San Jose to LA trip -- not so good

[eastern refugee]

It is on a 350

Sound like you've got this process down. So at 8 min., is that at 150kW, or 20kWh onboarded?

Sounds you like you might have a go to spot to rely on, Is there any competition for the taps when you roll in? Are you able to schedule the charge in advance, or is it first come, first serve?

What do you do during the recharge time? Do you stay with the vehicle and wait it out? Explore nearby retail, or dining?

it is on a 350 at EA. Normally it is too quick to do anything but most are located in super Walmart and so can use the restroom or grab a fast bite. Once you pull up and plug in the charger both recognizes the car and authorizes it. I look on my dash to see how many miles are left. So for example if my trip has 92 miles left I charge just to about 150 so that I have excess in case of accidents. It is just about being smart. If I have a few minutes extra time I will look for EA and charge up on the way to LA so that I can fly home late at night. In short it is just thinking about the trip and looking ahead. I tend to top off regardless if the car says so or not. 8 minutes is a no brainer.

when I notice updates like my FE now charges to 381 I plan a longer trip on a Saturday with a friend just to see the difference. When you have an ICE car it is VERY costly to do stuff like this. With the MME you are talking so much less. Like I said Bakersfield to marina del Rey which is roughly 250 or so miles round trip cost us 8.00.

charging speeds also seemed to have increased. For example previously at 70% the kWh dropped off to 78-80. Now I can do over 95 to get to 80%

Sponsored

 

[gpgrim]

It is on a 350

it is on a 350 at EA. Normally it is too quick to do anything but most are located in super Walmart and so can use the restroom or grab a fast bite. Once you pull up and plug in the charger both recognizes the car and authorizes it. I look on my dash to see how many miles are left. So for example if my trip has 92 miles left I charge just to about 150 so that I have excess in case of accidents. It is just about being smart. If I have a few minutes extra time I will look for EA and charge up on the way to LA so that I can fly home late at night. In short it is just thinking about the trip and looking ahead. I tend to top off regardless if the car says so or not. 8 minutes is a no brainer.

when I notice updates like my FE now charges to 381 I plan a longer trip on a Saturday with a friend just to see the difference. When you have an ICE car it is VERY costly to do stuff like this. With the MME you are talking so much less. Like I said Bakersfield to marina del Rey which is roughly 250 or so miles round trip cost us 8.00.

charging speeds also seemed to have increased. For example previously at 70% the kWh dropped off to 78-80. Now I can do over 95 to get to 80%

Is there any risk that when you pull up to the EA "station" there won't be an available plug and you'll have to wait? How is that managed? An extra few minutes isn't that big of a deal, but it can add up on multi-stop trips.

I've been bantering with a friend who just returned from LA in his 3, and a major recharge station was completely offline when he got there. Needless to say, he subsequently took a ration from his girlfriend as they were literally hunting for electrons in the dark, and wound up getting home a couple of hours later then the original itinerary, nursing his way to intermediate charging points.

As EV adoption rates increase, distribution will need to scale, but at some point real estate will also come into play.

 

[05reinvent]

A few observations from my weekend trip to LA. I had a choice of taking my wife's SUV, which we used to travel to LA before and naturally had no problems. Though I was concerned about charging we decided to try my MME anyway to get an idea what it's like to travel in EV.

First, (I should have researched that beforehand) there are two EA charging stations on I-5 that are absolutely essential: Panoche Shell and Countryside Market Shell. As far as I know if you miss any of those there are no other EA stations on the route and you are going to be in trouble. On the way back from LA, for whatever reason Ford navigation took me to the ChargePoint chargers, none of which wanted to charge my car. I used both my phone and CP card to initiate the charging and nothing worked. Those stations are awful, the ancient two line display only shows something like ERROR # and check the CP application. The cell phone data was unreliable and slow at that place and I had trouble using their app. Adding insult to injury, CP sent a warning that I will be charged $0.2/min after 15 min for parking without charging. I had to search for EA station and go 10 miles back, while the battery charge was rather low.

