geftsnowball
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2022
- Threads
- 7
- Messages
- 156
- Reaction score
- 157
- Location
- Washington
- Vehicles
- '22 Mach-E, Grabber Blue, Premium AWD ER
- Thread starter
- #1
TL;DR:
Built-in navigation is just not cutting it for anything outside of simple navigation, EA charging using the app can be sketchy and unreliable, despite EA app issues was not left stranded anywhere and only had to endure a couple extended charging sessions due to having to call EA support. Mach E itself did not let me down (beyond a few intermittent ādrive mode not availableā randomly popping up and one red ring charging issue that seemed to be an EA issue).
Trip prep and planning along the way:
Used ABRP to get a general idea of charging route using EA. Used the built-in navigation to mark next charger as a destination to enable battery preconditioning. Used PlugShare intermittently to verify and check charger history (e.g., completely skipped one potential location due to reported ongoing construction). Planned pit stops around charger locations.
In the end, my approach was not to go in and out of a charging station as quick as possible but to accommodate restroom breaks (7 year old and 67 year old passengers
). This ended up making pit stops about every 1.5-2 hours at most (plus a couple more non-charger pit stops) and only a couple of the charging stops had extra time waiting around (usually just for ābufferā charge for any additional unplanned pit stops). A good number of the stops I left with more charge than needed because we were not finished with restroom/eating/etc.
Using built-in navigation:
Not great! Perhaps Iām just too used to Google Mapsā¦
Issue 1:
How to find chargers in a certain area that you are not at yet? I had pre-determined chargers I wanted to hit based on preplanned pit stops and it seemed like the charger search had no way to find what I was looking forā¦ I believe the Ford app was a little better, but I was trying to do it while charging at the previous stop and do it using the car interface. After frustration and not being able to filter to just find EA stations, I ended up searching for the place (e.g., Eugene, OR), clicking the chargers nearby icon, clicking the
filter, choosing my preferred EA station, then deleting the place from my route since I only want to navigate to the charger and not a random part of the place (it automatically adds it when you click on the place). I did this because of the battery preconditioning when using the built-in navigation to a charger. There may be faster/better ways to do this but this was the method that I stumbled upon at the first stop (assuming it would be easier to find chargers I wantedā¦ should have tested before!) so I just stuck with jumping through the above hoops every time for the remainder of the trip.
Issue 2:
Most of the time the route was okayā¦ but at one point it decided that the whole route had a delay and kept trying to reroute me on side roads that added 90+ minutes to my route. I ignored these constant rerouting attempts and continued down the I-5 per the Google Maps directionsā¦ Eventually I turned off the dynamic rerouting to stop the ping ponging of the route (though it still kept up with the notifications every few minutes). It looks like there may have been construction in previous days (or some other activity) but that was not the case on the day I drove. Because I didnāt trust the built-in navigation (unfortunately, rightfully so and proven so by this issueā¦) I also had Google Maps navigation running at the same time on my phone and just ignored the built-in navigation.
Ford plug and charge charging:
I only had 1 issue with plug and charge and that was probably likely an issue on the EA end. Plugged in, and it kept restarting connecting to the vehicle, then gave the red ring on the charging port. I moved to a different charger and power cycled and was able to plug and charge without any issue.
EA Charging:
After I used up my free Ford charging credits, I used the EA app to charge to take advantage of the 25% discounted rate (saved the $4 monthās charge for this trip at the first fill charge, each additional charge was saving over the full rate). Unfortunately, this is where EA really blew it.
