music_cities
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- Calgary, Canada
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- Mach E 2022 GT
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We used the Mustang GTPE on "The Alberta Sessions EP" tour with Delirium Street Party Brass (check out the album on Bandcamp or Spotify or whatever, link below).
Calgary to Lethbridge there's sadly no Bluecruise Handsfree outside of the two cities, even though it's a divided highway. There are some agricultural access points and some non-grade-separated intersections, but they are far enough apart that Ford could choose to enable BlueCruise on long sections of the highway.
If you're seeing a show at The Slice Bar and Grill in downtown Lethbridge (best bands play there!) you must stay at the Wingate Windham in downtown Lethbridge; it's a nice close hotel with two Tesla L2s (bring your TeslaTap adapter). Lethbridge is known for it's wind, if there are crazy headwinds (and maybe an end-of-April snow-squall) on the way back to Calgary then Clareshome is good for a quick top up; you can stop at Shell Recharge if you want to buy snacks (50kw charger we got 44 kw), or there are Flo chargers (also 50kw) at the pleasant downtown park with some historic buildings. We averaged 36kwh/100km on the drive back to Calgary with a fully loaded car into the wind, that's our highest consumption ever. Even in winter at -37C temperatures I didn't use that much electricity, although of course when it's -37C outside the air is completely dead with no energy and hence no wind. Definitely check out the wind forecast if you're planning a trip anywhere with sparse DCFCs!
For the Red Deer and Edmonton leg of the tour, with the Mustang we couldn't get over 100kw of charging speed in Red Deer. Both the Electrify Canada charger on 67th (going to Edmonton) and the Red Deer Don Wheaton Chevy charger (coming back from Edmonton) maxed out at ~70kw. I'm not sure we preconditioned for Electrify Canada, but we definitely preconditioned for the 100kW FLO charger at the dealer, so 70kw was a bit disappointing conceptually. But, we went to Boston Pizza for lunch with the band and that took an hour, perfect timing for a 13% to 90% charge to get us to Canmore.
There are some stupidly slow L2s in Edmonton area (e.g. St Albert by the Arden Theatre, and Commerce Place downtown) but if you're staying the night in Downtown Edmonton (eg at the Delta or the Chateau Lacombe, my favourite) or seeing a show at one of the three venues at The Starlite Room you can charge at the Manulife Building downtown, it's a great L2. It's predominantly a downtown office building charger, but I spoke to the concierge about night charging and he was great. Don't get confused and go into Commerce Place next to it, they don't do public parking after 11PM and, as mentioned, their chargers are stupidly slow (11Amps, 2.5kw).
BlueCruise hands-free is great on the QE2 highway between Edmonton to just south of Red Deer, and again around Calgary from just north of Calgary and around the ring-road and along the Transcanada all the way in to Canmore. There are great fast chargers in Canmore, and destination L2s as well, so you can easily charge while rocking out at The Legion or at any of the other venues. I have a garage with a slow 3.5kw L2 in Canmore so we didn't use any of the public Canmore chargers.
I tell people I bought the MachE because I always wanted a Mustang, but there was an early meme about how many tubas can fit into a MachE that also influenced me, because I played tuba in the band for a while before going back to trombone. Anyone remember that meme? But we didn't get to try it out; the tuba player drove his own ICE car with the vibraphone and the other auxiliary percussion (sound effects, sea shells, whistles, tambourine, cowbell, bongos, etc.). And the drum kit was in another car. So, we just had saxophone, trombone, spare drum parts, the merch box, my show hats, four people, and luggage in the MachE.
Third party public charging cost was about $50 for about 1300km on the tour. But we had free hotel charging in Lethbridge, and I didn't include the cost of charging at my house. It would have been less if I'd stayed in downtown Edmonton at the Manulife Place charger while crashing at the Chateau Lacombe after the show, but the merch team was sober so we decided to stay at a relative's place instead, where there was only a Level 1 plug.
Here's the tour schedule and if you want to buy the album or stream it
https://www.deliriumspb.com/music/AlbertaSessions/
Oh, also, just before we toured we played a short show outside at Pixel Park in Calgary, on a rehearsal day, where they've combined an urban park with a parking lot and a Supercharger. This is one of the few superchargers with Magic Dock. I've charged there once, great place to charge if you're visiting Calgary, although it was a bit pricy when I tried it. You should go there and not just because the land developer (Calgary Municipal Lands Corporation) helped subsidize the band tour by hiring us to play there!
