Short Michigan Trip over 4th of July Weekend

[Vulnox]

Not a super exciting one, but I suspect for new people to EVs even the short trips are on their mind and are likely more common for the average person than cross country trips that I feel sometimes worry people more even if they rarely if ever do it.

We are in SE Michigan and went to a city just north of Holland, Michigan called West Olive where we had rented a house with some friends for the 4th weekend.

It's about 168 Miles, two and a half hours without stops.

We left in the early afternoon on Thursday with 100% SoC on our 2024 Lightning Platinum (so ER battery, not amazing for efficiency wheels).

I used ABRP as the main nav for the first time as I got an OBD adapter that works with it and it was pretty cool. Nice to see battery temps, voltage, live kW draw, etc. The house we were staying at didn't list an EV charger and I figured we would be going to the beach and out to eat and that, and ABRP was saying we would arrive with about 35% battery remaining.

The nice thing with ABRP is you can tell it what you want to arrive at your destination with for SoC, and I told it 70%. That would give us enough to get around easily without having to make another stop to charge anyway. With that info, ABRP told us to stop in Holland at a Meijer with Superchargers and charge to 73%. Very cool.

The drive was great, I usually stick to around 73 MPH on 70 MPH roads. Generally keeps us ahead of semis but not dealing with the left lane campers and that if we were constantly trying to pass people. We got to the SuperCharger with 36% remaining and they were fortunately v4 dispensers so we were able to hook up without any issue. I struggled a bit with starting the charge as I usually use plug and charge, but thought we would have to charge again for the way home so I bought the Tesla membership and did not have payment already set up in their app, so went through all that.

I finally got charging and the speeds were solid.

Now it of course came down from there, but held over 100 through almost our entire charging session.

We were supposed to stop at 73%, but ended up getting to around 80% because unfortunately someone in an older Dodge Grand Caravan parked in a spot by us in one of the SuperCharger stalls and went into the Meijer. They left their Great Pyrenees dog in the car, and the temps were hovering around 90 degrees, as my image above shows.

They had the front windows cracked about three inches, but if you haven't seen one of these dogs, they are huge and long haired. My dad had one for a while and they live for the cold. He used to just hang out in the middle of winter out in the snow like it was nothing. And this big guy was panting up a storm.

Our charge was at 73% after about 20 minutes, but my wife was not wanting to leave the dog. We waited a few more minutes to see if the owners would return, but still nothing. We called Holland police who said to contact 911 as their non-emergency response would likely be really slow. 911 operator said they would send someone and a K9 officer arrived a little under ten minutes later.

So we were over 30 minutes now and still no owners. The K9 officer was very helpful and he was worried about the dog as well and they had been paging the owner in Meijer but still no response. The fire department then showed up and they got the van open so they could give the pup some water, and said we were good to leave as they would wait for the owner.

So not sure how that went down ultimately, but I hope the owner gets enough sense to not repeat that. Their van was in rough shape and the windows were covered in dry dog drool. I am afraid this isn't uncommon for them and that dog. I feel for the owners if they are struggling, but a dog like that could definitely die in those conditions.

Anyway, back to the trip! As I mentioned we overcharged, which was fine.

We got to the house with about 83% still, and they had an outdoor 120v outlet that they said we could use, so I broke out the travel charger for the first time on any of our vehicles. It ended up working out really well for us. We did go back out to dinner that night and got some things from Target and ended the day around 79%. It charged overnight and I think got to about 83% by morning.

By the time we went out that day it was at 85%. Was around 79% again that night, charged overnight, etc.

Ultimately even with us going places a bit every day of the trip, we left the house to head home at 90% SoC using just the 120v. We didn't have to stop at all on the drive back home and got home with around 22% remaining.

Very happy with the truck. It was a short drive, but was entirely stress free. Overall cost with the Super Charging was around $22 plus the Tesla subscription which was admittedly a bit of a waste, but I thought starting out that we would use it enough to make it worth it.

So in summary:
-ABRP was great, having an OBD adapter for it is neat, but man do I wish we could just get that functionality without addons.
-SuperCharging went great, even on the holiday weekend. The station was always about 3/4 full, and I saw at least two other Mach-es and one other Lightning charging there. It was a Ford and Tesla gathering
-If you are staying somewhere that you can safely plug in to 120v, it's better to do it than not as you may find you get enough charge for the weekend even though it's very slow overall.
-Please take care of your pets on hot days. Even 10 minutes in 90 degree weather can make a vehicle extremely dangerous.

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[astrand1]

Not a super exciting one, but I suspect for new people to EVs even the short trips are on their mind and are likely more common for the average person than cross country trips that I feel sometimes worry people more even if they rarely if ever do it.

