Long holiday trip via Mach-e GT

[Valkyrja]

My wife and I had a last minute opportunity to spend time with family over XMas and so we threw everything into a completely charged MME GTPE and hit the road.

My garage kept car got dirty.

We went from beautiful Palm Springs, CA to Flagstaff, AZ and then on to Albuquerque, NM. We had sunny weather, warm weather, really cold weather, gentle breezes, 50 mph winds, snow, rain, and everything in between. We rode on dirt roads, pavement (dry, wet, iced) for about 800 miles in each direction.

Neither one of us has ever owned an electric car before and we learned a lot along the way.

TL;DR no major issues with the car or the trip. The Mach-e is a great car to do a long ride in.

Handling
* The car handles like a breeze. The Magneride suspension handled everything that was thrown at it.
* Hitting the accelerator to get around semis on back roads was great and our ability to quickly get around things helped tremendously.
* Still have the stock, summer tires on the car but did not have any issues dealing with snow and ice. The snow was not much and the ice was in patches. If I had to drive on ice and snow through the winter I would definitely buy all season tires after the first set wore out. I do have a lot of experience driving on ice and in snow storms so again, YMMV.
* The car was extremely responsive and we had a few hard swerves to avoid things on the highway. Never lost control, not even a little bit.

Charging
* First off, if the GTPE had the ability to quick charge to 90% we would have been able to shave 3-4 hours off of the completed trip.
* The car started the trip with a 100% charge at home courtesy of the Charge Point Flex.
* We were able to charge to 100% overnight at our first hotel, thanks to the 80 amp Tesla Mini Tap we bought.
* Most of the stops ended up being Electrify America charging stations but we also used Charge Point and Blink chargers along the way.
* In Needles, CA we ran into another Mach-e owner. Unfortunately it was due to the only high-speed charging station being completely offline. Kingman was next stop and we did not have the extra electrons to make it. Fortunately there was a very slow, but free, set of Level 2 chargers next to the fenced in EA station.

Not a sight anyone wants to see at the only high-speed chargers for miles and miles. Image courtesy of my Air 2S, which also ran out of charge while taking this.

Had we been able to fast charge to 90% previously we could have easily skipped the two hours we spent here. However, we did get to meet another Mach-e and met up with them later on at another charging stop.
* EA 350kW charging stations tended to go slower, around 30-40kW. The 150 stations tended to start around 125kW and then settle around 90kW until it hit 80% and then fell to 9-13kW. Due to this we did have to shuffle around a few times. One set of chargers was completely out but the chaedmo/150kW station was in a completely separate area of the parking lot and was operational.
* Even with some issues, most stops were around 30 minutes in length and allowed us time to use restrooms, refill drinks, throw out trash, etc. A couple of our stops we had to go to about 90% and timed those for breakfast and dinner. After walking down to a Cracker Barrel, eating, and returning it was ready to roll.
* We would have stopped for the night with our ICE vehicles and probably stopped at half of the other stops we made along the way. So, in the end, the charging did add time to the trip but, outside of the one place above and one minor hiccup elsewhere, not a lot of time. Again, that would have been reduced even further if our car had been eligible for the charging update.
* Many of the EA stations were in Wal-Mart parking lots and I believe the areas were picked specifically to allow the locals to act like lemmings whenever the car was attempting to pull into the station. I get they wanted some of them close to the doors to encourage shopping, but dealing with the locals who were intent on being run over was a bit much in a couple locations. We prefer the ones away from the crowd and love taking the longer walk to stretch our legs.
* One Wal-Mart must have had the charging station and parking spots done by someone who has never looked at an electric vehicle, let alone charged one. The single spot was off center and forget backing in, the cord was way too short. So we had to be creative, but it worked.
* We noticed very little ICEing going on and one I gave the WTF! stare to for long enough that they moved. Our charging access was never blocked nor did we have to wait for another car to finish up in order to charge.

Crappy picture of a cool feature.

