One day road trip in a BEV.

[ajmartineau]

This road trip story is more for the new BEV owners. You members that have been driving on electric for a while might find this silly, simple, and a waste of time.

I wanted to see what it would feel like(the rhythm of it) to make a bunch of quick stops during an all-day road trip. This is to simulate driving at 70+ mph for a sustained distance and being able to recharge in 20 minutes, gaining 100+ miles. I don't have a Mach-E or Porche or Tesla, although I guess I could rent one. I do have a MB 250e that can go just over 100 miles in the summer, and it can't fast charge, but it is a dream to drive(google it). I also have a Chevy Bolt which is basically the opposite of that. The trip I planned could be done in either car, although in the Mercedes it would take a long time. There were no working DCFCs on my route.

Here is the route. My plan was to mimic going to a destination, hanging out for 1/2 a day, and then driving the rest of the day to another location. What I did was drive to the beach, hung out a couple of days then drove home the long way around.
Here is the route on the Chevy app. Not all my stops are listed there.

The Chevy app is pretty good. It can predict range accurately even over a mountain pass. You can't save your trips like you can in Plugshare but customizing the stops is quick and easy. If you don't have cell service, it won't help you. I set most of the stops to only add 1% battery.

We made it to our first stop, the beach, at 53%. The app said it would be 54%. We had the A/C on for a bit.

We plugged in and charged to about 95%. I then unplugged and did not plug in again until we were on the way back two days later. While we were there, we drove around town for 20-30 miles at 20-40mph. We were just under 90% when we left.

On the way back we made a lot of unnecessary stops to mimic the timing of the stops that the Mach-E will do on a freeway road trip. I also wanted to do some check-ins on Plugshare. Some of these chargers haven't had a check-in for months, but I know they get used. I hate it when I am planning a trip and there hasn't been a check-in at a charger for months. Can I depend on it to be working? Is it still there? We all need to check-in when we use a charger. And take the few minutes to report the bad ones and/or post a picture that makes them easier to find. If you don't report a broken charger, they don't get fixed. You can bet that when a Tesla Supercharger goes down, the Tesla drivers are bugging customer support daily until it is fixed. (that's a big reason the supercharger network is better, it's our fault)

The trip back...
We made two 5 minute stops along the coast about 20 minutes after we began our trip back. It was just long enough to post a review and take a picture. Both are places you could easily spend time exploring or whatever.

I saw that the Tesla destination charger across the street that was blocked, so I did a check-in for that one also.

The third stop was for just over 30 minutes. I'll call it "lunch." Really we just walked along the lake and found a restroom that was semi-Covid safe.

Lake Quanalt Resort, very nice! I may go back to this one.

We ran into some trouble after lunch!

Ok, not really. They are replacing 6 or 7 bridges along this section of Hwy 101. The road went down to one lane multiple times. With no cell service for miles, a closed road could be a problem. You should know where your backup chargers are and road conditions. Until chargers are at most every gas station (or have replaced them), these issues may give you anxiety.

Our next stop was at the beach again. I know this charger gets used every day, but the last check-in was 2 weeks ago.

We were the fourth car to plug-in. This stop was about 15 minutes. We walked down to the beach and back.

Next, we stopped in Forks, where they made those Twilight movies. We didn't see any vampires as it was the middle of the afternoon. This isn't a good place to get a charge because it's nearly a mile off the main drag. That's where you could walk to get a "bite." It's the only charger for a long while, so an old Leaf driver might be forced to stop here. ...and there was no shade!

If you are seeing these pictures and thinking to yourself that we have great weather and beautiful scenery here in the Pacific Northwest, don't. This is the one weekend a year it doesn't rain. It never looks like this. That's why everything is so green and mossy. It's so wet, it kills everything. Look at this tree we passed.

And as you can see our beaches are super crowded.

... (sarcasm)

Ok, after Forks where we only stayed for long enough to realized we didn't want to stay, we headed off to our last charging stop. We stopped in Port Angeles. There is a charger right on the waterfront. We were there for about an hour and a half. We sat down to eat dinner outside a brewery and then walked around to find some ice cream. We did find some, and it was great! We didn't "wait" at all for the charger.

