Los Angeles to San Diego and back, great until we needed to charge

[AllenXS]

Thankfully I've only had good charging from EA and EC. Some of the others are a pain.
Seems I should avoid going to Southern California!

Sponsored

 

[RickMachE]

So this past weekend we took a brief trip from Los Angeles to San Diego. It's approximately 120-130ish miles of travel. I had charged the Mach-E to 90%. GOM showed 300+ miles. Great. My family and I hop in, put on good music and head to San Diego. We get there without issue and have a great day. We drove around to other places and still had plenty of charge left. However, at the end of the day it was apparent I needed a charge as I only had 100 miles of range and I have a 130 mile trip back home. So I punch in my home address into the Mach-E navigation and it points out that I need to charge and there is an EA station just 10 minutes away.

We navigate to the nearest EA station. Completely full, with one car already in line waiting to charge. I open the EA app on my phone and see there is another EA station about 15 minutes away. So I drive to the next EA station. One stall available, plug in, pay and we're charging. Awesome. 20 minutes pass and I notice we've barely added 6ish miles. I look on the EA screen and it says it's charging at 12KWh. I once again open the EA app and see there is another station about 30 minutes away from my current location, thankfully it was on the way home.

I make it to the third EA station:
Charging stall 1: Fails to connect/charge
Charging stall 2: Fails to connect/charge
Charging stall 3: In use by another vehicle
Charging stall 4: Connects and charges. Charged for 15 minutes. Wife angry and kids cranky.

Got home.

I'm seriously rethinking my Mach-E purchase due to the charging network. What should have been a 20 minute stop to charge for 15 minutes turned into almost 1 and a half hour endeavor. My family refuses to do any more long trips on the Mach-E.

I empathize with what you experienced. But I'd note several things that could have made the trip better, some are already mentioned:

1) Charge to 90% instead of 100% before a trip like this. Had you done that, you MAY not have needed to charge on the way home.

2) BEFORE YOU LEAVE, lay out the trip and note where possible charging locations are. Look each one up on PlugShare and read the historical comments.

3) BEFORE HEADING TO ANY STATION, look it up both on the app (EA) as well as PlugShare. You would have known that the first location was full and not headed there, or that the second and third locations had issues and waited at the first location.



Report every bad charger with EA's app, and in PlugShare.

 

[Mauser]

They call them EC (Electrify Canada) up here, but I avoid these chargers if at all possible. Are there any other options around California?

I've had no problems with EC so far. However, the Petro Canada infrastructure is AMAZING, they're just hard to find ATM. I've seen more popping up though.

 

[jason330i]

my wife actually wants to take our mach-e from los angeles to las vegas. but seriously, i don't want to deal with crap like this.

 

[Tampamike]

my wife actually wants to take our mach-e from los angeles to las vegas. but seriously, i don't want to deal with crap like this.

She said she wants to take the MachE, not you.

 

[jason330i]

She said she wants to take the MachE, not you.

so true.

 

[AKgrampy]

I think @RickMachE meant charge to 100% vs 90% before heading out.

 

[4sallypat]

my wife actually wants to take our mach-e from los angeles to las vegas. but seriously, i don't want to deal with crap like this.

We are going to do the same run with a group of 70+ other EVs in a couple of weeks.
https://fthepump.com/zero-runs

Looks like fun to see 70+ EVs in a group formation from San Bernardino to Las Vegas with 1 stop in Baker.

Organizer had to close the online entries because of the number of Teslas that wanted to join due to limited number of SuperChargers at Baker, CA.

They are still taking more participants that use CCS charging (MME, Lightning, Polestar, Lucid, Rivian, etc). Plenty of CCS DCFC at Baker available so if you want to join, contact the organizer.

Since I am still waiting for the 2022 MME, I am taking the Lightning along with the organizer who also has a Lightning and his wife is taking a flashy Tesla - see the video and see if you can recongize hers.

 

[dmastro]

I empathize with what you experienced. But I'd note several things that could have made the trip better, some are already mentioned:

1) Charge to 90% instead of 100% before a trip like this. Had you done that, you MAY not have needed to charge on the way home.

2) BEFORE YOU LEAVE, lay out the trip and note where possible charging locations are. Look each one up on PlugShare and read the historical comments.

3) BEFORE HEADING TO ANY STATION, look it up both on the app (EA) as well as PlugShare. You would have known that the first location was full and not headed there, or that the second and third locations had issues and waited at the first location.



Report every bad charger with EA's app, and in PlugShare.

Fair advice given the current reality of EV charging networks; however, charging needs to become as convenient (if not as fast) as filling up with gas to support continuing growth of EV adoption. For a day road trip, it's not reasonable to have to intently research charging possibilities.

 

[njb]

I don't know if this will make you feel any better but we have a Tesla and have similar issues from time to time. Stations being out of order, full of cars and not charging fast, or just full of cars and you have to wait. It used to be easier (although there were fewer stations to choose from). More cars more problems. Tesla is building more stations along the routes we take so that will help too but it's very stressful when you are out in between superchargers and the one you are heading towards to charge changes to "out of order for service" but doesn't say why, for how long, and if this applies to all of the units so we had to start looking for nearby destination chargers just in case as the only other superchargers were behind us or out of range. Luckily there was only a couple of them being worked on when we got there and we could charge (at a slightly reduced rate though but better than a destination).

