ericNdfw
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Eric
- Joined
- May 2, 2021
- Threads
- 22
- Messages
- 280
- Reaction score
- 339
- Location
- DFW, TX
- Website
- ericsmalling.com
- Vehicles
- `21 MME Prem 4X w/GTPE wheels,`22 Hyundai Palisade
- Occupation
- Solutions Architect (software)
- Thread starter
- #1
TL;DR: Ford software can randomly be unreliable and the availability of fast CCS charging is still lagging far behind Tesla here in Texas. Unless these things improve on both fronts I'll just take our ICE SUV for future long trips.
Long-winded version:
I took a road trip to Tyler, TX, and back yesterday which is about 272 miles round-trip (I'm in north-Fort Worth) w/out extra miles to get to/from chargers. This is my second time doing this trip and the first time since the weather has cooled off so I thought it would be interesting to see how range differs. It's also the first long-range drive I've taken since the 1.7.1 upgrade, (not that I thought that would have much/any impact.)
The first time I drove this route, it was August and my GOM was predicting that I'd get about 310 miles on 100% SOC. I knew that was overly optimistic but I did do pretty well with only a quick, 10-minute top-off charge at an evGo station on the return trip to get me home with about 10 miles range remaining. (80 MPH sucks battery down!)
This time, the GOM was much more conservative as we have had a lot of cool mornings in the mid-to-upper 30s. Also, my tire pressure had crept down to about 31 PSI which doesn't help range either. I don't remember the exact estimate it gave me as I set off but I think it was near 265. So I aired up those tires and hit the road around 11:30 am with nice 70Âş temps for most of the day. With such mild temp's I figured the range would be pretty close to (or maybe better) than what I saw in August (it was, see logs below).
Both the Ford nav and ABRP were saying I needed to hit a 25KW evGo charger on the outskirts of Dallas on the way out to give me enough range for the return leg. Then, on the return, I planned to hit the Electrify America (EA) station in Royce City for a ~30-minute charge to get me home. I decided to go out of my way and hit that EA charger both ways so that I'd know where it is and to make sure it worked before committing to it. That added about 50 minutes to my trip since it was so far out of the way but it was my choice so I can't complain too much about that. This was my first time using an EA station and it was nice, nobody ICING the spots and easy to find. The first two chargers I tried gave me the dreaded, "charge fault", error so I moved to another spot and the 3rd one worked fine.
The outbound trip out was fine but when I set off on the return leg, I had a bunch of challenges that were very frustrating.
First of all, CarPlay screen projection just stopped working. The audio would play and it said it was connected but the center screen was completely blank in the CarPlay app. I tried rebooting the phone, turning the MME off and on and disabling wireless CarPlay but nothing fixed it.
So, using the Ford nav, it wanted me to stop at the same evGo CCS charger it had chosen back in August but I wanted to do the EA one instead because: a.) I have the Ford credit there and, b.) that evGo charger is not in the best part of town to be hanging out at after dark. It was then that I discovered that there is no apparent way to tell the Ford Nav system to use a different charger so I just set my destination to that EA station directly.
I made it there with 4% SOC (~10 miles) and charged until I had about 30 miles more GOM range than I needed to get home; this took me to 31% SOC in about 12 minutes. (FWIW, charging started at 125Kw but settled to 105Kw for most of the session)
Back on the road, CarPlay was still not working, so I told Ford Nav to route me home. Its extra-conservative algorithm, though, did not like how few miles I had just added so it wanted to route me about 10 miles out of my way to another CCS charger and—for the life of me—I could not figure out a way to tell it to remove that charger stop. Instead, I used Siri to start my iPhone nav to home but only had the instrument cluster turn-by-turn to route me home. (that still worked, even though the center one was blank). Luckily I know the area well enough and the Ford nav had accurate traffic coloring so I could correlate that map with the route my phone was suggesting.
I ended up getting home with about 4% SOC remaining.
The car itself performed flawlessly, it's a wonderful highway cruiser. The software issues, though, are getting on my nerves. I'm not sure if it's Apple or Ford's issue but they need to sort this CarPlay stuff out. On my usual short, in-town during it's a minor annoyance when it doesn't work but when you have hours of driving it's a real headache. Maybe this is why Telsa eschews CarPlay and Android Auto.
Also, I understand that this particular route is an anecdotal problem given the lack of high-speed CCS charging along I-20 between DFW and Shreveport; but that fact is that if I were in a Tesla, I would have had a short (10 min's or less) Supercharger break, right there in Tyler, and not had to worry about it. People often discount the value of the Supercharger network but if I had to take more road trips I would be in a Tesla right now instead of the MME (or simply driving an ICE). Maybe the rumors of Superchargers being made available to us will come true, that would be nice.
Oh, and I thought I'd be able to just pull up my "Journeys" log in the FordPass app to report on how my range went... but this morning it says that I have had no journeys since October 22 (almost a month ago).
...even though I've driven nearly 1000 miles since then and I've not changed my settings. Yet another software bug, apparently.
Come on, Ford! In many ways, my old Gen 1 Chevy Volt's software was more functional than this. Step it up and fix this crap!
