Maryland to Colorado and back in the Mach-E

[jmcbrew]

Just got back from taking my mom on a road trip from Maryland to her home state of Colorado and back. There’s really not a lot to report on. Charging stations are plentiful and pretty reliable. Oddly, the only broken chargers I encountered were Tesla Superchargers (2 of them). Moving down to the next dispenser fixed that.

I primarily used Chargeway to find chargers. I find them very reliable and up-to-date. I love that they filter by charge speed and list nearby amenities.

My main issue was with hotel charging. Many hotels list EV charging on various booking sites, but don’t actually have them. Calling the hotel doesn’t help much, either… since you are usually re-routed to a call center rather than the hotel itself, and they are looking at the same (possibly wrong) data. Also, some hotels charge a crazy amount — one was $0.35/hour PLUS $5/hr, which ended up being more than 80¢/kWh.

Anyway, the trip was great… the Mach-E performed wonderfully… and charging was pretty smooth.

I used Tesla, GM, Mercedes, EVgo, EA, and IONNA chargers along the way.

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[Fremont Kid]

Similar to the round trip we made in September from Colorado Springs to Richmond, VA. I was most impressed by the IONNA and Flying J chargers. Only difference is that the three hotels we stayed at did list and have chargers. Only one in Burlington, CO was owned by the hotel. I used both the CCS to NACS adapter and the J1772 to Tesla Destination charger adapters. Worked great.

Hope your mom enjoyed the trip. Unfortunately, a lot of construction on I-64 and I-70.

 

[jmcbrew]

Similar to the round trip we made in September from Colorado Springs to Richmond, VA. I was most impressed by the IONNA and Flying J chargers. Only difference is that the three hotels we stayed at did list and have chargers. Only one in Burlington, CO was owned by the hotel. I used both the CCS to NACS adapter and the J1772 to Tesla Destination charger adapters. Worked great.

Hope your mom enjoyed the trip. Unfortunately, a lot of construction on I-64 and I-70.

Glad to hear you had good luck at hotels. We had a few misses in NY and Ontario earlier this summer. Ironically, the crappiest hotel we visited (and I mean BAD), had four brand-new 80 amp Blink chargers on site. Go figure!

Yeah, it did seem like the road work was non-stop. Well, at least the orange cones were non-stop. There never seemed to be any actual work going on. It’s also kind of funny that most of the work zones were still 70 MPH.

 

[Fremont Kid]

Glad to hear you had good luck at hotels. We had a few misses in NY and Ontario earlier this summer. Ironically, the crappiest hotel we visited (and I mean BAD), had four brand-new 80 amp Blink chargers on site. Go figure!

Yeah, it did seem like the road work was non-stop. Well, at least the orange cones were non-stop. There never seemed to be any actual work going on. It’s also kind of funny that most of the work zones were still 70 MPH.

Crazy.

 

[Space_Pony]

Just got back from taking my mom on a road trip from Maryland to her home state of Colorado and back. There’s really not a lot to report on. Charging stations are plentiful and pretty reliable. Oddly, the only broken chargers I encountered were Tesla Superchargers (2 of them). Moving down to the next dispenser fixed that.

I primarily used Chargeway to find chargers. I find them very reliable and up-to-date. I love that they filter by charge speed and list nearby amenities.

My main issue was with hotel charging. Many hotels list EV charging on various booking sites, but don’t actually have them. Calling the hotel doesn’t help much, either… since you are usually re-routed to a call center rather than the hotel itself, and they are looking at the same (possibly wrong) data. Also, some hotels charge a crazy amount — one was $0.35/hour PLUS $5/hr, which ended up being more than 80¢/kWh.

Anyway, the trip was great… the Mach-E performed wonderfully… and charging was pretty smooth.

I used Tesla, GM, Mercedes, EVgo, EA, and IONNA chargers along the way.

Is there a monthly charge to use the Chargeway app?

 

[jmcbrew]

Is there a monthly charge to use the Chargeway app?

I use the free version. You can pay and get more features, like real-time battery percentage and efficiency monitoring (kind of like ABRP).

 

[Space_Pony]

I use the free version. You can pay and get more features, like real-time battery percentage and efficiency monitoring (kind of like ABRP).

I checked out the app without setting up an account and the prices are generic. I won't set up an account just to check out the app.

 

[dan_meh]

What route did you take? Were you 70 all the way across?

I'm across the Potomac from you and a trip to Colorado is probably going to be my first multi day trip in the Mach E.

And are we at the point where you just kind of looked for your next station on Chargeway when you were at some percentage? Like “now that I’m at 40%, let’s find our next charger?”

 

[jmcbrew]

I checked out the app without setting up an account and the prices are generic. I won't set up an account just to check out the app.

Alright.

 

[jmcbrew]

What route did you take? Were you 70 all the way across?

I'm across the Potomac from you and a trip to Colorado is probably going to be my first multi day trip in the Mach E.

And are we at the point where you just kind of looked for your next station on Chargeway when you were at some percentage? Like “now that I’m at 40%, let’s find our next charger?”

We took 50 through WV and KY. Picked up 70 around Louisville. The return trip was pretty much 70 all the way.

As far as planning the next stop, we did that at the previous charging station. My mom likes to stop every 2 hours or so. We just looked on Apple Maps for what town was ~150 miles out and then used Chargeway to find the right station. A couple fo times, we decided to keep driving and used Chargeway to find a charger further down the road.

Stopping every 2 hours really makes the trip more relaxing. I never felt tired at all.

 

[dbsb3233]

We took 50 through WV and KY. Picked up 70 around Louisville. The return trip was pretty much 70 all the way.

As far as planning the next stop, we did that at the previous charging station. My mom likes to stop every 2 hours or so. We just looked on Apple Maps for what town was ~150 miles out and then used Chargeway to find the right station. A couple fo times, we decided to keep driving and used Chargeway to find a charger further down the road.

Stopping every 2 hours really makes the trip more relaxing. I never felt tired at all.

That's the way we usually road tripped the MME as well, typically ~2 hours on the road and a ~30 minute DCFC stop. Not because we wanted to stop that soon, but because I play it pretty safe on range and charging. I like to leave a 2nd station in range as backup, just in case. That commonly means stopping with 20-30% still left in the battery. I nearly always just DCFC up to 80%. And like the OP, I nav station to station, choosing my next station while charging at the current one. (Although I do research the general route at home first just to make sure it's all doable.)

We road trip a lot (over 50k miles of it in the MME). Including a 6400 mile trip last year from CO up the East Coast.

 

[jefftuck]

Hotels are really hit-or-miss. Pretty much 100% of the time, the front desk staff has no idea if they work, how they work, who’s parked there.

I don’t blame them. Nobody trained them. Some other company runs them. They have next to no control. And, for the free ones, it’s inevitable that locals will just come grab the free electrons.

I’d say PlugShare, for now, is your best bet. Hopefully you can see if someone else charged successfully recently.

 

[HarryD]

Good idea, just make sure you study the map of gas stations so everything goes smoothly.

 

[jmcbrew]

Good idea, just make sure you study the map of gas stations so everything goes smoothly.

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