2000 Mile Road Trip from Boston MA to Xenia, OH and Back

[phil]

The economics of building a new DCFC station don't make sense until the capacity of existing stations is exceeded. So there will be some pain I think before it gets better. Not looking forward to waiting for a charger to open up. At all. Fearing it, actually.

Have you learned nothing from the past two years? Our economy is managed by benevolent hyper-geniuses. Our supply chains are bulletproof. There is no risk of shortages or misallocation of important resources.

There will be no pain. It will be fine.

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[mkhuffman]

Have you learned nothing from the past two years? Our economy is managed by benevolent hyper-geniuses. Our supply chains are bulletproof. There is no risk of shortages or misallocation of important resources.

There will be no pain. It will be fine.

We are on the same page, my friend. If those benevolent masters would just get out of the way, the rest of us will solve their problems for them.

 

[mkhuffman]

We do a lot of road trips (~14k miles worth now), and so far we haven't run into a full EA station yet. But it's surely coming. We can definitely see the difference from a year ago, with all these new EVs hitting the roads lately. Just 4 chargers (with 1 or 2 often having issues) at most EA stations can fill up fast.

Agreed. Personally I think this will be a problem until 600 mile highway range cars are common. With that much range, people will never need a DCFC on the way. Well, except for crazy people who like to drive 1000 miles at a time. For pretty much everyone, destination chargers will be the answer. And they can be L2, which are much easier to install. Hotels will need a lot more, but again they are relatively easy to add compared to DCFC stations.

The Lucid currently is rated at 3.9 mi/kWh EPA on the highway. That seems high but I recognize they are probably the king of efficiency right now. For the average BEV, especially larger vehicles like a SUV, we can expect around 2.5 mi/kWh best case at 80 mph. Rivian is a lot worse, but let's assume they can improve efficiency to 2.5. To go 600 miles we need a 240 kWh battery.

I think we will need solid state batteries to fit a 240 kWh battery into a normal sized car. But that technology is coming. I bet we see it within the next five years. Until then, we BEV owners are going to experience pain when we travel, IMO. Hopefully I am wrong, but I don't see a reason to be positive about it right now.

 

[dbsb3233]

Agreed. Personally I think this will be a problem until 600 mile highway range cars are common. With that much range, people will never need a DCFC on the way. Well, except for crazy people who like to drive 1000 miles at a time. For pretty much everyone, destination chargers will be the answer. And they can be L2, which are much easier to install. Hotels will need a lot more, but again they are relatively easy to add compared to DCFC stations.

The Lucid currently is rated at 3.9 mi/kWh EPA on the highway. That seems high but I recognize they are probably the king of efficiency right now. For the average BEV, especially larger vehicles like a SUV, we can expect around 2.5 mi/kWh best case at 80 mph. Rivian is a lot worse, but let's assume they can improve efficiency to 2.5. To go 600 miles we need a 240 kWh battery.

I think we will need solid state batteries to fit a 240 kWh battery into a normal sized car. But that technology is coming. I bet we see it within the next five years. Until then, we BEV owners are going to experience pain when we travel, IMO. Hopefully I am wrong, but I don't see a reason to be positive about it right now.

The Lucid is impressive. But it's also an aerodynamic sedan, while the Rivian is a pickup truck which can never come close in highway efficiency. Americans love their SUVs and trucks, so yeah, 2.5 will be a pretty common MPK for most BEVs on the roads here. Even 2.0 for the bigger ones.

Hard to say how good/cheap batteries will get over the next decade, but I think it would take something truly surprising to see 600 mile range become routine. I think 400 will probably be the more common "leveling off" point, where manufacturers apply the advancements to making the vehicles cheaper and lighter rather than loading up more battery.

Plus there's another downside to loading up a ton of kWh onboard... longer charging times.

There's a point of diminishing return.

 

[kennethjk]

I'm surprised to see 2 of the 3 backing in. Previous Tesla owners, maybe?

(3 of 4 if you count that one at the end at the wrong angle.)

I have been to that station and you need to back in due to the way the chargers and hoses are set up. They worked well for me backing In.

 

[Eric_C_Boston]

I find most of the side-by-side charger sites with four chargers I used are setup like this with one of the two end spaces having the CHAdeMO plug. If you pull in to each stall, then the easiest access goes (from left to right) right rear, left front, right front, and left rear. The easiest one is where the white one is charging.

The charger at the right end was off and the car parked at right angles is not charging.

 

[PA Bob]

We continued on I-90 to the Massachusetts Turnpike. The car had 32% SOC when I got home. The total mileage was 1944.2 miles and I spent $190.09 in charging costs. I did not use Blue Cruise, but mostly used Adaptive Cruise to follow behind the other vehicle.
got a decent 123kW on a 150kw.

This is very helpful. You spent $190 for charging. You spent about 2.5 hrs charging. How much did the ICE spend? Do you feel your charging times were reasonable. Some of the times occurred when you were at your destination. Did the ICE driver feel like he would have spent less time fueling if he was on his own?

When you use the route planning apps, do they indicate what type of chargers there will be? I assume it pays to make an acct ahead of time.

 

[AndyR]

I love ham! I wish I would have know about Hamvention, I would've gone. I dont live too far from there...

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