 

[Blue highway]

So this past weekend we took a brief trip from Los Angeles to San Diego. It's approximately 120-130ish miles of travel. I had charged the Mach-E to 90%. GOM showed 300+ miles. Great. My family and I hop in, put on good music and head to San Diego. We get there without issue and have a great day. We drove around to other places and still had plenty of charge left. However, at the end of the day it was apparent I needed a charge as I only had 100 miles of range and I have a 130 mile trip back home. So I punch in my home address into the Mach-E navigation and it points out that I need to charge and there is an EA station just 10 minutes away.

We navigate to the nearest EA station. Completely full, with one car already in line waiting to charge. I open the EA app on my phone and see there is another EA station about 15 minutes away. So I drive to the next EA station. One stall available, plug in, pay and we're charging. Awesome. 20 minutes pass and I notice we've barely added 6ish miles. I look on the EA screen and it says it's charging at 12KWh. I once again open the EA app and see there is another station about 30 minutes away from my current location, thankfully it was on the way home.

I make it to the third EA station:
Charging stall 1: Fails to connect/charge
Charging stall 2: Fails to connect/charge
Charging stall 3: In use by another vehicle
Charging stall 4: Connects and charges. Charged for 15 minutes. Wife angry and kids cranky.

Got home.

I'm seriously rethinking my Mach-E purchase due to the charging network. What should have been a 20 minute stop to charge for 15 minutes turned into almost 1 and a half hour endeavor. My family refuses to do any more long trips on the Mach-E.

Whooo hooo! Solo Roadtrips!... er... sorry... that isn't where this was supposed to go.

We really do need more/better charge infrastructure. 3 years from now, I do think things will be better (more costly, but more available)

I also think there is a bubble, especially in So Cal, where EV sales are way ahead of chargers. Times, they are a changin.

 

[Blue highway]

We are going to do the same run with a group of 70+ other EVs in a couple of weeks.
https://fthepump.com/zero-runs

Looks like fun to see 70+ EVs in a group formation from San Bernardino to Las Vegas with 1 stop in Baker.

Organizer had to close the online entries because of the number of Teslas that wanted to join due to limited number of SuperChargers at Baker, CA.

They are still taking more participants that use CCS charging (MME, Lightning, Polestar, Lucid, Rivian, etc). Plenty of CCS DCFC at Baker available so if you want to join, contact the organizer.

Since I am still waiting for the 2022 MME, I am taking the Lightning along with the organizer who also has a Lightning and his wife is taking a flashy Tesla - see the video and see if you can recongize hers.

Wow, 70 EVs all stuck because the chargers in Baker are broken... that will be headlines on the news. kidding aside, this sounds cool.

 

[dbsb3233]

We've done over 15,000 miles of road trips in our Mach-e over the last 2 years, across CO/UT/NV/CA/AZ/NM. Roughly 100 DCFCs, probably 80 of those at EA. Out of those 80, we only left a station without a charge one time. And that was because the station was full (Barstow) and we still had enough to make it to the next station (Baker).

Many of those (maybe 30%) had an issue on the 1st attempt. Usually it was as simple as moving to the next charger. But in a few cases we had to call EA for a remote start. One time we had to settle for only 31kW as all the chargers at that station were experiencing power issues. But all the others got decent speed (within 20% of the norm, anyway).

I know we've been pretty lucky though. At some point we'll run across a station that just plain fails to work, as we see numerous reports of. That's why I always try to plan our stops to leave enough power in the battery to make it to a backup charger just in case. We commonly live in the 30-80% area on road trips, although there's always a few routes that we have no choice but to stretch it to a do-or-die charger. Fortunately we haven't 'died' yet.

Overall our experience has been quite good at EA. It's usually our first choice for location, consistency of power and pricing, ease of use, and # of chargers at each station. But it is getting tougher as so many more CCS EVs hit the roads each month. EA still has a lot of work to do to be as good as the gas station network. But we thank goodness that EA exists. We wouldn't be able to do a fraction of these bi-monthly road trips without them.

 

[ARK]

Sorry to hear about this. One suggestion I would have when doing trips like this where you might need a single, partial charge at some point (and assuming you can't overnight charge) is to keep your eyes open as to where you might be able to charge before heading home, while at your destination city.

Like if you were at 60% capacity once you reached San Diego, and the restaurant you were going to eat at had a L2 charger or even slow L3 charger a couple of blocks away, go and plug in then rather than making a specific charging stop on the way back.

 

[dbsb3233]

I think @RickMachE meant charge to 100% vs 90% before heading out.

Yep, clearly just a typo. Yes, no reason not to charge 100% on L2 to start the day (typically home or hotel) when you have the chance during a road trip. Throw out the 90% "better for the battery" cap when road-tripping. Some full charges here and there won't hurt the battery at all, and it's far more beneficial during a road trip. Could mean the difference between making it to a backup charger or not if the one you planned to stop at is full and/or broken.

Sponsored