Cross country with EA not ready for prime time.

[JayDoc]

Hi folks, mach-e premium AWD have owned since February. Regarding longer distance travel, I've made several trips to my daughter at 270 miles with one brief EA recharge half way and these were enjoyable and "a piece of cake". We decided to get adventurous and take a 600 mile trip from western NC to New Orleans. This turned out to be an extreme exercise in frustration! In brief, one station was great with consistent 130 kW flow (loved it), but some didn't work at all, and most maxed out @ 35 kW or so making charge times over one hour. Calls to EA were of no help. One fellow promised us a free charge for our trouble, but when we got to the next station the next person reneged. Horrible PR! Most, but not all, stations worked with Plug and Charge but some required a credit card so our "Ford Miles" didn't work. In summary, I love the car for local travel and out to 300 miles or so max. But, unless things change significantly, I will rent a hybrid for anything longer. I'm always open to suggestions, but rather disappointed for now. EA, I hope you're listening.

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[Tampamike]

Don’t get discouraged. We’ve made a couple 1,000+ road trips - the last one for over a month up the East coast into Canada and back. There’s a good many chargers out there on the highways. Off the highways you have plan a little more and do some research But it can be done. I’ve had the car since February And used up all the free kw’s a long time ago. P&C was a little glitchy at first but seems to work fine now when I use it. Mostly I activate the EA pass+ for the lower rate and use their app. There are some chargers that don’t work and some that work too slow (35 - switch chargers). Just have a back up plan. I had to go to the 4th location one night but none of them were EA because of where I was and we made it with about 15 miles to spare.

It’s only gonna get better. I’ve actually seen new EA units being installed and used them later when they were on line. EVGo and ChargePoint seem to be adding newer faster units too.

 

[timbop]

Have you used abetterrouteplanner.com and plugshare.com to help you plan the trip? Plugshare can help you figure out which locations are the problematic ones. Not all chargers at a site have issues - often it seems that one charger will max out at 35kw, but if you switch to a different one you get 130kw. Using plugshare you can map a journey with abrp skipping the crappy locations if possible.

I'll agree that it is much more of a chore than it should be, but that's why they call it "the bleeding edge".

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