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Ixoye

Ixoye

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My biggest advice to you, is to not ever use the Credit card readers on these. For one you get charged the highest amount possible. 2nd is that its also not reliable. If you activate it from the app, it bypasses the whole authentication step and just goes right to charging. Even if you have P&C enabled, it skips that part.

Pull up to the station, find it on the app, swipe to activate, then plug in the connector. This has been the most reliable way for me to use EA stations. P&C has worked every time for me, but, I also get random "Vehicle Protocol" errors when It get activated with P&C.
My understanding of p&c you donā€™t use the app at all. You plug in and it charges. I agree that last resort is to use my CC at pump. But when all else fails thatā€™s where I ended up. If P&C keeps saying payment declined, Iā€™ll start the charge from the app first as you suggest. However ford needs to get it to work, more like Tesla.
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silverelan

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I drive annually between Seattle and Boise for family visits. These challenges with Electrify America are really concerning since there are basically zero backup options in Idaho and Oregon in case EA is on the fritz.

@Ixoye, congrats on the new car! Please be sure to update Plugshare with your experiences at each station. Drivers and EA need to know if a station is out of order.

I'd be okay with waiting in line at a busy Supercharger as opposed to being stuck at an empty but broken Electrify America station.
 

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That is so odd because my experience with EA has not been like that at all. When I plug in after 10 seconds I get the prompt to pay. If I use the Ford Pass app to hit activate it just starts. I can also use my EA card to start it. Very weird. In this case P&C doesn't work at all for me since I must activate in the Ford app, but at least it works with a simple activation. I do have P&C enabled.
Mine did the same last night, plugged in, but when P&C failed and it asked me for payment, I went with the EA app instead of FordPass, and never ended up getting billed at all. So perhaps a problem on EA's end?
 

benk016

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My understanding of p&c you donā€™t use the app at all. You plug in and it charges. I agree that last resort is to use my CC at pump. But when all else fails thatā€™s where I ended up. If P&C keeps saying payment declined, Iā€™ll start the charge from the app first as you suggest. However ford needs to get it to work, more like Tesla.
That is how its supposed to work for sure. But we all are having issues with it working reliably. If it does authenticate, it seems to randomly stop in the middle of charging.

Activating in the EA App bypasses the payment authorization on the machine and does it all on the back end. If you activate with the EA app, and then plug the connector in, the terminal is already authorized and ready to charge. It just asks the car for how much voltage to give it and then starts charging.

So basically this is a 3rd way to start charging, and seems to be the most reliable currently.
 


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That is how its supposed to work for sure. But we all are having issues with it working reliably. If it does authenticate, it seems to randomly stop in the middle of charging.

Activating in the EA App bypasses the payment authorization on the machine and does it all on the back end. If you activate with the EA app, and then plug the connector in, the terminal is already authorized and ready to charge. It just asks the car for how much voltage to give it and then starts charging.

So basically this is a 3rd way to start charging, and seems to be the most reliable currently.
This is the only way I have charged at EA or ChargePoint. I tried the P&C at EA the first time and had issues. But when i activate from FordPass, you see the activation at the charger and plug in. No issues with that at all.

I understand that this is not what was sold in that it should be a seamless P&C, but this is not what is happening and is a pain point. Easier to activate and charge.

Hopefully, Ford will fix this among other things (charge curve, efficiency and performance enhancements) with their OTAs.
 

Prashantsukhs

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I want to start this post with a statement that even with some of what you will hear in this post, I emphatically love this car.

As noted in previous posts, I ended up finding a GB FE from Longmont Colorado who honored the X-Plan pricing and were very pleasant to deal with. Compared to my local dealers in Seattle area with GBā€™s asking for 7-10k ADM.

Day 1: Flight(s) was cancelled due to 4th largest snowstorm in Denver history with 27ā€ of snow in 24 hours.

Day 2: caught the 5am flight from Sea to Den
20210316_120954684_iOS.png


getting me to the dealer and out the door by noon.

mycar.png


Which kicked off the first leg. Travel 277 miles to Grand Junction to have dinner with Brother-in-law and nephew. The dealer had the car at 100% charged which with the current weather = 176 miles. My original plan was to stop in Frisco @ 105 miles, but ford decided I could make it to Vail (130 miles). Which sounds like somewhere I would have stopped anyway to check it out. Everything was great, had 176 charge and 130 miles to go. The elevation in Denver is 4700ft and there are two summits between Denver and Vail going over 10,000 ft. By the time I was over the first summit that ā€œBufferā€ went from 43 miles to about 10 with 25 miles left to get to Vail. In hindsight I should have stopped here as PlugShare recommended. Instead, I followed Fords recommendation. About 15 miles later my buffer is down under 5 miles and shortly after that Ford tells me that I am not going to make it and I should look for alternate charging station. I considered heading back down the hill to Frisco, but was fairly confident I was almost over the next summit and would be downhill to Vail which is what happened. Ended up pulling into Vail with around 13 miles left.

