Multi-day trip planning?

[bbulkow]

Even though my MachE is a commuter, it likes to think about long stretches of the open road.

I'm dreaming of a nice long road trip early next year, maybe. Perhaps a southern route where my range will be better, but ... well... thinking

I'm wondering how people plan multi-day routes.

In ABRP, the plan is made with no stops in driving. There appears to be a setting where you can say "stop at XX pm and restart at YY am", but it wouldn't be very good about choosing a town and hotel with an L2 charger, optimizing for coming in low and leaving high.

I imagine road tripping during the day, along my multiday route, and getting updates about proposed stops. I'd check with the network's app, see how crowded a stop is, see how long to the next stop, see how hungry I am, stop earlier or later, continue.

During the course of the day, I'd decide where I want to stop for the night. I don't think ABRP would be great at helping.

The best move would be a reasonably priced hotel with an L2 charger, so one doesn't have to think about plugging in to a fast charger, annoying people while getting to 100%. Just come out in the morning, unplug and go. The best way I can figure to do that is to pick a town, see the L2 chargers in PlugShare, pick a hotel, make a reservation a few hours in advance, and hope a bit that the L2 in question is available. If not, c'est la vie, one has an extra hour on a fast charger either the night before, or in the morning over coffee and a pastry.

I would really want ABRP to calculate starting off at 100%. I suspect that since I have Live Track data, it would wake up in the morning, see my 100% charged car, and plan a different day's stops.

Is that how people do it?

[ I realize there's another way to road trip, where you pick your overnights in advance, pick your hotel in advance where you'd scope out the L2 options at the hotel or nearby, and consider each leg separately. Peace be to the folks that do that! I'm more of a play it by ear road tripper. ]

How do you plan where to stop on a multi-day road trip, and how to plan for charges, given overnight charging is different from the fastest possible cannonball run multi-driver scenario that ABRP (and I think all other apps) specialize in?

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[AZBill]

The built in nav allows you to plan multiple trips and save them to the car (up to 10). You can enter the starting SoC for each leg or day.

 

[eStang]

To find hotels with overnight charging you can use the PlugShare app.
Set filters to:
Kilowatt Range: 0-20
Plugs: J-1772
Amenities: Lodging
(Note: when viewing the map, zoom in very closely in you desired lodging area, especially in urban areas because there are so many pins, they stack up on top of each other)


For multi-day trips I typically build the start-to-end trip in the FordPass app in advance of the trip to ensure thee are good charger options along the full route. And I check the selected stations on PlugShare, pay special attention to recent check-in comments.

On each trip day, I enter the day's destination into the car's navigation. Sometimes it will select different chargers than the full overview trip in FordPass, especially on day 2 and subsequent, which is fine, but confirm them on PlugShare and if they are poorly rated, fall back to one's you already vetted when you planned the full end to end trip.

 

[DYohn]

Yes, as above I'll look for hotels in the areas of DCFC stations at about the distance I want to cover in one day. I have never had good luck with overnight hotel charging as it is both slow and (these days) has too much demand for the available plugs. Plus I once stopped at a place that advertised level 2 charging for guests only to find out the cost to connect was $30 per hour. So I didn't use that.

Taking long road trips is much easier than critics and reviewers make it sound, you just can't push to your gas tank or bladder's limits the same way you can in an ICE. An EV forces a longer, more leisurely trip with more frequent stops for quick charging top-offs, and a bit of planning to make sure you have chargers where you will need them.

 

[hybrid2bev]

pick your overnights in advance, pick your hotel in advance where you'd scope out the L2 options at the hotel or nearby, and consider each leg separately in ABRP.

 

[RickMachE]

I find it a real PITA on a long trip. I put in the route in ABRP, then look for a charging stop they've picked around 8 hours of driving later, and then look for what cities are there and find a hotel, that way the hotel charging is backed up by a nearby DC fast charger.

NOTE - many hotels that have chargers are more expensive, so it may not be worth it to charge there. Or they charge for the charging. Or, they get iced all the time (read PlugShare).

 

[bbulkow]

NOTE - many hotels that have chargers are more expensive, so it may not be worth it to charge there. Or they charge for the charging. Or, they get iced all the time (read PlugShare).

Yeah. I had this experience in reno. i picked a hotel near a tesla destination charger (i have the converter), and it was never empty. I drove by 3 times. They werent iced but it was but it was not clear the teslas were charging, and some werent plugged in. I ended up wasting half an hour driving to the dc fast charger in Sparks to get enough charge to get over the sierra to the downslope which is a bit of a charging station of its own.

it does seem like hotel overnight infra will have to improve before it can be counted on. you really want to have an overnight charging reservation. Until then, it seems like hope for an l2 but don't count on it?

I don't think I will be optimizing for kw prices overmuch while roadtripping. Just getting where i am going is hard enough. somday we will have the luxury of being price sensitive on road trips.

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