The truth about Electrify America's progress and Traveling with the Mach E

[dbsb3233]

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I'm just going by what ABRP shows for my Denver-Vegas drive in the MME AWD ER. It shows 164 minutes of en-route EA charging each way. Most of that is at the $0.99 base rate, minus 20% for Pass+ discount = $130, x2 round-trip = $260. Versus 2 en-route gas refuels each way at $25-30 each. Making the EA charging about $150 more than gas for the trip.

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[ChasingCoral]

Do we yet know what our cost is going to be on EA with FordPass? I know you can see what no membership prices are, but I was under the impression that with a FordPass membership, it would be closer to the price of gas.

My guess is it will be the same as the EA member's price.

 

[dbsb3233]

From what others have said, that won't work. The rate is supposed to be set by the vehicle's capability, regardless of the kW rate being delivered.

Plus, is there even a 50 kW CCS charger? I thought they usually had 150-350 on the CCS and the 50 is just CHAdeMO?

 

[dbsb3233]

But again, aren't those just CHAdeMO instead of CCS?

Then there's the problem with 50 kW just being too slow for road trips. Most people are gonna stop charging before it tapers all the way that low.

I know you're a major exception by doing your around-home charging there too, so you have a regular routine to kill the time, but most people with charge at home and use EA only on road trips. And charging that slow sucks.

 

[Billyk24]

The EA stations I have visited have a CHAdeMO charger and CCS 150kW charger on the same station.

 

[ajmartineau]

ABRP doesn't care about how much it costs you. It had me charging to 85%, ahh no thanks. In reality, you will stop charging at 50-60% (before it gets expensive). I just used the My Chevy app for the Bolt to map out the Denver to Vegas trip. The total time was 14 hours and it only charges at 55kW. Seriously, that app is not accurate. You can calculate it manually or wait until the EPA numbers and charge rates are known and they update the app.
Try Plugshare, it's free. I used to use it all the time before the Chevy app was updated. Now it's great.

 

[ajmartineau]

@dbsb3233
I was trying to calculate the average charging speed needed to stay cheaper than gas on your Denver to Vegas trip. Your two $30 fill-ups for 785 miles puts you at 7.6 cents per mile (60/785). That's pretty cheap!
Using $.60 a minute pricing band in CO, and 3 miles per kW.
Average charging of 120kW will give you 2 kW per minute which makes it $.30 per kW. You divide that by 3 for your 3 miles per kW and your price per mile is 10 cents per mile for 521 miles. Add to that your 264 miles from your home charger at 3.3 cents per mile (my cost)and you are within the price of a coffee of your gas car ($8.80 plus $52.10 = $60.90). The MME charges at 150kW so you can get as cheap as your economy ICE vehicle, barely. Once the charge speed drops to 80kW it's time to move on to the next charger. The fact that the MME just sneaks into the most expensive band really ucks. The Select will be about 30% cheaper to charge if EA says it charges at 115kW.

Maybe you should take your gas car, it's a really cheap car to drive. Also remember, if you get a hotel, you will most likely charge to 100% for "free."

It's late so I may be missing something in the math. I feel like I am.

 

[dbsb3233]

I was trying to calculate the average charging speed needed to stay cheaper than gas on your Denver to Vegas trip. Your two $30 fill-ups for 785 miles puts you at 7.6 cents per mile (60/785). That's pretty cheap!
Using $.60 a minute pricing band in CO, and 3 miles per kW.
Average charging of 120kW

I was only counting the en-route refuels to make it apples-to-apples. I wasn't counting the destination refuel for either example (or the starting from home refuel). Thus the $60 in gas (2 en-route refuels rather than 3). You're right that it MIGHT be possible to refuel the MME cheaper at the destination than the ICE car, depending on whether something cheaper than EA can be found. But for this purpose I left the home and destination refueling out to concentrate on the en-route refuels.

I think the two MME assumptions you used there are probably too generous. 3 miles/kWh at 75-80 MPH is probably really closer to 2.5. And average charge rate of 120kW is probably closer to 90-100. All indications are that the MME has a fast and sharp taper. To average 120, I'm guessing we'd have to stop charging at about 50%. (It calculates to 82kW avg if charging to 80%).

The 6 charges ABRP shows for that route stop well short of 80% SOC already though, simply because the spacing of EA stations doesn't allow for more. The 6 stops charge up to 62%, 62%, 60%, 65%, 55%, and 69%. There's only 9 total EA stations on that route, so there's not a lot of options. And honestly, I don't think that's very unique to that route. Most of the country (outside CA) looks like there's not a lot of alternates to pick from on major routes.

 

[dbsb3233]

You're right though that the home-refueled miles are much cheaper in the BEV. I figure 1/3rd the cost of gas on home charging. So the first 200 miles of the trip are cheaper, before it reverses and EA is 2-3x more than gas (by my calculations).

And the destination fuel can be anywhere from better to worse, depending on what's available there.

Stopping for a hotel/motel because the extra charging time makes the trip too long for one day is another variable that could displace one EA charge. Unfortunately the tiny Utah towns anywhere near the middle don't tend to offer hotel/motel charging. Probably need to use EA anyway until that changes.

 

[buzznwood]

The 6 charges ABRP shows for that route stop well short of 80% SOC already though, simply because the spacing of EA stations doesn't allow for more. The 6 stops charge up to 62%, 62%, 60%, 65%, 55%, and 69%. There's only 9 total EA stations on that route, so there's not a lot of options. And honestly, I don't think that's very unique to that route. Most of the country (outside CA) looks like there's not a lot of alternates to pick from on major routes.

While it is not apple to apples with the super charger network, this was the main reason one of my work colleagues gave up using the tesla for long road trips, in CA it was fine but once getting further out into the sticks options became limited so you had to either slow down or charge the battery to a higher state when stopped both of which added considerable time to the journey.

No one can predict what way the future of battery tech will go, but either we get fill up times as fast as gas or density increases exponentially to the point we can get huge ranges that make it more likely that home and destinations charging will become the norm with charge stations mainly used for emergency and those that don't have access to home charging.

I know VW ruined it state side, but doing a long road trip in a modern diesel where 500+ miles of range is nothing just shows how far BEV's need to go before they can even be considered road trip worthy for me, adding more chargers en route will improve matters so you can do more quick stops but on a long road trip it won't take long for that to get old quickly and it just becomes the BEV equivalent of an old poorly maintained ICE with busted cooling system where you spend, just as long stuck at the side of the highway due to constant overheating as you do driving on it.

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