Blue Cruise and Cruise Control
* Worked very nicely except when it was not available.
* Most of the driving was on I-40 and I-10 and hands-free was available for such a long time that we started calling ourselves the supervisors rather than drivers.
* The car loved getting close to semis as we passed them by, making us nervous. After awhile it almost seemed threatening, as if we would pay the ultimate price should we attempt to ever take back control of the car. #totallynotskynet
* Super wide areas in the lanes such as when approaching off-ramps and on-ramps caused confusion and the car would request that we take over for a few minutes. Once the lane went back to its usual dimensions the car took back over.
* It likes to quiz you every so often by requesting you to put your hands on the steering wheel. Within moments of doing so it would take back over.
* The scanner is eerie in its ability to track your eyes, even when wearing sunglasses. It appeared to holler at my wife more than it did me. Do not block the car's ability to monitor your thoughts... errr... eyes. Coffee cups, water bottles, the lazy one hand on the top of the steering wheel driving style... keep your face mostly free of other objects. That said, you can look away and turn your head and even sip from your drink pretty easily without it complaining. Go too long though and it will holler at you via a series of almost R2-D2 like chimes. Hmmm, Ford there's an idea for you, configurable beeps and chirps.

Do not look away from the road... or else.

* Adaptive cruise control worked fine with one exception, it would randomly read speed limit signs on access roads near the highway, even when we were in the far lane. This led to a few instances where we were quickly disengaging Blue Cruise and hitting the accelerator to get back up to speed. On a busy highway, this is problematic.
* Hands-on mode still practically drove itself. We just had to reassure the electric pony by keeping contact on the steering wheel.

Anti-avoidance
* Works very well, even with multiple incoming vehicles.
* We might have found a blind-spot on the driver's side, just a little bit before the half-way point of the rear tire. It had worked flawlessly before and after the incident but for the one merge we were doing it completely failed to detect a car was in the lane. No flashing in the mirror, no chirps, nada. It was jarring in that it was the only time it happened. I do not have any more data to provide on this but will pay more attention to it in the future.
* Was great at detecting cross traffic and people when attempting to escape the Wal-Mart charging spots.

Comfort
* The seats were completely comfortable for me but my wife found them to be slightly uncomfortable during longer parts of our ride.
* Solar gain was pretty big and allowed us to keep the climate control off for a good chunk of the cold part of the trip.
* Accessing items we had in the back seat (snacks!) was pretty easy since the car is so roomy.
* Cold mode would start warming the seats and steering wheel when we used the remote start and was a nice touch.
* The ride was pretty quiet, even with a propulsion noise selected. Sometimes we drove in almost complete silence and other times we had music playing. Of course you could hear the wind but it was not as bad as I expected, even when those winds started hitting around 30 mph and above.

Range
* Better than expected. I did not keep hard numbers, but versus the estimate made by the paid version of ABRP, we were rocking the charge. On the way out we were consistently 5-10% above the expected SoC when pulling into the next charging area.
* Most of our range anxiety was induced via ABRP and our lack of experience with electric vehicles.
* Really high winds from the front reduced our efficiency, but not as much as we expected. The car went from about 2.4kW/mi efficiency down to about 1.8. We had anxiety about it the night before due to the weather warnings put out about the big storms moving through Flagstaff. Actually driving it we did not have much stress because we were now averaging 15% better performance than estimated by ABRP.
* We turned the ABRP versus real world results into a game where we tried our best to beat it by the highest % possible.

Costs
* Not fair to compare on this trip. We used up a chunk of complimentary charging and then had two days of free charging due to the holidays.
* Additional free charging at the first hotel where we went back to 100% overnight using the Tesla Destination charger (and saw another Mach-e, a beautiful red one) and the L2 in Needles.
* I expect it will come out to be about half to 2/3 the cost of using our ICE vehicles.

Community
* We talked to one other Mach-e owner and had a few conversations with other PHEV and electric vehicles. Everyone was nice and we received a number of compliments on the MME.
* We saw a lot of Bolts, a number of various Teslas, a few Porsches... but very few other Mach-e owners.