My experience charging using the app was unpleasant. My trip included 7 charging sessions using the app. This would have been 8 but the first stop attempting to use the app and the below issue prevented me using the app so I just used plug and charge and ate a $5 charge for the full rate overflow after my remaining free credits ran out. 2 of those stations required me to call EA to initiate the charge and 1 required I moved to the āonlyā free charger. The issue I had was that nearly every single stop using the app listed chargers as āunavailableā or āin useā when they in fact were not! 1 of the EA calls was because I showed up to a completely empty EA station (4 chargers) and all were either āin useā or āunavailableā despite that not being true. I did notice this on the first leg when using plug and charge, but it did not seem to matter because the plug-in action initiated the charge. On the app, you are locked out of any charge initiating actionsā¦ you are required to call EA and verify your account information and they initiate the charge. In 1 of the 2 cases, this didnāt even work, and they had to force restart the system before remotely initiating the charge. I stopped to charge at 13 EA stations on my trip (some just conveniently at a pit stop location, not necessary for range needed to my destination). I had issues with at least 5 of those chargers (either having to call EA or having to move to a different charger). Thatās not confidence inspiring. Looking at it with a positive, glass half full, attitudeā¦ I was not stranded at any of these stations. The worst case was about a 20āminute call to get charging (not great when youād only planned a 30-minute stop ā now 50 minutes!).
I suspect I may have been able to avoid some of the above issues by disabling plug and charge and maybe the app/EA network would have detected a new connection and communicated that āoh yeah, maybe itās not currently in useā butā¦ I knew plug and charge worked and didnāt want to chance disabling and not being able to re-enable if I needed to fall back on using plug and charge at the full paid rate. Perhaps someone can verify their experience with this issue.
Did not take note of the max charging speed when using plug and charge but here is some data from the EA summary notifications when using the app.
So, that was my experience! Hopefully someone will find this interesting and/or useful in some manner.
Built-in navigation is just not cutting it for anything outside of simple navigation, EA charging using the app can be sketchy and unreliable, despite EA app issues was not left stranded anywhere and only had to endure a couple extended charging sessions due to having to call EA support. Mach E itself did not let me down (beyond a few intermittent ādrive mode not availableā randomly popping up and one red ring charging issue that seemed to be an EA issue).
Trip prep and planning along the way:
Used ABRP to get a general idea of charging route using EA. Used the built-in navigation to mark next charger as a destination to enable battery preconditioning. Used PlugShare intermittently to verify and check charger history (e.g., completely skipped one potential location due to reported ongoing construction). Planned pit stops around charger locations.
In the end, my approach was not to go in and out of a charging station as quick as possible but to accommodate restroom breaks (7 year old and 67 year old passengers
). This ended up making pit stops about every 1.5-2 hours at most (plus a couple more non-charger pit stops) and only a couple of the charging stops had extra time waiting around (usually just for ābufferā charge for any additional unplanned pit stops). A good number of the stops I left with more charge than needed because we were not finished with restroom/eating/etc.Using built-in navigation:
Not great! Perhaps Iām just too used to Google Mapsā¦
Issue 1:
How to find chargers in a certain area that you are not at yet? I had pre-determined chargers I wanted to hit based on preplanned pit stops and it seemed like the charger search had no way to find what I was looking forā¦ I believe the Ford app was a little better, but I was trying to do it while charging at the previous stop and do it using the car interface. After frustration and not being able to filter to just find EA stations, I ended up searching for the place (e.g., Eugene, OR), clicking the chargers nearby icon, clicking the
filter, choosing my preferred EA station, then deleting the place from my route since I only want to navigate to the charger and not a random part of the place (it automatically adds it when you click on the place). I did this because of the battery preconditioning when using the built-in navigation to a charger. There may be faster/better ways to do this but this was the method that I stumbled upon at the first stop (assuming it would be easier to find chargers I wantedā¦ should have tested before!) so I just stuck with jumping through the above hoops every time for the remainder of the trip.Issue 2:
Most of the time the route was okayā¦ but at one point it decided that the whole route had a delay and kept trying to reroute me on side roads that added 90+ minutes to my route. I ignored these constant rerouting attempts and continued down the I-5 per the Google Maps directionsā¦ Eventually I turned off the dynamic rerouting to stop the ping ponging of the route (though it still kept up with the notifications every few minutes). It looks like there may have been construction in previous days (or some other activity) but that was not the case on the day I drove. Because I didnāt trust the built-in navigation (unfortunately, rightfully so and proven so by this issueā¦) I also had Google Maps navigation running at the same time on my phone and just ignored the built-in navigation.
