Public Charging Sucks

[djstough]

We took a trip to the in-laws yesterday. Left at 81% charge for a 90~ mile trip each way. Upon arrving we had 45% left, so we should have been fine. Got in the car for the return trip and GOM quickly went from 120 miles estimate to 51 and started planning stops for me. I was a bit (okay, a lot) confused. The recommended charge station was just about the mid-point of the return. As I continued on, and the GOM decrease slowed, I was still being told I needed to stop and add 20% charge to make it home. Well, I switched to Google Maps, plugged in home, which of course turned off Ford Nav, and lo-and-behold, the GOM magically jumped. Best I can figure it is decided I needed to stop, and was planning on using some energy for pre-conditioning, and just couldn't bring itself to stop! End of the story was, I made it home with 10% to spare, no stops, and all was fine. I wasn't anxious, but I can see where someone could be anxious with the overly conservative GOM and routing.

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[tifpwg]

I left home 5 hours ago and have driven about 3.5 hours. First charger wouldn’t accept my credit card info so had to call. I’ve been waiting at my second charging station for an hour and still don’t have a seat at the table. It will probably be 45 minutes to adequately charge. Another call to EA which they said the sites are under maintenance ( for the last couple weeks) for improvement to my driving experience. I care about now.

I love my car but when almost half my road trip time is spent waiting for and finally getting through a line for a charger I can’t justify taking it on a road trip.

I work from home and honestly don't go far in the weekends. The roadtrip anxiety set in a soon as I read your post. We've all become guinea pigs to this EV experience!

 

[AngryMan]

Xmas roadtrip with added anxiety since DCFC was inoperable near my brothers house. I could get there but could I get back home ?
Turned on Ford nav and immediately lost 14 miles of range . Luckily weather cooperated with a balmy 60 degrees ...in Ohio ...in December.
As I wave goodbye Ford nav says all good for return trip and I should be at 28% at the end . Off I go (passing brand new Tesla chargers on the turnpike)(ALL unoccupied ).
I joyfully turn into my driveway with ....28 % (!!!!) range left . Just like the ghost of Christmas future ...ummm I mean FORD NAVIGATION predicted .
WELL DONE Ford software techs

 

[RickMachE]

We took a trip to the in-laws yesterday. Left at 81% charge for a 90~ mile trip each way. Upon arrving we had 45% left, so we should have been fine. Got in the car for the return trip and GOM quickly went from 120 miles estimate to 51 and started planning stops for me. I was a bit (okay, a lot) confused. The recommended charge station was just about the mid-point of the return. As I continued on, and the GOM decrease slowed, I was still being told I needed to stop and add 20% charge to make it home. Well, I switched to Google Maps, plugged in home, which of course turned off Ford Nav, and lo-and-behold, the GOM magically jumped. Best I can figure it is decided I needed to stop, and was planning on using some energy for pre-conditioning, and just couldn't bring itself to stop! End of the story was, I made it home with 10% to spare, no stops, and all was fine. I wasn't anxious, but I can see where someone could be anxious with the overly conservative GOM and routing.

Kudos to you. This requires intelligent thought though. Too many couldn't figure this out.

Next time, charge to 100% for a 180 mile roundtrip.

 

[djstough]

Kudos to you. This requires intelligent thought though. Too many couldn't figure this out.

Next time, charge to 100% for a 180 mile roundtrip.

It was a long Christmas Day. Started off in the F150 for a 200 mile trip, and plugged in the MachE before I left. It was hadn't fully charged when I left. Otherwise, I agree, I would have started higher and not even worried about it!

 

[Pioneer74]

We took a trip to the in-laws yesterday. Left at 81% charge for a 90~ mile trip each way. Upon arrving we had 45% left, so we should have been fine. Got in the car for the return trip and GOM quickly went from 120 miles estimate to 51 and started planning stops for me. I was a bit (okay, a lot) confused. The recommended charge station was just about the mid-point of the return. As I continued on, and the GOM decrease slowed, I was still being told I needed to stop and add 20% charge to make it home. Well, I switched to Google Maps, plugged in home, which of course turned off Ford Nav, and lo-and-behold, the GOM magically jumped. Best I can figure it is decided I needed to stop, and was planning on using some energy for pre-conditioning, and just couldn't bring itself to stop! End of the story was, I made it home with 10% to spare, no stops, and all was fine. I wasn't anxious, but I can see where someone could be anxious with the overly conservative GOM and routing.

Ford navigation doesn't recognize that your house is a charging location and it tries to get to your destination with 20% battery. That's why it wanted you to charge, and your GOM went up when you canceled the trip.

 

[mkhuffman]

We took a trip to the in-laws yesterday. Left at 81% charge for a 90~ mile trip each way. Upon arrving we had 45% left, so we should have been fine. Got in the car for the return trip and GOM quickly went from 120 miles estimate to 51 and started planning stops for me. I was a bit (okay, a lot) confused. The recommended charge station was just about the mid-point of the return. As I continued on, and the GOM decrease slowed, I was still being told I needed to stop and add 20% charge to make it home. Well, I switched to Google Maps, plugged in home, which of course turned off Ford Nav, and lo-and-behold, the GOM magically jumped. Best I can figure it is decided I needed to stop, and was planning on using some energy for pre-conditioning, and just couldn't bring itself to stop! End of the story was, I made it home with 10% to spare, no stops, and all was fine. I wasn't anxious, but I can see where someone could be anxious with the overly conservative GOM and routing.

The range drops when you use the Ford Navigation because it uses the route and other factors to try to give you a more accurate estimate of the energy needed to get to your destination. It's called Intelligent Range.