Random
* Yay for PPF. It protected the car from a few solid hits of debris and rocks thrown at us by other vehicles. Plus we returned to a lot of sand in the air. Paint looks fine but there are a couple of spots where the tech who installed it will have to redo it. Not the PPF's fault, the MME has some difficult lines and we knew this could be a possibility. We have the full front, mirror caps, headlights, and glossy black rocker panels protected (~$2800 USD).
* Windshield was fine until we were about a thousand feet from home. Jerk in a huge Chevy truck was too impatient as we slowed for our stop and ended up throwing rocks from his tires over the car. One super small chip in the windshield because of it. I will likely repair this one myself this week. Of course it is dead center.
* The car was filthy and needed a bath. She is looking shiny and new and I have not found any spots where the paint has been chipped. This was a concern since a number of folks reported the paint was a bit "soft" or chipped easily.
* For the love of all that is unholy... please remove the resetting of the air circulation. Parts of downtown Phoenix smelled like a wet, dirty diaper and we knew as soon as the recirculating air setting was changed. That is a stupid thing to have reset and it should never have been.

All in all the trip was easy and most of the stress was us stressing over range where we ended up not needing to, outside of the closed EA station (which re-opened two days after we were there) and one other hiccup that I cannot exactly recall right now. Most of the trip went as expected and everything in the car performed as expected or better. We could not have had a better introduction to the world of fully electric vehicles.

Paradise by the EA charging station lights.

 

[Mgtmike]

Thanks for the recap. I just placed an order for our Mach E GT this morning. Been researching forums for the past week or two and test drove a GT from Carmax last week. First ever EV I or my wife have ever driven and we were hooked. Was debating a Model Y but after researching and based on a number of reasons I decided on this. Reading reviews like this reassures me I made the right choice and look forward to being a part of this forum for years to come.

 

[Carsinmyblood]

My wife and I had a last minute opportunity to spend time with family over XMas and so we threw everything into a completely charged MME GTPE and hit the road.

My garage kept car got dirty.

We went from beautiful Palm Springs, CA to Flagstaff, AZ and then on to Albuquerque, NM. We had sunny weather, warm weather, really cold weather, gentle breezes, 50 mph winds, snow, rain, and everything in between. We rode on dirt roads, pavement (dry, wet, iced) for about 800 miles in each direction.

Neither one of us has ever owned an electric car before and we learned a lot along the way.

TL;DR no major issues with the car or the trip. The Mach-e is a great car to do a long ride in.

Handling
* The car handles like a breeze. The Magneride suspension handled everything that was thrown at it.
* Hitting the accelerator to get around semis on back roads was great and our ability to quickly get around things helped tremendously.
* Still have the stock, summer tires on the car but did not have any issues dealing with snow and ice. The snow was not much and the ice was in patches. If I had to drive on ice and snow through the winter I would definitely buy all season tires after the first set wore out. I do have a lot of experience driving on ice and in snow storms so again, YMMV.
* The car was extremely responsive and we had a few hard swerves to avoid things on the highway. Never lost control, not even a little bit.

Charging
* First off, if the GTPE had the ability to quick charge to 90% we would have been able to shave 3-4 hours off of the completed trip.
* The car started the trip with a 100% charge at home courtesy of the Charge Point Flex.
* We were able to charge to 100% overnight at our first hotel, thanks to the 80 amp Tesla Mini Tap we bought.
* Most of the stops ended up being Electrify America charging stations but we also used Charge Point and Blink chargers along the way.
* In Needles, CA we ran into another Mach-e owner. Unfortunately it was due to the only high-speed charging station being completely offline. Kingman was next stop and we did not have the extra electrons to make it. Fortunately there was a very slow, but free, set of Level 2 chargers next to the fenced in EA station.

Not a sight anyone wants to see at the only high-speed chargers for miles and miles. Image courtesy of my Air 2S, which also ran out of charge while taking this.

