Akshay Sura Talks Family Road Trip Across America

Matthew McQueeny  
Welcome to Konaverse, this is Matt McQueeny. And with us is other hosts co host Akshay Sura, who is going to be going on a really cool month long Odyssey across this country called America. Akshay, what are you feeling right now?

Akshay Sura  
excitement, I can't wait.

Matthew McQueeny  
How long? Have you been planning this?

Akshay Sura  
A month and a half or so?

Matthew McQueeny  
When did you land on this as the thing you were going to do?

Akshay Sura  
So as we were getting vaccinated, we have been on a self imposed quarantine or lockdown, whatever you want to call it, since March of last year. So we've been cooped up, kids have been cooped up. So we were planning on visiting my brother who is also alone, doing his residency. And we like we're like, oh, we have to go see him. But then we looked into air and wasn't comfortable with the stories I was hearing just don't want to be cooped up and want to be able to control certain parts of the journey. So we're like, oh, we can drive? Because we've done it before. Like, before we had kids anyway. So we drove from Denver, or Littleton, Colorado all the way to New York City. A long while ago. So we're like oh roadtrip sounds good. And the kids are home. They're the right ages, we're never going to get them at this age again. So why not do it?

Matthew McQueeny  
And so was everybody on board? Was your wife on board with this mode of travel?

Akshay Sura  
No, it took us a couple of couple of days to kind of see if this is what we wanted to do initial gut feeling everyone was excited. So we didn't tell the kids first. My wife and I thought she was excited. But she's like, Okay, let me let me do some research. Let me figure out what's happening both on the air as well as you know, what will happen if we stay at these hotels? How, how much do we need to protect the kids and things of that sort. But after a couple of days, we knew what we wanted. We told the kids and the kids were on top of the moon because they were all excited for for the road trip.

Matthew McQueeny  
And the other interesting part is you'll be doing this in electric vehicle, a Tesla. So yeah, that is a whole nother kind of cool part to this. What about that is making this even more exciting?

Akshay Sura  
So the the older one is into, I think at school that starting to talk about the environment microplastics and saving the earth, which is great. I mean, kids need to be educated earlier on. I gave them the choice, we have like a regular vehicle and we have a Tesla. So what do you guys want to go in? They said, Tesla, because it's more comfortable. So the other one is an SUV, it's more comfortable for me because the seating position is much better. But I'm like, okay, we have autopilot. Most of the time, I don't have to sit in an awkward position, I just have to be ready to tap on the on the brake whenever needed to right. So but I did tell the kid so we need to do a test run, I need to know what we're looking at in terms of trains, what will have been in terms of how much we're going to stop? And if that test works, we'll use the electric vehicle. If it doesn't, then we're gonna use the

Matthew McQueeny  
conventional one. Do you have any concerns with it though? going like how do you I have a Tesla as well. First of all, you have a model?

Akshay Sura  
three standard range

Matthew McQueeny  
standard range, so that adds another another wrinkle to it a little bit. So what are the concerns? You probably researched a lot of forums and stuff how people do travel like this. What are some of the kind of liberating points and maybe some of the shortcomings you've heard?

Akshay Sura  
Range anxiety is one of the biggest ones from a concern perspective, but that's what the test was right. So what we did is we did it sounds stupid, but because we've been cooped up a couple of weeks ago we took a trip. We didn't anticipate it on being so long, but we ended up we usually go into San Diego for food or just to drive around because it's a pretty city and we decided we'll extend that to go to El Centro college. fornia el centro is in the like, towards the edge of California into Arizona, middle of nowhere. But I was really impressed by the number of superchargers. And the proximity to each other, and how long it takes. So we essentially did like a six to eight hour trip. We charged about three times. And how much do you charge? How long do you wait, it's all up to you. But the beauty is the software. I mean, it is just, I understand why they're so popular as they are, I haven't used any other electric vehicle. But I do know that over the year updates with Tesla, things change, right things get better. You get updates over the over the year. But it tells you how much you have how much you're going to have by the time you get to the supercharger. How long it's gonna take to charge. So I think from a range anxiety perspective, we got that out of the system, we logged all the things right, how much was the starting charge on? What was the ending charge? How long did it take? How Many Miles did we get out of it? From what I understood, based on the data we were seeing that day is typically, you know, you have to combine the city and the highway just because of your driving styles and all of that fun stuff. But to us, roughly a one percentage of charge equated to 2.2 miles, overall average, which makes sense. So to me, I don't look at range from like what the vehicle says perspective, I look at range from the actual data we have right from driving it. So if I'm at 100%, I should be able to get to a 200 mile range, but I'm most likely going to get to 170 or 180, depending on the load in the car, we're going to have quite a bit of stuff in the trunk and stuff. So that was that was the biggest base that range anxiety, but we tested it out seemed to be fine. And then when you look at the grid, in terms of Tesla superchargers, every 50 miles, there's one. So from here all the way to Florida, there are superchargers galore, every 50 miles or so. So technically, if you follow your navigation properly, it maps out where you need to charge how much how long you need to charge for, we should be pretty sad, but within the first couple of days, I'll let you know how it's, it's going.

