1500 mile round trip from north AZ to central CA ... finally NACS charging!

[SpaceEVDriver]

We just got home from a 1500 mile round trip from northern Arizona near Flagstaff to Cayucos, CA to spend some time on the beach. We got rained out, but the hills on the coast were worth the drive.

We decided to do two things differently on this trip and those two things didn't work out too well, but things weren't terrible. First, we decided to try to do NACS charging whenever the opportunity presented itself. Second, we took a different route for the first part of the trip.

We stopped for our first charge in Kingman and decided to use the Supercharger instead of our usual EA charger. I tried four posts. The first one charged for 2 kWh and quit while we were walking away. I tried three more and couldn't get any of them to work. We were planning to have dinner while waiting for the charge, so this wasted a total of 90 minutes of our time. After dinner, we moved on to Needles and charged at the EA charger without a problem.

Our new route wasn't as successful as we had hoped. The small highway (95 south from the 40) was full of very slow trucks that seemed to be avoiding the bigger freeways. So the first leg of the trip took more than an hour longer than it should have. We'll avoid that highway from now on. This route added another full hour to our drive, so at this point we were 2.5 hours behind. So much for trying new things. For these trips, we'll stick to Interstate 40.

The hotel we stayed at in Palm Springs advertised chargers, their desk people acted like several were available. And two of the six available plugs around the location were usable and were plugged in. None of the other chargers were working. The next morning, we went to a Supercharger. I tried a couple of posts and they didn't work. We moved on to an EA charger, but it was full. So we got on the 10 and went up to the EA/EVGo chargers at the Desert Hills Premium Outlets. They were empty when we committed to going, but the line was several cars deep by the time we arrived. We were down to about six miles of range. But also not interested in sitting and waiting, so we drove the mile back to the Supercharger. The first one we tried was missing a pin. The second one was offline, though the app didn't indicate that. We found a third one and that finally worked. We were getting a charge for the first time on a Supercharger! It took longer than I'm used to: We averaged about 60 kW instead of the 80-90 we get with EA chargers. But it charged, so... Yay!

That right pin is missing entirely.

(Finally charging on NACS!)

We made our way into the LA valley, picked up some family, and headed out toward the coast. We stopped in Santa Barbara for lunch and a charge. We got a second successful charge on NACS, but some jerk unplugged us. We were at 80% so I didn't escalate the situation, but... What kind of petty jerk thinks it's okay to disconnect a charging car that isn't theirs? Other than the jerk, we had a good second successful NACS charge.

With 80%, we were just fine getting up to Cayucos and the place we stayed assured us they had L2 chargers that were working, so we weren't worried about charging again. Their chargers did work! Yay!

We did a bunch of exploring the Cayucos and Morro Bay area the next couple of days, getting charged to 100% every night.

Then we headed home. We took mostly the same route home, but went through the Simi valley instead of through Pasadena. Lots of lemons are ripe! I was tempted to stop for fresh fruit, but my passengers wanted to get home. We didn't need to stop for a charge, so that was nice.

We stayed overnight with family. That night, I decided to try the NACS charging experience again. This time I found a charger that had a bunch of empty posts, so I didn't expect to be harassed by brand-T owners. Charge was again slower than I'm used to, but whatever, I got a pretty sunset photo.

On the drive home, we stopped for a quick restroom and charge break in Barstow. We decided to continue trying our luck with NACS. We went through five stalls before we found a working post. But we got another (slow) charge.

We stopped for lunch in Needles and charged at the NACS charger near the Wagon Wheel. Again, we got a good connection, this time on the first try. We had an okay lunch and got a decent charge. This time we reached about 70 kW average.

We stopped for a quick restroom break and super quick charge in Williams. We made it home with about 17%, which is more than I had hoped, but that restroom stop added a lot of charge and now I have to burn it off over the next few days.

At this point, we have had 5 successes out of 18 attempts to use the NACS charging. We tried several times with the Lightning, but I'm not sure the Lightning is up-to-date on software, so I should probably remove those from the count. Doing so means 5 successes out of 15 attempts, or 33% success rate with NACS. For the next several tens of thousands of miles, I will always choose a stopping place with a CCS1 charger nearby, but will continue to test NACS. The benefit of NACS seems to be that there are usually enough posts that even though many posts are out of order or won't talk to the car, the shear number of posts means there's still a chance to get a charge. But, I don't trust the NACS chargers at this point, so won't plan a leg that brings me to a NACS charger with a SoC so low that I can't make it to a CCS1 charger.

