Jimrpa
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Jim
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2020
- Threads
- 231
- Messages
- 7,125
- Reaction score
- 9,479
- Location
- Wayne, PA
- Vehicles
- 2021 Infinite Blue Premium Mustang Mach E ER AWD
- Occupation
- Retied (formerly tried to herd highly technical, independent cats)
- Thread starter
- #1
A few months ago, some buddies and I were trying to figure out where to go for a long weekend in the spring, when the pandemic lightened, and the weather warmed up a bit. Normally, I’m not the one who drives, but I was hoping I’d have my Mustang Mach E by then so I volunteered to be the driver.
We wanted to go someplace “different”, so I tossed out St. Michael’s, MD. I had said to there many years ago with a buddy and remembered it as being a nice little town and it wasn’t TOO far away. So, the plan was set. We were going to leave on Friday morning, May 7 and return Sunday May 9. By May we figured it should be warming up a bit and the weather should be decent.
On the drive down, I was using intelligent cruise control with lane centering and explaining that it was NOT self driving but that BlueCruise was coming later this year which would allow hands-free on select limited access roads. At about that time, a tractor trailer decided to cut me off, incredibly close, so the car pretty much began doing what could be best described as “very aggressive” braking and I quickly checked and swerved into the next lane to the left. The braking really startled them and I explained that ACC does do braking to maintain distance, but I did the sudden lane change.
They also made a comment about the “roller coaster” like ride (one guy compared it to the Rock n Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith.) I explained that I was using a mode called 1-pedal drive and turned it off. They definitely preferred the ride without 1-pedal drive. They found it less jerky.
They definitely did not like the concept of charging. We stopped at a harriett Tubman museum on our way down and there was a ChargePoint level 2 charger (so, of course, I had to download the app), but they had the charger installed way out in their grass parking lot, not in their paved parking lot! That didn’t impress them. Then, we got to the bed and breakfast we were staying at. They had assured me that they had a charger. And they did - at their OTHER in - 3/4 mile away! So, we drive to the other inn, and I was prepared with my TeslaTap (because they told me they only had a Tesla charger) but they actually had both a Tesla charger AND a J-1772 charger! I plug my car in and it begins charging, and the owner comes over and we begin talking. It turns out that Tesla had installed both of the charges FREE about 3 years ago - they just called him up out of the blue! We continued talking. He owns a model 3. Bought it the night Elon announced it, even before there were running models and, of course loves it. His son is planning on getting a Mustang Mach E though. I talked to him about the Mustang Mach E for a bit and showed it to him. He was very impressed. He loved the instrument panel and really liked the styling. By then, my friends had given up and begun walking back to town, in the rain, without umbrellas (sigh!) He offered to give me a lift back in his wife’s huge SUV (some Infiniti monster) and we saw my friends. We picked them up and headed back to town. We grabbed dinner that night. The next morning, we did the 3/4 mile walk in off and on rain back to the other inn to get my fully charged car and headed off to Assateague Island to see the ponies. It was raining off and on, and pretty cold and miserable, so there were no horses to be seen. We finally gave up and went to Ocean city for Lunch. After lunch, we headed back to St. Michael’s, only to discover the only road into town was closed because of a major accident. We turned around and went back to a Starbucks I then suggested we go hand out at a charger since we weren’t going to get back to st. Michael’s and the weather was deteriorating. I wasn’t paying attention and the first charger I went to was a Tesla Supercharger ? so we then went to Easton, which had FREE chargers in their town lot. Now it had begun pouring rain, but we hung out for about 40 minutes. My friends couldn’t believe my battery charge only went up by 2%. I kept trying to explain that it’s a BIG battery! The weather cleared and we decided to head back to St. Michael’s. Sync was claiming it was going to take us 2.5 hours and was taking us some bizarre route (Sync apparently thought the road was closed and didn’t know how to route when there was no valid route. I think it was “stalling” until it thought the route would clear). So, my friends immediately decided that sync was the worst piece of crap that had ever been developed, pulled out their iPhones and launched their beloved Waze, which confidently assured them we’d be there in 1/2 hour. I don’t have any Google (or Amazon) products on my phone and I try to use them as infrequently as possible, so I launched CarPlay and Apple Maps (of course, they think Apple Maps is a stupid toy that shouldn’t be used for “real” navigation”.) Apple Maps was using the same route their Waze was using with an ETA 20 minutes later. It turns out that there was one point where you could approach the accident scene from another road and the emergency services were alternating traffic between the two routes - the Apple Maps route and the Waze route. To shut these guys up, I took the turn that put me on the Waze route. We ended up at the exact same place, just a different line at the bottleneck. After that, I got to St. Michael’s with 17% charge left and parked the car in a nearby lot with ChargePoint chargers for the night.
Their conclusions:
We wanted to go someplace “different”, so I tossed out St. Michael’s, MD. I had said to there many years ago with a buddy and remembered it as being a nice little town and it wasn’t TOO far away. So, the plan was set. We were going to leave on Friday morning, May 7 and return Sunday May 9. By May we figured it should be warming up a bit and the weather should be decent.