Matthew McQueeny  
Yeah, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna talk along this trip just to see how it's going like a little bit of a diary we got to keep you're working a little bit. So how are you going to, I'd always heard, you know, you're you're doing your own mileage, kind of they're figuring that out. I've always heard it's about 252 56 that they say you get, but even 200 or so how are you going to you got a lot of miles to go, how many times do you plan to stop per day three charges, two charges?

Akshay Sura  
Yeah, so I think on average, two to three charges is what it came out to. So the way we did it is a we wanted it to be the most safest we could make it for the kids. We wanted to have definite stops. So in the last time we did a road trip, basically I kept on saying oh, I can go another 100 miles, I can go 100 miles. And what ended up happening is I was exhausted at doing 16 hour days, right. And one thing is to get there fast. The other thing is you have to get there with a family with two young kids. So what we did, or what we're hoping to do is we're going to drive so on average, it seemed like two hours worth of try would get us around, depending on where you are. But from where we were two hours to two and a half hours would get us to the next charging point that we need. We will charge up, take the break to walk around, get some coffee or tea break or whatever you want to call it. Get some food depending on the time of the day get back in get and we have pre determined stops. So from here the first stop for the day is Tucson, Arizona, followed the next day is the shortest day because we're only driving about four or five hours to El Paso, Texas. Because we wanted to break it at at bigger points rather than small towns. And then the next one is San Antonio. And then followed by Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Tallahassee, Florida. And then the final days to push to Miami.

Matthew McQueeny  
Florida is surprisingly big on that front. When you look at the the final run there now. I'm interested this as a Tesla driver our last Tesla question, but what is the what is the Tesla like something happens to the car they're just available? Right? Like they're within a call pretty much anywhere right?

Akshay Sura  
Yeah, so the good thing about this is obviously you have to cater to all of the all of the eventualities, something might happen. So I do have a spare tire, all that fun stuff, tire pressures and the whole shebang. But you have the Tesla roadside assistance, and then our insurance provider, which is Metro Mile. They provide their own roadside assistance as well as about, you know, we have almost like an insurance but technically what's supposed to happen, at least in the route where you have Tesla superchargers, they, I believe, have enough vendors along that line to help people who have whatever it is, if it's a tire issue, battery issue, whatever that is, they're supposed to come out and help you. 

Matthew McQueeny  
And it can only really be those two things, right? I mean, there's not there's not a lot of that's the funny thing with a Tesla, there's not a lot of things, I mean, knock on wood, but yeah, there's not a lot of things that can happen to it. It's

Akshay Sura  
Yeah, moving parts of the electric electric, body calm, theraband, whatever you want to call them, and then the tires and the brakes, you barely use the brakes. Because at the regenerative braking, I barely use the brakes, because the brake itself, yeah, if you just let go of the accelerator ahead of time, right, and then the tires, it's a couple years old car, but we've only put in 7000 miles on and we barely use it, especially with the pandemic, we haven't had to use it at all. So it's relatively new. So I don't anticipate any issues. But you never know. Right? Like when you're going on such a long trip. 

Matthew McQueeny  
Yeah, it's definitely pushing it. So let's go to the other big aspect of this as the as a as a partner, as a founder in a growing technology company. It's gutsy to take, what is it? It'll be 10 days traveling, you'll still be available in case anyone's listening. But well, that must be really hard. Because you're you're like always, you're always working like, how are you going to do that I'll take you a little bit.