We are in SE Michigan and went to a city just north of Holland, Michigan called West Olive where we had rented a house with some friends for the 4th weekend.

It's about 168 Miles, two and a half hours without stops.

We left in the early afternoon on Thursday with 100% SoC on our 2024 Lightning Platinum (so ER battery, not amazing for efficiency wheels).

I used ABRP as the main nav for the first time as I got an OBD adapter that works with it and it was pretty cool. Nice to see battery temps, voltage, live kW draw, etc. The house we were staying at didn't list an EV charger and I figured we would be going to the beach and out to eat and that, and ABRP was saying we would arrive with about 35% battery remaining.

The nice thing with ABRP is you can tell it what you want to arrive at your destination with for SoC, and I told it 70%. That would give us enough to get around easily without having to make another stop to charge anyway. With that info, ABRP told us to stop in Holland at a Meijer with Superchargers and charge to 73%. Very cool.

The drive was great, I usually stick to around 73 MPH on 70 MPH roads. Generally keeps us ahead of semis but not dealing with the left lane campers and that if we were constantly trying to pass people. We got to the SuperCharger with 36% remaining and they were fortunately v4 dispensers so we were able to hook up without any issue. I struggled a bit with starting the charge as I usually use plug and charge, but thought we would have to charge again for the way home so I bought the Tesla membership and did not have payment already set up in their app, so went through all that.

I finally got charging and the speeds were solid.

Now it of course came down from there, but held over 100 through almost our entire charging session.

We were supposed to stop at 73%, but ended up getting to around 80% because unfortunately someone in an older Dodge Grand Caravan parked in a spot by us in one of the SuperCharger stalls and went into the Meijer. They left their Great Pyrenees dog in the car, and the temps were hovering around 90 degrees, as my image above shows.

They had the front windows cracked about three inches, but if you haven't seen one of these dogs, they are huge and long haired. My dad had one for a while and they live for the cold. He used to just hang out in the middle of winter out in the snow like it was nothing. And this big guy was panting up a storm.

Our charge was at 73% after about 20 minutes, but my wife was not wanting to leave the dog. We waited a few more minutes to see if the owners would return, but still nothing. We called Holland police who said to contact 911 as their non-emergency response would likely be really slow. 911 operator said they would send someone and a K9 officer arrived a little under ten minutes later.

So we were over 30 minutes now and still no owners. The K9 officer was very helpful and he was worried about the dog as well and they had been paging the owner in Meijer but still no response. The fire department then showed up and they got the van open so they could give the pup some water, and said we were good to leave as they would wait for the owner.

So not sure how that went down ultimately, but I hope the owner gets enough sense to not repeat that. Their van was in rough shape and the windows were covered in dry dog drool. I am afraid this isn't uncommon for them and that dog. I feel for the owners if they are struggling, but a dog like that could definitely die in those conditions.

Anyway, back to the trip! As I mentioned we overcharged, which was fine.

We got to the house with about 83% still, and they had an outdoor 120v outlet that they said we could use, so I broke out the travel charger for the first time on any of our vehicles. It ended up working out really well for us. We did go back out to dinner that night and got some things from Target and ended the day around 79%. It charged overnight and I think got to about 83% by morning.

By the time we went out that day it was at 85%. Was around 79% again that night, charged overnight, etc.

Ultimately even with us going places a bit every day of the trip, we left the house to head home at 90% SoC using just the 120v. We didn't have to stop at all on the drive back home and got home with around 22% remaining.

Very happy with the truck. It was a short drive, but was entirely stress free. Overall cost with the Super Charging was around $22 plus the Tesla subscription which was admittedly a bit of a waste, but I thought starting out that we would use it enough to make it worth it.

So in summary:
-ABRP was great, having an OBD adapter for it is neat, but man do I wish we could just get that functionality without addons.
-SuperCharging went great, even on the holiday weekend. The station was always about 3/4 full, and I saw at least two other Mach-es and one other Lightning charging there. It was a Ford and Tesla gathering
-If you are staying somewhere that you can safely plug in to 120v, it's better to do it than not as you may find you get enough charge for the weekend even though it's very slow overall.
-Please take care of your pets on hot days. Even 10 minutes in 90 degree weather can make a vehicle extremely dangerous.

Great story. I’m also in Michigan. I love ABRP. I have an obd reader as well and that makes quite a difference. I’ve gone across country 3 times so far in my lariat ER and I love it. But a little route planning makes all the difference. On the dog issue. Especially in summer I don’t get why people drag around their dogs unless they are going somewhere for the dog like a park. In extreme weather seems like a whole lot better to just leave the dog at home. But that’s just me.