JohnS1111
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Alex
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2021
- Threads
- 12
- Messages
- 121
- Reaction score
- 99
- Location
- Orange, CA
- Vehicles
- Mach-E eAWD
- Thread starter
- #1
This was my first road trip in the car and I had only tried charging it once before at a Electrify America station to figure out how that works. The car had still less then 400 miles and not being sure about when and where to charge, I was a bit worried - something you would never think about with a gasoline car. I WANTED to plan out the stops, but work got in the way and essentially I only had time to pack up on Thursday evening and left right after work on Friday without any idea where I would stop to charge.
So this is in a sense a very naive telling of how the first road trip with an EV goes for someone who never had one before and did not plan anything.
As said, I took off directly after work in Orange county and went direction I5 North. Then I started going to search on the Navigation and wanted to type in the address. That is when I learned that "certain features" are not available while driving. I did not find a microphone icon to say the address either. Luckily I discovered that I entered a generic address close to where I wanted to go previously and you can find those under the recent searches - so 1st lesson learned, type in your destination while still parked even if you are in a hurry.
My car was charged to about 94% for the trip, so that was decent. And I was really pleased that the navigation system pretty much told me "you're not gonna make it, adding charging stops". First planned stop was at Lost Hills, CA which was 183 miles.
Driving, I used blue cruise a lot. I was impressed with it that it goes up the mountain over to Grapevine North almost fully on hands-free blue cruise. So, I just let the car do it's thing most of the way and had no feet on the pedals and put my hands on my knees. Annoyingly the navigation wanted me to join the pool lane every 2 miles but I do not have the stickers. Took me a bit to figure out how to ignore pool lanes. Most of the mountain road was blue cruise and to me that was unexpected as I thought "sharp turns" would be hands on and there were some. The car did do good with but did react a bit late going into sharper turns followed by a bit of bouncing between the lines until stable. But overall not bad, it did it's job. I am pretty sure that it did read some of the 55 mph speed limit signs for cars towing wrong going up the mountain, because once you go with the flow of traffic at 75mph and next thing the car is almost brake checking the guy behind me because it set the speed limit to 61 (55mph + 6mph I set as a tolerance).
Lost Hills, I pulled up to the Shell gas station and the charger was on one side of the pumps next to the tire pressure thing. The charging station was occupied by a Nissan Leaf, I think. The charging station had both a CCS and a ChaDeMo cable. Well, this was my second time approaching a charging station so, I thought I could plug in on the second one and initiate my charging session. So I parked next to it - awkwardly because of the charging port position - and plugged it in. Nothing changed on the screen for initiating my session. So, I unplugged again and parked there to wait for the guy(or gal) to end the charging session. At that point, I took out my phone and checked the Electrify America app if there are other chargers around and the app said there would be 5 with 3 available. I was confused and well... 5 parking spots over from where I manovered and was waiting was a row of green lights. A Porsche Taycan charging there and I think the guy in there was watching me the entire time. Rookie mistake, I guess, but hey, this was my first charging stop in the wild. Regardless, I had to charge so no shame, I picked one of the THREE available spots next to the guy and plugged in. Plugging in was as in my one try before and seamless. Wait until you can press "Continue" to initiate charging and you're done. I walked over to the Carls Jr and ate a burger and by the time I was back the car was at 80%. Ready to go!