Akshay Sura  
I've been told not to work during this period. So obviously I can't work when I'm driving. I could be on calls. But Mostafa and others in the team are urging me not to be part of any of the scrum calls. I'm going to try my best. It's hard, though, I will tell you that most of most of my days are meetings. And when it's not meetings, it's a lot of work. So I am looking forward to the break. But at the same time, you know, you got to do what you got to do. So if if there's an emergency or something happens, I do have to jump on calls to help people out.

Matthew McQueeny  
And I do have to imagine that with as much output as you do put out there that you know, it's not like you're gonna hide it right, you're not hiding that you're doing this because on the other end, you'll be able to do some work, but it's vacation too. But it's the it's the it's the traveling and I always feel like when you go to travel the first day is always when weird things happen. And then it calms down. I'm not trying to jinx you. But yeah, that's gonna When's the last time you didn't like, sit and work for like at least an hour or two?

Akshay Sura  
It was probably

Matthew McQueeny  
2007.

Akshay Sura  
No, I think probably like late 2019 was the last time I want to say when took a break for like 10 days. And I chose not to work, which was nice. Wow. And how

Matthew McQueeny  
do you do that? Like, it doesn't actually I think this is an interesting like work thing like, does it take a day or two to to unwind or unravel? Kind of all the things. You see a million things write about projects, when you're in them for the day after it's like you keep running. And then at some point, things start kind of working. And then you're able to let go, right?

Akshay Sura  
Yeah, the hardest point is to make that decision saying I am not going to do anything. So it's resisting those notifications to come through. And you have to disable those. enough that you're not jumping on the call saying, oh, what's happening here, it's better. I mean, it's a good way to test your infrastructure in terms of team as well, right? You want to give the team a chance to like any, it's not just me, per se when, say if you're working on a specific project for a long duration in time and one of one of the resources has to take a break due to health or vacation. It's hard on the rest of us. Like if someone were to leave our team for a week or two. You have to shoulder their burden you have to deal with what they're dealing with. So it is always hard but as a person taking off, that's another thing I think of is Oh man, no, I shouldn't be looking at this or I shouldn't get involved because unless it's unique and I have a different perspective or a knowledge which they Don't have,

Matthew McQueeny  
I always find the hardest thing when you take off is before you take off. You're so excited about your like, your trip and your adventure that you go, yay, I'll be able to like check in a bunch of times. But then you get out there and you're like out of your normal zone of things. You're like computer's not where it is, like, do I want to boot it up? And so it almost ends up taking care of itself when you do something like you're doing that is so forced in some way. You know, it's almost like going to a desert island on a desert island. It's almost like going to an island or something where you don't have access, right?

Akshay Sura  
Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty much like, it's like, what am I going to do have a laptop on me while I'm driving? I can't right. It almost forces you. And I'm hoping that at least while I'm driving or the driving duration of the trip, I don't get on laptops.

Matthew McQueeny  
So is there anything else that you're thinking of? How are you feeling about your plan? If this were a website, launch schedule? How do you feel what you've put in place?

Akshay Sura  
Yes. We've had checklists galore. So the girls and I have created checklists. We've gone through it last weekend, we actually probably 70% there, some of the last pieces are getting the dogs boarded, dropping them off their food, cleaning up the house. Just last minute things you can put away until it's the last day right. So checklists, checklists, checklists, the trunk is already loaded, most of it, just our backpacks are missing from there. So

Matthew McQueeny  
Dogs, the animals That's a hard one to do have one of those boarding places with the cameras where you can see them all the time

Akshay Sura  
on No, but they send us pictures. So we board at this place called Briar cliff. It's one of our favorite places the dogs get the best treatment there they get a suitet and nice enough suite there's no TV in there, thank goodness but they do get a nice enough sweet for the two dogs. They get to be together and they get taken out and play and all of that fun stuff while with the other dogs. So yeah, we don't usually worry about them when they're at the boarding place.

Matthew McQueeny  
So it sounds like you're all set. We'll have to we'll have to hear along the way. If it's meeting expectations if you're hitting your sprint schedules

Akshay Sura  
I'm sure I'll have updates. I am going to try to record all of those and hopefully share them with the with the people who are interested but I'm really curious like I've never traveled with kids on the on a road trip before so it'll be a mixed bag but I know that we'll try to make the most of it and have a lot of fun. That's that's what we're looking forward to.

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