First road trip. Any tips?

[z88]

We will be taking a trip from Salt Lake City to San Diego. This will be our first trip where we rely on charging stations and only the second time I will have charged outside of my own home. Any tips would be awesome. I'm mainly concerned about charger connectivity if there are still any issues or tricks I should be aware of? I will have my wife and two kids so anything that can make this go as smooth as possible is appreciated we talked ourselves out of renting a gas vehicle for the trip so hopefully all goes well.

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[praxiscat]

Research your charging stops in advance. Make sure they are fast chargers. There is a way to filter this on the ford pass app.

I just took a road trip, this is what helped make it go smoothly. But I was just with my friend for a long weekend, not two kids. Also make sure you are not close to zero when you do a charging stop, just in case you need to do another one.

 

[Mach-E VLOG]

We will be taking a trip from Salt Lake City to San Diego. This will be our first trip where we rely on charging stations and only the second time I will have charged outside of my own home. Any tips would be awesome. I'm mainly concerned about charger connectivity if there are still any issues or tricks I should be aware of? I will have my wife and two kids so anything that can make this go as smooth as possible is appreciated we talked ourselves out of renting a gas vehicle for the trip so hopefully all goes well.

I just did roundtrip from Denver to San Diego so you'll probably cover a lot of the same stretches of road. It all went really well just using the in car navigation and letting it add stops for me. I used all EA chargers except for when we stayed in Vegas and had access to a Level 2 charger. Every charging stop was flawless except for North Las Vegas. The session errored out after 6 minutes and then again after another 6 minutes. Even on Saturday, when temps were near 120, charging was great.

Also note that in Baker, CA, there are a lot of EA chargers, but most are 50kW. They do have a couple of 150kWs there on the side closest to the Tesla Supercharger.

It can also be nice to double check with A Better Route Planner. It has slightly different estimates on charging stops. I just ended up sticking with the car's plan though.

BTW... Some of those stretches on I15 with the 80mph speed limit and the winds dropped my efficiency all the way down to 1.9 miles per kWh. But overall, for the 2,400 mile trip my efficiency was 3.0 miles per kWh.

 

[z88]

Research your charging stops in advance. Make sure they are fast chargers. There is a way to filter this on the ford pass app.

I just took a road trip, this is what helped make it go smoothly. But I was just with my friend for a long weekend, not two kids. Also make sure you are not close to zero when you do a charging stop, just in case you need to do another one.

Thank you for the quickly reply! I just entered in the destination in the trip planner. ill double check which ones it marked were fast chargers and which weren't. Is there a reason not to do full charges on some of these stops other than time? It looks like most it just wanted us to stop for about 30 minutes and continue on to the next one. im also going to look for a hotel that will have chargers so we dont have to worry about it once we are there

 

[z88]

I just did roundtrip from Denver to San Diego so you'll probably cover a lot of the same stretches of road. It all went really well just using the in car navigation and letting it add stops for me. I used all EA chargers except for when we stayed in Vegas and had access to a Level 2 charger. Every charging stop was flawless except for North Las Vegas. The session errored out after 6 minutes and then again after another 6 minutes. Even on Saturday, when temps were near 120, charging was great.

Also note that in Baker, CA, there are a lot of EA chargers, but most are 50kW. They do have a couple of 150kWs there on the side closest to the Tesla Supercharger.

It can also be nice to double check with A Better Route Planner. It has slightly different estimates on charging stops. I just ended up sticking with the car's plan though.

BTW... Some of those stretches on I15 with the 80mph speed limit and the winds dropped my efficiency all the way down to 1.9 miles per kWh. But overall, for the 2,400 mile trip my efficiency was 3.0 miles per kWh.

Thank you for the reply! Ill checkout out A Better Route Planner as well and compare it to what the cars planner says. Are there any other apps you'd recommend? I'll make sure to check and try to stick to 150kW charges when I can. Is there any highway speed you'd recommend or just sticking to 80mph where allowed is going to be fine generally?

 

[Mach-E VLOG]

Thank you for the reply! Ill checkout out A Better Route Planner as well and compare it to what the cars planner says. Are there any other apps you'd recommend? I'll make sure to check and try to stick to 150kW charges when I can. Is there any highway speed you'd recommend or just sticking to 80mph where allowed is going to be fine generally?

The night before, I used the FordPass app and A Better Route Planner to at least get an idea of what I was looking at for the drive. Before we got to a charging stop, my wife would use the Electrify America app and Plugshare to check the station. This part isn't really necessary, but it was useful. She'd find out stuff like, "Stall 1 & 2 are unavailable" so I'd make sure I picked a different stall. The EA app tells you that. The PlugShare app has that plus info/reviews from people that used it recently. We also used the PlugShare app to do our own reviews/check-in at each stop. These are all just extra steps, but not essential.

I kept the car right at the speed limit using Intelligent Cruise Control. I think that helped keep the range estimates fairly accurate. Most of the time I got a little bit of extra range just by staying at the speed limit. At 80mph, efficiency does drop, but as long as the car is expecting that, it is fine. If you are doing 80mph during a long 65mph speed limit stretch, you will likely have range issues.

**Plus, I was filming a road trip video and I don't need video evidence of me speeding. LOL

 

[DeeS]

We will be taking a trip from Salt Lake City to San Diego. This will be our first trip where we rely on charging stations and only the second time I will have charged outside of my own home. Any tips would be awesome. I'm mainly concerned about charger connectivity if there are still any issues or tricks I should be aware of? I will have my wife and two kids so anything that can make this go as smooth as possible is appreciated we talked ourselves out of renting a gas vehicle for the trip so hopefully all goes well.

PlugShare is a nice app can plan road trip and miles between charging stations is given

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