EOY trip - Chicago to Nashville

[VindictivePantz]

I successfully completed a roundtrip from the northwestern suburbs of Chicago to Nashville at the EOY (per help from this thread.)

It was a gametime decision on taking the MME vs. my wife's ICE because the weather was atypically warm in the Chicago area for departure, but was going to be colder on the way back. Looking at the forecast, and performing regular ABRP plans the day before, I decided to take the MME.

I had to set expectations with the family that we'd be looking at a longer trip due to charging stops, and they were good with that.

This was my third, but longest "road trip" with the MME, so I was pretty confident that between ABRP, PlugShare, and Ford's navigation, I was covered.

Observations:

1. ABRP is great and terrible at the same time. As noted in the thread above, ABRP was at one point indicating a 12-17 hour trip. I forced it to behave by using @RickMachE 's suggested tuning. By the time the trip actually came around, ABRP had a more reasonable 10-12 hour window.
   
   An ICE trip (without stops) would be 9 hours, but typically 10 based on past experience. We could live with an extra 2 hours and some extra rest, so the MME was fine.
   
   
2. ABRP is terrible on Android/Android Auto. Frequent crashes, slowness, and it chewed a lot of phone battery. Android 12, stock.
   
   
3. ABRP cannot handle minor detours (e.g. heading 2-3 miles off the path for a bite to eat) without crashing, recalculating, and requiring it to be wrangled back to the routing it was supposed to use.
   
   
4. ABRP is not for the non-technical, and until they start using some of that subscription money to polish the UI, flow, and stability, they are just 1 or 2 competitor's away from being irrelevant. (e.g. Google is working on incorporating EV planning.) If they could combine the simplicity of Ford or PlugShare, with the options to tune for geeks underneath, they'd have a reliable product
   
   Despite all of this, ABRP is a requirement for a long road-trip
   
   
5. For redundancy, I also planned both to/from via the Ford App, which proved useful (more later)
   
   
6. I attempted to use PlugShare as well for trip planning, but it is too basic. I did use it for charger quality, and everything checked out (it's a good community.)
   
   
7. I intentionally chose a hotel with L2 charging. It worked out, but not without some stress. There were 4 L2 stations and 6 Tesla "Destination" stations. I do not have an adapter, and I was counting on availability and no ICE'ing. Availability was fine, despite ICE'ing. There were always 2 - 3 ICE vehicles in the L2 stations, and luckily, I seemed to be the only non-Tesla EV driver so it all worked out.
   
   There was never ICE'ing in the Tesla spots, and I strongly suspect it's because of signage. The Tesla spots had clear "EV parking only - violators will be towed"-type signage. The L2 spots had "EV Charging" signs, but no verbiage around ONLY EVs or threats of towing.
   
   Hotels need to adjust signage, to at least strongly discourage unintentional ICE'ing. I am confident that's what was happening - people just not paying attention and parking at what were close spots to the lobby entrance.
   
   The L2 charging was perfect otherwise. It was "free", and I only had to DCFC one time during my stay due to some unplanned side trips and scheduling.
   
   
8. I DCFC'd otherwise (Electrify America), always targeted 80%, despite what ABRP recommended. ABRP likes to give you partial charges, which might work sometimes, but at the end, you still need to accomplish total distance. Going to 80% and adjusting ABRP along the way *may* result in the elimination of a charging stop, or at least give you some additional route options.
   
   Also, budget for unplanned Wal-mart purchases
   
   
9. The trip down took around 12 hours; 1 hour of that was a meal on top of charging, so if we decided to just grab drive-thru, we would have been at ~11 hours, so ~1-2 hours longer than an ICE trip. That fell right within expectations.
   
   
10. The trip back took a little less time because we did not stop for a sit-down meal, and I pushed the range further as I got closer to Chicago as the number of DCFC options were much higher if I found myself in a bind. I ended the trip with ~50 miles left and did not need a stop.
    
    
11. Speed-wise, I kept it within +5 of the speed limit wherever possible (near large cities, that was a bit harder). Doing so kept my efficiency between 2.5 - 2.8 most of the trip. Temperatures were in the 50s for most of the trip; low 60s while in the Nashville area, so temperature was not a significant factor.
    
    
12. 100% charge leaving on the first day + last day was a big help
    
    
13. There was one portion of the trip down where I ditched ABRP and went with my Ford Nav plan to stretch distance a bit. I was on the border of needing an ABRP-recommended L2 session (at a high output station), and when I did the math based on my consumption, I was confident I could make it, but wanted to be more conservative and Ford routed me to highways (so slower, some regen opportunities) - but net, it did not have an overall material duration impact and I ended up doing better than what my math/Ford expected when I made it to the hotel.
    
    
14. BlueCruise helps fatigue significantly, but even when I could not use it, adaptive cruise control was nice. Both helped with minor regen throughout the trip if traffic slowed in front of me, and I am confident using both squeezed some extra miles out of the battery due to it just being better at managing speed changes than I would be.
    
    
15. BlueCruise can also flake near construction zones where lane lines are not well defined, so I took control when approaching those areas.
    
    
16. I used BlueCruise at least 75% of the interstate portion of the trip, except around major metropolitan areas where there are just too many factors that I am not comfortable handing over to Skynet quite yet.
    
    Overall, I was really impressed and happy with BC.
    
    
17. The vehicle itself was comfortable, and made it a relaxing drive. There were a couple of instances where it got bumpy, but they were short-lived.
    

Two final points:

• Had the temperature been colder in Chicago (40s or 30s) on departure or return, I would not have taken the MME as an extra charge stop or two would have made the trip too long duration-wise. It's a 50-degree or above roadtrip vehicle, depending on charging locations, length of your trip, etc.
• I'm driving a Job 1 car, hit 20,000 miles, and had the HBJVB "Sword of Damocles" hanging over my head the whole time. I did not fret about it, but it would pop into my head, especially after DCFC'ing.

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