Charge 1: The charger was in the garage and was easy to use (ChargePoint which I have tons of experience with at home and work). Sadly it was DANG expensive and only 62.5kW charger. After 56min we added 155 miles enough for the next leg of our trip. Overall the experience was great other than wishing it was a 150kW or higher charger.

Charge 2: We made it to Sams club EA charger where we plugged in hoping the plug and charge would just work. It did not, so I ended up buying a membership on EA and loaded their card with 40.00 which also didnā€™t work. So I stuck my credit card in the machine and ended up paying 43cents/kWh Went and had a pleasant dinner with the Bro-In-Law and nephew The car came in with 9% and left with 96%. All in all the experience was pleasant even though I hadnā€™t figured out how to make the Plug and Charge to work. (Yet)

Cousins.jpg



Ended the day in Green River Utah

Day 3: Plan was to make it to Boise Id to have dinner with Brother and family.

Charge 3: Before leaving Green River, we stopped at EA (Green River Coffee). Tried using the apple pay EA card again with no luck, so I used my CC again. Came in with 29% and left with 76% which would get me to Price UT. 64 miles.

Charge 4: Another ChargePoint that worked like a charm 125kW charger but averaged about 40kW. After 27 min added 106miles enough to get me to Orem. Best thing was this was a free charging station. Thanks Price City Council.

Charge 5: Another ChargePoint located at Orem City Justice center. Which charged for 29min adding 31% to the car.

Charge 6: EA at Walmart. Plugged in, had to use CC again and went into Walmart to purchase drinks and snacks and hoped to come back to car with 80% charge. Instead came back to find the car at a charge fault after 2% added. Frustrated we called EA and they introduced me to why the Plug and charge wasnā€™t working. I tried to enable in the app and it wouldnā€™t enable. They walked me though how to use the EA app to kick it off, which I did and then went to get food while it charged 54% giving us enough to make it to the next charging station in Heyburn Id.

While getting food called Ford who transferred me to about 5 people before giving up and telling me that they would have to open a ticket with a different team that they gave me the number to. We disconnected and headed out and made the call to the ford team that would open the ā€œcaseā€ to track down why I couldnā€™t enable plug&charge. While on hold my daughter tried to enable it again in the app and viola it worked. Hooray, hung up the call and was excited to test it at the next stop

Charge 7: EA location at a Sinclair Stinker station. Plugged in, the car was recognized and started to charge. After 3 minutes charger fault. Started it again got 8% then charger fault. Swapped to different spot and it started got 2% and fault, went to 3rd location charged 1% and fault. Pulled into 4th and last option and got 9% then fault. Called EA again and they rebooted the 4th charging station and then gave me free charge which they initiated, got 48% more and we had enough for the next leg. Which was Mountain Home Idaho (just outside of Boise).

Charge 8: EA at Walmart in Mountain Home, pulled in with 2% tried to use plug and charge but was hit with the payment declined error that people were seeing. I was in a hurry since I was late getting to dinner at this point and time so I disabled P&C and then used my CC to add 29% to get me easily into Boise.

Charge 9: EA at Walmart Boise, Turned on P&C prior and tried it with the normal error. Went back to disabling the feature and used my CC. Brother picked us up and we went and had dinner. About 45 minutes later I realized my ford app was blowing up in my pocket and it was telling me that we needed to move the vehicle since it was idle. I looked and it only got 3% added before a charge fault had happened. Drove back to the car and tried to charge again on different station made another 24% before fault, swapped another location 12% then fault, another 17% fault, and called they rebooted and were able to get another 18% and we headed out. We had called and the hotel said they had EV chargers, I asked what kind they said Tesla. I told them that wouldnā€™t work for me which they then said, we have 1 normal charger. I thought that would be a bonus to charge overnight on a Type 2. Headed up Blue pass in Oregon on route to the next EA station 89 miles away.

