First Mustang Mach E Road Trip ?

Jimrpa

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A few months ago, some buddies and I were trying to figure out where to go for a long weekend in the spring, when the pandemic lightened, and the weather warmed up a bit. Normally, I’m not the one who drives, but I was hoping I’d have my Mustang Mach E by then so I volunteered to be the driver.
We wanted to go someplace “different”, so I tossed out St. Michael’s, MD. I had said to there many years ago with a buddy and remembered it as being a nice little town and it wasn’t TOO far away. So, the plan was set. We were going to leave on Friday morning, May 7 and return Sunday May 9. By May we figured it should be warming up a bit and the weather should be decent.
On the drive down, I was using intelligent cruise control with lane centering and explaining that it was NOT self driving but that BlueCruise was coming later this year which would allow hands-free on select limited access roads. At about that time, a tractor trailer decided to cut me off, incredibly close, so the car pretty much began doing what could be best described as “very aggressive” braking and I quickly checked and swerved into the next lane to the left. The braking really startled them and I explained that ACC does do braking to maintain distance, but I did the sudden lane change.
They also made a comment about the “roller coaster” like ride (one guy compared it to the Rock n Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith.) I explained that I was using a mode called 1-pedal drive and turned it off. They definitely preferred the ride without 1-pedal drive. They found it less jerky.
They definitely did not like the concept of charging. We stopped at a harriett Tubman museum on our way down and there was a ChargePoint level 2 charger (so, of course, I had to download the app), but they had the charger installed way out in their grass parking lot, not in their paved parking lot! That didn’t impress them. Then, we got to the bed and breakfast we were staying at. They had assured me that they had a charger. And they did - at their OTHER in - 3/4 mile away! So, we drive to the other inn, and I was prepared with my TeslaTap (because they told me they only had a Tesla charger) but they actually had both a Tesla charger AND a J-1772 charger! I plug my car in and it begins charging, and the owner comes over and we begin talking. It turns out that Tesla had installed both of the charges FREE about 3 years ago - they just called him up out of the blue! We continued talking. He owns a model 3. Bought it the night Elon announced it, even before there were running models and, of course loves it. His son is planning on getting a Mustang Mach E though. I talked to him about the Mustang Mach E for a bit and showed it to him. He was very impressed. He loved the instrument panel and really liked the styling. By then, my friends had given up and begun walking back to town, in the rain, without umbrellas (sigh!) He offered to give me a lift back in his wife’s huge SUV (some Infiniti monster) and we saw my friends. We picked them up and headed back to town. We grabbed dinner that night. The next morning, we did the 3/4 mile walk in off and on rain back to the other inn to get my fully charged car and headed off to Assateague Island to see the ponies. It was raining off and on, and pretty cold and miserable, so there were no horses to be seen. We finally gave up and went to Ocean city for Lunch. After lunch, we headed back to St. Michael’s, only to discover the only road into town was closed because of a major accident. We turned around and went back to a Starbucks I then suggested we go hand out at a charger since we weren’t going to get back to st. Michael’s and the weather was deteriorating. I wasn’t paying attention and the first charger I went to was a Tesla Supercharger ? so we then went to Easton, which had FREE chargers in their town lot. Now it had begun pouring rain, but we hung out for about 40 minutes. My friends couldn’t believe my battery charge only went up by 2%. I kept trying to explain that it’s a BIG battery! The weather cleared and we decided to head back to St. Michael’s. Sync was claiming it was going to take us 2.5 hours and was taking us some bizarre route (Sync apparently thought the road was closed and didn’t know how to route when there was no valid route. I think it was “stalling” until it thought the route would clear). So, my friends immediately decided that sync was the worst piece of crap that had ever been developed, pulled out their iPhones and launched their beloved Waze, which confidently