I finally put in my real destination into the navigation system and I noticed that it recalculates the charging stops when you do this. I thought that's neat as you could use it on the road. Essentially I only had to do one more stop at this point at a Walmart in Patterson after 160 miles. And then I would be at my final destination, so that is not bad at all. Again, blue cruise is great but it wanted me to be hands on at times. First I thought Blue Cruise would only work if there is a car in front of me. but then I figured out that Blue Cruise doesn't go hands-free at 81+ mph. That is kind of sad as the flow of traffic was at times faster. My range after my first charging stop was about 210 miles and I did want to arrive as early as possible to get some sleep as we wanted to go fishing next morning. So, I pushed it a bit - driving like an ass - and I saw my range drop while the distance to the charging stop in Patterson did not decrease at the same rate. I cancelled the route a few times in the navigation system to see if it would come up with a different stop, but nope. So I changed my driving style and stayed behind a truck at 65mph for the last 25 miles and ended up with just 6% battery at that Walmart. The Ford navigation system said "2 of 4" available shortly before I arrived but when I got there it was "0 of 4". But it was not really "available" because one charging station did show a "network error", one did show for both chargers "not available" and the other two were taken. One by a black Mach-E and the other one by Kona. I parked across the two occupied charging stations and waited. A couple came by and complimented me on my car that it looks so much better than the black one. I walked to the Walmart and got a Snickers and got back go my car and kept waiting. Finally the family with the Mach-E came back, apparently they had been at a restaurant close by, the car was at 84% and they had been there for about 50 minutes. And of course at the same time the woman with the Kona came back from her Walmart shopping. I was finally able to pull in and charge up. I have not been at a Walmart at 10pm at night and walked the store and afterwards watched some dudes with lowered cars and subwoofers congregating on the parking lot. Was interesting, but I lost a solid 40 minutes on this stop. I wanted to arrive before midnight and that wasn't going to happen anymore.
I could have made it to my final destination without charging one more time, but completely empty. So I stopped one more time at a Target in Yuba City, I believe. There were 6 charging stations all empty... but it was 00:30, so no wonder. Gave the car the last boost and made it.
---
Short story on the stay: No fish, I spent a nice weekend and impressed a few people who had never seen a car like this.
Then I headed back.
---
Before leaving I had the car charged up to 65%. But as 80% is the best you can get for quick charge I did not bother finding a local charging station for those 15% and just got going.
I did rely on Blue Cruise again most of the time after I was on the I5. It works, was relaxing and I had a long drive ahead.
Through Sacramento the navigation system thought I was about 200ft left of the interstate and kept telling me how to get back on it. That was annoying. Once I was past Sacramento I guess it realized there is only this one road. My first stop was a at a Walmart a bit before Stockton. I got a lot better miles per kwH than going up north. The Ford navigation was good with that suggestion, but I was only supposed to charge back to up like 60% and then continue. I ignored that and charged to 80%. Walked around, bought a candy bar... these stops are not good for a diet. Starting the car again, there was a message that the range increased or similar and if I want to recalculate charging stops. I thought that that was pretty good.
I got back on the interstate and that is where the navigation system went haywire. I was going on the I5 south, but according to the navigation system I went offroading and went east cross country to the 99. I posted this to the forum and the suggestion was a reboot of Sync using the steering wheel controls. Honestly, no idea how to do this, but I realized that between the first glitch in Sacramento and the charging stop before Stockton the car had never been really off. So, I took the next exit, turned it off AND opened the driver door. Then I waited an obligatory 10 seconds and turned the car on again. And suddenly the navigation system knew again where I was. So, good to go again.
Again, Blue Cruise is awesome, but if you know how the 2 lane I5 works. It is trucks of course on the right lane and cars on the left. Lane huggers and slow cars on the left as well and then people who want to quickly skip 4 cars before the next truck.
Blue cruise WOULD be awesome in some ways, if the right lane would be fast enough. I set it to 85 mph in a 70 speed limit, so that means on the fast lane I would be fast enough. Now there is then the pileup because a truck overtaking a truck, the gap in front even with one bar is big enough for someone to pull in, the car makes an "almost collision" hard brake, ... it is annoying. I tended to push the gas pedal to close gaps. I found a good "group" after a while
Also, I changed the tolerance for the speed limit to 10 mph so that I would still end up in hands-free in a 70 mph zone.