Had we been able to fast charge to 90% previously we could have easily skipped the two hours we spent here. However, we did get to meet another Mach-e and met up with them later on at another charging stop.
* EA 350kW charging stations tended to go slower, around 30-40kW. The 150 stations tended to start around 125kW and then settle around 90kW until it hit 80% and then fell to 9-13kW. Due to this we did have to shuffle around a few times. One set of chargers was completely out but the chaedmo/150kW station was in a completely separate area of the parking lot and was operational.
* Even with some issues, most stops were around 30 minutes in length and allowed us time to use restrooms, refill drinks, throw out trash, etc. A couple of our stops we had to go to about 90% and timed those for breakfast and dinner. After walking down to a Cracker Barrel, eating, and returning it was ready to roll.
* We would have stopped for the night with our ICE vehicles and probably stopped at half of the other stops we made along the way. So, in the end, the charging did add time to the trip but, outside of the one place above and one minor hiccup elsewhere, not a lot of time. Again, that would have been reduced even further if our car had been eligible for the charging update.
* Many of the EA stations were in Wal-Mart parking lots and I believe the areas were picked specifically to allow the locals to act like lemmings whenever the car was attempting to pull into the station. I get they wanted some of them close to the doors to encourage shopping, but dealing with the locals who were intent on being run over was a bit much in a couple locations. We prefer the ones away from the crowd and love taking the longer walk to stretch our legs.
* One Wal-Mart must have had the charging station and parking spots done by someone who has never looked at an electric vehicle, let alone charged one. The single spot was off center and forget backing in, the cord was way too short. So we had to be creative, but it worked.
* We noticed very little ICEing going on and one I gave the WTF! stare to for long enough that they moved. Our charging access was never blocked nor did we have to wait for another car to finish up in order to charge.

Crappy picture of a cool feature.

Blue Cruise and Cruise Control
* Worked very nicely except when it was not available.
* Most of the driving was on I-40 and I-10 and hands-free was available for such a long time that we started calling ourselves the supervisors rather than drivers.
* The car loved getting close to semis as we passed them by, making us nervous. After awhile it almost seemed threatening, as if we would pay the ultimate price should we attempt to ever take back control of the car. #totallynotskynet
* Super wide areas in the lanes such as when approaching off-ramps and on-ramps caused confusion and the car would request that we take over for a few minutes. Once the lane went back to its usual dimensions the car took back over.
* It likes to quiz you every so often by requesting you to put your hands on the steering wheel. Within moments of doing so it would take back over.
* The scanner is eerie in its ability to track your eyes, even when wearing sunglasses. It appeared to holler at my wife more than it did me. Do not block the car's ability to monitor your thoughts... errr... eyes. Coffee cups, water bottles, the lazy one hand on the top of the steering wheel driving style... keep your face mostly free of other objects. That said, you can look away and turn your head and even sip from your drink pretty easily without it complaining. Go too long though and it will holler at you via a series of almost R2-D2 like chimes. Hmmm, Ford there's an idea for you, configurable beeps and chirps.

Do not look away from the road... or else.

* Adaptive cruise control worked fine with one exception, it would randomly read speed limit signs on access roads near the highway, even when we were in the far lane. This led to a few instances where we were quickly disengaging Blue Cruise and hitting the accelerator to get back up to speed. On a busy highway, this is problematic.
* Hands-on mode still practically drove itself. We just had to reassure the electric pony by keeping contact on the steering wheel.

Anti-avoidance
* Works very well, even with multiple incoming vehicles.
* We might have found a blind-spot on the driver's side, just a little bit before the half-way point of the rear tire. It had worked flawlessly before and after the incident but for the one merge we were doing it completely failed to detect a car was in the lane. No flashing in the mirror, no chirps, nada. It was jarring in that it was the only time it happened. I do not have any more data to provide on this but will pay more attention to it in the future.
* Was great at detecting cross traffic and people when attempting to escape the Wal-Mart charging spots.