This gave us enough to have a 50-mile buffer to make it home. There is a DCFC in town that has been broken for a long time. I think the owner disconnected it from the network, just a theory. After we filled up, I went over to the broken DCFC and tried to charge. I went through all steps, called in, and did them all again. It's a Greenlots charger and they were very nice on the phone. I've never had a bad charging company customer service person. Hopefully, they fix that charger.

We then stopped at the Walmart just out of town. This Walmart shows as a future EA site on Plugshare and the EA website. I was very disappointed to see that they haven't broken ground yet. Hopefully soon.

We made it home with 17% battery left. Most of the driving was under 60mph so the efficiency for the entire trip was very high. Hwy 101 is slow as it's mostly a curvey, hilly, two-lane road, with a lot of motorhomes.

These screenshots or from the Bolt when we arrived home.

I learned that stopping for 10 minutes or less felt rushed. I didn't have time to do everything I needed to do.
Always look at the picture of where the plugs are, it will help you find it. The "pin" on Plugshare is normally very accurate.
It's not a waste of time to plug in for a short time on a free L2 charger, that 10-20 miles might be the difference of being able to skip a stop.

All the stops on this trip were 6-7kW L2 chargers, they were all free, none of them were blocked, I didn't have to wait in line one, and they all worked.

I hope this was helpful, as I am not the best writer.

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[JamieGeek]

Very useful as not everyone has an EV and thus they can learn--all of us can.

Your Bolt is newer than mine: You have the benefit of the charge-to-level setting (I have only "full" and "hilltop reserve").

 

[highland58]

I've travelled that same route in my Clarity, but the majority of it was ICE. I charged a couple of times, at a laundromat in Port Townsend for some free L2 while eating lunch, and overnight via the 120V charger that comes with the car. Our trip included the Hoh Rain Forest and we spent the night at Seiku.

 

[macchiaz-o]

This was great. Your writing is just fine. You're now yet another Pacific Northwesterner who says, "these photos make this look like paradise but PLEASE PLEASE do not come here it's so awful argh-oh-no."

 

[dbsb3233]

Thanks for the report. For a leisurely, slower-speed trip with a lot of stops like that, looks like it can be very doable. (Quite different than a longer, higher-speed "just get there" trip.)

The efficiency of the lighter Bolt makes it far more doable too. A 4.5 miles/kWh is pretty amazing. The MME will probably be in the low-3's on that same route. (And the mid-high-2's at 75-80 MPH.)

 

[ajmartineau]

In the Mach-E, on the freeway at 70+, with DCFC chargers, this trip could have been from Seattle to San Fransico with similar ~30-minute type and number of stops, at least that's what I was trying to reproduce. To me, the speed of the car and chargers, as well as the distance traveled is irrelevant. It's about the stop and go rhythm of quick stops instead of 55kW stops of the Bolt or gasoline stops of your ICE. I don't eat or pee in my car so I have to stop sometime.

In the end, it felt fine to travel this way. It is very similar to riding a motorcycle a long distance. I really don't like traveling long distances in the Bolt because the stops are too long. The Mach-E stops will be fewer and take 1/3 of the time. Now I know I will be compromising when I pick it up.

 

[JamieGeek]

A GM engineer did say that if you put your foot down flat out as fast as the Bolt can go (I think its goverened somewhere in the mid 80s mph) you can go 180 miles.

I've done that trip (basically 90 miles to destination and back) quite a few times at 70 mph and that leaves me with 10 - 25 miles "in the tank" at the end of the trip. I'm to the point that I'm very comfortable going 180 miles in the Bolt.

I figure the 300 mile MME will get me 250 miles comfortably.

 

[dbsb3233]

The Mach-E stops will be fewer and take 1/3 of the time. Now I know I will be compromising when I pick it up.

You certainly COULD do shorter stops more often in the MME. There's nothing limiting someone from doing more stops (other than losing time, of course). The limit is on the upper end (i.e. longer legs that require fewer stops).

 

[MerryBrown]

This road trip story is more for the new BEV owners. You members that have been driving on electric for a while might find this silly, simple, and a waste of time.