assured them we’d be there in 1/2 hour. I don’t have any Google (or Amazon) products on my phone and I try to use them as infrequently as possible, so I launched CarPlay and Apple Maps (of course, they think Apple Maps is a stupid toy that shouldn’t be used for “real” navigation”.) Apple Maps was using the same route their Waze was using with an ETA 20 minutes later. It turns out that there was one point where you could approach the accident scene from another road and the emergency services were alternating traffic between the two routes - the Apple Maps route and the Waze route. To shut these guys up, I took the turn that put me on the Waze route. We ended up at the exact same place, just a different line at the bottleneck. After that, I got to St. Michael’s with 17% charge left and parked the car in a nearby lot with ChargePoint chargers for the night.
Their conclusions:
  • Electric cars are fine for commuting, but the technology isn’t advanced enough to take them on road trips of any length (to quote one friend “Nobody is going to want to stop for an hour or more every 2-2 1/2 hours and wait while their car recharges! That’s stupid.” I tried to point out that you’re probably going maybe 4-4 1/2 hours between charges and he wasn’t having it. His attitude was that people get on the road at 6, drive straight through until noon, except for bathroom breaks, grab lunch and fuel, then continue on until they stop for the evening. He didn’t see how an electric car could do that. Oh well. Not my problem :D
  • Sync navigation sucks - this is a religious battle and you’ll never win it. Yea, sadly, Sync was faced with an edge case it couldn’t cope with. I would have gotten annoyed with Sync’s answer and failed over to Apple Maps.
  • 1-Pedal driving is very jerky like a roller coaster. I’m glad I finally have confirmation on that from people who are totally ignorant of electric cars in general and that complaint about the Mustang Mach E in particular. It is an issue. As soon as I switched off one pedal driving and drove the car “normally”, they were happy. So, it wasn’t my driving per se (unless you want to say it’s that I haven’t learned to to do 1-pedal driving
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A few months ago, some buddies and I were trying to figure out where to go for a long weekend in the spring, when the pandemic lightened, and the weather warmed up a bit. Normally, I’m not the one who drives, but I was hoping I’d have my Mustang Mach E by then so I volunteered to be the driver.
We wanted to go someplace “different”, so I tossed out St. Michael’s, MD. I had said to there many years ago with a buddy and remembered it as being a nice little town and it wasn’t TOO far away. So, the plan was set. We were going to leave on Friday morning, May 7 and return Sunday May 9. By May we figured it should be warming up a bit and the weather should be decent.
On the drive down, I was using intelligent cruise control with lane centering and explaining that it was NOT self driving but that BlueCruise was coming later this year which would allow hands-free on select limited access roads. At about that time, a tractor trailer decided to cut me off, incredibly close, so the car pretty much began doing what could be best described as “very aggressive” braking and I quickly checked and swerved into the next lane to the left. The braking really startled them and I explained that ACC does do braking to maintain distance, but I did the sudden lane change.
They also made a comment about the “roller coaster” like ride (one guy compared it to the Rock n Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith.) I explained that I was using a mode called 1-pedal drive and turned it off. They definitely preferred the ride without 1-pedal drive. They found it less jerky.
They definitely did not like the concept of charging. We stopped at a harriett Tubman museum on our way down and there was a ChargePoint level 2 charger (so, of course, I had to download the app), but they had the charger installed way out in their grass parking lot, not in their paved parking lot! That didn’t impress them. Then, we got to the bed and breakfast we were staying at. They had assured me that they had a charger. And they did - at their OTHER in - 3/4 mile away! So, we drive to the other inn, and I was prepared with my TeslaTap (because they told me they only had a Tesla charger) but they actually had both a Tesla charger AND a J-1772 charger! I plug my car in and it begins charging, and the owner comes over and we begin talking. It turns out that Tesla had installed both of the charges FREE about 3 