Comfort
* The seats were completely comfortable for me but my wife found them to be slightly uncomfortable during longer parts of our ride.
* Solar gain was pretty big and allowed us to keep the climate control off for a good chunk of the cold part of the trip.
* Accessing items we had in the back seat (snacks!) was pretty easy since the car is so roomy.
* Cold mode would start warming the seats and steering wheel when we used the remote start and was a nice touch.
* The ride was pretty quiet, even with a propulsion noise selected. Sometimes we drove in almost complete silence and other times we had music playing. Of course you could hear the wind but it was not as bad as I expected, even when those winds started hitting around 30 mph and above.

Range
* Better than expected. I did not keep hard numbers, but versus the estimate made by the paid version of ABRP, we were rocking the charge. On the way out we were consistently 5-10% above the expected SoC when pulling into the next charging area.
* Most of our range anxiety was induced via ABRP and our lack of experience with electric vehicles.
* Really high winds from the front reduced our efficiency, but not as much as we expected. The car went from about 2.4kW/mi efficiency down to about 1.8. We had anxiety about it the night before due to the weather warnings put out about the big storms moving through Flagstaff. Actually driving it we did not have much stress because we were now averaging 15% better performance than estimated by ABRP.
* We turned the ABRP versus real world results into a game where we tried our best to beat it by the highest % possible.

Costs
* Not fair to compare on this trip. We used up a chunk of complimentary charging and then had two days of free charging due to the holidays.
* Additional free charging at the first hotel where we went back to 100% overnight using the Tesla Destination charger (and saw another Mach-e, a beautiful red one) and the L2 in Needles.
* I expect it will come out to be about half to 2/3 the cost of using our ICE vehicles.

Community
* We talked to one other Mach-e owner and had a few conversations with other PHEV and electric vehicles. Everyone was nice and we received a number of compliments on the MME.
* We saw a lot of Bolts, a number of various Teslas, a few Porsches... but very few other Mach-e owners.

Random
* Yay for PPF. It protected the car from a few solid hits of debris and rocks thrown at us by other vehicles. Plus we returned to a lot of sand in the air. Paint looks fine but there are a couple of spots where the tech who installed it will have to redo it. Not the PPF's fault, the MME has some difficult lines and we knew this could be a possibility. We have the full front, mirror caps, headlights, and glossy black rocker panels protected (~$2800 USD).
* Windshield was fine until we were about a thousand feet from home. Jerk in a huge Chevy truck was too impatient as we slowed for our stop and ended up throwing rocks from his tires over the car. One super small chip in the windshield because of it. I will likely repair this one myself this week. Of course it is dead center.
* The car was filthy and needed a bath. She is looking shiny and new and I have not found any spots where the paint has been chipped. This was a concern since a number of folks reported the paint was a bit "soft" or chipped easily.
* For the love of all that is unholy... please remove the resetting of the air circulation. Parts of downtown Phoenix smelled like a wet, dirty diaper and we knew as soon as the recirculating air setting was changed. That is a stupid thing to have reset and it should never have been.

All in all the trip was easy and most of the stress was us stressing over range where we ended up not needing to, outside of the closed EA station (which re-opened two days after we were there) and one other hiccup that I cannot exactly recall right now. Most of the trip went as expected and everything in the car performed as expected or better. We could not have had a better introduction to the world of fully electric vehicles.

Paradise by the EA charging station lights.

My wife and I have been on two 1,400+ trips, and she took one solo. OUr finding mimic yours - minus the diapers in ABQ.

I bought a '53 XK120 in ABQ and it is dusty there. I pity the rental car cleaners, my car was a mess.

 

[Blanked]

* For the love of all that is unholy... please remove the resetting of the air circulation. Parts of downtown Phoenix smelled like a wet, dirty diaper and we knew as soon as the recirculating air setting was changed. That is a stupid thing to have reset and it should never have been.

YES!!! LOCKED RE-CIRC !!! our Ford Explorer knock-off 'Land Rover Discovery Sport' has this!

