Lightning & Trailer Road Trip with J3400/NACS-adapter

[ChasingCoral]

We are on our second multi-month road trip in the Lightning pulling our 24' travel trailer. My thanks to @Ford Motor Company for providing us with one of the prototype NACS to CCS1 adapters and an early install of the PowerUp and backend certificate for Plug & Charge. The trip traveled south from Maryland to the Georgia coast, west to the Florida Gulf coast, and we are ending our westward journey in Texas for the eclipse in April. After that we'll head home via an inland (more northerly) route once the weather's warmer.

We've been charging on Superchargers for about ten days now, and here's the good and the bad, many are exactly as expected.

Good:

• Superchargers are much more reliable than the CCS networks. I've rarely seen a dead charger and the app notifies you in advance which one is dead so you can avoid it.
• Charging session initiation is faster using the Tesla app than any other app except perhaps ChargePoint.
• Charging session initiation is faster using Plug & Charge with Tesla than with Electrify America.
• Plug & Charge with Tesla has worked every time.
• A large percentage of sites have one or two "side-mounted" chargers that are more friendly for Ford EVs and EVs pulling trailers.
• There has always been room to charge despite issues of charge ports and cable length.
• There are generally more Superchargers than CCS chargers.
• The combination of Superchargers and CCS chargers has opened up routes I couldn't have taken last year.
• I've had several good discussions with Tesla drivers who have been happy to see this move. No one has been upset (yet).

Bad:

• Creative parking is a must as
  • Ford EVs have their charge ports in the wrong place for Tesla chargers.
  • Cables are too short.
• Lack of displays on v3 chargers means you have to rely on the Tesla and Ford Pass apps for lots of things:
  • If a charger is down, only the Tesla app really tells you.
  • Your FordPass app is all you have to tell you your charging speed and %SOC
• Tesla discount charging requires activation of charging sessions in the app -- P&C will only give you the retail price (just like EA).
• A problem had cropped us so that I could P&C at Superchargers but not at EA chargers. Ford seems to have fixed this by adjusting the certificates on the back end.
• We have found a number of supercharger locations not open to Fords. The only reliable way to know is to check the Tesla app. We've had useable Tesla chargers not show up in Charge Assist and chargers found in Charge Assist that were not useable.

The next few days of our trip will be along the Florida panhandle, hugging the Gulf coast through Apalachicola, Panama City, and across to Pensacola. This would not have been possible without the adapter. In fact, it will require both Superchargers and CCS DCFCs. Usual range is about 100 miles between charges but is usually dictated by the spacing between chargers, not the battery.

Here are a number of photos of our creative parking. We have not had to unhook to charge yet. The picture of our Lightning charging without the trailer was a session when running around Raleigh without the trailer.It still shows how Lightnings without trailers benefit from the "side saddle" chargers.

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[dbsb3233]

Great report, Mark!

Hopefully the lack of screens on Tesla chargers ratchets up the pressure on Ford to add the current charging power (kW) inside the vehicle on the driver display or Sync screen.

 

[macchiaz-o]

Hopefully the lack of screens on Tesla chargers ratchets up the pressure on Ford to add the current charging power (kW) inside the vehicle on the driver display or Sync screen.

Until that happens, we can see charge rate via FordPass.

 

[dbsb3233]

Until that happens, we can see charge rate via FordPass.

Yeah but I know that can be slow to update at times. At least for SOC, so I assume the power level too.

I wonder if it still shows the kW if the session was started via the Tesla app instead (to get the Tesla membership discount)?

 

[macchiaz-o]

Yeah but I know that can be slow to update at times. At least for SOC, so I assume the power level too.

I wonder if it still shows the kW if the session was started via the Tesla app instead (to get the Tesla membership discount)?

I haven't tried, but my guess is that the kW display is charger agnostic. It should work with dumb chargers, too. The value may be lower than what the charge station displays due to cabling and electronics-related losses.

 

[ChasingCoral]

Yeah but I know that can be slow to update at times. At least for SOC, so I assume the power level too.

Correct. There can be lots of variations in power that you won't see on the FP app. The only way to track it well is with an OBDII and an app like Car Scanner.

@Ford Motor Company: Please add charging information to the Sync screen. We've only been asking for three years now!

I wonder if it still shows the kW if the session was started via the Tesla app instead (to get the Tesla membership discount)?

Yes. You can track it with either the FordPass app or the Tesla app.

 

[AhardFSU]

Good report Mark and thank you. Sometimes I feel like Ford may not want to add the charging info to Sync bc they fear something else may break if they do. I think that I will rely on the Tesla app to find out which V3 stations are open to non-Tesla vehicles. I have noticed in the past week that the Tesla app and website have added more V3 stations that weren't listed when the network officially opened on Feb 29.

 

[silverelan]

@Ford Motor Company: Please add charging information to the Sync screen. We've only been asking for three years now!

Charging kW and Amps are on the 2024 Lightning. Hopefully it gets OTA’d to the MME too.

source:

 

[TheSteelRider]

Charging kW and Amps are on the 2024 Lightning. Hopefully it gets OTA’d to the MME too.

source:

This is fantastic! Now, we just need to wait 3 years before it rolls out to us in an OTA!

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