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[Mach-Lee]

From what I understand, that area is extremely well traveled by Teslas, so all the chargers get worn out faster. That damaged plug is pretty incredible, that could possibly ruin your adapter.

All the Superchargers I've tried have worked (only a handful so far), but I think around here they get much less usage so are more reliable.

Sad we need more people to fix these things but the exact opposite just happened.

Also why is there no "report a problem" button yet? That should be an industry-wide thing. If a half dozen people report a damaged connector, trucks should roll.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

From what I understand, that area is extremely well traveled by Teslas, so all the chargers get worn out faster. That damaged plug is pretty incredible, that could possibly ruin your adapter.

All the Superchargers I've tried have worked (only a handful so far), but I think around here they get much less usage so are more reliable.

Sad we need more people to fix these things but the exact opposite just happened.

Also why is there no "report a problem" button yet? That should be an industry-wide thing. If a half dozen people report a damaged connector, trucks should roll.

Yeah, this is a busy corridor.

There were always multiple posts with cables laying on the ground or sometimes inside the post structure, which I gathered is the signal that the post isn't usable. I didn't realize that when we came across the busted cable and we plugged it back in. I alerted one driver, but a second blew me off and apparently got a charge. I'm not entirely sure how or whether their vehicle received some damage, but good luck to them.

I am glad we have additional options, but at least on our usual paths, NACS isn't the panacea some people seen to want it to be. I've seen more inoperable NACS chargers than CCS1. And I've only looked at NACS chargers on two road trips. There are just so many more of them.

 

[emichnov]

That was not my experience at all. 31 NACS charging sessions on a 4400 miles east coast trip and we probably had 2 failed charging posts. Weird it could be so different.

 

[FordMachEGo]

Question. When the person unplugged you at the SC, what did they do with the adapter? Was it left plugged into the car?

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Question. When the person unplugged you at the SC, what did they do with the adapter? Was it left plugged into the car?

Yes, they left it plugged in. They were walking away from the vehicles when I arrived because FordPass alerted me to the stop charge. I was going back to move the car, assuming the sc had stopped me at 80% because the place was busy.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

That was not my experience at all. 31 NACS charging sessions on a 4400 miles east coast trip and we probably had 2 failed charging posts. Weird it could be so different.

That's great. I hope it stays that way.

 

[grein002]

From what I understand, that area is extremely well traveled by Teslas, so all the chargers get worn out faster. That damaged plug is pretty incredible, that could possibly ruin your adapter.

All the Superchargers I've tried have worked (only a handful so far), but I think around here they get much less usage so are more reliable.

Sad we need more people to fix these things but the exact opposite just happened.

Also why is there no "report a problem" button yet? That should be an industry-wide thing. If a half dozen people report a damaged connector, trucks should roll.

Don't worry! Musk fired the entire SuperCharger team, so all the broken chargers will get fixed more quickly now!

 

[dbsb3233]

Doing so means 5 successes out of 15 attempts, or 33% success rate with NACS.

Wow, that's worse than EA. So much for the vaunted SC dependability. I'm sure it's still usually more dependable, but it's not the Holy Grail it was made out to be. Kyle had issues too at nearly every SC in his CT in the cross-country race. Often minor issues, but still.

As others have noted, it's probably more a California thing from so much more demand than most of the country. It's pretty much the pattern with EA too -- usually worse in CA. Although the handful of CA EA stations we've used have been fine, other than Barstow being full one time with people waiting (we had just enough to make it to Baker so we continued on). Most of the EAs we've used across 14 states have been adequate (it might take trying a 2nd or 3rd charger but eventually fine at reasonable speed). Minus a few notoriously bad stations to always be weary of, that is.

We leave Thursday for a 6000 mile trip through 26 states (CO to the east coast). I borrowed an adapter (thanks Jeff!) but I'm still planning to use EA for 90% of our DCFCs, with SCs for a few fill-ins and backup wherever EA might fail us.

