leeman
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2021
- Threads
- 73
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- 716
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- Location
- Outer space
- Vehicles
- 2021 Mach E GT
- Occupation
- Engineer
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- #1
My wife and I had an interesting experience today with our mock E and it was a good test to see if battery powered vehicles really are something that is as easy as a gas powered vehicle to on in certain situations.
Today we left the house with less than a full tank no pun intended anyways we drove to LA basically South Bay and thought hey we could probably hit one of the fast chargers in the area as the map noted many .
Unfortunately this wasn't the case there weren't many available in the ones that were were unavailable I went to six separate charging stations within the Bay Area including the ones around the mall the only fully functional charging area was one at the South Bay Mall I believe in Torrance that was all Tesla base they had something like over 20 and only five cars are on them and every single one of them was functional.
But let me step back a little further so I figured hey I'll use the Ford functionality to see where there's a local fast charger city of Torrance . Add the map service take me there to find out that in fact the fast charger was broken so I thought OK we'll all go to the electrify America at the mall I pull into a space the screen goes charger unavailable man comes running up to me at the same time and goes hey I was gonna park there well that's BMW drivers for you anyways that charging station was not available so I drove around a little bit picking maybe somebody would leave no no one left. At this point the vehicle was at 30% charge. And this is the first time I've had range anxiety or slight lack of ability to charge anxiety for lack of a better term. So I went to an EV go site that was all 240s unfortunately there was three cars there 10 places to charge all of them that weren't being in use were all broken they all had red lights meaning they didn't work. That's where I noticed that Tesla charging area look brand new looks like 20 stalls and only five cars. There is really something to be said for the Tesla infrastructure I think they know how to do it best but I could be wrong. So I went to this ChargePoint location at a city Park it noted a DC fast charger and multiple chargers one was working with one car on it the rest of them were broken including the fast charger. I went to another EVG location to find that all of the charging stations were unavailable. Back on the road again I have driven around within a 3 mile radius of the location I was at in Torrance trying to find a place to charge and top off a little bit while my wife was at her dentist appointment. Still looking for a place to go there were some charging stations available that were many miles away but you figured by the time you get there they're probably being taken I haven't looked for off busy areas such as banks parks and other locations that you wouldn't think would have a lot of people at them at this time but that just didn't work I ended up going back to the city of Torrance 240 V charger that was available there was one left thankfully it worked and I was able to add get this a whole 10 miles it's been an hour and 10 minutes to add 10 miles to the car I still had to drive to Culver City to meet up with friends for lunch with my wife I thought well maybe we can charge on the way back I didn't take much power to get to Culver City from Torrance which was the great news.
Not always trusting the MachE range statement we decided that we would have an experiment and see how far we could get to go before we ran really low the good news was the car performed really well when you left the radio off and the HVAC systems off and ended up getting back home with approximately 12% battery which I thought was pretty good considering freeway driving in about 70 on the way back kudos to Ford and having a longer range battery for sure.
I know this isn't the most eloquent piece of piece of writing but I wanted to say that if you don't leave home topped off you could always end up with some charging station anxiety or range anxiety because a lot of these locations that you think have a lot of chargers for our type of vehicles they tend to be out of service in the bay area in LA I found this to be true every time we went up into LA specially so keep that in mind if you're gonna go over 100 miles make sure you're got a full charge to make sure you can make it back don't rely on the charging infrastructure because it's always let me down everywhere I've went in Orange County in LA.
Today we left the house with less than a full tank no pun intended anyways we drove to LA basically South Bay and thought hey we could probably hit one of the fast chargers in the area as the map noted many .
Unfortunately this wasn't the case there weren't many available in the ones that were were unavailable I went to six separate charging stations within the Bay Area including the ones around the mall the only fully functional charging area was one at the South Bay Mall I believe in Torrance that was all Tesla base they had something like over 20 and only five cars are on them and every single one of them was functional.
But let me step back a little further so I figured hey I'll use the Ford functionality to see where there's a local fast charger city of Torrance . Add the map service take me there to find out that in fact the fast charger was broken so I thought OK we'll all go to the electrify America at the mall I pull into a space the screen goes charger unavailable man comes running up to me at the same time and goes hey I was gonna park there well that's BMW drivers for you anyways that charging station was not available so I drove around a little bit picking maybe somebody would leave no no one left. At this point the vehicle was at 30% charge. And this is the first time I've had range anxiety or slight lack of ability to charge anxiety for lack of a better term. So I went to an EV go site that was all 240s unfortunately there was three cars there 10 places to charge all of them that weren't being in use were all broken they all had red lights meaning they didn't work. That's where I noticed that Tesla charging area look brand new looks like 20 stalls and only five cars. There is really something to be said for the Tesla infrastructure I think they know how to do it best but I could be wrong. So I went to this ChargePoint location at a city Park it noted a DC fast charger and multiple chargers one was working with one car on it the rest of them were broken including the fast charger. I went to another EVG location to find that all of the charging stations were unavailable. Back on the road again I have driven around within a 3 mile radius of the location I was at in Torrance trying to find a place to charge and top off a little bit while my wife was at her dentist appointment. Still looking for a place to go there were some charging stations available that were many miles away but you figured by the time you get there they're probably being taken I haven't looked for off busy areas such as banks parks and other locations that you wouldn't think would have a lot of people at them at this time but that just didn't work I ended up going back to the city of Torrance 240 V charger that was available there was one left thankfully it worked and I was able to add get this a whole 10 miles it's been an hour and 10 minutes to add 10 miles to the car I still had to drive to Culver City to meet up with friends for lunch with my wife I thought well maybe we can charge on the way back I didn't take much power to get to Culver City from Torrance which was the great news.
Not always trusting the MachE range statement we decided that we would have an experiment and see how far we could get to go before we ran really low the good news was the car performed really well when you left the radio off and the HVAC systems off and ended up getting back home with approximately 12% battery which I thought was pretty good considering freeway driving in about 70 on the way back kudos to Ford and having a longer range battery for sure.
I know this isn't the most eloquent piece of piece of writing but I wanted to say that if you don't leave home topped off you could always end up with some charging station anxiety or range anxiety because a lot of these locations that you think have a lot of chargers for our type of vehicles they tend to be out of service in the bay area in LA I found this to be true every time we went up into LA specially so keep that in mind if you're gonna go over 100 miles make sure you're got a full charge to make sure you can make it back don't rely on the charging infrastructure because it's always let me down everywhere I've went in Orange County in LA.
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