EVJoe
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Joe
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2024
- Threads
- 13
- Messages
- 51
- Reaction score
- 79
- Location
- Michigan
- Vehicles
- 2023 Mach E Premium
- Occupation
- Engineer
- Thread starter
- #1
My wife, dog and I just completed a road trip from West Michigan to the Grand Canyon and back. We left West Mi on 7-1-2026 and returned on 7-8-2026. We left south down and came north from AZ back and traveled in/through the following states, MI, IN, IL, MO, KA, OK, TX, NM, AZ, CO, WY, NE, IA, back through IL, IN, back to MI for a total from my driveway back to my driveway exactly 4011.0 Miles, and a total time in the car with charging of 91 hours, 24 minutes and 32 seconds. Way too long.
This was my first road trip in an EV outside of just driving to work and back and my first time publicly fast charging the car since buying it in 2-2024. Initially I started out using the Ford built in nav, but also tried using ABRP and google maps. I found that ABRP was jittery on the map through android auto, and also did not precondition the battery prior to the charging stops so I went back to a mix of google maps that said it would precondition the battery and seemed to do so and the built in nav.
Something to get out of the way is my car has an issue that's ongoing (heading back to the dealer) where my Ford Pass App more often than not does not communicate with the vehicle. I think it updated about 3 times during the 7 day trip meaning that the Ford plug and charge also did not work, making the trip that much more of a PITA as I was never able to see the SOC while charging at some stations, and I was never able to start the climate to keep my dog cool in the hot weather so my wife and I had to take turns using restrooms and seeing some sights while the other sat in the car with it on running the AC.
The trip to the Canyon went fairly well and I only had a few small charger issues that unplugging and re-plugging usually fixed, or swapping chargers to the next open station. I was routed to a Tesla charger that was a V3 but did not communicate in NM. I also booked a hotel in NM that had Tesla chargers in the parking lot, to arrive finding out they were V2 and are not compatable. I was able to find charging elsewhere that just took more time, but nothing way out of the way.
Leaving the Canyon was amazing, we left in the morning and driving a nice silent EV with the windows down around the Canyon area, smelling the fresh air, seeing all the scenic views and seeing + hearing the wildlife vs some loud ass nasty stinky exhaust and engine drone was nearly the best experience of the whole trip, I seen a pretty steady 12+Mi/kWh through some downhill parts of AZ + CO, It even hit 31 Mi/kWh for a bit one time.
The return trip was a different story, I was nearly stranded in NE. The built in nav was routing me to a charger that was non existent and was going to have me arrive there around 23% SOC, had I went to this charger I would not have had enough range to make it to the next available charging station especially since there was about a 25mph steady crosswind and the highway efficacy was in the bottom of the barrel. Thankfully I had my wife check google maps prior to that charge stop and reading the reviews we found it had been removed, so we rerouted to a different location that was 40 miles out of the way one way. I ended up getting off the highway and taking back roads driving 50-55 mph to arrive to the next charger at a Wal-mart at 20% SOC. If I stayed on the built in nav course we probably would have had to call a flatbed.
At this point I was pretty upset with the built in NAV and from there only used google maps connected to Android auto. After the near miss with the charge station my now new found crippling range anxiety left me manually entering charge stations for the remainder of the trip. I found that charging stations in NE are far and few between (go figure), so for the remainder of NE and IA I never let the car go below 35% SOC just in case a charger was non existent or did not work at all, like another charger I was routed to at a Ford dealership Lincoln NE that did not work, and again had to drive out of the way, this time about 12 miles. It appeared that the charger did not have communication access.
Another issue I had was android auto would constantly drop out of wireless connection and was very annoying but using USB C fixed that until I had to stop for a charge and use one of the now way too many charging apps to start a charger, then getting the Android auto reconnected was just more fiddling.
Something else that's ridiculous is the amount of charging apps I now have on my phone and the amount of companies that have my personal info and CC info is deeply concerning. Somewhere along the line someone (govt maybe LOL) should have came in and standardized chargers or something, I don’t know what the fix is at this point, but damn all the different apps suck, some chargers have CC readers on them, but not all and those that did not always worked. I definitely can understand why there are a lot of people who dislike EV’s now, there is an excess amount of extra labor involved with all the apps and fiddling around for charging.
Would I take the same trip again and take an EV, probably as long as I could avoid NE lol, but that would just add more time driving out of the way around it. I know that we could have made the trip faster in a ICE vehicle, as when we did stop to charge we knew that we had extra time so we used it, if we were only fueling up we could have shaved some time off, and not having to drive out of the way a few times for non functional or non existent chargers would also have saved us a few hours for sure (as well as crippling range anxiety), but driving the EV through the mountain areas was awesome, plenty of power up the hills and having regen on the way down actually upped the battery percentage a few times.
My takeaway was that as long as the chargers worked and charging initiated properly the time it took to charge was not all that bad, I would say we spent maybe 5-10 minutes on a few of the charges sitting and doing nothing but waiting, most of the time it gave all of us the time to take care of business and grab a snack etc while it charged, I think we only stopped 1-2 times to take care of business without charging. Overall the trip went well outside of the Nebraska charging issues, we seen a lot of amazing scenery and have a few new states we may look to retire too, like flagstaff area of AZ or Maybe CO (not near Denver, and definitely not NE, have no desire to visit that state again). I did not document all the charging costs yet, I am waiting for it all to come in on my CC, so after I get a total cost for charging I will make an update post on cost vs miles driven.