Calgary to Lethbridge there's sadly no Bluecruise Handsfree outside of the two cities, even though it's a divided highway. There are some agricultural access points and some non-grade-separated intersections, but they are far enough apart that Ford could choose to enable BlueCruise on long sections of the highway.
If you're seeing a show at The Slice Bar and Grill in downtown Lethbridge (best bands play there!) you must stay at the Wingate Windham in downtown Lethbridge; it's a nice close hotel with two Tesla L2s (bring your TeslaTap adapter). Lethbridge is known for it's wind, if there are crazy headwinds (and maybe an end-of-April snow-squall) on the way back to Calgary then Clareshome is good for a quick top up; you can stop at Shell Recharge if you want to buy snacks (50kw charger we got 44 kw), or there are Flo chargers (also 50kw) at the pleasant downtown park with some historic buildings. We averaged 36kwh/100km on the drive back to Calgary with a fully loaded car into the wind, that's our highest consumption ever. Even in winter at -37C temperatures I didn't use that much electricity, although of course when it's -37C outside the air is completely dead with no energy and hence no wind. Definitely check out the wind forecast if you're planning a trip anywhere with sparse DCFCs!
For the Red Deer and Edmonton leg of the tour, with the Mustang we couldn't get over 100kw of charging speed in Red Deer. Both the Electrify Canada charger on 67th (going to Edmonton) and the Red Deer Don Wheaton Chevy charger (coming back from Edmonton) maxed out at ~70kw. I'm not sure we preconditioned for Electrify Canada, but we definitely preconditioned for the 100kW FLO charger at the dealer, so 70kw was a bit disappointing conceptually. But, we went to Boston Pizza for lunch with the band and that took an hour, perfect timing for a 13% to 90% charge to get us to Canmore.
There are some stupidly slow L2s in Edmonton area (e.g. St Albert by the Arden Theatre, and Commerce Place downtown) but if you're staying the night in Downtown Edmonton (eg at the Delta or the Chateau Lacombe, my favourite) or seeing a show at one of the three venues at The Starlite Room you can charge at the Manulife Building downtown, it's a great L2. It's predominantly a downtown office building charger, but I spoke to the concierge about night charging and he was great. Don't get confused and go into Commerce Place next to it, they don't do public parking after 11PM and, as mentioned, their chargers are stupidly slow (11Amps, 2.5kw).
BlueCruise hands-free is great on the QE2 highway between Edmonton to just south of Red Deer, and again around Calgary from just north of Calgary and around the ring-road and along the Transcanada all the way in to Canmore. There are great fast chargers in Canmore, and destination L2s as well, so you can easily charge while rocking out at The Legion or at any of the other venues. I have a garage with a slow 3.5kw L2 in Canmore so we didn't use any of the public Canmore chargers.
I tell people I bought the MachE because I always wanted a Mustang, but there was an early meme about how many tubas can fit into a MachE that also influenced me, because I played tuba in the band for a while before going back to trombone. Anyone remember that meme? But we didn't get to try it out; the tuba player drove his own ICE car with the vibraphone and the other auxiliary percussion (sound effects, sea shells, whistles, tambourine, cowbell, bongos, etc.). And the drum kit was in another car. So, we just had saxophone, trombone, spare drum parts, the merch box, my show hats, four people, and luggage in the MachE.
Third party public charging cost was about $50 for about 1300km on the tour. But we had free hotel charging in Lethbridge, and I didn't include the cost of charging at my house. It would have been less if I'd stayed in downtown Edmonton at the Manulife Place charger while crashing at the Chateau Lacombe after the show, but the merch team was sober so we decided to stay at a relative's place instead, where there was only a Level 1 plug.
Here's the tour schedule and if you want to buy the album or stream it
https://www.deliriumspb.com/music/AlbertaSessions/Oh, also, just before we toured we played a short show outside at Pixel Park in Calgary, on a rehearsal day, where they've combined an urban park with a parking lot and a Supercharger. This is one of the few superchargers with Magic Dock. I've charged there once, great place to charge if you're visiting Calgary, although it was a bit pricy when I tried it. You should go there and not just because the land developer (Calgary Municipal Lands Corporation) helped subsidize the band tour by hiring us to play there!
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