In your case it may have assumed a highway speed higher than you actually drove. I have found Intelligent Range to be very conservative, and I usually arrive with a higher SoC than it predicted. But I definitely prefer that to getting stranded because it under estimated.

And yes, public charging sucks. And it continues to get worse every day. Tesla SC access can't come soon enough.

 

[Runner30005]

Going cross country with an EV is an adventure. Even with careful planing things can easily go awry. On this years 900 mile Christmas trip I have learned the following.
Tesla charging has been great!
EA continues to disappoint with non-working and slow chargers.
Slowing down from 70 to 65 greatly increases efficiency. At 70 the Mach-E overestimated range and at 65 it slightly underestimated it.

 

[leeman]

I left home 5 hours ago and have driven about 3.5 hours. First charger wouldn’t accept my credit card info so had to call. I’ve been waiting at my second charging station for an hour and still don’t have a seat at the table. It will probably be 45 minutes to adequately charge. Another call to EA which they said the sites are under maintenance ( for the last couple weeks) for improvement to my driving experience. I care about now.

I love my car but when almost half my road trip time is spent waiting for and finally getting through a line for a charger I can’t justify taking it on a road trip.

I left home 5 hours ago and have driven about 3.5 hours. First charger wouldn’t accept my credit card info so had to call. I’ve been waiting at my second charging station for an hour and still don’t have a seat at the table. It will probably be 45 minutes to adequately charge. Another call to EA which they said the sites are under maintenance ( for the last couple weeks) for improvement to my driving experience. I care about now.

I love my car but when almost half my road trip time is spent waiting for and finally getting through a line for a charger I can’t justify taking it on a road trip.

Yep

 

[alexgorod]

And who thinks 50Kw is fast charging?

Need to be faster, but still fast enough for my case.

I have a standard battery, and in the trips I want to have 30% of the charge when I arrive to the charger, so I have 45 or so miles for the "plan B" and "plan C" if this charger doesn't work. And when I start charging from 30% level, the charging speed is not much higher than 50 kwh.

 

[TGIF]

The rest of the trip was much better. JRSNova sums it up above. I’m hoping this is the low point of charging infrastructure development and maintenance. Hopefully, when Tesla’s network opens up and IRA sites come online it will get much better. I did use a Tesla Supercharger to try it out and it worked great. I parked in the stall to the right of the unit, however, to allow the cord to reach. EVGo sites were generally well maintained and I actually got 177 kW downloads on one. Wow! For the second day of my trip I left in the dead of night to try to avoid daytime congestion at charging stations, which seemed to work fairly well. EA continues to throttle speeds on many of the stalls I encountered, or just have non-working stalls.

Unfortunately, there are simply some underserved areas. Kansas City, I’m looking at you! An L2 charger isn’t an acceptable Plan B on a road trip. We also need to be able to count on the next charger being operational and available without an excessive wait. At this point, my neighbor looks justified in buying a Tesla.

 

[RandyMache]

I left home 5 hours ago and have driven about 3.5 hours. First charger wouldn’t accept my credit card info so had to call. I’ve been waiting at my second charging station for an hour and still don’t have a seat at the table. It will probably be 45 minutes to adequately charge. Another call to EA which they said the sites are under maintenance ( for the last couple weeks) for improvement to my driving experience. I care about now.

I love my car but when almost half my road trip time is spent waiting for and finally getting through a line for a charger I can’t justify taking it on a road trip.

If you drive at all away from your home, you should have an app for EA with your credit card info in the app. I just went on a 3,200 mile road trip from San Diego to Whitefish Montana and had zero problems at 14 EA charging stations and 3 other non EA stations. I feel for you if your having these problems, but get the app and you will find it works pretty good.

 

[TGIF]

If you drive at all away from your home, you should have an app for EA with your credit card info in the app. I just went on a 3,200 mile road trip from San Diego to Whitefish Montana and had zero problems at 14 EA charging stations and 3 other non EA stations. I feel for you if your having these problems, but get the app and you will find it works pretty good.

I’m truly glad your route works out. My point is that other routes do not work. I live in a charging dessert of SW IA, NW MO isn’t much better. I have the EA app. I need to rely on their ONE L3 charger in the KC area. Of four stations, two are out of service, and the other two are throttled. It creates a bottleneck of multiple EV operators who have to charge there. I waited about 1 1/4 hours to get a spot. Then it took me about 45 minutes to get enough charge to get to the next charger on my route. EA has known, or should have known, about the non-operational status for weeks because that’s how long they’ve been reported on PlugShare. EA just doesn’t seem to care. Infrastructure needs to improve everywhere for Americans to adopt EVs on a widespread basis.

 

[Rt1AWD]

The real problem is that the difference of usage between regular days and holidays is huge. Much higher then for gas stations. I'm not sure how to smooth it out.

 

[RickMachE]

I’m truly glad your route works out. My point is that other routes do not work. I live in a charging dessert of SW IA, NW MO isn’t much better. I have the EA app. I need to rely on their ONE L3 charger in the KC area. Of four stations, two are out of service, and the other two are throttled. It creates a bottleneck of multiple EV operators who have to charge there. I waited about 1 1/4 hours to get a spot. Then it took me about 45 minutes to get enough charge to get to the next charger on my route. EA has known, or should have known, about the non-operational status for weeks because that’s how long they’ve been reported on PlugShare. EA just doesn’t seem to care. Infrastructure needs to improve everywhere for Americans to adopt EVs on a widespread basis.

EA knows. The reality is that some issues are parts on backorder from overseas. Many other issues are "we just don't give a crap about this location so we won't put in the newer chargers because it's not in our plan". Huber Heights, OH I'm looking at you.

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