2,000-Mile Road Trip - A Much Better Experience

[BadgerGreg]

My last MME road trip, Stranded in Wisconsin: Mach E road trip fail, did not end well, so I approached my recent road trip with some trepidation. Last week (April 5-8), I had a business trip, traveling from Michigan to three of my company's offices in Louisville (KY), Nashville (TN), and Knoxville (TN), with a side trip to North Carolina to visit old friends, then back to Ann Arbor (MI). Round trip, just under 2,000 miles.

I'm back (and so is my MME), and I can say that this road trip was a huge success. Although I don't have BlueCruise yet, it didn't really matter, as many of the roads in Tennessee and North Carolina are too twisty to leave to a computer (and I'd rather engage the car myself on those stretches anyway).

A significant percentage (about 40%) of my electrons came from Level 2 charging, as I was able to charge up (usually for free) in the parking lot of each hotel. All in, I only spent about $130 on charging ($100 for DCFC and $30 for Level 2), which is well under half of what I would have spent fueling an ICE vehicle. My overall efficiency was 2.7 mi/kWh, which is pretty decent considering I drove through a fair amount of rain, snow, wind, and some colder than usual spring weather.

Key thoughts/takeaways:

1. Electrify America is reliable and fast; I trust no other charging network, especially for highway charging.
2. With the EA charger spacing and the charging curve (factoring in bladder limitations), the ideal charge session was from <5% to 65%. Usually about 25-30 minutes. I arrived at each destination with <10% SOC and relied on Level 2 overnight.
3. Ahem, EA: we need DCFC stations in West Virginia. WV is a black hole for CCS charging, and I had to navigate around (via Virginia) to get back to Michigan.
4. Ford needs to work on its navigation app (navigating to nearby chargers); when I would skip a charger (because I had adequate range to get to the next one), the navigation app got hung up on the charger I passed by and would tell me to turn around and head back, even after 20+ miles beyond that charger, even when it was obvious I had plenty of range for the next EA station. Even going to the nav menu and manually selecting the next charger didn't always work. In short, the nav system is still really flaky and needs a lot of work.
5. When charging to your next destination, give yourself at least a 30-mile buffer. I had multiple occasions when I'd charge from 5% to 65%, left with a 30-mile surplus to my next destination, and would arrive with less than a 5-mile buffer, even without drastically changing my driving style. If you encounter additional wind or wet weather, that buffer disappears quickly. I did have one nail-biter where I arrived with 0% SOC and 1 mile of indicated range. When in a pickle, it's easy to gain some range at the end of a segment by hanging out in the right lane and driving a bit below the speed limit for the last 5 +/- miles. It helped me once or twice.
6. When in Kentucky, buy bourbon. Lots of it.
7. A Better Route Planner is ok for planning, but it sucks at in-route navigation. Ditch it and stick with Waze or Ford's nav app.
8. I never had to wait for a charger; all charging sessions (Level 2 and 3) had open and available chargers.
9. The car has redeemed itself after my last road trip debacle; I'm not going to worry on my next road trip.
10. Range anxiety? A BIT of that on the long return trip when I relied solely on DCFC. I pushed the limits a bit and pulled into EA stations 3-4 times with less than 5% SOC. This anxiety would go away if DCFC was available, say, at a 50-mile interval. We're not there yet.

 

[RickMachE]

I solve the running out of EV charge problem by almost always charging to 80%. If the route calls for charging to 65%, then at the next location charging from 30 to 57%, if you charge to 80% you only need to charge from 45 to 57% at the next location AND you have a buffer on that first leg (and charging to 80% on the next leg gives you a buffer on that one).

I balance that against whether the station is in a per kW or per minute state.

I was happy to see someone posting efficiency of 2.7 besides me...

 

[Schmetsky]

Nice write up.

Were you generally looking at the GuessOMeter or would you use the percent of battery @ 2.7 mi/kWh to gage how far you could go? Was the range that the MME said pretty accurate?