 

[Valkyrja]

Thanks for the recap. I just placed an order for our Mach E GT this morning. Been researching forums for the past week or two and test drove a GT from Carmax last week. First ever EV I or my wife have ever driven and we were hooked. Was debating a Model Y but after researching and based on a number of reasons I decided on this. Reading reviews like this reassures me I made the right choice and look forward to being a part of this forum for years to come.

You are welcome and glad you found the forum. Hope that you end up loving your GT as much as we do this one. My biggest complaint is that since my wife has started driving it a bit more I find myself in the passenger seat more often. Between the hands-free Blue Cruise and her driving I barely drove the thing at all during this trip.

We had decided, even before we knew of the MME, that we did not want a Tesla. There are a bunch around here and we just do not care for their style. That said a friend recently picked up a Y and it is very solid and has not been plagued by fit and finish issues we heard a lot about in the previous years.

 

[Valkyrja]

My wife and I have been on two 1,400+ trips, and she took one solo. OUr finding mimic yours - minus the diapers in ABQ.

I bought a '53 XK120 in ABQ and it is dusty there. I pity the rental car cleaners, my car was a mess.

Phoenix smelled awful, in parts of the downtown. Just enough to make you wonder what was going on. We have been through Phoenix a few times but rarely stopped overnight.

We love ABQ and almost settled down in that area. This was our second trip there this year, but the first for the MME.

 

[Mgtmike]

You are welcome and glad you found the forum. Hope that you end up loving your GT as much as we do this one. My biggest complaint is that since my wife has started driving it a bit more I find myself in the passenger seat more often. Between the hands-free Blue Cruise and her driving I barely drove the thing at all during this trip.

We had decided, even before we knew of the MME, that we did not want a Tesla. There are a bunch around here and we just do not care for their style. That said a friend recently picked up a Y and it is very solid and has not been plagued by fit and finish issues we heard a lot about in the previous years.

Luckily I’ve always done 99% of the driving regardless of which vehicle we drive together. I just sold my 2012 f150 FX4 that was my daily driver. This will be its replacement. Wife drives an explorer sport and I’m a huge Ford guy. Previously owned a modified 2006 Mustang GT. Felt like it was time to step into the EV world. Wife will get an upgrade once this is paid for. I was 80% set on the Mach even prior to researching the Tesla but wanted to rule out anything I was missing before finally placing an order. TONS of teslas around here also and can’t wait to take delivery in a few months.

Gives me time to prep for home charging setups and decide on some aftermarket rims since I’m not big on the GT stock rims. Was debating moving up to a GTPE but for our needs I felt like we’ll be fine with this. I can always do suspension upgrades to my liking along with other mods along the way

 

[TonyaE]

My wife and I had a last minute opportunity to spend time with family over XMas and so we threw everything into a completely charged MME GTPE and hit the road.

My garage kept car got dirty.

We went from beautiful Palm Springs, CA to Flagstaff, AZ and then on to Albuquerque, NM. We had sunny weather, warm weather, really cold weather, gentle breezes, 50 mph winds, snow, rain, and everything in between. We rode on dirt roads, pavement (dry, wet, iced) for about 800 miles in each direction.

Neither one of us has ever owned an electric car before and we learned a lot along the way.

TL;DR no major issues with the car or the trip. The Mach-e is a great car to do a long ride in.

Handling
* The car handles like a breeze. The Magneride suspension handled everything that was thrown at it.
* Hitting the accelerator to get around semis on back roads was great and our ability to quickly get around things helped tremendously.
* Still have the stock, summer tires on the car but did not have any issues dealing with snow and ice. The snow was not much and the ice was in patches. If I had to drive on ice and snow through the winter I would definitely buy all season tires after the first set wore out. I do have a lot of experience driving on ice and in snow storms so again, YMMV.
* The car was extremely responsive and we had a few hard swerves to avoid things on the highway. Never lost control, not even a little bit.

