Built Ford Tough? First road trip through the Canadian mountains during scorching a heat wave - wish me luck and no HVBJB failure!

[scoopman]

Wouldn't these all be EC stations, eh?

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[dbsb3233]

Good to know about the power usage with AC. I have found it’s been okay during my daily commute but going up and down the mountains with 4 people and bagged in the car will definitely effect our efficiency.

Massively. We do a lot of road trips through the Rocky Mountains. Really need to factor in elevation from charge to charge. Uphill legs can easily fall below 2 MPK (mi/kWh). But if course you make that up going downhill.

I have an elevation app I use to see if it's a significant elevation difference.

 

[Mathington]

Wouldn't these all be EC stations, eh?

Yup, they are EC, not EA, just a slip of the mind when I was reading EA.

 

[Mathington]

Massively. We do a lot of road trips through the Rocky Mountains. Really need to factor in elevation from charge to charge. Uphill legs can easily fall below 2 MPK (mi/kWh). But if course you make that up going downhill.

I have an elevation app I use to see if it's a significant elevation difference.

What app do you use? I had to use Google maps to set the route and then press “biking directions” to see the elevation gain/loss but it’s not great at showing where it is on the route itself.
I was also getting 2.1-2.3 km/kWh (1.3mi/kWh) on the way up the mountain as it was the worst possible conditions due to the massive elevation gain and the highway speed of 120kmph (75mph). This was with 4 adults, a child, AC blasting and the trunk full of luggage. Due to this, I found it really hard to judge efficiency and if I could make up for the efficiency loss on the way down the mountain.

 

[dbsb3233]

What app do you use? I had to use Google maps to set the route and then press “biking directions” to see the elevation gain/loss but it’s not great at showing where it is on the route itself.
I was also getting 2.1-2.3 km/kWh (1.3mi/kWh) on the way up the mountain as it was the worst possible conditions due to the massive elevation gain and the highway speed of 120kmph (75mph). This was with 4 adults, a child, AC blasting and the trunk full of luggage. Due to this, I found it really hard to judge efficiency and if I could make up for the efficiency loss on the way down the mountain.

It's just some random Android app I found called My Elevation. There's probably a dozen others that are just as good, but that one works well enough. Just a map and you long-press on any spot to see the elevation.

I use Android Auto in the car too, and sometimes I just ask Google. "Hey Google, what's the elevation of Cedar City, Utah?".

It took me a while to trust that I'd have enough range coming back down after getting nervous watching the range meter plummet on the way up. Sometimes I go negative on the GOM vs distance to destination when I get to the top of the hill, but then get it all back coming down. For instance, it's about a 6000' drop from the Eisenhower Tunnel to the west side of Denver 45 miles down the mountain. And it's virtually all break-even on the way down, meaning I'm at the same battery% at the bottom as I had at the top.

 

[alexgorod]

I will update this post with a post road trip summary once I get back next week, so stay tuned!

Are you back? Prove it!

 

[Mathington]

Are you back? Prove it!

I have indeed made it back safely and without incident.

Without further ado, here is the overview of the final two days.

Day 3:

We planned to spend the entire day in Banff, and since there were no DCFC anywhere to be found within a 20 minute drive, I decided I would just head downtown and park the car at one of the many L2 stations for a couple hours to give me enough juice to get to the first charger on day 4 when coming back home.

I went downtown and found a nice charing location with 4x Tesla destination chargers (4x Tesla, 4x J-1772)

Unfortunately, after charging for 3 hours, I discovered that the J-1772 chargers were way under powered and only pumping out 3kW.

I had maxed out my charging time at this parking lot, so I moved to another one that also had Tesla destination chargers (2x Tesla, 2x J-1772) After the expierience at the first station, I decided to check the charging speed of this new charger to see if it was any better (thank you car scanner! I wish we could natively see charging speed from the car iteself)
Sadly, this other charger was also stuck outputting 3kW. It was at this point that I decided to try the Tesla to J-1772 adapter that I had bought on Amazon the day before the trip. (Since this was a last minute purchase to have a safety net of some sort, I didn't have enough time to get a Tesla Tap)

I plugged into the Tesla destination with the adapter and ended up getting 7kW! Not amazing but way better than what I was getting before. At this point I was incredibly happy to have bought the adapter as it was really coming in clutch.

Sadly, I didn't get to charge at this 2nd charger for more than 2 hours as my wife had twisted her ankle really bad so I walked back to the car to pick it up and take her back to our hotel with 65% battery.

According to my efficiency from the trip to Banff and using ABRP, I figured that I would have enough charge to make it to the first DCFC location the next morning. Just to be extra safe, I plugged into the the 120v outlet for the night to get as much juice as we could before going to bed.

Day 4:
This would be the longest day of driving/charging over the course of the entire trip (~13-14 hours according to ABRP)

We packed the car early in the morning and were on the road by 7am sharp. The first planned charging stop was at the Electrify Canada (EC) in Golden.

The first leg of the trip went off without a hitch and we managed to get to Golden with 70km more range than expected. I was thinking that we would have a shorter charging stop and then continue on the road when I ran into the first charging issue on the journey. All the EC chargers were dead, not even "unavailable" but completely black. I then noticed that it wasn't just the chargers but all the other buildings nearby didn't seem to have any power.