 

[dbsb3233]

Yes, they left it plugged in. They were walking away from the vehicles when I arrived because FordPass alerted me to the stop charge. I was going back to move the car, assuming the sc had stopped me at 80% because the place was busy.

That's really bad, especially since there's no screen for them to know you were at 80%. Not that that would justify it either, of course, but some might try to.

If they know the MME, they might know that the 5th circle light blinking on the charge port meant it was in the 80-100% range. Maybe they thought you were at 99% or something. Still though, that's not a good enough excuse unless maybe the charging had stopped completely, and all the other (working) posts were full.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Wow, that's worse than EA. So much for the vaunted SC dependability. I'm sure it's still usually more dependable, but it's not the Holy Grail it was made out to be. Kyle had issues too at nearly every SC in his CT in the cross-country race. Often minor issues, but still.

As others have noted, it's probably more a California thing from so much more demand than most of the country. It's pretty much the pattern with EA too -- usually worse in CA. Although the handful of CA EA stations we've used have been fine, other than Barstow being full one time with people waiting (we had just enough to make it to Baker so we continued on). Most of the EAs we've used across 14 states have been adequate (it might take trying a 2nd or 3rd charger but eventually fine at reasonable speed). Minus a few notoriously bad stations to always be weary of, that is.

We leave Thursday for a 6000 mile trip through 26 states (CO to the east coast). I borrowed an adapter (thanks Jeff!) but I'm still planning to use EA for 90% of our DCFCs, with SCs for a few fill-ins and backup wherever EA might fail us.

My experience with EA is about 95% success rate, with hundreds of DC charging experiences.

I've only taken the Mustang to AZ, NM, TX, OK, CA, and NV, so I can't speak for experiences elsewhere.

I will say some EA stations' reliability has collapsed in the past 18 months. In particular, the Kingman EA station used to be always reliable and now is regularly busy and regularly has one or more down or dramatically slowed. I had hoped the NACS chargers in Kingman would provide a solution to the 4-port EA station, but I think instead we're going to skip Kingman for most of our trips until EA adds some more reliable chargers or the Rivian network opens up.

Similarly, the Barstow EA charging station is often very busy, so it's nice there are a pile of NACS chargers just down the road. I've also used the ~60 kW chargers at a couple of different places in Barstow. The 60 kW chargers are great when I need to nap after a long day of work in Pasadena and I'm staring down four or five more hours of driving before getting home.

Safe travels! Sounds like a fantastic trip!

 

[RKinWA]

We just got home from a 1500 mile round trip from northern Arizona near Flagstaff to Cayucos, CA to spend some time on the beach. We got rained out, but the hills on the coast were worth the drive.

We decided to do two things differently on this trip and those two things didn't work out too well, but things weren't terrible. First, we decided to try to do NACS charging whenever the opportunity presented itself. Second, we took a different route for the first part of the trip.

We stopped for our first charge in Kingman and decided to use the Supercharger instead of our usual EA charger. I tried four posts. The first one charged for 2 kWh and quit while we were walking away. I tried three more and couldn't get any of them to work. We were planning to have dinner while waiting for the charge, so this wasted a total of 90 minutes of our time. After dinner, we moved on to Needles and charged at the EA charger without a problem.

Our new route wasn't as successful as we had hoped. The small highway (95 south from the 40) was full of very slow trucks that seemed to be avoiding the bigger freeways. So the first leg of the trip took more than an hour longer than it should have. We'll avoid that highway from now on. This route added another full hour to our drive, so at this point we were 2.5 hours behind. So much for trying new things. For these trips, we'll stick to Interstate 40.

The hotel we stayed at in Palm Springs advertised chargers, their desk people acted like several were available. And two of the six available plugs around the location were usable and were plugged in. None of the other chargers were working. The next morning, we went to a Supercharger. I tried a couple of posts and they didn't work. We moved on to an EA charger, but it was full. So we got on the 10 and went up to the EA/EVGo chargers at the Desert Hills Premium Outlets. They were empty when we committed to going, but the line was several cars deep by the time we arrived. We were down to about six miles of range. But also not interested in sitting and waiting, so we drove the mile back to the Supercharger. The first one we tried was missing a pin. The second one was offline, though the app didn't indicate that. We found a third one and that finally worked. We were getting a charge for the first time on a Supercharger! It took longer than I'm used to: We averaged about 60 kW instead of the 80-90 we get with EA chargers. But it charged, so... Yay!