years ago - they just called him up out of the blue! We continued talking. He owns a model 3. Bought it the night Elon announced it, even before there were running models and, of course loves it. His son is planning on getting a Mustang Mach E though. I talked to him about the Mustang Mach E for a bit and showed it to him. He was very impressed. He loved the instrument panel and really liked the styling. By then, my friends had given up and begun walking back to town, in the rain, without umbrellas (sigh!) He offered to give me a lift back in his wife’s huge SUV (some Infiniti monster) and we saw my friends. We picked them up and headed back to town. We grabbed dinner that night. The next morning, we did the 3/4 mile walk in off and on rain back to the other inn to get my fully charged car and headed off to Assateague Island to see the ponies. It was raining off and on, and pretty cold and miserable, so there were no horses to be seen. We finally gave up and went to Ocean city for Lunch. After lunch, we headed back to St. Michael’s, only to discover the only road into town was closed because of a major accident. We turned around and went back to a Starbucks I then suggested we go hand out at a charger since we weren’t going to get back to st. Michael’s and the weather was deteriorating. I wasn’t paying attention and the first charger I went to was a Tesla Supercharger ? so we then went to Easton, which had FREE chargers in their town lot. Now it had begun pouring rain, but we hung out for about 40 minutes. My friends couldn’t believe my battery charge only went up by 2%. I kept trying to explain that it’s a BIG battery! The weather cleared and we decided to head back to St. Michael’s. Sync was claiming it was going to take us 2.5 hours and was taking us some bizarre route (Sync apparently thought the road was closed and didn’t know how to route when there was no valid route. I think it was “stalling” until it thought the route would clear). So, my friends immediately decided that sync was the worst piece of crap that had ever been developed, pulled out their iPhones and launched their beloved Waze, which confidently assured them we’d be there in 1/2 hour. I don’t have any Google (or Amazon) products on my phone and I try to use them as infrequently as possible, so I launched CarPlay and Apple Maps (of course, they think Apple Maps is a stupid toy that shouldn’t be used for “real” navigation”.) Apple Maps was using the same route their Waze was using with an ETA 20 minutes later. It turns out that there was one point where you could approach the accident scene from another road and the emergency services were alternating traffic between the two routes - the Apple Maps route and the Waze route. To shut these guys up, I took the turn that put me on the Waze route. We ended up at the exact same place, just a different line at the bottleneck. After that, I got to St. Michael’s with 17% charge left and parked the car in a nearby lot with ChargePoint chargers for the night.
Their conclusions:
  • Electric cars are fine for commuting, but the technology isn’t advanced enough to take them on road trips of any length (to quote one friend “Nobody is going to want to stop for an hour or more every 2-2 1/2 hours and wait while their car recharges! That’s stupid.” I tried to point out that you’re probably going maybe 4-4 1/2 hours between charges and he wasn’t having it. His attitude was that people get on the road at 6, drive straight through until noon, except for bathroom breaks, grab lunch and fuel, then continue on until they stop for the evening. He didn’t see how an electric car could do that. Oh well. Not my problem :D
  • Sync navigation sucks - this is a religious battle and you’ll never win it. Yea, sadly, Sync was faced with an edge case it couldn’t cope with. I would have gotten annoyed with Sync’s answer and failed over to Apple Maps.
  • 1-Pedal driving is very jerky like a roller coaster. I’m glad I finally have confirmation on that from people who are totally ignorant of electric cars in general and that complaint about the Mustang Mach E in particular. It is an issue. As soon as I switched off one pedal driving and drove the car “normally”, they were happy. So, it wasn’t my driving per se (unless you want to say it’s that I haven’t learned to to do 1-pedal driving
I wouldn't necessarily say you suck at 1PD. ? I've noticed the same thing driving manual transmission cars at times. As the driver you know when a shift is coming, so it doesn't feel jerky to you at all. Passengers have no idea it's coming, so their heads bob a bit as you push in and let out the clutch.
 

