Short report on my first road trip (and charging infrastructure on South-Central Florida)

JcMarin

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JC
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I’v had my MME GT for a year now, 10K miles but up to now have only used it for city commute and some very short trips around South Florida

Last weekend I made a trip Miami to Orlando ~240mi and just wanted to share my experience, this was also the first time in a year that I had to do DC Fast charging

I used a conbination of ABRP to plan charging along route and PlugShare to look for options @ destination, but then reverted to Google Maps (Android Auto) for live routing, I did not try the in Car navigation or routing through FordPass (but should had probably at least tried them to compare)

  • Along route in FL Turnpike there were DCFC on all the TP-Service stops but greatly varied in # stations and kw capacity
    • FPL has installed their new Evolution stations in the Port St Lucie-Fort Pierce stations and this was by far the best I found in the trip. 7 DCFC 150kw stations all working and charging with their app was easy (scan QR) and payed through Google Pay in the app. Also App provides good info and status of current charge( %, $, kw, t)
    • Only one station was in use when I go there, I plugged and charged for 15 minutes from 50 to 85% 130-100kw up to 80%, 46 80-85%
    • Service station also has about 12 Tesla chargers about half of them were being used
    • FPL Evolution is not on Blue Oval so could not use FordPass app or free kw from Ford
    • I decided to charge again @ the last service station before Orlando (Canoe Creek) only 2 DCFC chargers here from Duke Energy (ChargeUp App), this station did not show in ABRP, but confirmed it existed in PlugShare
    • 1 Station did not work for CCS, I waited for a Volt that was trying to charge in 2nd station but CHAdeMO did not work for him
    • Could not get the station to work with Credit Card, dowloaded app and finally started charging @ 62kw, charged for 20 minutes to 80%
    • Again Duke Energy/ChargeUp stations not in Blue Oval so could not use Ford App/free kw

  • Orlando area
    • I reached Orlando with about 70% charge and after looking @ options to charge near my hotel was discouraged to find not many good options (most had only 1-2 stations and were 50kw max), the better options with +2 stations and 150+kw were either 30+ minutes or more away or inside Disney venues
    • I stopped @ Vineland Premium Outlets but only had 1 CCS station -Ev Go- and was being used (and very busy)
    • I did found an available EV Go station in another mall nearby (Lake Buenavista Factory Stores) it was only one 50kw, I tried using FordPass to charge but could not find the charger in the Map, I must confess it was the first time trying to charge with FordPass App and was not as intuitive as I thought and had not researched before as I should, so may have been doing something wrong.
    • Could not make charger work with credit card, so downloaded App and got it to work, left it charging while shopping and charged to 85% ~40kw

  • There were no convenient Electrify America Stations along my route to try Plug And Charge

  • Coming back I only stopped again in the Fort Pierce station, this time all stations available and charged no issue. ALL the Tesla stations were in use!

This is my first experience with a short road trip with the MME and although I could have prepared more in advanced (downloading the different network apps and setting up payment for instance) I was not sure what I was going to find, and naively though things were going to be easier and was expecting much better infrastructure tbh.





Although charging ended up just working fine the experience left much to be desired, infrastructure is nowhere near the level to make this trips hassle free and the state of some of the chargers I did find was already showing poor maintenance. TESLA charging network is way better from what I saw in all regards, but I think they are starting to suffer from their own success, I was amazed to see the FT Pierce TESLA station completely full and cars waiting.





As many have stated EV charging infrastructure needs to drastically improve to keep up with the amount of EV’s being sold, hopefully some of the recent infrastructure plans will help
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