That right pin is missing entirely.

(Finally charging on NACS!)

We made our way into the LA valley, picked up some family, and headed out toward the coast. We stopped in Santa Barbara for lunch and a charge. We got a second successful charge on NACS, but some jerk unplugged us. We were at 80% so I didn't escalate the situation, but... What kind of petty jerk thinks it's okay to disconnect a charging car that isn't theirs? Other than the jerk, we had a good second successful NACS charge.

With 80%, we were just fine getting up to Cayucos and the place we stayed assured us they had L2 chargers that were working, so we weren't worried about charging again. Their chargers did work! Yay!

We did a bunch of exploring the Cayucos and Morro Bay area the next couple of days, getting charged to 100% every night.

Then we headed home. We took mostly the same route home, but went through the Simi valley instead of through Pasadena. Lots of lemons are ripe! I was tempted to stop for fresh fruit, but my passengers wanted to get home. We didn't need to stop for a charge, so that was nice.

We stayed overnight with family. That night, I decided to try the NACS charging experience again. This time I found a charger that had a bunch of empty posts, so I didn't expect to be harassed by brand-T owners. Charge was again slower than I'm used to, but whatever, I got a pretty sunset photo.

On the drive home, we stopped for a quick restroom and charge break in Barstow. We decided to continue trying our luck with NACS. We went through five stalls before we found a working post. But we got another (slow) charge.

We stopped for lunch in Needles and charged at the NACS charger near the Wagon Wheel. Again, we got a good connection, this time on the first try. We had an okay lunch and got a decent charge. This time we reached about 70 kW average.

We stopped for a quick restroom break and super quick charge in Williams. We made it home with about 17%, which is more than I had hoped, but that restroom stop added a lot of charge and now I have to burn it off over the next few days.

At this point, we have had 5 successes out of 18 attempts to use the NACS charging. We tried several times with the Lightning, but I'm not sure the Lightning is up-to-date on software, so I should probably remove those from the count. Doing so means 5 successes out of 15 attempts, or 33% success rate with NACS. For the next several tens of thousands of miles, I will always choose a stopping place with a CCS1 charger nearby, but will continue to test NACS. The benefit of NACS seems to be that there are usually enough posts that even though many posts are out of order or won't talk to the car, the shear number of posts means there's still a chance to get a charge. But, I don't trust the NACS chargers at this point, so won't plan a leg that brings me to a NACS charger with a SoC so low that I can't make it to a CCS1 charger.

Great writeup, but stories like this are the exact reason I decided to get a 3 year lease on an ICE vehicle for my longer road trips. The MME is my baby, my daily driver, the vehicle I take everywhere around the area where it won't require more than 1 DCFC, but I think for the next couple years these types of experiences will be norm for EV until things finally get settled. For me it's not necessarily the charger issues as much as it is the extra time added to a trip for charging during a long road trip. But that's just me.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

That's really bad, especially since there's no screen for them to know you were at 80%. Not that that would justify it either, of course, but some might try to.

If they know the MME, they might know that the 5th circle light blinking on the charge port meant it was in the 80-100% range. Maybe they thought you were at 99% or something. Still though, that's not a good enough excuse unless maybe the charging had stopped completely, and all the other (working) posts were full.

It was surprising and thus frustrating and angering. If I was my younger, dumber self, I might have been more confrontational, but it wasn't worth it. The station was busy and there was a line, but I've never unplugged a vehicle even when there are many cars in line. Nor have I called the tow truck on brand-T cars that are parked in charging spots without even being plugged in. Most of my "ICEd" charger experiences have been brand-T cars sitting in the spot not plugged in.

 

[DesignMatters]

We just got home from a 1500 mile round trip from northern Arizona near Flagstaff to Cayucos, CA to spend some time on the beach. We got rained out, but the hills on the coast were worth the drive.

We decided to do two things differently on this trip and those two things didn't work out too well, but things weren't terrible. First, we decided to try to do NACS charging whenever the opportunity presented itself. Second, we took a different route for the first part of the trip.

We stopped for our first charge in Kingman and decided to use the Supercharger instead of our usual EA charger. I tried four posts. The first one charged for 2 kWh and quit while we were walking away. I tried three more and couldn't get any of them to work. We were planning to have dinner while waiting for the charge, so this wasted a total of 90 minutes of our time. After dinner, we moved on to Needles and charged at the EA charger without a problem.

