GuliblGuy
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Justin
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2021
- Threads
- 20
- Messages
- 659
- Reaction score
- 1,253
- Location
- North Tustin, CA
- Vehicles
- Shadow Black 2021 Premium 4X Mach E
- Thread starter
- #1
Just returned from a ~2000 mile round trip from Orange County CA to Albany/Portland OR.
Decided to take 99 up to my stop over at a friends house in Chico/Magalia CA as there are more charging options and it’s less travelled than I5 so I felt better about rolling into potentially busy stations with a wait.
Planned out the trip in the car’s trip planner and ABRP. Trusted ABRP way more than the car, as it would route to random chargers that were not high powered sometimes, or to the Rivian charging network which we can’t use (Ford says they are working on removing them…). I exported my legs of the trip from ABRP to excel and printed those out with notes about the address of the charger and just manually added the next charging stops in the car. Used the built in nav when heading to a charger so it would precondition the battery, though I never saw any Exterior Temp usage in my stats so not sure if it was really doing much of anything in this mild weather.
Left Tustin CA at 100% charge on Wed 5/24 and headed to the first stop in Tulare CA, driving around 73 mph most of the way, a little slower on my way up the grapevine so I didn’t use too much energy, and then speeding up between 75-80 as I got closer to the charger and had plenty of buffer.
Made it to Tulare with 15% and 37 miles remaining, where I got my slowest charge of the trip, 150 kWh charger maxing at 73 kWh speed. Station was empty. Charged to about 70% and was heading to Turlock, but kept checking the EA app and it was full, and also had to use the restroom, so stopped before that at Atwater and charged to about 70%.
Tulare stop:
Next stop was going to be the Yuba City EA, but as I got closer I kept plugging in Chico to the nav and at first was neg 12 miles on the buffer, but as it is always pessimistic it eventually got to even and then by the time I hit Yuba I had a 5 mile buffer so I decided to just go for it! Found a couple trucks that were going a decent speed so I got behind them here and there, and made it to Chico with 4% on the battery!
Had lunch with friends, plugged into free Lvl 2 charger for a couple hours, and then drove to their house in Magalia for the night. They let me plug in there, but due to our late arrival and when their TOU kicked in I couldn’t start charging until midnight, and left about 530 the next morning. Was planning on 90-100% for blast off, but was only 65% when I left. That meant I couldn’t go straight to Yreka as I had planned, so pulled an audible and went to Anderson to charge up for a bit, then hit Yreka as that was what ABRB had planned for me.
After that it was off to Sutherlin OR where I had my first full station and a wait. A nice lady in the only other Mach E I saw charging on the trip was about done, so only waited 6-8 min or so then plugged in when she left, and got a charge to about 60% which was enough to get me to my Dad’s in Albany OR. Charged at the Wal Mart in town so I had some walkin’ around electricity, and there I got my fastest charge yet. Those newer EA units are nice as well because it shows you what the car is requesting vs what is being delivered so you can see where the problem is if it seems slower than you think it should be.
Sutherlin stop:
Albany EA speeds
From there it was a trip up to the Portland area the next day, and then Siletz at the coast the day after, and a few more local places, and then took off early Tues for Magalia again, and spent the night and headed back to OC yesterday. Basically same chargers on way up but in reverse.
Bakersfield would be my last charging stop before home, and the EA app kept showing the station as full (1 dispenser broken and 3 others in use), but I had no other options and was just hoping there wasn’t a long wait. I pulled in and a Bolt was waiting to charge, and someone was just unplugging and he took that spot. I parked and waited…getting out to check the other cars and see what their % was.
To my surprise the Rivian there was not charging and just idling. As time went on I was getting more p*ssed about waiting for no reason…finally he came out with his girlfriend, gave her a long kiss goodbye, and sauntered over to his truck. By this point an EQE had shown up and was now next after me…he tried to talk to me a bit about my car when I pointedly asked if he was done charging and got in and started my car to move into place………VERY frustrating that a local was clearly just not caring about others on road trips.