I wanted to see what it would feel like(the rhythm of it) to make a bunch of quick stops during an all-day road trip. This is to simulate driving at 70+ mph for a sustained distance and being able to recharge in 20 minutes, gaining 100+ miles. I don't have a Mach-E or Porche or Tesla, although I guess I could rent one. I do have a MB 250e that can go just over 100 miles in the summer, and it can't fast charge, but it is a dream to drive(google it). I also have a Chevy Bolt which is basically the opposite of that. The trip I planned could be done in either car, although in the Mercedes it would take a long time. There were no working DCFCs on my route.

Here is the route. My plan was to mimic going to a destination, hanging out for 1/2 a day, and then driving the rest of the day to another location. What I did was drive to the beach, hung out a couple of days then drove home the long way around.
Here is the route on the Chevy app. Not all my stops are listed there.

The Chevy app is pretty good. It can predict range accurately even over a mountain pass. You can't save your trips like you can in Plugshare but customizing the stops is quick and easy. If you don't have cell service, it won't help you. I set most of the stops to only add 1% battery.

We made it to our first stop, the beach, at 53%. The app said it would be 54%. We had the A/C on for a bit.

We plugged in and charged to about 95%. I then unplugged and did not plug in again until we were on the way back two days later. While we were there, we drove around town for 20-30 miles at 20-40mph. We were just under 90% when we left.

On the way back we made a lot of unnecessary stops to mimic the timing of the stops that the Mach-E will do on a freeway road trip. I also wanted to do some check-ins on Plugshare. Some of these chargers haven't had a check-in for months, but I know they get used. I hate it when I am planning a trip and there hasn't been a check-in at a charger for months. Can I depend on it to be working? Is it still there? We all need to check-in when we use a charger. And take the few minutes to report the bad ones and/or post a picture that makes them easier to find. If you don't report a broken charger, they don't get fixed. You can bet that when a Tesla Supercharger goes down, the Tesla drivers are bugging customer support daily until it is fixed. (that's a big reason the supercharger network is better, it's our fault)

The trip back...
We made two 5 minute stops along the coast about 20 minutes after we began our trip back. It was just long enough to post a review and take a picture. Both are places you could easily spend time exploring or whatever.

I saw that the Tesla destination charger across the street that was blocked, so I did a check-in for that one also.

The third stop was for just over 30 minutes. I'll call it "lunch." Really we just walked along the lake and found a restroom that was semi-Covid safe.

Lake Quanalt Resort, very nice! I may go back to this one.

We ran into some trouble after lunch!

Ok, not really. They are replacing 6 or 7 bridges along this section of Hwy 101. The road went down to one lane multiple times. With no cell service for miles, a closed road could be a problem. You should know where your backup chargers are and road conditions. Until chargers are at most every gas station (or have replaced them), these issues may give you anxiety.

Our next stop was at the beach again. I know this charger gets used every day, but the last check-in was 2 weeks ago.

We were the fourth car to plug-in. This stop was about 15 minutes. We walked down to the beach and back.

Next, we stopped in Forks, where they made those Twilight movies. We didn't see any vampires as it was the middle of the afternoon. This isn't a good place to get a charge because it's nearly a mile off the main drag. That's where you could walk to get a "bite." It's the only charger for a long while, so an old Leaf driver might be forced to stop here. ...and there was no shade!

If you are seeing these pictures and thinking to yourself that we have great weather and beautiful scenery here in the Pacific Northwest, don't. This is the one weekend a year it doesn't rain. It never looks like this. That's why everything is so green and mossy. It's so wet, it kills everything. Look at this tree we passed.

And as you can see our beaches are super crowded.

... (sarcasm)

Ok, after Forks where we only stayed for long enough to realized we didn't want to stay, we headed off to our last charging stop. We stopped in Port Angeles. There is a charger right on the waterfront. We were there for about an hour and a half. We sat down to eat dinner outside a brewery and then walked around to find some ice cream. We did find some, and it was great! We didn't "wait" at all for the charger.