Charge 10: Strangely this EA station was 5 miles off of i84 at a cute country store. It was around 11:30pm at this point and as we pulled in we could see one of the chargers were stuck at a bootup screen. We went to the second one and plugged it in and nothing. Frozen at the welcome screen. Wouldnā€™t do anything so we moved to the 3rd station, plugged in fine but when it came time to pay it had an error with payment machine. Moved over to station 4 and it just hung at initiating charge. Called EA support and they rebooted it didnā€™t fix it so they had me move to the one with the faulty credit card machine and planned on giving me a free charge so we moved over started the charge and same thing. Wouldnā€™t start the charge. At this point the EA agent told me they would put a free charge on my account and there was nothing they could do for me. I was 44 miles from the hotel with 60ish miles till empty and heading up the hill. We took off with no other option but try to make the hotel and use the L2 charger. Again pushing up to a summit and watching the miles buffer disappear, to the point that ford warned me again that I wasnā€™t going to make my destination which I quickly turned off hoping my 14 and 15 year old daughter wouldnā€™t notice the alarm. Happily we hit the summit with 5 miles of buffer and coasted down to Baker City Ore for the night.

CCNotWorking.jpg


Charge 11: We pulled into the hotel at 12:30am. I drove over to where the Superchargers were looking for the lone L2 charger and didnā€™t see it so I pulled up to the front and went in to check in and get directions, he mentioned that there were a couple of places where I could plug into a 110v socket. I had about 10 miles of charge and had 44 miles until the next DC, so sitting around for 30 hours to charge enough wasnā€™t going to work. He apologized and said he didnā€™t know that it would be so slow to charge with 110 when he mentioned he did have a 220 on the property. I perked up and asked if we could go look at it. Sure enough was the proper socket and plugged in and charged at 14miles/hr. Slept for 5 1/2 which added 89miles making the trip to La Grande (40 miles away) within reach.

Charge 12: EA at Walmart La Grande. 3% added before fault, then called EA fed up and they comped me 47% the second run and it worked fine. The EA guy asked me to turn on my P&C setting for the next charge

Charge 13: EA at Space Age fuel in Hermiston Or, pulled in with 22% and shocker P&C did not work. Went to disable so I could use my CC again and shocker there was no cellular signal here so I couldnā€™t get the app to load. Luckily the gas station had public wifi which was good enough for me to disable P&C and charge with CC up to 75% charge when it faulted, and was enough to get us to next location EA in Yakima Wa

Charge 14: EA at Walmart, had 4 faults total before charging it from 16 to 58% which would get us to Ellensburg Wa

Charge 15: EA at Taco Bell, had 2 faults but was able to get from 46% up to 69% which was more than enough to get me home into the Seattle area.

Observations:

  • Car drives great, however with the cold weather my tires were sitting between 40-42PSI which made it a bit bumpy
  • Co-Pilot works mostly great, it biases to the right which will freak you out when passing Semi trucks.
  • I never hit more than 70kW during charging. Averaged probably in the 45kW range which would be a non-starter if I was going to use it for distance driving. I did not buy it for distance driving, just commuting and having fun near home
  • Never had an issue with a ChargePoint station but tons of issues with EA, in fact I averaged around 70kW with Chargepoint and only around 40kW with EA.
  • People seem to like the color and look of this vehicle, lots of people giving a thumbs up or catching up to me to take a look at the car
  • This car is way to easy to get a speeding ticket


Damage to the car:

  • After getting home I took it to a car wash (PNW people it is the Brown Bear on Avondale Redmond Wa). They said I was the first Mach-E they had seen, car was nice and clean getting the crap from the drive off the car. Later that night while getting stuff from the trip from the trunk I notice my rear wiper had disappeared. Called the car wash in the morning and sure enough it was there. He told my wife when she picked it up that if there is a problem with it to call them back. It is broken I ordered the new part 45.00 be in Wednesday. Car wash admitted that trouble vehicles that they are aware of they put a special bag over to avoid damage to it but the attendant had never seen the Mach-e and didnā€™t know if it would be an issue.
  • Noticed my front windshield had taken a rock to the upper passenger corner which made it crack making a triangle in the edge.
All in all the trip was just shy of 1500 miles and was a fun drive, if it werenā€™t for the slow and faulty charging sessions the trip would have been much more enjoyable. Having the one EA station not work at all was unacceptable and thank God the hotel had that 220v. Thought I was going to be using my free roadside service to drive us to LaGrande. My daughters thought it was comfortable to ride in, and I let my 15 year old drive one of the legs and she really enjoyed it and I liked that she was assisted by copilot.
How much of total kWh used for entire trip and how much it cost?
 

jhalkias

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I want to start this post with a statement that even with some of what you will hear in this post, I emphatically love this car.