Luckily I had a backup plan as there was both a 200kW Petro Canada and a 50kW BC Hydro as backups. The Petro Canada had a horrible score and had a lot of notes from the past couple days about people being unable to charge. I decided to try it anyway just in case and to my surprise, by the time I got to the Petro Canada, the power had returned and the 200kW charger was actually working and I was getting a solid charging speed!

I went to the washroom and then stopped at the Tim Hortons before heading back to the car. We were topped up to 80% after 25-30 minutes and started on our way to Revelstoke.

The Revelstoke charger doesn't have much in the way of amenities other than a train museum and some bathrooms, but it was still great to have a 150kW charger and take time to stretch my legs.

We then continued to Kamloops where we had a good charging session to 80% at the Electrify Canada while eating some Subway for lunch.

The drive from Kamloops to Hope was interesting as we had a major increase in elevation combined with higher speed limits of 120km/h which lead to the efficiency dropping light a rock down to 1.9 km/kWh. We had to make the decision on if we were going to abandon our plans of driving directly to Hope and route to a charger in Merritt. We needed to maintain an average of 4.8km/kWh in order to make it to hope.

Luckily after we finished the climb, we started gaining efficiency back and brought the average efficiency back to over 5.3km/kWh which meant we would be able to make it directly to Hope.

At Hope, we stopped at Petro-Canada and was successfully able to charge. I also encountered another Infinite Blue Mach-E who pulled in 3 minutes after me but unfortunately the other charging station was offline for service so they just went over to the EC station.

One thing I had noticed during the trip was that all the Petro Canada stations had a really horrible rating with comments on PlugShare about people unable to charge. After reading the comments the commonality was that they were all Ioniq 5 owners.

I however never had any issues charging so I'm wondering if it was a car specific issue and nothing with the chargers at all.


In summary

The trip was an incredible success and there were a few key observations/learnings.

1) EV road trips are a blast and I will take my Mach-E if I have a choice.

2) The car charges faster than I expected, even with a slower 119kW peak charging rate.

3) Charging stops are not an inconvenience and it's a great chance to stretch your legs, go to the washroom or get a drink/snack. I find that I'm more refreshed at the end of a drive than driving non-stop in an ICE vehicle.

4) While charging stations always had cars charging, I never had to wait for a charger. I think this will rapidly change and hope that EC and Petro-Canada start installing more locations or more chargers per location.

5) You still need to plan your route and check PlugShare

6)ABRP is VERY conservative, which isn't a bad thing.

7) I really liked the built-in Ford Navigation! It's great to use, especially when driving in areas with no cell signal where Google Maps and Apple Maps glitched big time.

8) Electrify Canada is always my first choice when it comes to charging, not only due to PlugShare reliability (which may not always be correct) but also the number of stations at each location.

9) Petro-Canada is great when you can get a spot to charge as it's only $0.27/min vs $0.44/min with EC. They usually have good amenities at their locations as well, the main problem is that each site only has two chargers and they are usually taken

 

[alexgorod]

How many times did you wish that you had an extended battery?

 

[MachEMaster]

Wouldn't these all be EC stations, eh?

Don’t use Electrify Canada if you can at all avoid it. EC charges .57 cents per minute. Petro Canada charges .27 cents. Unless you are limited to EC by location, save yourself some money. I will only make that mistake the one time.

 

[Mathington]

How many times did you wish that you had an extended battery?

Surprisingly, I never really felt that.

I find that I prefer to drive 3 hours max before needing a break for the washroom or to stretch my legs so the standard range was plenty to do this and then stop at a charging station for a break.

if this was winter time or colder weather or the charging stations were spaced farther apart, I may want the extended range but for this trip it wasn’t an issue at all!

 

[Mauser]

Calgarian here! Enjoy your trip. I've gone to Canmore/Banff many times now - obviously much less of a trip than you took. In Canmore, the charging stations are slim, there's only one DCFC.

Glad it's working out well for you.

 

[Mauser]

Don’t use Electrify Canada if you can at all avoid it. EC charges .57 cents per minute. Petro Canada charges .27 cents. Unless you are limited to EC by location, save yourself some money. I will only make that mistake the one time.

The EC station near me has always been free. At the end of my charge, it tells me what it would have cost, but always comes up as a zero-dollar charge.

 

[Mathington]

Don’t use Electrify Canada if you can at all avoid it. EC charges .57 cents per minute. Petro Canada charges .27 cents. Unless you are limited to EC by location, save yourself some money. I will only make that mistake the one time.

I agree, I did end up paying $4 for the EC pass+ membership which gave me the $0.44/min rate and paid for itself on this trip after the first or second charge.
Since this was a road trip I didn’t mind paying more if the charger had more spots or better amenities while charging. I actually found that the Petro-Canada locations were better but the main issues is they only have 2 chargers per location. Build more chargers!

 

[Mathington]

The EC station near me has always been free. At the end of my charge, it tells me what it would have cost, but always comes up as a zero-dollar charge.

I had that with my car for the first few times but eventually it started charging me. Not sure why it did this but I didn’t complain
Maybe EC gives new members a bit of free charging when they sign up?

 

[MachEMaster]

Screenshot from EC Merrit British Columbia site. Terrible pricing, when it automatically groups the MME into 350kwh charging rate. I got stuck in a McDonalds gong show, finally got out, my Mach E charged to 90% from 50, and it was $22 CAD. Still PO’d about it! Lol

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