This gave us enough to have a 50-mile buffer to make it home. There is a DCFC in town that has been broken for a long time. I think the owner disconnected it from the network, just a theory. After we filled up, I went over to the broken DCFC and tried to charge. I went through all steps, called in, and did them all again. It's a Greenlots charger and they were very nice on the phone. I've never had a bad charging company customer service person. Hopefully, they fix that charger.

We then stopped at the Walmart just out of town. This Walmart shows as a future EA site on Plugshare and the EA website. I was very disappointed to see that they haven't broken ground yet. Hopefully soon.

We made it home with 17% battery left. Most of the driving was under 60mph so the efficiency for the entire trip was very high. Hwy 101 is slow as it's mostly a curvey, hilly, two-lane road, with a lot of motorhomes.

These screenshots or from the Bolt when we arrived home.

I learned that stopping for 10 minutes or less felt rushed. I didn't have time to do everything I needed to do.
Always look at the picture of where the plugs are, it will help you find it. The "pin" on Plugshare is normally very accurate.
It's not a waste of time to plug in for a short time on a free L2 charger, that 10-20 miles might be the difference of being able to skip a stop.

All the stops on this trip were 6-7kW L2 chargers, they were all free, none of them were blocked, I didn't have to wait in line one, and they all worked.

I hope this was helpful, as I am not the best writer.

 

[MerryBrown]

Thank you, this is really interesting. This will be my first BEV and I am really curious about how to make it fit into my life.

 

[ChasingCoral]

Thank you, this is really interesting. This will be my first BEV and I am really curious about how to make it fit into my life.

Biggest difference: every morning when you get up and go to the car, the battery is charged. Very different from your gas tank.

 

[JamieGeek]

Biggest difference: every morning when you get up and go to the car, the battery is charged. Very different from your gas tank.

If you remember to plug it in every day.

If you so choose you can drive it like you would your existing gas car: Drive it until the "tank" gets to a low specific point (say a 1/4 tank) and then plug it in. The next morning its full.

I do it both ways: In winter the Bolt gets plugged in nightly so that its charged and the BMS can heat the battery. In summer, when it doesn't need that, I only plug it in about twice a week (even longer with the whole stay-at-home-covid stuff--I think its been over a week now since I've plugged in the Bolt).

When the range gets above 200 or so miles you have a bit more of a luxury than the days of the <100 mile cars (Leaf, Focus Electric, etc.).

 

[ChasingCoral]

If you remember to plug it in every day.

If you so choose you can drive it like you would your existing gas car: Drive it until the "tank" gets to a low specific point (say a 1/4 tank) and then plug it in. The next morning its full.

I do it both ways: In winter the Bolt gets plugged in nightly so that its charged and the BMS can heat the battery. In summer, when it doesn't need that, I only plug it in about twice a week (even longer with the whole stay-at-home-covid stuff--I think its been over a week now since I've plugged in the Bolt).

When the range gets above 200 or so miles you have a bit more of a luxury than the days of the <100 mile cars (Leaf, Focus Electric, etc.).

True. Either way it happens overnight while you sleep and doesn't require you to remember to plan for and add a stop along your way.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

My general game plan for charging the MME (bear in mind I've never owned a BEV) is to let in run down to about 1/4 or so, then charge it up after the daily errands are done in the morning. Hawaii's off-peak hours are 9 am to 5 pm daily due to the rather huge amount of PVE supplying the grid. Maximum rates are actually overnight. Plus I'm in a better situation, we have 36 solar panels and a 16kWh battery storage system. Getting the MME charged early allows the PVE system to fill the batteries as well.

Other than that it'll get charged close to full whenever there's a genuine threat of a hurricane making landfall on the island.

 

[dbsb3233]

Biggest difference: every morning when you get up and go to the car, the battery is charged. Very different from your gas tank.

This is probably being nitpicky, but I'd call that the biggest benefit (overnight home charging at cheap residential rates) rather than the biggest difference. It's a great benefit though - perhaps the biggest reason for getting a BEV (if you can charge at home).

An equally big difference (maybe even more so) is on the other end of the scale though -- charging on the road (slow, more frequent, sometimes scarce, sometime nervous, usually more expensive, and requires a lot more pre-planning).

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