As noted in previous posts, I ended up finding a GB FE from Longmont Colorado who honored the X-Plan pricing and were very pleasant to deal with. Compared to my local dealers in Seattle area with GBā€™s asking for 7-10k ADM.

Day 1: Flight(s) was cancelled due to 4th largest snowstorm in Denver history with 27ā€ of snow in 24 hours.

Day 2: caught the 5am flight from Sea to Den
20210316_120954684_iOS.png


getting me to the dealer and out the door by noon.

mycar.png


Which kicked off the first leg. Travel 277 miles to Grand Junction to have dinner with Brother-in-law and nephew. The dealer had the car at 100% charged which with the current weather = 176 miles. My original plan was to stop in Frisco @ 105 miles, but ford decided I could make it to Vail (130 miles). Which sounds like somewhere I would have stopped anyway to check it out. Everything was great, had 176 charge and 130 miles to go. The elevation in Denver is 4700ft and there are two summits between Denver and Vail going over 10,000 ft. By the time I was over the first summit that ā€œBufferā€ went from 43 miles to about 10 with 25 miles left to get to Vail. In hindsight I should have stopped here as PlugShare recommended. Instead, I followed Fords recommendation. About 15 miles later my buffer is down under 5 miles and shortly after that Ford tells me that I am not going to make it and I should look for alternate charging station. I considered heading back down the hill to Frisco, but was fairly confident I was almost over the next summit and would be downhill to Vail which is what happened. Ended up pulling into Vail with around 13 miles left.

Charge 1: The charger was in the garage and was easy to use (ChargePoint which I have tons of experience with at home and work). Sadly it was DANG expensive and only 62.5kW charger. After 56min we added 155 miles enough for the next leg of our trip. Overall the experience was great other than wishing it was a 150kW or higher charger.

Charge 2: We made it to Sams club EA charger where we plugged in hoping the plug and charge would just work. It did not, so I ended up buying a membership on EA and loaded their card with 40.00 which also didnā€™t work. So I stuck my credit card in the machine and ended up paying 43cents/kWh Went and had a pleasant dinner with the Bro-In-Law and nephew The car came in with 9% and left with 96%. All in all the experience was pleasant even though I hadnā€™t figured out how to make the Plug and Charge to work. (Yet)

Cousins.jpg



Ended the day in Green River Utah

Day 3: Plan was to make it to Boise Id to have dinner with Brother and family.

Charge 3: Before leaving Green River, we stopped at EA (Green River Coffee). Tried using the apple pay EA card again with no luck, so I used my CC again. Came in with 29% and left with 76% which would get me to Price UT. 64 miles.

Charge 4: Another ChargePoint that worked like a charm 125kW charger but averaged about 40kW. After 27 min added 106miles enough to get me to Orem. Best thing was this was a free charging station. Thanks Price City Council.

Charge 5: Another ChargePoint located at Orem City Justice center. Which charged for 29min adding 31% to the car.

Charge 6: EA at Walmart. Plugged in, had to use CC again and went into Walmart to purchase drinks and snacks and hoped to come back to car with 80% charge. Instead came back to find the car at a charge fault after 2% added. Frustrated we called EA and they introduced me to why the Plug and charge wasnā€™t working. I tried to enable in the app and it wouldnā€™t enable. They walked me though how to use the EA app to kick it off, which I did and then went to get food while it charged 54% giving us enough to make it to the next charging station in Heyburn Id.

While getting food called Ford who transferred me to about 5 people before giving up and telling me that they would have to open a ticket with a different team that they gave me the number to. We disconnected and headed out and made the call to the ford team that would open the ā€œcaseā€ to track down why I couldnā€™t enable plug&charge. While on hold my daughter tried to enable it again in the app and viola it worked. Hooray, hung up the call and was excited to test it at the next stop

Charge 7: EA location at a Sinclair Stinker station. Plugged in, the car was recognized and started to charge. After 3 minutes charger fault. Started it again got 8% then charger fault. Swapped to different spot and it started got 2% and fault, went to 3rd location charged 1% and fault. Pulled into 4th and last option and got 9% then fault. Called EA again and they rebooted the 4th charging station and then gave me free charge which they initiated, got 48% more and we had enough for the next leg. Which was Mountain Home Idaho (just outside of Boise).

Charge 8: EA at Walmart in Mountain Home, pulled in with 2% tried to use plug and charge but was hit with the payment declined error that people were seeing. I was in a hurry since I was late getting to dinner at this point and time so I disabled P&C and then used my CC to add 29% to get me easily into Boise.