I was also misled by the Ford navigation on the way to LA (perhaps I don't understand how it's working). As I was leaving home, it did set the stops for charging, so I though I was all set, but after the first charge I apparently needed to set the next charging again. I assumed it would take me to the second charger and it didn't. I realized the problem only after the car flashed 10% battery warning. At that time the navigation was taking me to LA while I had about 15 miles of the charge left. Who designs a navigation app that doesn't warn the user that he won't make it to the destination without charging? It should have been flashing red right away. Anyway, I searched for the nearest charger while driving 80mph and it showed I passed one 10 miles back and the next exit was about another 1+ miles away. By that time the GOM showed 12 miles left. I thought I was screwed. I dropped the speed to 60mph, turned off the AC, and navigated to the charger arriving with 1 mile on GOM left. Fortunately the charger worked fine.

Another flaw in Ford navigation is their unreasonable assumptions about efficiency. I was driving on I-5 at 80 mph (an average speed of the traffic), there was a strong wind, as it often happens on that stretch of the road. The GOM showed more than 40 miles margin in the beginning, which I noticed was quickly disappearing as I was driving. When it dropped to 15 miles with still 60 miles to the charger I suspected I might not make it. I had to reduce AC and drop the speed, at about 71 mph the GOM stopped bleeding miles. At that point the car showed 2.2mi/kWh. I was humiliated by large trucks passing me.

A few words about the EA chargers. The plug-and-charge mostly worked. The first EA charger faulted after initiating charging almost immediately. Another one didn't recognize the car and demanded payment. One charger dropped power to about 50kW, but following the advice of other people here, I disconnected and reconnected and the power went up to 110kW and then settled around 90kW. The other four chargers I used during the trip worked fine. I haven't used any charger that would go about 110kW even for a few minutes. In LA I charged at the Target plaza, and some idiots blocked the chargers. Two cars parked taking all the space so I couldn't get to the third charger. I got lucky and while I was thinking about my options the Target employee took carts away allowing me to squeeze to the third charger under "No Parking" sign.

Now a few words about the cost of the interstate travel (after using free kWh). Currently EA charges 43c/kWh for nonmembers. Using 2.2mi/kWh as a reasonable approximation, the cost becomes 19.5c/mi. I saw $4.29/gal prices on the gas station, it might be more or less in other places. At that price the EV equivalent efficiency is a paltry 22 miles per gallon. When we traveled to LA in my wife's full size SUV last time we had 29 miles per gallon and had to stop only once to get gas. The moral of this story, it's really stupid idea travel large distances in EV, only additional inconveniences and it costs more.

P.S. I met three other Mach-Es while charging, the most I've seen so far.

 

[05reinvent]

Those numbers are fine for mixed city/highway driving. I actually averaged anywhere from 3.3 to 3.5 in different days. But it's way too optimistic for long trips on interstate where you drive 80 mph most of the time. My car is AWD SR, so it has the shortest range. But for that trip it wouldn't make any difference for any other configuration, you can't make it without those two stops anyway, though you would have a bigger margin for any errors or unforeseen circumstances. I think when EA decided where to put the chargers they calculated the real range and came up with those two places, basically they did minimum still making it practical.

For my car driving on I-5 at desired speed, the efficiency was about 2.1 mi/kWh. Taking into account that you can only reasonably charge the battery to 80%, the range becomes about 114 miles. A better weather conditions can improve it, but you can't really travel like that hoping that everything will go right. Only when they put fast chargers everywhere where gas stations are now the situation will change.

Another problem is the 80% cliff. There was an E-tron charging next to me and it was going almost at the same speed as mine while charging over 80%.

I don't know about the other guys but I have a problem following the text with all these abbreviations GOM guess o meter? something else. EA. Electrify America.

 

[eastern refugee]

Is there any risk that when you pull up to the EA "station" there won't be an available plug and you'll have to wait? How is that managed? An extra few minutes isn't that big of a deal, but it can add up on multi-stop trips.

I've been bantering with a friend who just returned from LA in his 3, and a major recharge station was completely offline when he got there. Needless to say, he subsequently took a ration from his girlfriend as they were literally hunting for electrons in the dark, and wound up getting home a couple of hours later then the original itinerary, nursing his way to intermediate charging points.

As EV adoption rates increase, distribution will need to scale, but at some point real estate will also come into play.

Yes.
If you open the EA app for that location BEFORE you pull up it will tell you which chargers are available as well as their charge such as 50/150/350. If it is taken or broken it will state UNAVAILABLE.

 

[eastern refugee]

I don't know about the other guys but I have a problem following the text with all these abbreviations GOM guess o meter? something else. EA. Electrify America.

I apologize. EA is Electrify America

Sponsored