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I've been driving one-pedal on the BMW i3 for the last five years and I have never had anyone claim that it was jerky. And believe me, my wife would tell me and I'm pretty sure that others would as well.

Now my experience with one-pedal on the MME is limited to an all too short test drive. But my impression was that it wasn't that much different than the i3. At the very first stop sign I came to, I stopped about 10 feet shorter than I wanted to, but after a few minutes I found I could finesse about as well as the i3.
 

malba2366

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This is the exact reason I won't take a road trip in an EV. It is just not worth messing around trying to charge a vehicle and the cost savings is minuscule when using fast charging.
 
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AllenXS

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It's been great on road trips. I started off small then build up to gain confidence. Still cautious. You were brave! You'll enjoy the next trip.
 


ARK

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Sorry to hear the trip didn’t go so well. I think the lesson here is that it is especially important to have a sense of where the L3 chargers are along your route and plan stops accordingly. You should really only plan to use L2 charging at your destination, i.e. overnight.
 

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Electric cars are fine for commuting, but the technology isn’t advanced enough to take them on road trips of any length (to quote one friend “Nobody is going to want to stop for an hour or more every 2-2 1/2 hours and wait while their car recharges! That’s stupid.” I tried to point out that you’re probably going maybe 4-4 1/2 hours between charges and he wasn’t having it. His attitude was that people get on the road at 6, drive straight through until noon, except for bathroom breaks, grab lunch and fuel, then continue on until they stop for the evening. He didn’t see how an electric car could do that. Oh well. Not my problem
They're actually closer to being right on that one. No way you're gonna get 4-4.5 hours of driving between charges on a road trip, unless only driving 35 MPH or something. Even 2-2.5 is a bit much at interstate speeds. 300 mile range isn't 300 miles of actual road trip distance. It's more like 150. 70-80 MPH speed cuts into range, arriving with at least 10% safety buffer cuts into range, starting at 80% after a DCFC cuts into range, climate control use cuts into range, etc.

And then we're slaves to the spacing of good chargers. On a recent 800 mile road trip, I averaged 117 miles between charges. That's less than 2 hours. But... the average charge was only about 25 minutes. So basically half hour stops. (That's at 150+ kW EA chargers. Would take a long longer on lower power.)
 

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1-Pedal driving is very jerky like a roller coaster. I’m glad I finally have confirmation on that from people who are totally ignorant of electric cars in general and that complaint about the Mustang Mach E in particular. It is an issue. As soon as I switched off one pedal driving and drove the car “normally”, they were happy. So, it wasn’t my driving per se (unless you want to say it’s that I haven’t learned to to do 1-pedal driving
1PD really takes a lot of finesse to keep from slowing down too abruptly (causing the annoying head-jerk). Thing is, the driver doesn't notice it as much because they know what's coming and subconsciously brace accordingly. But for passengers it can be super annoying until enough finesse is applied to slow down as gradually as a normal coast-then-brake pattern we're used to with ICE. That second of coasting while moving the foot from the gas pedal to the brake pedal really helps with a smoother transition. But in 1PD, it's immediate unless really finessed to be equally as gradual.

I tried it for a while then abandoned 1PD for traditional 2-pedal. But some people love it. I think it's worth testing out being a passenger while somebody else it driving 1PD though to really experience what it's like.
 

dbsb3233

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This is the exact reason I won't take a road trip in an EV. It is just not worth messing around trying to charge a vehicle and the cost savings is minuscule when using fast charging.
If the route is well covered (especially by EA), I don't find it to be bad, if not caring about taking 25% longer to get there. But that's a big IF. Without good 100+ kW charger coverage at the right spots and spacing, I wouldn't do it either. That's such a key requirement. Nor if one is in a hurry and time is of the essence.

There's usually no cost savings either, at least with EA rates. They tend to be roughly equal to what it costs per-mile for gas in a 25 MPG vehicle, and that's if using the EA Pass+ discount. At regular EA rates it's actually more than gas. Although I did find some free charging along the way that did actually make the total cost a bit cheaper than gas.
 