Our new route wasn't as successful as we had hoped. The small highway (95 south from the 40) was full of very slow trucks that seemed to be avoiding the bigger freeways. So the first leg of the trip took more than an hour longer than it should have. We'll avoid that highway from now on. This route added another full hour to our drive, so at this point we were 2.5 hours behind. So much for trying new things. For these trips, we'll stick to Interstate 40.

The hotel we stayed at in Palm Springs advertised chargers, their desk people acted like several were available. And two of the six available plugs around the location were usable and were plugged in. None of the other chargers were working. The next morning, we went to a Supercharger. I tried a couple of posts and they didn't work. We moved on to an EA charger, but it was full. So we got on the 10 and went up to the EA/EVGo chargers at the Desert Hills Premium Outlets. They were empty when we committed to going, but the line was several cars deep by the time we arrived. We were down to about six miles of range. But also not interested in sitting and waiting, so we drove the mile back to the Supercharger. The first one we tried was missing a pin. The second one was offline, though the app didn't indicate that. We found a third one and that finally worked. We were getting a charge for the first time on a Supercharger! It took longer than I'm used to: We averaged about 60 kW instead of the 80-90 we get with EA chargers. But it charged, so... Yay!

That right pin is missing entirely.

(Finally charging on NACS!)

We made our way into the LA valley, picked up some family, and headed out toward the coast. We stopped in Santa Barbara for lunch and a charge. We got a second successful charge on NACS, but some jerk unplugged us. We were at 80% so I didn't escalate the situation, but... What kind of petty jerk thinks it's okay to disconnect a charging car that isn't theirs? Other than the jerk, we had a good second successful NACS charge.

With 80%, we were just fine getting up to Cayucos and the place we stayed assured us they had L2 chargers that were working, so we weren't worried about charging again. Their chargers did work! Yay!

We did a bunch of exploring the Cayucos and Morro Bay area the next couple of days, getting charged to 100% every night.

Then we headed home. We took mostly the same route home, but went through the Simi valley instead of through Pasadena. Lots of lemons are ripe! I was tempted to stop for fresh fruit, but my passengers wanted to get home. We didn't need to stop for a charge, so that was nice.

We stayed overnight with family. That night, I decided to try the NACS charging experience again. This time I found a charger that had a bunch of empty posts, so I didn't expect to be harassed by brand-T owners. Charge was again slower than I'm used to, but whatever, I got a pretty sunset photo.

On the drive home, we stopped for a quick restroom and charge break in Barstow. We decided to continue trying our luck with NACS. We went through five stalls before we found a working post. But we got another (slow) charge.

We stopped for lunch in Needles and charged at the NACS charger near the Wagon Wheel. Again, we got a good connection, this time on the first try. We had an okay lunch and got a decent charge. This time we reached about 70 kW average.

We stopped for a quick restroom break and super quick charge in Williams. We made it home with about 17%, which is more than I had hoped, but that restroom stop added a lot of charge and now I have to burn it off over the next few days.

At this point, we have had 5 successes out of 18 attempts to use the NACS charging. We tried several times with the Lightning, but I'm not sure the Lightning is up-to-date on software, so I should probably remove those from the count. Doing so means 5 successes out of 15 attempts, or 33% success rate with NACS. For the next several tens of thousands of miles, I will always choose a stopping place with a CCS1 charger nearby, but will continue to test NACS. The benefit of NACS seems to be that there are usually enough posts that even though many posts are out of order or won't talk to the car, the shear number of posts means there's still a chance to get a charge. But, I don't trust the NACS chargers at this point, so won't plan a leg that brings me to a NACS charger with a SoC so low that I can't make it to a CCS1 charger.

…and this folks is why our BEV’s are fun commuters and 2nd cars and an ICE (even a rented one! ) rule for roadtrips.

No fuss, no muss, no headaches, and much shorter traveling time.

 

[4sallypat]

I had a different experience past Easter weekend thru Central California.

All the Tesla chargers worked perfectly without any swapping.

On my route, way more Tesla locations than the few EA/EVgo/CP/7-11 chargers that you have to hunt around for....

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