The next planned stop was 120 miles south at Panoche Road. I charged again up to 80% against "recommedation" to charge less ... once you stop, why not. I also had like a pound of frozen yogurt and talked to a guy who was charging a black Mach-E GT. He loves the car and was asking me if my car was affected by the recall - I have to look into that. Got another compliment on how great looking that car was from a by passer. Anyways, good stop and on the road again.
The navigation system planned a stop at a Target in Bakersfield. I looked at it while driving and it was about 10 miles off the interstate. I did not want to do a 20-mile excursion to charge the car, so I started experimenting with the "replace" function of the charging station. I got to say that this is really useless at this point with an arrow which direction and a distance but no indicator if it is on your route - that sucked. I tried to figure out what would be a good replacement, but esentially you have to tap on it, zoom out and then get a gage on how far off the route it is. The car complained to me to keep eyes on the road. So this functionality is not good at all.
Then the Lost Hills exit popped up and as I didn't know where the charging stations where on the way up, I certainly knew where they are now. I stopped here instead of Bakersfield and charged again up to 80% next to a Rivian and eating some ice cream while waiting.
So now technically my destination was 182 miles away and my range was a bit over 200 miles. BUT, I had to climb the mountains past Grapevine and face LA traffic going to Orange county. I assumed I had to do one more stop. Well, I got to Gorman with 45% battery. From there it is level or downhill. I stayed with the general speed of the traffic at around 75 mph and when I got to Six Flags the battery was still at 42%. Going over the mountain south blue cruise wanted hands on most of the time. The car liked the route the opposite way a lot better.
The navigation system insisted for a while that I should drive towards Santa Monica and take the 405 - absolutely not. I kept staying on the I5 and the screen told me that I should maybe take a break. I am not tired, I am just ignoring your stupid suggestion to go by LAX. Anyways, I just thought at this point I will go for it... I turned off the AC - in the aftermath, AC had a 3% impact on the trip - and stuck in the middle lane with blue cruise behind a big truck. I ended up with 45 miles left at home. Total drive time for 500 miles was 9 hours and 20 minutes. That ain't shabby at all with going through Los Angeles.
---
My conclusion of my first long distance trip which I started completly unprepared:
Good:
* The navigation is doing a good job planning the stops in general.
* Blue Cruise is great, I had driven cars with adaptive cruise control before and learned to trust it and this is a lot better.
* Seats were good, but I still got a sweaty butt. I wish they were vented.
* The ride was quiet and audio was good.
Bad:
* The navigation system kept a bit deteriorating until it totally went out and I had to restart - that was a bad glitch.
* I tried re-planning stops for charging by cancelling and entering the destination again. That worked sometimes.
* The navigation tells you how many charging stations are available at a stop but not if some of those are out permanently. That would be helpful to manage expectations.
* A bit of lane bouncing, but I am complaining on a high level as I enjoyed the car driving itself a lot. I think it is a big help and I arrived a lot less tired than on my previous drives up north.
* Lastly, I still have my Sirus XM trial and I remember from my BMW that I was just using the buttons on the steering wheel to switch through all the channels. That does not work here.. For FM radio, long press searches the band up or down. For XM radio, long press fast scrolls through channels. There is no way to switch one channel up or down in XM radio as a short press just switches between the presets.
Overall, I am very pleased with the journey, but I would improve two things:
1) This one is minor and I won't keep XM anyways, but switching XM channels is not possible from the steering wheel and I think it should. Maybe add a double tap on "next" to switch one channel up for example. So that single press is between the pre-sets as normal, long press is seek on FM and seek fast on XM. And double press is switch one channel up or down. I think that would be nice.
2) For trip planning, my second stop on the way up was a close call - obviously because the car did not know my driving style and I drove faster than expected most. But the "replace" charging station stop function sucks. I had the same issue on the way south with the stop in Bakersfield. The general way the navigation system plans the trip is great, so why not piggy bag on that. There should be a simple function to tap on the charging stop and tap on "find earlier stop on the route" and let the trip planner do the thing as before.