Do I regret taking the EV, no. I am glad I did it and can say I did it. It was an experience I will never forget.
This was my first road trip in an EV outside of just driving to work and back and my first time publicly fast charging the car since buying it in 2-2024. Initially I started out using the Ford built in nav, but also tried using ABRP and google maps. I found that ABRP was jittery on the map through android auto, and also did not precondition the battery prior to the charging stops so I went back to a mix of google maps that said it would precondition the battery and seemed to do so and the built in nav.
Something to get out of the way is my car has an issue that's ongoing (heading back to the dealer) where my Ford Pass App more often than not does not communicate with the vehicle. I think it updated about 3 times during the 7 day trip meaning that the Ford plug and charge also did not work, making the trip that much more of a PITA as I was never able to see the SOC while charging at some stations, and I was never able to start the climate to keep my dog cool in the hot weather so my wife and I had to take turns using restrooms and seeing some sights while the other sat in the car with it on running the AC.
The trip to the Canyon went fairly well and I only had a few small charger issues that unplugging and re-plugging usually fixed, or swapping chargers to the next open station. I was routed to a Tesla charger that was a V3 but did not communicate in NM. I also booked a hotel in NM that had Tesla chargers in the parking lot, to arrive finding out they were V2 and are not compatable. I was able to find charging elsewhere that just took more time, but nothing way out of the way.
Leaving the Canyon was amazing, we left in the morning and driving a nice silent EV with the windows down around the Canyon area, smelling the fresh air, seeing all the scenic views and seeing + hearing the wildlife vs some loud ass nasty stinky exhaust and engine drone was nearly the best experience of the whole trip, I seen a pretty steady 12+Mi/kWh through some downhill parts of AZ + CO, It even hit 31 Mi/kWh for a bit one time.
The return trip was a different story, I was nearly stranded in NE. The built in nav was routing me to a charger that was non existent and was going to have me arrive there around 23% SOC, had I went to this charger I would not have had enough range to make it to the next available charging station especially since there was about a 25mph steady crosswind and the highway efficacy was in the bottom of the barrel. Thankfully I had my wife check google maps prior to that charge stop and reading the reviews we found it had been removed, so we rerouted to a different location that was 40 miles out of the way one way. I ended up getting off the highway and taking back roads driving 50-55 mph to arrive to the next charger at a Wal-mart at 20% SOC. If I stayed on the built in nav course we probably would have had to call a flatbed.
At this point I was pretty upset with the built in NAV and from there only used google maps connected to Android auto. After the near miss with the charge station my now new found crippling range anxiety left me manually entering charge stations for the remainder of the trip. I found that charging stations in NE are far and few between (go figure), so for the remainder of NE and IA I never let the car go below 35% SOC just in case a charger was non existent or did not work at all, like another charger I was routed to at a Ford dealership Lincoln NE that did not work, and again had to drive out of the way, this time about 12 miles. It appeared that the charger did not have communication access.
Another issue I had was android auto would constantly drop out of wireless connection and was very annoying but using USB C fixed that until I had to stop for a charge and use one of the now way too many charging apps to start a charger, then getting the Android auto reconnected was just more fiddling.
Something else that's ridiculous is the amount of charging apps I now have on my phone and the amount of companies that have my personal info and CC info is deeply concerning. Somewhere along the line someone (govt maybe LOL) should have came in and standardized chargers or something, I don’t know what the fix is at this point, but damn all the different apps suck, some chargers have CC readers on them, but not all and those that did not always worked. I definitely can understand why there are a lot of people who dislike EV’s now, there is an excess amount of extra labor involved with all the apps and fiddling around for charging.
Would I take the same trip again and take an EV, probably as long as I could avoid NE lol, but that would just add more time driving out of the way around it. I know that we could have made the trip faster in a ICE vehicle, as when we did stop to charge we knew that we had extra time so we used it, if we were only fueling up we could have shaved some time off, and not having to drive out of the way a few times for non functional or non existent chargers would also have saved us a few hours for sure (as well as crippling range anxiety), but driving the EV through the mountain areas was awesome, plenty of power up the hills and having regen on the way down actually upped the battery percentage a few times.
My takeaway was that as long as the chargers worked and charging initiated properly the time it took to charge was not all that bad, I would say we spent maybe 5-10 minutes on a few of the charges sitting and doing nothing but waiting, most of the time it gave all of us the time to take care of business and grab a snack etc while it charged, I think we only stopped 1-2 times to take care of business without charging. Overall the trip went well outside of the Nebraska charging issues, we seen a lot of amazing scenery and have a few new states we may look to retire too, like flagstaff area of AZ or Maybe CO (not near Denver, and definitely not NE, have no desire to visit that state again). I did not document all the charging costs yet, I am waiting for it all to come in on my CC, so after I get a total cost for charging I will make an update post on cost vs miles driven.
Do I regret taking the EV, no. I am glad I did it and can say I did it. It was an experience I will never forget.
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