plus about $11 of overnight home electricity for the top-up after I got back. The EV saved approximately $23 and gave back 90 minutes. Charging lost on time. Gas lost on money. Both lost to the Wendy's exit.

the index card, revisited

The card came home in my pocket, and I rewrote it in pen for next time: two sites per town minimum, 40 percent buffer past the map, and never plan a Fort Stockton arrival after 9 PM. The screen on the first site finally said one stall available while I was two exits gone. Seven dead stalls, one voicemail, one Cybertruck ahead of me, and a backup site the map only shows if you ask it rudely. That is it. Eight stops, $84.31, and one plug behind a Wendy's that the first site never cited.