Showing a list of 10 chargers with an arrow which direction they are isn't really helpful.
If someone knows a place to submit suggestions like this to Ford let me know.
Car is back home and very dusty and will get a soft pre-wash tomorrow followed by a real one
So this is in a sense a very naive telling of how the first road trip with an EV goes for someone who never had one before and did not plan anything.
As said, I took off directly after work in Orange county and went direction I5 North. Then I started going to search on the Navigation and wanted to type in the address. That is when I learned that "certain features" are not available while driving. I did not find a microphone icon to say the address either. Luckily I discovered that I entered a generic address close to where I wanted to go previously and you can find those under the recent searches - so 1st lesson learned, type in your destination while still parked even if you are in a hurry.
My car was charged to about 94% for the trip, so that was decent. And I was really pleased that the navigation system pretty much told me "you're not gonna make it, adding charging stops". First planned stop was at Lost Hills, CA which was 183 miles.
Driving, I used blue cruise a lot. I was impressed with it that it goes up the mountain over to Grapevine North almost fully on hands-free blue cruise. So, I just let the car do it's thing most of the way and had no feet on the pedals and put my hands on my knees. Annoyingly the navigation wanted me to join the pool lane every 2 miles but I do not have the stickers. Took me a bit to figure out how to ignore pool lanes. Most of the mountain road was blue cruise and to me that was unexpected as I thought "sharp turns" would be hands on and there were some. The car did do good with but did react a bit late going into sharper turns followed by a bit of bouncing between the lines until stable. But overall not bad, it did it's job. I am pretty sure that it did read some of the 55 mph speed limit signs for cars towing wrong going up the mountain, because once you go with the flow of traffic at 75mph and next thing the car is almost brake checking the guy behind me because it set the speed limit to 61 (55mph + 6mph I set as a tolerance).
Lost Hills, I pulled up to the Shell gas station and the charger was on one side of the pumps next to the tire pressure thing. The charging station was occupied by a Nissan Leaf, I think. The charging station had both a CCS and a ChaDeMo cable. Well, this was my second time approaching a charging station so, I thought I could plug in on the second one and initiate my charging session. So I parked next to it - awkwardly because of the charging port position - and plugged it in. Nothing changed on the screen for initiating my session. So, I unplugged again and parked there to wait for the guy(or gal) to end the charging session. At that point, I took out my phone and checked the Electrify America app if there are other chargers around and the app said there would be 5 with 3 available. I was confused and well... 5 parking spots over from where I manovered and was waiting was a row of green lights. A Porsche Taycan charging there and I think the guy in there was watching me the entire time. Rookie mistake, I guess, but hey, this was my first charging stop in the wild. Regardless, I had to charge so no shame, I picked one of the THREE available spots next to the guy and plugged in. Plugging in was as in my one try before and seamless. Wait until you can press "Continue" to initiate charging and you're done. I walked over to the Carls Jr and ate a burger and by the time I was back the car was at 80%. Ready to go!
