3,300 Mile Road Trip 1 Week After Purchase

[Boselka]

So I have been reading this forum for a while, and I can't thank everyone so much for all of the great insight, support, and discussion on this cool car. We ordered our MME back in like May, and finally took delivery on October 18th. We could not be happier with our Star White Premium Extended Range AWD Mach-E. We promptly got all of the windows tinted, and de-baged the vehicle for that nice smooth and clean look. Then we took it on the 22nd on a cross-country road trip from Dallas Through Nashville to Washington D.C. and back. Total Trip was 3,300 miles, first ever road trip in an electric car. I wanted to share our observations and possibly get communities feedback.

• Charging on EA pretty much the entire trip we hit a total of 13 different chargers. Everything worked pretty well, the biggest issue we had to deal with is figuring out which was the fastest station. (Although we had 1 station fault but it was only 1 charger amongst a group of 4 at the station so not so bad.)
  • Our MME is running 1.7.1 With Blue Cruise, and most of the time from 20% - 70% we averaged about 107KW with some instances of 150-160KW around the 30% - 45% range.
  • On the way out of Dallas we over-planned every detail both through the Connected Nav, Plug Share, and A Better Route Planner. However all of that was overkill, the way back we only used the Connected Nav, found it easy to use, good at predicting needed range, and finding good chargers. Only a few notes for @Ford Motor Company on this:
    • First off don't recommend a 50kw Charge Point if there is a 150kw charger within a few miles of the 50kw unit? Not sure why but both times on 81 in VA the connected nav wanted us to spend almost 2 hours at a 50kw Chargepoint when there was a 150kw EA station within 10 miles of that station that would charge us in 35 minutes.
    • Next is the routing through the chargers, if we did not drive the exact route in the parking lot the nav recommends we would not come in contact with where the system thought the charger is. Then even after charging and driving away from the charger that was recommended by the connected navigation the system is still trying to route back to that charger. This was strange because we got a push notification that we have enough charge to continue the journey (a great feature btw). This results in having to cancel the whole trip, and start all over again (because you can't remove a recommended stop only select a replacement.
• The efficiency overall for the trip was 3.0miles/kWh - Although we lucked out with nearly perfect weather the entire trip 56º - 70º so we did not really need E-Heat or AC, so that was SUPER helpful.
  • We averaged about 200 miles between charging stops (occasionally less when needed).
• Blue Cruise we got to use about 65% of the Trip and overall we like it, and it made the trip WAY more comfortable and less draining, but we do have some notes. I calculated that we did probably over 2,000 miles on BlueCruise.
  • During the day, on wider lanes, we find it does wander a bit bouncing back and forth between the lines.
  • Works great at night with clear lines (centers good no wander)
  • Crosswinds confuse it, especially if you try to hold the wheel to help keep it centered.
  • There is also a bit of an issue where it will hug the right side if the line on the right lane is faint. We attempted several times to hold the wheel to help center it in the lane, this creates cascading feedback where you hold the car to the left to keep it center, it applies more pressure to move the car right, which you then add more pressure to hold the car center, and if you let go of the wheel it overcorrects and freaks out.
  • Bright sunlight coming at the front of the car confuses the sensor as I am sure it drowns out the camera looking for lanes.
  • In general, the transition between asking for hands on the wheel vs. hands-free is pretty smooth if you are paying attention. However the hands-free mode is sensitive enough where you can't look around too much, so I noticed if I bounced between the center rearview mirror to the driver's side mirror and then at the instrument cluster before looking back directly at the road it would ask me to look at the road. Also taking a drink for any longer than a sip causes an alert.
  • I think the most annoying thing though is that it tracks the car in front of you that is exciting way too long. The car can be exited in a different lane for a good 200 feet in a lot of cases, and thus when they slow down for the exit BlueCruise slows down to stay behind them even though they are in a different lane.
• Questions that I can't figure out:
  • First and most annoyingly the climate control has a mind of its own. I can set the climate control on fan speed 2 temp 70º and coming out of the vents only without AC and without EHeat but with recirculate on. Checking back in 10-15 minutes sometimes recirculate is off, sometimes AC is back on or EHeat is back on. Same with Auto-Mode but I expected Auto to do these things. The result is I probably had to go into the climate control settings like 50 times on this trip to keep my manual settings the way we wanted them. (I mean if it is 63º outside we can be comfortable in recirculating mode at 70º settings without getting cold, but start bringing in outside air and after a while, it gets too cold inside. So WHY won't it let me keep it that way.)
  • The other thing I can't figure out (maybe someone else is experiencing) every so often the Ford Voice Recognition Pulls up as if we hit the voice button. This happened probably about a dozen times on the road trip. (No we did not accidentally hit the button) Has anyone else had this happen? I can't figure out what causes it.

I believe that is all I can think of, we are now a complete Ford Electric Household with our 2016 CMax Energi, 2017 Ford Focus Electric, 2021 Mustang Mach-E, and now just got our Ford Connected Charger installed!

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[Glen]

What a great write up. Thank you. Gives me hope and makes me want mine more. ?