Charge 9: EA at Walmart Boise, Turned on P&C prior and tried it with the normal error. Went back to disabling the feature and used my CC. Brother picked us up and we went and had dinner. About 45 minutes later I realized my ford app was blowing up in my pocket and it was telling me that we needed to move the vehicle since it was idle. I looked and it only got 3% added before a charge fault had happened. Drove back to the car and tried to charge again on different station made another 24% before fault, swapped another location 12% then fault, another 17% fault, and called they rebooted and were able to get another 18% and we headed out. We had called and the hotel said they had EV chargers, I asked what kind they said Tesla. I told them that wouldnā€™t work for me which they then said, we have 1 normal charger. I thought that would be a bonus to charge overnight on a Type 2. Headed up Blue pass in Oregon on route to the next EA station 89 miles away.

Charge 10: Strangely this EA station was 5 miles off of i84 at a cute country store. It was around 11:30pm at this point and as we pulled in we could see one of the chargers were stuck at a bootup screen. We went to the second one and plugged it in and nothing. Frozen at the welcome screen. Wouldnā€™t do anything so we moved to the 3rd station, plugged in fine but when it came time to pay it had an error with payment machine. Moved over to station 4 and it just hung at initiating charge. Called EA support and they rebooted it didnā€™t fix it so they had me move to the one with the faulty credit card machine and planned on giving me a free charge so we moved over started the charge and same thing. Wouldnā€™t start the charge. At this point the EA agent told me they would put a free charge on my account and there was nothing they could do for me. I was 44 miles from the hotel with 60ish miles till empty and heading up the hill. We took off with no other option but try to make the hotel and use the L2 charger. Again pushing up to a summit and watching the miles buffer disappear, to the point that ford warned me again that I wasnā€™t going to make my destination which I quickly turned off hoping my 14 and 15 year old daughter wouldnā€™t notice the alarm. Happily we hit the summit with 5 miles of buffer and coasted down to Baker City Ore for the night.

CCNotWorking.jpg


Charge 11: We pulled into the hotel at 12:30am. I drove over to where the Superchargers were looking for the lone L2 charger and didnā€™t see it so I pulled up to the front and went in to check in and get directions, he mentioned that there were a couple of places where I could plug into a 110v socket. I had about 10 miles of charge and had 44 miles until the next DC, so sitting around for 30 hours to charge enough wasnā€™t going to work. He apologized and said he didnā€™t know that it would be so slow to charge with 110 when he mentioned he did have a 220 on the property. I perked up and asked if we could go look at it. Sure enough was the proper socket and plugged in and charged at 14miles/hr. Slept for 5 1/2 which added 89miles making the trip to La Grande (40 miles away) within reach.

Charge 12: EA at Walmart La Grande. 3% added before fault, then called EA fed up and they comped me 47% the second run and it worked fine. The EA guy asked me to turn on my P&C setting for the next charge

Charge 13: EA at Space Age fuel in Hermiston Or, pulled in with 22% and shocker P&C did not work. Went to disable so I could use my CC again and shocker there was no cellular signal here so I couldnā€™t get the app to load. Luckily the gas station had public wifi which was good enough for me to disable P&C and charge with CC up to 75% charge when it faulted, and was enough to get us to next location EA in Yakima Wa

Charge 14: EA at Walmart, had 4 faults total before charging it from 16 to 58% which would get us to Ellensburg Wa

Charge 15: EA at Taco Bell, had 2 faults but was able to get from 46% up to 69% which was more than enough to get me home into the Seattle area.

Observations:

  • Car drives great, however with the cold weather my tires were sitting between 40-42PSI which made it a bit bumpy
  • Co-Pilot works mostly great, it biases to the right which will freak you out when passing Semi trucks.
  • I never hit more than 70kW during charging. Averaged probably in the 45kW range which would be a non-starter if I was going to use it for distance driving. I did not buy it for distance driving, just commuting and having fun near home
  • Never had an issue with a ChargePoint station but tons of issues with EA, in fact I averaged around 70kW with Chargepoint and only around 40kW with EA.
  • People seem to like the color and look of this vehicle, lots of people giving a thumbs up or catching up to me to take a look at the car
  • This car is way to easy to get a speeding ticket


Damage to the car:

