FIRST ROAD TRIP! 1,500 Miles Through A Rocky Mountain Blizzard

[littlD]

The trip was an adventure because it was pretty much a worst-case scenario.

Temperatures were below freezing for nearly the entire journey.

Road conditions were awful. I had to deal with blizzards that reduced my visibility to near-zero, the snow blocked the sensors on my car (RIP adaptive cruise control), deep slush and black ice ruined my traction, and I had to alter routes on the fly due to road closures.

Charging was also a huge problem. My destination near Hot Springs in South Dakota is centered in a fast-charge dead-zone with no fast chargers for about 200 miles in any direction. Even finding suitable L2 charging was nearly impossible, with the nearest city being over 50 miles away.

With that preamble, here's my experience taking a road trip through a blizzard to rural South Dakota.

ROUTING
I routed the initial trip from Salt Lake City to my brother's cabin near Hot Springs, South Dakota on A Better Route Planner using their free trial period of Premium service. Unfortunately, ABRP doesn't do a great job factoring in road closures or traffic conditions, and there's no way to manually tell the app not to use a specific road, so I had to export my plan to Google Maps, which has better real-time traffic data.

Getting it all to work with Android Auto was a bit of a chore, as I couldn't get ABRP to export its route to Google Maps through Android Auto. I had to disconnect my phone from Android Auto, open up the ABRP app on my phone, export the route to Google Maps, start navigation on my phone, then reconnect my phone to Android Auto. Google Maps often lost my route while I was charging - most likely, I inadvertently cancelled navigation while messing with my phone during charges - so this was a process I had to go through several times.

On an ICE vehicle, the trip each way should be about 9 to 9.5 hours each way, mostly traveling along I-80. However, I-80 has few fast chargers along its path (and wound up being closed, anyway), so I had to make a large detour along I-70 which added almost 150 miles to my trip. Including charging time, it would take me an estimated 15 hours each way, which didn't include a full overnight charge at a hotel.

The stop at a hotel was mandatory, as the only way to make the final leg of the trip to Hot Springs was to charge for at least 10 hours on a L2 charger in or near Scottsbluff, NE. Once at my destination, I would also have to charge at least 60% of my battery using a 240v electric outlet, which would take about 2 days.

ON THE ROAD
The start of the trip wasn't bad at all. BlueCruise's hands-free driving on interstates was a blessing for large stretches of the drive. I did find that it sometimes got confused, thinking I wasn't watching the road when I was scanning the horizon for wildlife (I literally drove through three herds of deer, so that was a huge concern of mine). BlueCruise also wasn't available for many of the winding mountain stretches, as the turns were too sharp for the system to handle. Nevertheless, being able to occasionally rest my arms during the trip made the long drive much less unpleasant.

I-80 closed due to the blizzard, and ABRP insisted on putting me on at least some portion of it regardless of what alternate route I chose. Google Maps could navigate around it, but couldn't replace the destination charger with another one within range, so I had to use the Mach-E's built-in navigation to find a charger during one stretch, then go back to Google Maps to get back on my journey to the next charging station that I'd plotted through ABRP. The experience left me really wishing for better EV routing software.

The Mach-E mostly handled the poor road conditions wonderfully. The heavy battery and AWD meant that even on its stock all-season tires, I had much better handling than most of the other vehicles on the road. In the worst conditions, I still had to slow down to drive safely, but I still shaved off whole hours of my trip by being better able to handle the snow, ice, and slush. During my last stretch on I-15, much of traffic was driving single-file on the right side of the interstate at a measly 25 mph or so, but I was able to drive safely at roughly twice the speed in the left lanes, which I estimate saved me at least an hour just that night.

What the Mach-E did struggle with was its various sensors getting impacted by snow, mud, and ice. Features like lane keep, adaptive cruise control, and collision avoidance depend on these sensors to operate, so I spent the worst parts of the trip without those features. The worst of it was the loss of adaptive cruise control, as there's apparently no defaulting to ordinary cruise control when the sensors are obstructed. Before the sensors failed, though, lane keep was very useful in low-visibility situations, especially when it helped me stay in my lane when the windshield was getting blasted with slush from cars in the opposing lane.

CHARGING
I used either ChargePoint or Electrify America stations for the entire journey (with the exception of the home charge at my brother's cabin).

ChargePoint was much cheaper than EA; most charged only $.20/kw (or, in other words, roughly half the price per mile as driving an average ICE), and one station was free, although some did have extravagant parking fees that could double the price. EA, on the other hand, usually charges about $.43/kw without a membership.