 

[timbop]

Wow, that's pretty fantastic that you just jumped in to a 3500 mile drive like that. I'm a huge pessimist so I worked my way up to longer drives and developing a trust of the EA network being reliable enough. Spot on about the nav not prioritizing 150kw stations over 50kw stations - Ford really needs to work that out before I trust the nav to route me on a long trip. I think your climate control issues were because you had it in automatic. I never use that; I set the fan speed, vents, and whether AC or heat is enabled manually and it does a pretty good job of keeping a consistent temp. With the car's assistant popping up it is probably because you have the voice activation enabled. I've disabled that in my android phone and the car; otherwise it sometimes hears the radio and thinks I activated it.

 

[Boselka]

...Spot on about the nav not prioritizing 150kw stations over 50kw stations - Ford really needs to work that out before I trust the nav to route me on a long trip...

Yes it is annoying, we got around it by looking at the charging stations it auto-added to the trip and if anything was not EA we replaced that charger on the trip with the closest EA charger and it auto-calculated the other charging stations as needed. Worked well every time, just annoying we had to go that extra step.

 

[RickMachE]

Great example of why not to use just the Ford system. ABRP and the EA app are helpful to not waste time.

 

[Boselka]

Great example of why not to use just the Ford system. ABRP and the EA app are helpful to not waste time.

Personally (and after using ABRP with the FFE) I prefer the Ford System as it did better auto-updating based on actual conditions. For example on one stretch into VA on 81 because it was a lot of down-hill and no need for AC or Heat we ran an average of 3.6 miles / KW and it actually moved us out to a charger that was previously out of reach when originally planning the trip (cutting one stop out of the trip and making us arrive faster than planned.) It is not perfect but it worked.

 

[RickMachE]

That's why you use all of them. ABRP on phone, Ford on screen, check new EA location when Ford suggests it, then look in PlugShare to see site ratings.

 

[Boselka]

...With the car's assistant popping up it is probably because you have the voice activation enabled. I've disabled that in my android phone and the car; otherwise it sometimes hears the radio and thinks I activated it.

Thank you @timbop for this information, I did not know there was a Voice Activation that is always listening, it totally makes sense that it may have heard us say something similar to the OKAY FORD command prompt that made this activate. Now I know the car is not haunted LOL.

 

[Tampamike]

The routing to the charger through the parking lot is almost comical sometimes - until you’re trying to leave a place that you’re unfamiliar with and it‘s trying to route you back to the charger. I wasn’t laughing. I finally discovered that you CAN delete the charger. When you hit the “X” to cancel the route, a box pops up with the option to just delete the waypoint (the charger location) and keep the rest of the routing. I didn’t realize that until after I hit the cancel route option. Now I know …

The Nav charger selection actually helped me one time. I was spring loaded to EA chargers but the car’s Nav wanted to send me to an EVGo charger. Usually they have been the slower variety, but to my surprise, the EVGo at Normandy Square in Jacksonville, Fl was a bank of brand new fast chargers as fast as the EA ones. Worked out great.

 

[Boselka]

The routing to the charger through the parking lot is almost comical sometimes - until you’re trying to leave a place that you’re unfamiliar with and it‘s trying to route you back to the charger. I wasn’t laughing. I finally discovered that you CAN delete the charger. When you hit the “X” to cancel the route, a box pops up with the option to just delete the waypoint (the charger location) and keep the rest of the routing. I didn’t realize that until after I hit the cancel route option. Now I know …

The Nav charger selection actually helped me one time. I was spring loaded to EA chargers but the car’s Nav wanted to send me to an EVGo charger. Usually they have been the slower variety, but to my surprise, the EVGo at Normandy Square in Jacksonville, Fl was a bank of brand new fast chargers as fast as the EA ones. Worked out great.

Good to know, I did not see that option either so will try that.

 

[67 Stang Convertible]

Thanks for the write up. Good to hear the Ford Nav works well. A single system is just easier. Checking 3 different apps to take a trip seems overkill. Wish the Ford Nav would show our Law Enforcement friends then would not need Waze. I look forward to my 1st road trip; when ever it comes. Still have to convince the wife it's ok to stop at a charger for 30 min.

 

[macgyver60]

Thanks for the detailed write up. The Ford voice thing is something I have had a problem with since I got the car. If I am talking to my wife or the radio is on it will happen pretty frequently. About once on an hour long drive. Not a big deal but kind of annoying like a rude child. Siri doesn't interrupt anywhere near as much.

 

[macgyver60]

That's why you use all of them. ABRP on phone, Ford on screen, check new EA location when Ford suggests it, then look in PlugShare to see site ratings.

Agreed but way too much app switching when trying to drive. They need to find a way to incorporate more of these functions into a single app if mo other purpose than safety

 

[RickMachE]

Agreed but way too much app switching when trying to drive. They need to find a way to incorporate more of these functions into a single app if mo other purpose than safety

Agreed.

 

[timbop]

Thanks for the detailed write up. The Ford voice thing is something I have had a problem with since I got the car. If I am talking to my wife or the radio is on it will happen pretty frequently. About once on an hour long drive. Not a big deal but kind of annoying like a rude child. Siri doesn't interrupt anywhere near as much.

If you disable the keyword recognition then all you have to do is hit the button on the steering wheel to activate it, so it's not really a big deal. My hand is on the wheel anyway, so pressing a button on the few occasions I want the voice assistant is better than it constantly coming on. I had a situation with a podcast that had words it mistook so it got stuck in a loop: the assistant interrupted the podcast, I canceled it, and the podcast restarted just before the keyword so it triggered the assistant again.

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