  • After getting home I took it to a car wash (PNW people it is the Brown Bear on Avondale Redmond Wa). They said I was the first Mach-E they had seen, car was nice and clean getting the crap from the drive off the car. Later that night while getting stuff from the trip from the trunk I notice my rear wiper had disappeared. Called the car wash in the morning and sure enough it was there. He told my wife when she picked it up that if there is a problem with it to call them back. It is broken I ordered the new part 45.00 be in Wednesday. Car wash admitted that trouble vehicles that they are aware of they put a special bag over to avoid damage to it but the attendant had never seen the Mach-e and didnā€™t know if it would be an issue.
  • Noticed my front windshield had taken a rock to the upper passenger corner which made it crack making a triangle in the edge.
All in all the trip was just shy of 1500 miles and was a fun drive, if it werenā€™t for the slow and faulty charging sessions the trip would have been much more enjoyable. Having the one EA station not work at all was unacceptable and thank God the hotel had that 220v. Thought I was going to be using my free roadside service to drive us to LaGrande. My daughters thought it was comfortable to ride in, and I let my 15 year old drive one of the legs and she really enjoyed it and I liked that she was assisted by copilot.
Great report! Thanks for being a charging pioneer!
 

Mirak

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Congratulations on the gorgeous new car. Iā€™m sorry about the damage.

I completed a similar but shorter road trip to pick up my grabber blue, also from Colorado, but I only had to drive 500 miles back to Wichita. Stopped 4 times to charge, all at EA 150kW stations.

Plug & Charge is a disaster, as you unfortunately leaned. EA worked fantastic for me but I usually had to call EA to manually initiate my charge because P&C was messing it all up.
 

The ICTVillain

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Plug and Charge worked for me at two EA stations on my road trip to DFW and back to ICT.

I also find the lane keep assist is biased to the right... passing folks can be annoying since you have to actively fight the system.
 
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Ixoye

Ixoye

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How much of total kWh used for entire trip and how much it cost?
it doesn't look like I will be able to figure out how many kW it took based on the tools I have, but I just looked at all of the CC, Chargepoint, EA and Fordpass. I paid a total of $125.90 + 100kW of my 250kW from Ford.
 

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I want to start this post with a statement that even with some of what you will hear in this post, I emphatically love this car.

As noted in previous posts, I ended up finding a GB FE from Longmont Colorado who honored the X-Plan pricing and were very pleasant to deal with. Compared to my local dealers in Seattle area with GBā€™s asking for 7-10k ADM.

Day 1: Flight(s) was cancelled due to 4th largest snowstorm in Denver history with 27ā€ of snow in 24 hours.

Day 2: caught the 5am flight from Sea to Den
20210316_120954684_iOS.png


getting me to the dealer and out the door by noon.

mycar.png


Which kicked off the first leg. Travel 277 miles to Grand Junction to have dinner with Brother-in-law and nephew. The dealer had the car at 100% charged which with the current weather = 176 miles. My original plan was to stop in Frisco @ 105 miles, but ford decided I could make it to Vail (130 miles). Which sounds like somewhere I would have stopped anyway to check it out. Everything was great, had 176 charge and 130 miles to go. The elevation in Denver is 4700ft and there are two summits between Denver and Vail going over 10,000 ft. By the time I was over the first summit that ā€œBufferā€ went from 43 miles to about 10 with 25 miles left to get to Vail. In hindsight I should have stopped here as PlugShare recommended. Instead, I followed Fords recommendation. About 15 miles later my buffer is down under 5 miles and shortly after that Ford tells me that I am not going to make it and I should look for alternate charging station. I considered heading back down the hill to Frisco, but was fairly confident I was almost over the next summit and would be downhill to Vail which is what happened. Ended up pulling into Vail with around 13 miles left.

Charge 1: The charger was in the garage and was easy to use (ChargePoint which I have tons of experience with at home and work). Sadly it was DANG expensive and only 62.5kW charger. After 56min we added 155 miles enough for the next leg of our trip. Overall the experience was great other than wishing it was a 150kW or higher charger.

Charge 2: We made it to Sams club EA charger where we plugged in hoping the plug and charge would just work. It did not, so I ended up buying a membership on EA and loaded their card with 40.00 which also didnā€™t work. So I stuck my credit card in the machine and ended up paying 43cents/kWh Went and had a pleasant dinner with the Bro-In-Law and nephew The car came in with 9% and left with 96%. All in all the experience was pleasant even though I hadnā€™t figured out how to make the Plug and Charge to work. (Yet)

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Ended the day in Green River Utah

Day 3: Plan was to make it to Boise Id to have dinner with Brother and family.