Charging
* First off, if the GTPE had the ability to quick charge to 90% we would have been able to shave 3-4 hours off of the completed trip.
* The car started the trip with a 100% charge at home courtesy of the Charge Point Flex.
* We were able to charge to 100% overnight at our first hotel, thanks to the 80 amp Tesla Mini Tap we bought.
* Most of the stops ended up being Electrify America charging stations but we also used Charge Point and Blink chargers along the way.
* In Needles, CA we ran into another Mach-e owner. Unfortunately it was due to the only high-speed charging station being completely offline. Kingman was next stop and we did not have the extra electrons to make it. Fortunately there was a very slow, but free, set of Level 2 chargers next to the fenced in EA station.

Not a sight anyone wants to see at the only high-speed chargers for miles and miles. Image courtesy of my Air 2S, which also ran out of charge while taking this.

Had we been able to fast charge to 90% previously we could have easily skipped the two hours we spent here. However, we did get to meet another Mach-e and met up with them later on at another charging stop.
* EA 350kW charging stations tended to go slower, around 30-40kW. The 150 stations tended to start around 125kW and then settle around 90kW until it hit 80% and then fell to 9-13kW. Due to this we did have to shuffle around a few times. One set of chargers was completely out but the chaedmo/150kW station was in a completely separate area of the parking lot and was operational.
* Even with some issues, most stops were around 30 minutes in length and allowed us time to use restrooms, refill drinks, throw out trash, etc. A couple of our stops we had to go to about 90% and timed those for breakfast and dinner. After walking down to a Cracker Barrel, eating, and returning it was ready to roll.
* We would have stopped for the night with our ICE vehicles and probably stopped at half of the other stops we made along the way. So, in the end, the charging did add time to the trip but, outside of the one place above and one minor hiccup elsewhere, not a lot of time. Again, that would have been reduced even further if our car had been eligible for the charging update.
* Many of the EA stations were in Wal-Mart parking lots and I believe the areas were picked specifically to allow the locals to act like lemmings whenever the car was attempting to pull into the station. I get they wanted some of them close to the doors to encourage shopping, but dealing with the locals who were intent on being run over was a bit much in a couple locations. We prefer the ones away from the crowd and love taking the longer walk to stretch our legs.
* One Wal-Mart must have had the charging station and parking spots done by someone who has never looked at an electric vehicle, let alone charged one. The single spot was off center and forget backing in, the cord was way too short. So we had to be creative, but it worked.
* We noticed very little ICEing going on and one I gave the WTF! stare to for long enough that they moved. Our charging access was never blocked nor did we have to wait for another car to finish up in order to charge.

Crappy picture of a cool feature.

Blue Cruise and Cruise Control
* Worked very nicely except when it was not available.
* Most of the driving was on I-40 and I-10 and hands-free was available for such a long time that we started calling ourselves the supervisors rather than drivers.
* The car loved getting close to semis as we passed them by, making us nervous. After awhile it almost seemed threatening, as if we would pay the ultimate price should we attempt to ever take back control of the car. #totallynotskynet
* Super wide areas in the lanes such as when approaching off-ramps and on-ramps caused confusion and the car would request that we take over for a few minutes. Once the lane went back to its usual dimensions the car took back over.
* It likes to quiz you every so often by requesting you to put your hands on the steering wheel. Within moments of doing so it would take back over.
* The scanner is eerie in its ability to track your eyes, even when wearing sunglasses. It appeared to holler at my wife more than it did me. Do not block the car's ability to monitor your thoughts... errr... eyes. Coffee cups, water bottles, the lazy one hand on the top of the steering wheel driving style... keep your face mostly free of other objects. That said, you can look away and turn your head and even sip from your drink pretty easily without it complaining. Go too long though and it will holler at you via a series of almost R2-D2 like chimes. Hmmm, Ford there's an idea for you, configurable beeps and chirps.

Do not look away from the road... or else.

* Adaptive cruise control worked fine with one exception, it would randomly read speed limit signs on access roads near the highway, even when we were in the far lane. This led to a few instances where we were quickly disengaging Blue Cruise and hitting the accelerator to get back up to speed. On a busy highway, this is problematic.
* Hands-on mode still practically drove itself. We just had to reassure the electric pony by keeping contact on the steering wheel.