My logs for this trip:
Long-winded version:
I took a road trip to Tyler, TX, and back yesterday which is about 272 miles round-trip (I'm in north-Fort Worth) w/out extra miles to get to/from chargers. This is my second time doing this trip and the first time since the weather has cooled off so I thought it would be interesting to see how range differs. It's also the first long-range drive I've taken since the 1.7.1 upgrade, (not that I thought that would have much/any impact.)
The first time I drove this route, it was August and my GOM was predicting that I'd get about 310 miles on 100% SOC. I knew that was overly optimistic but I did do pretty well with only a quick, 10-minute top-off charge at an evGo station on the return trip to get me home with about 10 miles range remaining. (80 MPH sucks battery down!)
This time, the GOM was much more conservative as we have had a lot of cool mornings in the mid-to-upper 30s. Also, my tire pressure had crept down to about 31 PSI which doesn't help range either. I don't remember the exact estimate it gave me as I set off but I think it was near 265. So I aired up those tires and hit the road around 11:30 am with nice 70Âş temps for most of the day. With such mild temp's I figured the range would be pretty close to (or maybe better) than what I saw in August (it was, see logs below).
Both the Ford nav and ABRP were saying I needed to hit a 25KW evGo charger on the outskirts of Dallas on the way out to give me enough range for the return leg. Then, on the return, I planned to hit the Electrify America (EA) station in Royce City for a ~30-minute charge to get me home. I decided to go out of my way and hit that EA charger both ways so that I'd know where it is and to make sure it worked before committing to it. That added about 50 minutes to my trip since it was so far out of the way but it was my choice so I can't complain too much about that. This was my first time using an EA station and it was nice, nobody ICING the spots and easy to find. The first two chargers I tried gave me the dreaded, "charge fault", error so I moved to another spot and the 3rd one worked fine.
The outbound trip out was fine but when I set off on the return leg, I had a bunch of challenges that were very frustrating.
First of all, CarPlay screen projection just stopped working. The audio would play and it said it was connected but the center screen was completely blank in the CarPlay app. I tried rebooting the phone, turning the MME off and on and disabling wireless CarPlay but nothing fixed it.
So, using the Ford nav, it wanted me to stop at the same evGo CCS charger it had chosen back in August but I wanted to do the EA one instead because: a.) I have the Ford credit there and, b.) that evGo charger is not in the best part of town to be hanging out at after dark. It was then that I discovered that there is no apparent way to tell the Ford Nav system to use a different charger so I just set my destination to that EA station directly.
I made it there with 4% SOC (~10 miles) and charged until I had about 30 miles more GOM range than I needed to get home; this took me to 31% SOC in about 12 minutes. (FWIW, charging started at 125Kw but settled to 105Kw for most of the session)
Back on the road, CarPlay was still not working, so I told Ford Nav to route me home. Its extra-conservative algorithm, though, did not like how few miles I had just added so it wanted to route me about 10 miles out of my way to another CCS charger and—for the life of me—I could not figure out a way to tell it to remove that charger stop. Instead, I used Siri to start my iPhone nav to home but only had the instrument cluster turn-by-turn to route me home. (that still worked, even though the center one was blank). Luckily I know the area well enough and the Ford nav had accurate traffic coloring so I could correlate that map with the route my phone was suggesting.
I ended up getting home with about 4% SOC remaining.
The car itself performed flawlessly, it's a wonderful highway cruiser. The software issues, though, are getting on my nerves. I'm not sure if it's Apple or Ford's issue but they need to sort this CarPlay stuff out. On my usual short, in-town during it's a minor annoyance when it doesn't work but when you have hours of driving it's a real headache. Maybe this is why Telsa eschews CarPlay and Android Auto.
Also, I understand that this particular route is an anecdotal problem given the lack of high-speed CCS charging along I-20 between DFW and Shreveport; but that fact is that if I were in a Tesla, I would have had a short (10 min's or less) Supercharger break, right there in Tyler, and not had to worry about it. People often discount the value of the Supercharger network but if I had to take more road trips I would be in a Tesla right now instead of the MME (or simply driving an ICE). Maybe the rumors of Superchargers being made available to us will come true, that would be nice.
Oh, and I thought I'd be able to just pull up my "Journeys" log in the FordPass app to report on how my range went... but this morning it says that I have had no journeys since October 22 (almost a month ago).
...even though I've driven nearly 1000 miles since then and I've not changed my settings. Yet another software bug, apparently.Come on, Ford! In many ways, my old Gen 1 Chevy Volt's software was more functional than this. Step it up and fix this crap!
My logs for this trip:
- Started with ~265 mi range estimate
- Home to EA station, Royce City: 66 mi
- Added 13 mi at EA station
- EA Station -> destination in Tyler: 92 mi
- Tyler -> same EA station: 88 mi (took different route)
- Added 71 mi at EA station
- EA station -> home: 66 mi
- Ended with ~10 mi range estimate
- 312 mi driven
- estimated 84 miles added at chargers
- 260 + 84 - 10 = 334 (not too far off the actual)
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