I finally put in my real destination into the navigation system and I noticed that it recalculates the charging stops when you do this. I thought that's neat as you could use it on the road. Essentially I only had to do one more stop at this point at a Walmart in Patterson after 160 miles. And then I would be at my final destination, so that is not bad at all. Again, blue cruise is great but it wanted me to be hands on at times. First I thought Blue Cruise would only work if there is a car in front of me. but then I figured out that Blue Cruise doesn't go hands-free at 81+ mph. That is kind of sad as the flow of traffic was at times faster. My range after my first charging stop was about 210 miles and I did want to arrive as early as possible to get some sleep as we wanted to go fishing next morning. So, I pushed it a bit - driving like an ass - and I saw my range drop while the distance to the charging stop in Patterson did not decrease at the same rate. I cancelled the route a few times in the navigation system to see if it would come up with a different stop, but nope. So I changed my driving style and stayed behind a truck at 65mph for the last 25 miles and ended up with just 6% battery at that Walmart. The Ford navigation system said "2 of 4" available shortly before I arrived but when I got there it was "0 of 4". But it was not really "available" because one charging station did show a "network error", one did show for both chargers "not available" and the other two were taken. One by a black Mach-E and the other one by Kona. I parked across the two occupied charging stations and waited. A couple came by and complimented me on my car that it looks so much better than the black one. I walked to the Walmart and got a Snickers and got back go my car and kept waiting. Finally the family with the Mach-E came back, apparently they had been at a restaurant close by, the car was at 84% and they had been there for about 50 minutes. And of course at the same time the woman with the Kona came back from her Walmart shopping. I was finally able to pull in and charge up. I have not been at a Walmart at 10pm at night and walked the store and afterwards watched some dudes with lowered cars and subwoofers congregating on the parking lot. Was interesting, but I lost a solid 40 minutes on this stop. I wanted to arrive before midnight and that wasn't going to happen anymore.
I could have made it to my final destination without charging one more time, but completely empty. So I stopped one more time at a Target in Yuba City, I believe. There were 6 charging stations all empty... but it was 00:30, so no wonder. Gave the car the last boost and made it.
---
Short story on the stay: No fish, I spent a nice weekend and impressed a few people who had never seen a car like this.
Then I headed back.
---
Before leaving I had the car charged up to 65%. But as 80% is the best you can get for quick charge I did not bother finding a local charging station for those 15% and just got going.
I did rely on Blue Cruise again most of the time after I was on the I5. It works, was relaxing and I had a long drive ahead.
Through Sacramento the navigation system thought I was about 200ft left of the interstate and kept telling me how to get back on it. That was annoying. Once I was past Sacramento I guess it realized there is only this one road. My first stop was a at a Walmart a bit before Stockton. I got a lot better miles per kwH than going up north. The Ford navigation was good with that suggestion, but I was only supposed to charge back to up like 60% and then continue. I ignored that and charged to 80%. Walked around, bought a candy bar... these stops are not good for a diet. Starting the car again, there was a message that the range increased or similar and if I want to recalculate charging stops. I thought that that was pretty good.
I got back on the interstate and that is where the navigation system went haywire. I was going on the I5 south, but according to the navigation system I went offroading and went east cross country to the 99. I posted this to the forum and the suggestion was a reboot of Sync using the steering wheel controls. Honestly, no idea how to do this, but I realized that between the first glitch in Sacramento and the charging stop before Stockton the car had never been really off. So, I took the next exit, turned it off AND opened the driver door. Then I waited an obligatory 10 seconds and turned the car on again. And suddenly the navigation system knew again where I was. So, good to go again.
Again, Blue Cruise is awesome, but if you know how the 2 lane I5 works. It is trucks of course on the right lane and cars on the left. Lane huggers and slow cars on the left as well and then people who want to quickly skip 4 cars before the next truck.
Blue cruise WOULD be awesome in some ways, if the right lane would be fast enough. I set it to 85 mph in a 70 speed limit, so that means on the fast lane I would be fast enough. Now there is then the pileup because a truck overtaking a truck, the gap in front even with one bar is big enough for someone to pull in, the car makes an "almost collision" hard brake, ... it is annoying. I tended to push the gas pedal to close gaps. I found a good "group" after a while
Also, I changed the tolerance for the speed limit to 10 mph so that I would still end up in hands-free in a 70 mph zone.
The next planned stop was 120 miles south at Panoche Road. I charged again up to 80% against "recommedation" to charge less ... once you stop, why not. I also had like a pound of frozen yogurt and talked to a guy who was charging a black Mach-E GT. He loves the car and was asking me if my car was affected by the recall - I have to look into that. Got another compliment on how great looking that car was from a by passer. Anyways, good stop and on the road again.