All in all everything worked pretty well at EA stations, just a couple times had some faults, and had to wait 2 times for a spot to charge. Car did great and was surprised driving over 70 had 3.0 average efficiency for the trip. Here are my stats from the overall trip back OR down to SoCal.
Decided to take 99 up to my stop over at a friends house in Chico/Magalia CA as there are more charging options and it’s less travelled than I5 so I felt better about rolling into potentially busy stations with a wait.
Planned out the trip in the car’s trip planner and ABRP. Trusted ABRP way more than the car, as it would route to random chargers that were not high powered sometimes, or to the Rivian charging network which we can’t use (Ford says they are working on removing them…). I exported my legs of the trip from ABRP to excel and printed those out with notes about the address of the charger and just manually added the next charging stops in the car. Used the built in nav when heading to a charger so it would precondition the battery, though I never saw any Exterior Temp usage in my stats so not sure if it was really doing much of anything in this mild weather.
Left Tustin CA at 100% charge on Wed 5/24 and headed to the first stop in Tulare CA, driving around 73 mph most of the way, a little slower on my way up the grapevine so I didn’t use too much energy, and then speeding up between 75-80 as I got closer to the charger and had plenty of buffer.
Made it to Tulare with 15% and 37 miles remaining, where I got my slowest charge of the trip, 150 kWh charger maxing at 73 kWh speed. Station was empty. Charged to about 70% and was heading to Turlock, but kept checking the EA app and it was full, and also had to use the restroom, so stopped before that at Atwater and charged to about 70%.
Tulare stop:
Next stop was going to be the Yuba City EA, but as I got closer I kept plugging in Chico to the nav and at first was neg 12 miles on the buffer, but as it is always pessimistic it eventually got to even and then by the time I hit Yuba I had a 5 mile buffer so I decided to just go for it! Found a couple trucks that were going a decent speed so I got behind them here and there, and made it to Chico with 4% on the battery!
Had lunch with friends, plugged into free Lvl 2 charger for a couple hours, and then drove to their house in Magalia for the night. They let me plug in there, but due to our late arrival and when their TOU kicked in I couldn’t start charging until midnight, and left about 530 the next morning. Was planning on 90-100% for blast off, but was only 65% when I left. That meant I couldn’t go straight to Yreka as I had planned, so pulled an audible and went to Anderson to charge up for a bit, then hit Yreka as that was what ABRB had planned for me.
After that it was off to Sutherlin OR where I had my first full station and a wait. A nice lady in the only other Mach E I saw charging on the trip was about done, so only waited 6-8 min or so then plugged in when she left, and got a charge to about 60% which was enough to get me to my Dad’s in Albany OR. Charged at the Wal Mart in town so I had some walkin’ around electricity, and there I got my fastest charge yet. Those newer EA units are nice as well because it shows you what the car is requesting vs what is being delivered so you can see where the problem is if it seems slower than you think it should be.
Sutherlin stop:
Albany EA speeds
From there it was a trip up to the Portland area the next day, and then Siletz at the coast the day after, and a few more local places, and then took off early Tues for Magalia again, and spent the night and headed back to OC yesterday. Basically same chargers on way up but in reverse.
Bakersfield would be my last charging stop before home, and the EA app kept showing the station as full (1 dispenser broken and 3 others in use), but I had no other options and was just hoping there wasn’t a long wait. I pulled in and a Bolt was waiting to charge, and someone was just unplugging and he took that spot. I parked and waited…getting out to check the other cars and see what their % was.
To my surprise the Rivian there was not charging and just idling. As time went on I was getting more p*ssed about waiting for no reason…finally he came out with his girlfriend, gave her a long kiss goodbye, and sauntered over to his truck. By this point an EQE had shown up and was now next after me…he tried to talk to me a bit about my car when I pointedly asked if he was done charging and got in and started my car to move into place………VERY frustrating that a local was clearly just not caring about others on road trips.
All in all everything worked pretty well at EA stations, just a couple times had some faults, and had to wait 2 times for a spot to charge. Car did great and was surprised driving over 70 had 3.0 average efficiency for the trip. Here are my stats from the overall trip back OR down to SoCal.
Last edited:
