3,082mi Road Trip Observations

[Johnny572]

The wife and I had an opportunity to take the GT on a week-long road trip visiting friends and family in Florida and decided to take a fun (circuitous) path from our home in Maryland west to Kentucky before heading southeast through Asheville and then making our way down to Fort Myers and then back up I95 home. I have a set of CR1 wheels (factory tires) and decided to throw them on. Our path took us over the Appalachian Mountains twice. Temps ranged from a low of 30 to upper 70's in Florida

Some stats:

• 3.0mi/kWh average consumption (temps ranged from 30 to upper 70's, though the average was probably 40's). Mostly highway 70-72mph.
• DCFCs: 17 (10 EA, 5 EvGo, 2 other)
• L2: 5 overnight charges (4 at hotels, 1 other)
• Average of 140mi/charge.

Planning:

I used ABRP to plan each day the night before, and looked at Plugshare to make sure I had good charging stops. A lot of fuss is made over having to do this with an EV, but it's really no different than the route planning we had to do for trips before GPS routing existed (anyone remember the AAA flip books?).

I only deviated from the ABRP / Ford navigation recommendation once (day 2). Both had me taking a path through the middle of West Virginia and relying on a single Chargepoint CPE 250, arriving with a low SOC and charging to over 90%. I played around with ABRP adding waypoints and discovered I could go around WV creating a much safer route and only adding 25 min to my travel time (faster roads, faster chargers).

Can't emphasize enough how much of a morale boost it is to start the day with a full charge and preconditioned vehicle. We were able to accomplish that almost every day (more on that later), but starting the day with a cold battery and having to DCFC isn't fun.

Charge Networks:

EvGO: I had issues with one of the 350kw chargers south of Columbus. It would reliably lose communication after about 8 minutes of charging and I had to re-initiate each time (I am set up for P&C, so not a big hassle). This is where I realized that below a certain SOC, the Mach-E charging strategy is a lot like the Lightning. I would get about 160kw for a few minutes before it dropped down. Ironically, the end result was that the disconnects let me charge up a little faster. At a second 200kw charger in Richmond, P&C wouldn't work (the app did, however) and we only got 60kw range charging speeds.

Electrify America: EA was mostly solid until the last day. It's counterintuitive, but the more remote locations along the interstate seem more reliable, whereas the locations in high-traffic / high density areas are a mess. Along I95 in the mid Atlantic region, many chargers are de-rated (some noted on the EA app, some not). Most drivers seem oblivious to this. I saw one older woman with an EQS plugged into an EA charger hobbled to 33kw. She was reclined back taking a nap and added maybe 5kw of "free" charging in the time it took me to get to 80%. If you have the ER battery, the 350kw chargers are appreciably faster on average, reliably giving 158-163kw at plug in vs. 120-range for the 150kw chargers.

I ran into one EA location (Walterboro SC) where every charger was de-rated to 50kw. In that instance, I added just enough charge to get me to the next charger. Passing through Richmond, I tried stopping at an EA location only to discover it was completely full with a queue - every car charging was one sold with free EA (VW, Kia, Hyundai, Lucid) and had local VA plates. Luckily I had enough charge to make it to the next station further North.

As an aside, I hated at least 75% of the physical EA locations we stopped at. Most Walmarts aren't clean, there are cars zooming through the parking lots, and several were sketchy as well.

Hotel L2: Again plugshare is great here. Hilton seemed to have the best free L2 chargers. On our last night in Hilton Head I made a reservation at the only hotel with L2 charging (a single plug). I knew from Plugshare that it was hit or miss, so I expected the worst and got it. It turns out they had a 32+A charger being supplied by a 20A circuit (I feel like that has to be a code violation?). Unless you can adjust the charging current in the vehicle (like Tesla) it will pop the breaker (which our car did). Not being able to charge overnight meant we had to top off at the nearest EA, adding at least 30min to a long day.

The Mach E:

In a nutshell, the car performed great and did almost everything asked of it. The car received 2 small powerups (4.2.1, 4.2.2) over the trip without issue (it is in EA). I used Ford's navigation exclusively and am pretty confident that any DCFC stops where we didn't receive 150+kw charging were a result of a charger limitation. I did make a conscious effort to turn the heat off when we were within 20mi of our next charger. Adding waypoints or new charge locations was pretty simple and straightforward with one hiccup on the last day.

One limitation (it may be intentional) of the Ford navigation is that it seems to be smart enough to know that a charge stop will be long (it could see that the EA chargers we needed to use were throttled to 50kw), but not smart enough to tell me to get moving once I had enough charge to make it to the next charger. As a result, on our last day, it had me charging at the 50kw Walterboro EA for over an hour and a half to over 70%. I said to hell with that and left when I had enough miles (+20 for cushion) to make it to Florence. This threw Ford Nav / Sync for a fit trying to redirect me back to Walterboro. When I did a delete/replace charger in the navigation, something froze and I ended up having to do a Sync reboot using the steering wheel controls to fix it. The Sync reboot had things working smoothly again and leaving Walterboro early saved me 30 minutes.

CR-1 wheels:

I averaged 3mi/kwh for the whole trip. My efficiency at highway speeds varied from 2.6 (windy, cold weather) to 3.3 (Florida in the upper 70s). Anecdotal, but efficiency seemed MUCH better under 50mph, where 3.7+ was common. Lifetime efficiency on our car with the GTPE wheels was 2.6mi/kwh, so slapping the CR1 wheels on the car saved me 158kwh (about 3 charging stops or $76 at $.48/kwh) over the 3k miles. Wife still hates them and wants the GTPE wheels back on as soon as possible.

CR1 wheels…….Great idea!

 

[mkhuffman]

I have a GT with GTPE wheels. Sorry for any confusion.

But your OP says you had CA Rt1 wheels on your car and the picture shows them. I am confused.

 

[SWO]

But your OP says you had CA Rt1 wheels on your car and the picture shows them. I am confused.

CR1 wheels for the trip, but my baseline (the wheels normally on the car) for efficiency comparison is a GT with GTPE wheels.

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