First road trip questions - planning charging stops

mixduptransistor

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I would assume whichever is closest. They're only trying to help you out when you've stranded yourself, not worry whether you'll lose a few hours at an L2 putting in just enough so you can drive it to the next DCFC.

Although we might see the emergence of more field charging in the coming years (onboard generator). That'll just be L2 too, but saves a flatbed load.
It's going to take a pretty fast charger to be better than a flatbed tow. Even the fastest fast charger is only going to be 20-22 miles per hour of charge. They need to be faster than that, probably in the 50-60 mile per hour range to be faster than loading your car and driving you to the nearest charger. And, the nearest charger would need to be more than an hour away
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dbsb3233

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It's going to take a pretty fast charger to be better than a flatbed tow. Even the fastest fast charger is only going to be 20-22 miles per hour of charge. They need to be faster than that, probably in the 50-60 mile per hour range to be faster than loading your car and driving you to the nearest charger. And, the nearest charger would need to be more than an hour away
Only if the nearest charger happens to be DCFC. If it's L2, you haven't gained anything. In fact, you've lost the towing time.
 

zvez

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Curious if that means the nearest Level 3/DCFC or just the nearest public Level 2 charger. It does include the nearest Ford dealer which will only be Level 2
pg 266 of the manual. Nearest charger. Nearest Ford EV cert. dealer, or home.

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jparduhn70

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I suggest you acquaint yourself with abetterrouteplanner.com; it is a free and allows you to tailor many parameters, including the minimum charge level left when getting to a charger.
If you want to take advantage of ABRP with CarPlay and get the most out of the app, you’ll need the premium subscription at $5/month or $50/year.
 

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This MME is my first ever EV so I’ve never charged at a charging station before.

I need suggestions on which Apps (IOS) that I should download on my iPhone. I would like to be able to see locations and how many charging stations currently available and the cost to use.

When charging an EV at a charging station - do I need to stay with my EV or can I walk to a resturant or store?

Any other Tips or Suggestions?
Thank you so much for asking this! I was wondering the same thing. The MME will be my first EV and i see people charging their cars for extended periods. Do you stay? Leave? What’s the protocol?
 


Major

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I am currently on a road trip. I left Bakersfield,Ca to Houston and now goi g back.
My suggestion is to NOT use your free ford $77.50 charge of 250 KWH. I HAD ALL kinds of issues. I ONLY use EA as they are completely easy to use. With the suggestion of EA I turn off the plug and charge. I bought the PLUS plan for $4 a month. I paid for the year in savings on this trip.
Use the ford pass app as it will direct you to the nearest EA Charger. FYI EA is EXTREMELY helpful. Both EVGO and ChargePoint SUCK.

We are on the way back. We did 850 miles here and now doing the same home. Each fill up was in the $7-9 range. It is roughly 15 mi utes per charge. When you are getting ready to pull up to EA open the app. On the app it will list all of the charges based on capacity. Find the 350 chargers. BEFORE YOU STOP click on the charger that you are going to use. At the bottom of the new app is a green arrow. Slide it across. NOW that you have pulled up and stopped connect the charger. The charger will communicate with the car and then start charging since you preset everything before you stopped. When it hits 80 on your phone click stop. Unplug and go. Like I said 15 mi utes and done.
So, which is it? You said use 350 chargers and someone previously stated the 350 ones don't work on our cars.
 

eastern refugee

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So, which is it? You said use 350 chargers and someone previously stated the 350 ones don't work on our cars.
EA just did an update on their app which has issues with Ford Pass. They are working on it. The free miles are good for 3 years. I had lots of issues with the free miles so I turned off the plug and charge feature. Now there is still an issue with the new EA UPDATE. I have 3761 miles on a 3 week old car and still about 800 miles to go.

Use the app but do NOT use the free miles. Set up an account for $4 a month. The average charge is 100 miles and 15-25 minutes. The ford app gives you three choices. Take the time to explore the chargers. Ford will direct you to level 1 chargers. Chose wisely.

To make matters worse the navigation system does NOT alter your route if you change. It sets up the route based on chargers. If you charge sooner the app will continue to send you to the preset chargers. It is NOT like a gas car that alters.

Yes it is worth taking the road trip but it is a learning curve. You need to be willing to be a pioneering. I am embracing it but if you are in a hurry today is not the day. It will come. I expect a lot of fixes over OTA.
 

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So, which is it? You said use 350 chargers and someone previously stated the 350 ones don't work on our cars.
All EA CCS connectors will work with our cars, regardless of whether they say "150 kW" or "350 kW"
 

mixduptransistor

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Thank you so much for asking this! I was wondering the same thing. The MME will be my first EV and i see people charging their cars for extended periods. Do you stay? Leave? What’s the protocol?
Feel free to leave your car charging and go to a shop or restaurant (I mean, other than you should be taking some COVID precautions currently). The only real etiquette is, don't cut in line if there is a line, and don't leave your car in the spot after charging is done

As long as your car is actively charging you're good, no matter how long it takes
 

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Feel free to leave your car charging and go to a shop or restaurant (I mean, other than you should be taking some COVID precautions currently). The only real etiquette is, don't cut in line if there is a line, and don't leave your car in the spot after charging is done

As long as your car is actively charging you're good, no matter how long it takes
And if you leave your car, it would be nice to make sure it’s using a 150kW station if available, not a 350kW. It would be rude if a Taycan pulled up and the 350kW stations were all taken by cars that can’t charge that fast.
 

mixduptransistor

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And if you leave your car, it would be nice to make sure it’s using a 150kW station if available, not a 350kW. It would be rude if a Taycan pulled up and the 350kW stations were all taken by cars that can’t charge that fast.
Maybe, but now you're getting into really deep EV knowledge territory. Sure, try to be even nicer but the Taycan owner can't get mad at you because there's no way to know if the 150k was taken, etc.