Charge 3: Before leaving Green River, we stopped at EA (Green River Coffee). Tried using the apple pay EA card again with no luck, so I used my CC again. Came in with 29% and left with 76% which would get me to Price UT. 64 miles.

Charge 4: Another ChargePoint that worked like a charm 125kW charger but averaged about 40kW. After 27 min added 106miles enough to get me to Orem. Best thing was this was a free charging station. Thanks Price City Council.

Charge 5: Another ChargePoint located at Orem City Justice center. Which charged for 29min adding 31% to the car.

Charge 6: EA at Walmart. Plugged in, had to use CC again and went into Walmart to purchase drinks and snacks and hoped to come back to car with 80% charge. Instead came back to find the car at a charge fault after 2% added. Frustrated we called EA and they introduced me to why the Plug and charge wasnā€™t working. I tried to enable in the app and it wouldnā€™t enable. They walked me though how to use the EA app to kick it off, which I did and then went to get food while it charged 54% giving us enough to make it to the next charging station in Heyburn Id.

While getting food called Ford who transferred me to about 5 people before giving up and telling me that they would have to open a ticket with a different team that they gave me the number to. We disconnected and headed out and made the call to the ford team that would open the ā€œcaseā€ to track down why I couldnā€™t enable plug&charge. While on hold my daughter tried to enable it again in the app and viola it worked. Hooray, hung up the call and was excited to test it at the next stop

Charge 7: EA location at a Sinclair Stinker station. Plugged in, the car was recognized and started to charge. After 3 minutes charger fault. Started it again got 8% then charger fault. Swapped to different spot and it started got 2% and fault, went to 3rd location charged 1% and fault. Pulled into 4th and last option and got 9% then fault. Called EA again and they rebooted the 4th charging station and then gave me free charge which they initiated, got 48% more and we had enough for the next leg. Which was Mountain Home Idaho (just outside of Boise).

Charge 8: EA at Walmart in Mountain Home, pulled in with 2% tried to use plug and charge but was hit with the payment declined error that people were seeing. I was in a hurry since I was late getting to dinner at this point and time so I disabled P&C and then used my CC to add 29% to get me easily into Boise.

Charge 9: EA at Walmart Boise, Turned on P&C prior and tried it with the normal error. Went back to disabling the feature and used my CC. Brother picked us up and we went and had dinner. About 45 minutes later I realized my ford app was blowing up in my pocket and it was telling me that we needed to move the vehicle since it was idle. I looked and it only got 3% added before a charge fault had happened. Drove back to the car and tried to charge again on different station made another 24% before fault, swapped another location 12% then fault, another 17% fault, and called they rebooted and were able to get another 18% and we headed out. We had called and the hotel said they had EV chargers, I asked what kind they said Tesla. I told them that wouldnā€™t work for me which they then said, we have 1 normal charger. I thought that would be a bonus to charge overnight on a Type 2. Headed up Blue pass in Oregon on route to the next EA station 89 miles away.

Charge 10: Strangely this EA station was 5 miles off of i84 at a cute country store. It was around 11:30pm at this point and as we pulled in we could see one of the chargers were stuck at a bootup screen. We went to the second one and plugged it in and nothing. Frozen at the welcome screen. Wouldnā€™t do anything so we moved to the 3rd station, plugged in fine but when it came time to pay it had an error with payment machine. Moved over to station 4 and it just hung at initiating charge. Called EA support and they rebooted it didnā€™t fix it so they had me move to the one with the faulty credit card machine and planned on giving me a free charge so we moved over started the charge and same thing. Wouldnā€™t start the charge. At this point the EA agent told me they would put a free charge on my account and there was nothing they could do for me. I was 44 miles from the hotel with 60ish miles till empty and heading up the hill. We took off with no other option but try to make the hotel and use the L2 charger. Again pushing up to a summit and watching the miles buffer disappear, to the point that ford warned me again that I wasnā€™t going to make my destination which I quickly turned off hoping my 14 and 15 year old daughter wouldnā€™t notice the alarm. Happily we hit the summit with 5 miles of buffer and coasted down to Baker City Ore for the night.

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Charge 11: We pulled into the hotel at 12:30am. I drove over to where the Superchargers were looking for the lone L2 charger and didnā€™t see it so I pulled up to the front and went in to check in and get directions, he mentioned that there were a couple of places where I could plug into a 110v socket. I had about 10 miles of charge and had 44 miles until the next DC, so sitting around for 30 hours to charge enough wasnā€™t going to work. He apologized and said he didnā€™t know that it would be so slow to charge with 110 when he mentioned he did have a 220 on the property. I perked up and asked if we could go look at it. Sure enough was the proper socket and plugged in and charged at 14miles/hr. Slept for 5 1/2 which added 89miles making the trip to La Grande (40 miles away) within reach.