However, between the additional parking fees and the much longer route I had to take, I wound up spending a lot more than if I'd driven an ICE, which was extremely disappointing. I had complimentary charging from EA through FordPass, so I got those miles for free, and received about 60% of a battery for free at my brother's cabin, but if I'd had to pay full price, it would have cost me about $165 for fuel round-trip. By way of comparison, gasbuddy.com's calculator estimates I could have taken the same trip in an ICE for about $118.

That's not a totally fair comparison, as you normally wouldn't use an EA charger without a membership (which brings the price per kw down to $.31), most ICE drivers don't use a route planner to save on gas money, and I took a longer route under unfavorable conditions. Still, it's a bad mark on EVs to know that your extra-expensive car will not only be less convenient and take longer on road trips, but might even cost you as much in fuel (or more).

On the bright side, I didn't experience a single faulty charger, and never had any meaningful issues getting a charge. On a couple of ChargePoint chargers, it was unclear whether it wanted me to plug my vehicle in before or after starting a session, but it never took me more than one or two extra tries to get things working.

CONCLUSION
Taking a road trip through a blizzard is never a fun experience, and it's unfair to the Mach-E to make any harsh judgments based on this worst-case scenario. Still, I have to admit that the experience has really dampened my interest in taking the Mach-E on long road trips.

Despite the wonderful handling and BlueCruise, there just isn't enough infrastructure in many parts of the country, and when it's there, it costs far too much to make it worth the inconvenience of having to stop twice as often, and for ten times as long each stop.

If you're paying half as much per mile, you can sort of justify it, but with per-minute and parking fees added, and currently no way to automate a route based on charging costs, you have to base your decision to road trip on an EV solely on ride quality (which is somewhat contradicted by the longer trip times) and environmental concerns (in which case, why are you taking road trips in the first place? There aren't many reasons why you'd really need to travel across the country in person).

Sadly, route planning is still a necessity for EVs in a way that just isn't for ICE vehicles. This issue is made worse by the fact that available route planners are each pretty good at one thing, but none are effective at all the things you really need a route planner to do.

Hopefully, in time, we'll see charging networks filled out, and competition and innovation will drive down costs, and you'll need route planners less often and they'll be better than they are now. Until then, though, I think it's going to be difficult to convince the average American that it's really worth it to switch over to an EV as a primary vehicle.

Great writeup!

I'd forward your experiences to ABRP so they can make improvements, I use it for initial planning but rarely during the drive for reasons like that.

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[Rotmeat]

Great writeup!

I'd forward your experiences to ABRP so they can make improvements, I use it for initial planning but rarely during the drive for reasons like that.

Too late for that, already burned that bridge.

Got into a big fight with them because I couldn't get my trial canceled, and then I had some trouble contacting their support email (who didn't respond to me when I did get finally get that resolved), AND some sort of bug prevented me from creating an account on their forums.

Don't really trust a software company that can't manage basics like that. Like, how are they going to keep my financial information safe if they can't make a support button that works?

 

[billy_at]

You learn that unless there is an economical reason (i.e. you're in a per kWh state and then next charger is in a per minute state which is therefore much cheaper) to always "fill up" to 80% (90%after update), because you never know whether the next charging location will work reliably, etc. Whether you spend 23 minutes at one and 32 minutes at the next, it is still 55 minutes. And there is zero difference in using a 350kW charger and a 150kW charger in my experience.

Also, if you always fill up, and are willing to push to say 10% left, you may be able to have one less stop or less at the last stop before your destination.

I completely agree with this.

 

[billy_at]

Thanks for the writeup. I agree with the commenter above who said the bigger problem seems to be the charging infrastructure, and the MME did its job very well.

EV's are still a new technology, and we're still watching the charging network get built out. Personally, I haven't yet taken my MME on a very long road trip, but I'm looking forward to trying it. Even a very long trip along the I-95 corridor (where most of my road trips take place) seems totally fine to me in an EV. This is a densely populated region with lots of charging options and lots of fast chargers.

But I'm quite comfortable with renting a gas car for the occasional road trip that pushes the charging infrastructure too hard - like a trip through low-density areas or areas with few chargers, e.g. the one you just took. I can only think of one road trip I've taken in my life where EV charger access would've been a major concern. If I took that particular trip again, I'd just rent a gas car and not worry about it. Just like sometimes flying is the only realistic option to get between two points.

For literally 99.9% of my trips, an EV is already a perfect solution. For the remaining, extremely rare trips where I'm venturing out of the charging zone, I'm happy to just suck it up and use a few gallons of fossil fuels until the infrastructure is better.

Just my two cents.

 

[Jim’s electricMustang]

Wow, I just got my MME premium with 4wd. So far I am not as impressed with the 4wd capabilities. You wouldn’t use conventional cruise control on an ice vehicle in snow. Why try it when the sensors are covered with snow and ice?

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