Along those same lines, it's also a lot nicer if you only charge what you need to get to your next charging stop. If you only need to charge up to 65%, don't sit there and charge to 80 or 90, although there's nothing really "wrong" with that, it is an extra courtesy if the location is busy
 

dbsb3233

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Along those same lines, it's also a lot nicer if you only charge what you need to get to your next charging stop. If you only need to charge up to 65%, don't sit there and charge to 80 or 90, although there's nothing really "wrong" with that, it is an extra courtesy if the location is busy
Although if you're doing multiple charges, it probably works out about the same either way. Charging on to 80% on charge #1 may make that one 8 minutes longer, but it could make charge #2 8 minutes shorter.

Also depends on what your charger situation is at your destination. If you have L2 at the hotel, then it makes sense to arrive it the minimum (~10%). But if you just have to DCFC charge there too, it's pretty much a wash.

The Mach-E isn't proving to have much of an "early in the curve" charging advantage. After the first 2 minutes, it's leveling off most of the way to 80%.
 

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EA app is not working today. There are problems with the app. As far as being nice etc I have yet to see a second car charging. In short take the 350 you will be by yourself except for people coming up to ask you about the car.
 

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I'm on my road trip now and I *definitely* have learned a lot.

#1 AVOID FORD PASS. I couldn't get it connected. I was getting the dreaded connection errors both in the app and on the car. I spent hours attempting to connect it and was on the phone with several people from Ford. No luck. As I left for my trip, some parts of Ford Pass were working (lock/unlock, check charging status) but nothing related to Plug & Charge was working. It kept saying it wasn't connected.

#2 AVOID FORD PASS. The first time I tried to charge, I stopped at an Electrify America fast charger. My credit cards were declined. When I called the credit card company, they weren't even seeing that the charges were reaching them. Guess what? Ford Pass was preventing the Electrify America chargers from sending in my CC payment info. At this point I decided to...

#3a INSTALL THE ELECTRIFY AMERICA APP. With a membership to EA you will get cheaper charging and the app works great. (I realize we're supposed to get a bunch of free EA charging with Plug & Charge... but that means you need Ford Pass to work.)

#3b When at EA charging stations, the steps are: (1) Drive up and park (2) Plug in a 150 kWh charger to your car - more on that next (3) Open the app, find the list of chargers at the station, click the charger # you just plugged in (the number will be at the top of the charging machine), and swipe to pay. You don't need to touch or click anything on the EA charger screen.

#4 ONLY GO TO FAST CHARGERS. A fast charger will say 150 kWh. The ones that say 50 are so slow they're not worth the stop. The chargers that are 350 do not work with the Mach E.

#4 AVOID FORD PASS. Once I had started charging, it would stop after 1-3 minutes. This happened at least 10 times. I finally called the Electrify America toll free number and got a very helpful person. He said that on his end it appeared that the Ford Pass / Plug & Charge system was interrupting the charging. At this point I logged on to ford.com and deleted the Mach E off my account. I verified in the app that the car was gone (may have had to refresh or click around, I don't remember) and logged off the app. Charging resumed with no problems.

#5 AVOID FORD PASS. Next time I stopped to charge at EA, it again stopped after 3 minutes. Guess what? The app had mysteriously logged me on (by itself !) and again was interrupting the charging process. At this point I logged off again and deleted the app entirely. So far, this has enabled me to charge without problems.

#6 PLUGSHARE is also a good app to have. I set it to only show me Electrify America stops. This is very helpful for route planning. In California there are a fair number of EA chargers, but you definitely want to plan ahead.

Other random things I have learned:
- the little button next to where the charger goes into the car unlocks the charger.
- maybe someone can confirm this, but the EA guy said the chargers work more reliably when the car is off.
- I had some random CarPlay issues (CarPlay wouldn't load if I switched to Nav during a phone call) but that went away once I got rid of FordPass.
- The car Nav is awesome at finding charging stations (several of them weren't on PlugShare) but it doesn't tell you whether they are fast or slow chargers
- My phone battery was being drained rapidly even when it was plugged in or charging wirelessly. Guess what, when I deleted Ford Pass it went back to normal battery drain.
- Stop charging at EA when the battery hits 80%. It goes so slowly after that it's not worth the wait. It was taking about 35 min to go from 25% to 80%.
- Yes, you can lock your car and walk around while charging. The EA app will tell you when it's reached 80% or if there's a problem. All the EA stops I made were in locations where there were coffee shops, etc, right nearby.

I do realize that FordPass and Plug & Charge are probably working for some folks, but if anyone is in that limbo of some things working and some things not working, I would delete every last bit of it including your car's existence on your ford account.
You are correct that starting the charging session using the EA app provides more reliable charging and cheaper rates, so far. I find the most reliable is to pull up to the charger, start the charging session on the app, THEN plug the charger into the car. That avoids any problems with P&C.

Unlike your results, I' have used mostly 350kW EA chargers and they usually worked fine.

I have also had fully successful P&C sessions, but others have been buggy. See my results so far at:
https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/my-travels-with-marlin-gb-fe-delivered.3298/post-126280
 

ChasingCoral

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Just be cautious relying very heavily on ABRP. Their model of the Mach E's consumption is very much in alpha, not even beta, testing at this point
I find the FordPass/Sync 4A navigation to be more accurate for the Mach E than ABRP at this point.
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