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1PD really takes a lot of finesse to keep from slowing down too abruptly (causing the annoying head-jerk). Thing is, the driver doesn't notice it as much because they know what's coming and subconsciously brace accordingly. But for passengers it can be super annoying until enough finesse is applied to slow down as gradually as a normal coast-then-brake pattern
Yes, but if you combine 1-pedal driving with adaptive cruise control the MME slows more gradually and there is less herky jerky motion unless someone cuts right in front of you. There are 4 settings on the distance gap adjustment. I find the cruise + 1 pedal a good combination.
 

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Yes, but if you combine 1-pedal driving with adaptive cruise control the MME slows more gradually and there is less herky jerky motion unless someone cuts right in front of you. There are 4 settings on the distance gap adjustment. I find the cruise + 1 pedal a good combination.
Agree about ACC. But that's the case whether 1PD is on or not. In fact the pedals aren't even used when ACC is in use. ACC is effectively 0PD.
 

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This sounds like an absolutely miserable trip and you friend is right. The delta between the time to fill up a gas tank vs charge a battery is too great.
 

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I'm going to say that you haven't figured out 1PD. It's like downshifting in a manual without the abrupt slowing with the downshift -- super smooth. I move between cars so every once in a while the first stop sign can be a jerky stop before I recalibrate, but that's about it.

The MME with adaptive cruise is just like any other vehicle with adaptive cruise. They all work about the same. My take is that the MME is better than 90% of the adaptive cruise vehicles on the market, which may simply be a function of the fact that the MME is a newer vehicle with current generation tech.

Some road trips would be fine assuming you understand what you're in for and can plan accordingly. We have members who have gone several thousand miles and didn't find it to be a big deal. However, you set up a situation which had a good probability of failure. First you took people who weren't prepared for travel with a BEV. Second you failed to adequately research the charging situation. For example, a quick look at plugshare should have told you that your B&B didn't have a charger as well as that you would need to use a slow Evgo charger. And before getting to that point I would have concluded that this area was not a great destination given the absence of fast DC chargers. (Again might or might not be a problem, depending on what you wanted to do and who you were doing it with).

I guess what I'm saying is that I totally agree with you that a BEV is not a good choice for many/most road trips, and certainly not if you are like your friend and want to drive six hours at a stretch. For these situations renting is a good solution. It's why God gave us Enterprise. LOL
 
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Waze is available on screen if you connect android auto/apple carplay.

Sounds like planning just wasn't as good. There's a lot of apps with my personal favorite being PlugShare, but there's also A Better Route Planner (ABPR) and the Electrify America app that could help planning the trip.

I've had the debate plenty with my family and friends over an electric vehicle.

For example, my mom's main concern was "what if you run out of electricity?!" well, what happens when you run out of gas? The car stops. You plan accordingly to make sure it doesn't happen in either vehicle.

Dad, "45 minutes to charge 10-80%? That's too long. I can fill my tank in a few minutes."
Sure, the charging can take time depending on a lot of factors. One of the biggest benefits to an EV is charging at home. How many trips to the gas station are you saving? Not only that but you're saving yourself the having to fuel up in the rain, cold, snow, etc. Sure you can still do it in charging stations, but you're paying a lot less to charge up than fueling (home charging costs me $8.8 0-100, and electrify america is about $10.8 0-80)

(Also, pre conditioning is much more than just a remote start. Also you can't really do it in a gas car if your garage is closed).

Friend "how do you plan a trip?" well, it's just like using waze or google maps. Sure the Sync app in the vehicle isn't great, I've seen some videos where the car tells people to charge for 9 hrs at 120v to make it to the next stop! Check out the apps, they make a huge difference!
 

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Just did some googling, and there are very few charging options on the Maryland Eastern Shore. No wonder you had such a miserable charging experience.

Some smart business person needs to point this out to Ocean City, and convince the city/state to give them huge kickbacks and tax waivers to open up an EV fast charger.
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