The navigation system planned a stop at a Target in Bakersfield. I looked at it while driving and it was about 10 miles off the interstate. I did not want to do a 20-mile excursion to charge the car, so I started experimenting with the "replace" function of the charging station. I got to say that this is really useless at this point with an arrow which direction and a distance but no indicator if it is on your route - that sucked. I tried to figure out what would be a good replacement, but esentially you have to tap on it, zoom out and then get a gage on how far off the route it is. The car complained to me to keep eyes on the road. So this functionality is not good at all.
Then the Lost Hills exit popped up and as I didn't know where the charging stations where on the way up, I certainly knew where they are now. I stopped here instead of Bakersfield and charged again up to 80% next to a Rivian and eating some ice cream while waiting.
So now technically my destination was 182 miles away and my range was a bit over 200 miles. BUT, I had to climb the mountains past Grapevine and face LA traffic going to Orange county. I assumed I had to do one more stop. Well, I got to Gorman with 45% battery. From there it is level or downhill. I stayed with the general speed of the traffic at around 75 mph and when I got to Six Flags the battery was still at 42%. Going over the mountain south blue cruise wanted hands on most of the time. The car liked the route the opposite way a lot better.
The navigation system insisted for a while that I should drive towards Santa Monica and take the 405 - absolutely not. I kept staying on the I5 and the screen told me that I should maybe take a break. I am not tired, I am just ignoring your stupid suggestion to go by LAX. Anyways, I just thought at this point I will go for it... I turned off the AC - in the aftermath, AC had a 3% impact on the trip - and stuck in the middle lane with blue cruise behind a big truck. I ended up with 45 miles left at home. Total drive time for 500 miles was 9 hours and 20 minutes. That ain't shabby at all with going through Los Angeles.
---
My conclusion of my first long distance trip which I started completly unprepared:
Good:
* The navigation is doing a good job planning the stops in general.
* Blue Cruise is great, I had driven cars with adaptive cruise control before and learned to trust it and this is a lot better.
* Seats were good, but I still got a sweaty butt. I wish they were vented.
* The ride was quiet and audio was good.
Bad:
* The navigation system kept a bit deteriorating until it totally went out and I had to restart - that was a bad glitch.
* I tried re-planning stops for charging by cancelling and entering the destination again. That worked sometimes.
* The navigation tells you how many charging stations are available at a stop but not if some of those are out permanently. That would be helpful to manage expectations.
* A bit of lane bouncing, but I am complaining on a high level as I enjoyed the car driving itself a lot. I think it is a big help and I arrived a lot less tired than on my previous drives up north.
* Lastly, I still have my Sirus XM trial and I remember from my BMW that I was just using the buttons on the steering wheel to switch through all the channels. That does not work here.. For FM radio, long press searches the band up or down. For XM radio, long press fast scrolls through channels. There is no way to switch one channel up or down in XM radio as a short press just switches between the presets.
Overall, I am very pleased with the journey, but I would improve two things:
1) This one is minor and I won't keep XM anyways, but switching XM channels is not possible from the steering wheel and I think it should. Maybe add a double tap on "next" to switch one channel up for example. So that single press is between the pre-sets as normal, long press is seek on FM and seek fast on XM. And double press is switch one channel up or down. I think that would be nice.
2) For trip planning, my second stop on the way up was a close call - obviously because the car did not know my driving style and I drove faster than expected most. But the "replace" charging station stop function sucks. I had the same issue on the way south with the stop in Bakersfield. The general way the navigation system plans the trip is great, so why not piggy bag on that. There should be a simple function to tap on the charging stop and tap on "find earlier stop on the route" and let the trip planner do the thing as before.
Showing a list of 10 chargers with an arrow which direction they are isn't really helpful.
If someone knows a place to submit suggestions like this to Ford let me know.
Car is back home and very dusty and will get a soft pre-wash tomorrow followed by a real one
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