 

[BadgerGreg]

I solve the running out of EV charge problem by almost always charging to 80%. If the route calls for charging to 65%, then at the next location charging from 30 to 57%, if you charge to 80% you only need to charge from 45 to 57% at the next location AND you have a buffer.

I balance that against whether the station is in a per kW or per minute state.

I LOVE the per-minute states because I pay about half as much as per-kWh locations.

The reason I often unplug at 65% is that the charging speed really starts to drop between 60%-70% (about 75 kW at 65% SOC) and I get a bit impatient. I’m hoping that Ford continues to improve the charging curve to get a higher sustained charging rate. 0-50% is pretty quick, but not so much after that.

 

[BadgerGreg]

Nice write up.

Were you generally looking at the GuessOMeter or would you use the percent of battery @ 2.7 mi/kWh to gage how far you could go? Was the range that the MME said pretty accurate?

I usually did the math myself. Using the SOC, I estimated total kWh available and multiplied by 2.5 (to be conservative). It can sneak up on you when you drive into worsening conditions. I was driving in dry sunny conditions (2.8 mi/kW) and it got cold and wet (2.3 mi/kW). That’s why the mileage buffer is important.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

I'm impressed with your willingness to go below about 15%. We've been nervous when we get below 20%. I think it's a holdover from driving craptastic old ICEs with dirty, rust gas tanks.

 

[BadgerGreg]

I'm impressed with your willingness to go below about 15%. We've been nervous when we get below 20%. I think it's a holdover from driving craptastic old ICEs with dirty, rust gas tanks.

 

[RickMachE]

Bingo. I planned our trip in early March based on 2.3. And I added 25 miles after to make sure I had no issues. Our first leg is 197 miles. I stopped for 30 minutes at a 25kW charger to add a buffer on the way down, but on the way back it was much warmer and I went the distance from 95% to 12% without fear.

My lowest was 3%, 9 miles. I couldn't take a picture because my wife would hit me.

When you're not near any chargers (i.e. West Virginia, boonies of Georgia), it's not fun especially at night in bad weather. We had to turn around when a road was closed, and I was looking at a detour to charge if necessary. Luckily the route went downhill rapidly, and regen actually raised the range as we went, so we got into a state park without a problem, and then charged at a campground spot.

 

[Spooky]

Nice report. Does the Waze app you mentioned route with suggested places to charge?

We initially didn't think we'd use the MME on roadtrips but starting to think maybe we should.

 

[BadgerGreg]

Nice report. Does the Waze app you mentioned route with suggested places to charge?

We initially didn't think we'd use the MME on roadtrips but starting to think maybe we should.

No, but I think the PlugShare app can use Waze to navigate to a known charger location. I also like Waze for the speed trap notifications

 

[Mathington]

Great trip summary and glad to hear that it worked out much better than your previous trip.

 

[Mike Halleman]

Basil Hayden, great choice. Cheers and great write up

 

[kkriskal]

Thank you for sharing, reading these reviews gives me confidence on taking my MME on a long road trip

 

[TheSeg]

Re: A Better Route Planner

I agree it's bad for turn-by-turn routing. On my pervious trip from SF to LA, I started with ABRP via CarPlay and it crashed 30 miles in, reverted to km, and started to freeze again. Switched to Apple Maps where I was able to Siri to my first charging stop.

ABRP is great for plotting a trip! I get a great sense of what the trip will be like. I'll keep using it in the future to plan other trips, especially for hotel planning. But on the road, I'll use Apple Maps.

 

[2FlyMache]

Re: A Better Route Planner

I agree it's bad for turn-by-turn routing. On my pervious trip from SF to LA, I started with ABRP via CarPlay and it crashed 30 miles in, reverted to km, and started to freeze again. Switched to Apple Maps where I was able to Siri to my first charging stop.

ABRP is great for plotting a trip! I get a great sense of what the trip will be like. I'll keep using it in the future to plan other trips, especially for hotel planning. But on the road, I'll use Apple Maps.

I'm interested in how Apple Maps does on a longer trip.

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