Road Tripping? What am I Doing Wrong?

[SpaceEVDriver]

I recently took a road trip with very minimal planning. I booked a hotel with a L2 charger at the end of the drive and looked at PlugShare to see if there were good DCFCs on my route. After I finished, I looked at ABRP to compare the predicted trip and the actual trip.

ABRP said I would need to make five stops and it would take me 12 hours to drive 650 miles.
Google Maps says it would take me 9.5 hours, but it doesn't include stops, meals, or anything like that.

I made three charging stops, one of which was for both lunch (charging) and some additional visiting with family (not charging).
The trip took me 11.5 hours total, including the charging stops and lunch and the visit. I would have stopped for lunch and the visit for the same length of time (about 75 minutes) even if I was driving my ICE.
I averaged 3.7 miles/kWh for the first two legs (total of 500 miles) and ~2.8 m/kWh for the third leg (I was getting sleepy so I bumped my speed up to 78-80 mph).

I keep hearing that I can't take this car on road trips. I must be doing something terribly wrong.

I'll post a full report sometime next week or the week after when I have time to write things up.

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[mdolan92869]

Oh, the bad stuff doesn’t apply to Grabber Blue. Those are the cool people that get them and they don’t want to disappoint the cool people. ?

 

[Tampamike]

Here we go with the positivity again?

 

[TTF]

My road trips have all been fine so far too.. I always stop every 3 to 4 hrs anyway and on the highway, Otto doesn't get hungry for at least that long.

 

[heisnuts]

The problem is the inconsistency. In your case the DC Fast charging worked well and there were places to eat where you were charging. Unfortunately that is not the case is a lot of the US right now.

A trip on I-5 through Washington, Oregon and California is not too much of a gamble because there are ample DCFC options with backups nearby. However, if you look at a trip from Portland, OR to Spokane, WA (360 miles) you will be praying that when you pull into Hermiston, OR that one of the 4 EA stations is both working and not already occupied because there is not another nearby DCFC option. You will also be praying that your charging rate ends up being at least 100 KWh. Since you will not be charging to 100% here the same prayers will be going out for your next stop in Ritzville, WA (111 miles), which also only has 4 stations.

Another example where we took ICE instead of the MME is Seaside, OR to Gold Beach, OR (293 miles). On this trip along the coast you will be making the same prayers for the EA station in Newport, OR. If you look in this area you will see no other DCFC that have over a 50 KWh rate, and once you get to Gold Beach you pray your hotel has a charger that works to 100% because you are going back to Newport on the way back since there are no other fast options in-between.

I realize there really isn't a good business case for private companies to install these expensive DCFC units, but until the quantity and reliability of these units increase dramatically, it makes a lot of road tripping in the US a lot more of a challenge than driving an ICE vehicle.

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