Anti-avoidance
* Works very well, even with multiple incoming vehicles.
* We might have found a blind-spot on the driver's side, just a little bit before the half-way point of the rear tire. It had worked flawlessly before and after the incident but for the one merge we were doing it completely failed to detect a car was in the lane. No flashing in the mirror, no chirps, nada. It was jarring in that it was the only time it happened. I do not have any more data to provide on this but will pay more attention to it in the future.
* Was great at detecting cross traffic and people when attempting to escape the Wal-Mart charging spots.

Comfort
* The seats were completely comfortable for me but my wife found them to be slightly uncomfortable during longer parts of our ride.
* Solar gain was pretty big and allowed us to keep the climate control off for a good chunk of the cold part of the trip.
* Accessing items we had in the back seat (snacks!) was pretty easy since the car is so roomy.
* Cold mode would start warming the seats and steering wheel when we used the remote start and was a nice touch.
* The ride was pretty quiet, even with a propulsion noise selected. Sometimes we drove in almost complete silence and other times we had music playing. Of course you could hear the wind but it was not as bad as I expected, even when those winds started hitting around 30 mph and above.

Range
* Better than expected. I did not keep hard numbers, but versus the estimate made by the paid version of ABRP, we were rocking the charge. On the way out we were consistently 5-10% above the expected SoC when pulling into the next charging area.
* Most of our range anxiety was induced via ABRP and our lack of experience with electric vehicles.
* Really high winds from the front reduced our efficiency, but not as much as we expected. The car went from about 2.4kW/mi efficiency down to about 1.8. We had anxiety about it the night before due to the weather warnings put out about the big storms moving through Flagstaff. Actually driving it we did not have much stress because we were now averaging 15% better performance than estimated by ABRP.
* We turned the ABRP versus real world results into a game where we tried our best to beat it by the highest % possible.

Costs
* Not fair to compare on this trip. We used up a chunk of complimentary charging and then had two days of free charging due to the holidays.
* Additional free charging at the first hotel where we went back to 100% overnight using the Tesla Destination charger (and saw another Mach-e, a beautiful red one) and the L2 in Needles.
* I expect it will come out to be about half to 2/3 the cost of using our ICE vehicles.

Community
* We talked to one other Mach-e owner and had a few conversations with other PHEV and electric vehicles. Everyone was nice and we received a number of compliments on the MME.
* We saw a lot of Bolts, a number of various Teslas, a few Porsches... but very few other Mach-e owners.

Random
* Yay for PPF. It protected the car from a few solid hits of debris and rocks thrown at us by other vehicles. Plus we returned to a lot of sand in the air. Paint looks fine but there are a couple of spots where the tech who installed it will have to redo it. Not the PPF's fault, the MME has some difficult lines and we knew this could be a possibility. We have the full front, mirror caps, headlights, and glossy black rocker panels protected (~$2800 USD).
* Windshield was fine until we were about a thousand feet from home. Jerk in a huge Chevy truck was too impatient as we slowed for our stop and ended up throwing rocks from his tires over the car. One super small chip in the windshield because of it. I will likely repair this one myself this week. Of course it is dead center.
* The car was filthy and needed a bath. She is looking shiny and new and I have not found any spots where the paint has been chipped. This was a concern since a number of folks reported the paint was a bit "soft" or chipped easily.
* For the love of all that is unholy... please remove the resetting of the air circulation. Parts of downtown Phoenix smelled like a wet, dirty diaper and we knew as soon as the recirculating air setting was changed. That is a stupid thing to have reset and it should never have been.

All in all the trip was easy and most of the stress was us stressing over range where we ended up not needing to, outside of the closed EA station (which re-opened two days after we were there) and one other hiccup that I cannot exactly recall right now. Most of the trip went as expected and everything in the car performed as expected or better. We could not have had a better introduction to the world of fully electric vehicles.

Paradise by the EA charging station lights.

Beautiful car ladies. Sounds like it was a fun trip.