Ford plug and charge charging:
I only had 1 issue with plug and charge and that was probably likely an issue on the EA end. Plugged in, and it kept restarting connecting to the vehicle, then gave the red ring on the charging port. I moved to a different charger and power cycled and was able to plug and charge without any issue.
EA Charging:
After I used up my free Ford charging credits, I used the EA app to charge to take advantage of the 25% discounted rate (saved the $4 monthās charge for this trip at the first fill charge, each additional charge was saving over the full rate). Unfortunately, this is where EA really blew it.
My experience charging using the app was unpleasant. My trip included 7 charging sessions using the app. This would have been 8 but the first stop attempting to use the app and the below issue prevented me using the app so I just used plug and charge and ate a $5 charge for the full rate overflow after my remaining free credits ran out. 2 of those stations required me to call EA to initiate the charge and 1 required I moved to the āonlyā free charger. The issue I had was that nearly every single stop using the app listed chargers as āunavailableā or āin useā when they in fact were not! 1 of the EA calls was because I showed up to a completely empty EA station (4 chargers) and all were either āin useā or āunavailableā despite that not being true. I did notice this on the first leg when using plug and charge, but it did not seem to matter because the plug-in action initiated the charge. On the app, you are locked out of any charge initiating actionsā¦ you are required to call EA and verify your account information and they initiate the charge. In 1 of the 2 cases, this didnāt even work, and they had to force restart the system before remotely initiating the charge. I stopped to charge at 13 EA stations on my trip (some just conveniently at a pit stop location, not necessary for range needed to my destination). I had issues with at least 5 of those chargers (either having to call EA or having to move to a different charger). Thatās not confidence inspiring. Looking at it with a positive, glass half full, attitudeā¦ I was not stranded at any of these stations. The worst case was about a 20āminute call to get charging (not great when youād only planned a 30-minute stop ā now 50 minutes!).
I suspect I may have been able to avoid some of the above issues by disabling plug and charge and maybe the app/EA network would have detected a new connection and communicated that āoh yeah, maybe itās not currently in useā butā¦ I knew plug and charge worked and didnāt want to chance disabling and not being able to re-enable if I needed to fall back on using plug and charge at the full paid rate. Perhaps someone can verify their experience with this issue.
Did not take note of the max charging speed when using plug and charge but here is some data from the EA summary notifications when using the app.
Stop # | Time on Charger (Minutes) | Energy Delivered (kWh) | Max Charging Speed (kW) | Start-Ending SoC (%) | Charger Max Speed (kWh)*** |
1* | 49:40 | 53.1800 | 135 | 43-96 | 350 |
2* | 46:09 | 39.8680 | 97 | 59-98 | 350 |
3 | 59:52 | 67.6640 | 160 | 26-97 | 350 |
4 | 31:13 | 39.0400 | 102 | 47-87 | 350 |
5 | 17:47 | 20.1200 | 105 | 62-83 | 150 |
6 | 33:29 | 36.3130 | 92 | 53-91 | 350 |
7** | 38:?? | ? | ? | 45-92 | ? |
| * same charger, 1 is tail end of trip leg 1 and 2 is start of trip leg 2 ** Got the juice but EA still has not pushed details of charge, āerrorā occurred when ending charging session. *** I am well aware of the āMach E canāt fully take advantage of 350 kWh chargingā opinion. This is just how the die landed ā many of these the decision to choose a 150 kWh spot was taken away from me due to the charging issues mentioned above e.g., only one spot āavailableā to charge at and it happened to be 350. Interestingly, in some cases the CCS/CHAdeMO combo was the only 150 kWh station. |
So, that was my experience! Hopefully someone will find this interesting and/or useful in some manner.
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