On the drive down, I was using intelligent cruise control with lane centering and explaining that it was NOT self driving but that BlueCruise was coming later this year which would allow hands-free on select limited access roads. At about that time, a tractor trailer decided to cut me off, incredibly close, so the car pretty much began doing what could be best described as “very aggressive” braking and I quickly checked and swerved into the next lane to the left. The braking really startled them and I explained that ACC does do braking to maintain distance, but I did the sudden lane change.
They also made a comment about the “roller coaster” like ride (one guy compared it to the Rock n Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith.) I explained that I was using a mode called 1-pedal drive and turned it off. They definitely preferred the ride without 1-pedal drive. They found it less jerky.
They definitely did not like the concept of charging. We stopped at a harriett Tubman museum on our way down and there was a ChargePoint level 2 charger (so, of course, I had to download the app), but they had the charger installed way out in their grass parking lot, not in their paved parking lot! That didn’t impress them. Then, we got to the bed and breakfast we were staying at. They had assured me that they had a charger. And they did - at their OTHER in - 3/4 mile away! So, we drive to the other inn, and I was prepared with my TeslaTap (because they told me they only had a Tesla charger) but they actually had both a Tesla charger AND a J-1772 charger! I plug my car in and it begins charging, and the owner comes over and we begin talking. It turns out that Tesla had installed both of the charges FREE about 3 years ago - they just called him up out of the blue! We continued talking. He owns a model 3. Bought it the night Elon announced it, even before there were running models and, of course loves it. His son is planning on getting a Mustang Mach E though. I talked to him about the Mustang Mach E for a bit and showed it to him. He was very impressed. He loved the instrument panel and really liked the styling. By then, my friends had given up and begun walking back to town, in the rain, without umbrellas (sigh!) He offered to give me a lift back in his wife’s huge SUV (some Infiniti monster) and we saw my friends. We picked them up and headed back to town. We grabbed dinner that night. The next morning, we did the 3/4 mile walk in off and on rain back to the other inn to get my fully charged car and headed off to Assateague Island to see the ponies. It was raining off and on, and pretty cold and miserable, so there were no horses to be seen. We finally gave up and went to Ocean city for Lunch. After lunch, we headed back to St. Michael’s, only to discover the only road into town was closed because of a major accident. We turned around and went back to a Starbucks I then suggested we go hand out at a charger since we weren’t going to get back to st. Michael’s and the weather was deteriorating. I wasn’t paying attention and the first charger I went to was a Tesla Supercharger ? so we then went to Easton, which had FREE chargers in their town lot. Now it had begun pouring rain, but we hung out for about 40 minutes. My friends couldn’t believe my battery charge only went up by 2%. I kept trying to explain that it’s a BIG battery! The weather cleared and we decided to head back to St. Michael’s. Sync was claiming it was going to take us 2.5 hours and was taking us some bizarre route (Sync apparently thought the road was closed and didn’t know how to route when there was no valid route. I think it was “stalling” until it thought the route would clear). So, my friends immediately decided that sync was the worst piece of crap that had ever been developed, pulled out their iPhones and launched their beloved Waze, which confidently assured them we’d be there in 1/2 hour. I don’t have any Google (or Amazon) products on my phone and I try to use them as infrequently as possible, so I launched CarPlay and Apple Maps (of course, they think Apple Maps is a stupid toy that shouldn’t be used for “real” navigation”.) Apple Maps was using the same route their Waze was using with an ETA 20 minutes later. It turns out that there was one point where you could approach the accident scene from another road and the emergency services were alternating traffic between the two routes - the Apple Maps route and the Waze route. To shut these guys up, I took the turn that put me on the Waze route. We ended up at the exact same place, just a different line at the bottleneck. After that, I got to St. Michael’s with 17% charge left and parked the car in a nearby lot with ChargePoint chargers for the night.
Their conclusions:
- Electric cars are fine for commuting, but the technology isn’t advanced enough to take them on road trips of any length (to quote one friend “Nobody is going to want to stop for an hour or more every 2-2 1/2 hours and wait while their car recharges! That’s stupid.” I tried to point out that you’re probably going maybe 4-4 1/2 hours between charges and he wasn’t having it. His attitude was that people get on the road at 6, drive straight through until noon, except for bathroom breaks, grab lunch and fuel, then continue on until they stop for the evening. He didn’t see how an electric car could do that. Oh well. Not my problem
- Sync navigation sucks - this is a religious battle and you’ll never win it. Yea, sadly, Sync was faced with an edge case it couldn’t cope with. I would have gotten annoyed with Sync’s answer and failed over to Apple Maps.
- 1-Pedal driving is very jerky like a roller coaster. I’m glad I finally have confirmation on that from people who are totally ignorant of electric cars in general and that complaint about the Mustang Mach E in particular. It is an issue. As soon as I switched off one pedal driving and drove the car “normally”, they were happy. So, it wasn’t my driving per se (unless you want to say it’s that I haven’t learned to to do 1-pedal driving
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