Charge 12: EA at Walmart La Grande. 3% added before fault, then called EA fed up and they comped me 47% the second run and it worked fine. The EA guy asked me to turn on my P&C setting for the next charge

Charge 13: EA at Space Age fuel in Hermiston Or, pulled in with 22% and shocker P&C did not work. Went to disable so I could use my CC again and shocker there was no cellular signal here so I couldnā€™t get the app to load. Luckily the gas station had public wifi which was good enough for me to disable P&C and charge with CC up to 75% charge when it faulted, and was enough to get us to next location EA in Yakima Wa

Charge 14: EA at Walmart, had 4 faults total before charging it from 16 to 58% which would get us to Ellensburg Wa

Charge 15: EA at Taco Bell, had 2 faults but was able to get from 46% up to 69% which was more than enough to get me home into the Seattle area.

Observations:

  • Car drives great, however with the cold weather my tires were sitting between 40-42PSI which made it a bit bumpy
  • Co-Pilot works mostly great, it biases to the right which will freak you out when passing Semi trucks.
  • I never hit more than 70kW during charging. Averaged probably in the 45kW range which would be a non-starter if I was going to use it for distance driving. I did not buy it for distance driving, just commuting and having fun near home
  • Never had an issue with a ChargePoint station but tons of issues with EA, in fact I averaged around 70kW with Chargepoint and only around 40kW with EA.
  • People seem to like the color and look of this vehicle, lots of people giving a thumbs up or catching up to me to take a look at the car
  • This car is way to easy to get a speeding ticket


Damage to the car:

  • After getting home I took it to a car wash (PNW people it is the Brown Bear on Avondale Redmond Wa). They said I was the first Mach-E they had seen, car was nice and clean getting the crap from the drive off the car. Later that night while getting stuff from the trip from the trunk I notice my rear wiper had disappeared. Called the car wash in the morning and sure enough it was there. He told my wife when she picked it up that if there is a problem with it to call them back. It is broken I ordered the new part 45.00 be in Wednesday. Car wash admitted that trouble vehicles that they are aware of they put a special bag over to avoid damage to it but the attendant had never seen the Mach-e and didnā€™t know if it would be an issue.
  • Noticed my front windshield had taken a rock to the upper passenger corner which made it crack making a triangle in the edge.
All in all the trip was just shy of 1500 miles and was a fun drive, if it werenā€™t for the slow and faulty charging sessions the trip would have been much more enjoyable. Having the one EA station not work at all was unacceptable and thank God the hotel had that 220v. Thought I was going to be using my free roadside service to drive us to LaGrande. My daughters thought it was comfortable to ride in, and I let my 15 year old drive one of the legs and she really enjoyed it and I liked that she was assisted by copilot.
Something you might be interested in for future road trips is a Tesla Tap adapter that will let you use a Tesla Destination charger (not a Tesla Super Charger) with your Mach-E. The Tesla Tap Mini would be convenient to travel with and be a good backup on the road or at home if you happen to have a Tesla Wall Charger as I do and use it for home charging of my Mach-E.
http://www.umc-j1772.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=17
 

AllenXS

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Something you might be interested in for future road trips is a Tesla Tap adapter that will let you use a Tesla Destination charger (not a Tesla Super Charger) with your Mach-E. The Tesla Tap Mini would be convenient to travel with and be a good backup on the road or at home if you happen to have a Tesla Wall Charger as I do and use it for home charging of my Mach-E.
http://www.umc-j1772.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=17
With the destination charger, can anyone (with a tap) plug in there?
 

methorian

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My biggest advice to you, is to not ever use the Credit card readers on these. For one you get charged the highest amount possible. 2nd is that its also not reliable. If you activate it from the app, it bypasses the whole authentication step and just goes right to charging. Even if you have P&C enabled, it skips that part.

Pull up to the station, find it on the app, swipe to activate, then plug in the connector. This has been the most reliable way for me to use EA stations. P&C has worked every time for me, but, I also get random "Vehicle Protocol" errors when It get activated with P&C.
This is my experience as well. Even when P&C works, I've more commonly got faults during the charging session.

Using the EA app to activate the charger is much faster and more reliable so far. Hoping P&C will eventually catch up.
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