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Christmas Road Trip Report

djwildstar

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Long Road Trip
For Christmas we visited my sister-in-law's place. This was our longest road trip so far: We drove from Atlanta to Toledo and back again, with some around-town driving as well as an excursion to Sandusky. We got a late start on Friday the 23rd, and split the drive north into two segments, with an overnight stop and charging just north of Knoxville. The return was a single 16-hour marathon. Weather on the drive up was unseasonably warm, 40’s and 50’s, while the drive back was a more typical 30’s and 40’s.

This was our fourth and longest road trip in the 7 months and nearly 14,000 miles we've had the truck. Our other road trips have been in spring and summer, from Atlanta GA to Point Pleasant WV, and from Atlanta GA to Walt Disney World (twice). Overall I estimate that about 4500 of our miles have been road trips.

By The Numbers
The Beast’s trip odometer and charging logs report:
  • Trip Computer
    • 1.8 mi/kWh,
    • 1656.2 miles, and
    • 30:40 total power-on; so
    • 54 MPH overall average speed.
  • Charge Logs
    • 15 fast-charging stops,
    • 6:29 charging time, and
    • 737.5kWh; so
    • 26 minutes average charging stop, for
    • +37.5% (88 miles) to the battery.
This time and distance includes time spent getting to and from charging stops. Charging time only counts plug-in to unplug time. The longest charging stop was 39 minutes to charge the battery from 14% to 80%, which is two minutes faster than the advertised. We also stopped overnight and charged while we slept one night. This Level 2 charge isn't included in the above, but charged the battery from 61% to 100% in 8:41 while we slept.

Overall, we spent 17.6% of our time charging, and 82.4% driving. Our experience closely matched Motor Trend's 75 MPH, 30-minute charging stop road-trip strategy, so we were probably within 75 minutes of the best-possible time for a trip of this distance.

Observations
We were unable to get any charging, even Level 1, at my sister-in-law’s house. None of their garage and external outlets work -- they were powering their Christmas decorations from an extension cord strung out of the laundry room window. My brother-in-law doesn’t know why the outlets don't work (I suspect it’s because he doesn’t know what a tripped GFCI breaker looks like), but for the sake of Christmas harmony and my wife’s sanity, I didn’t go into it.

The new GM Ultium-branded chargers at Flying J and Pilot locations worked well, BUT getting to them was hard because they aren't in Sync Navigation and FordPass refuses to plan a charging stop there.

When we had problems, it was at Electrify America:
  • On the way up, one stop refused to charge at more than 37kW.
  • On the way back, one location would provide 160+kW, but terminate the session after 2-5 minutes. I plugged and re-plugged until we had enough to reach the next-nearest charger.
  • On the way back, EA maintenance was at the location that had been delivering 37kW, and the issue was fixed (we were the first vehicle to charge there after repairs were completed.)
Overall, 12 charging stops were at EA, and 10 of them were just fine. The two that weren't working cost us a lot of time, and 83.3% uptime doesn't inspire confidence in the brand -- and for reference, Tesla claims 99.95% uptime for their SuperChargers. We didnt' experience lines, but we did have situations were our charger wasn't working well and all the other ones were occupied.

My wife really, really, really wants chargers that are at someplace other than WalMart:
  • In general, the bathrooms were gross (I suspect Sam Walton would be quite upset);
  • WalMart isn't very welcoming or interesting to walk through as a visitor; and
  • We would welcome fast charging at Buc-Ees or Target instead.

My Take-Away
I still love this truck for road trips. BlueCruise and the enforce stop-and-walk-around nature of EV road tripping made the marathon return trip (16 hours door-to-door) do-able. I feel like I could do back-to-back 12-hour to 16-hour days without a lot of trouble.

My wife is less enthralled; she finds the charging time to be too much, and in general would prefer to cover more ground in fewer hours. She does still love the truck for in-town trips, and the comfort of the Lariat trim made the trip bearable for her.
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hturnerfamily

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interesting, as my wife LOVES having stops at Walmart, since, well, she can get practically ANYTHING there... and, the bathrooms are just what you need, and the selection, is, well, EVERYTHING... we HATE Bucc'ee's and Targets... oh well... to each his/her own... : )
 

Maquis

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interesting, as my wife LOVES having stops at Walmart, since, well, she can get practically ANYTHING there... and, the bathrooms are just what you need, and the selection, is, well, EVERYTHING... we HATE Bucc'ee's and Targets... oh well... to each his/her own... : )
Glad I’m not the only Buc-ees hater!
 

johnnyonetime

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We like Buc-ees, never wait in line for clean restrooms. Food is okay and ice is cheap. Parking can be a challenge but when charging becomes available for our Lightning it will be another reason to stop.
 
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djwildstar

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Our biggest problem with stops at WalMart was that the bathrooms, particularly in Kentucky and Ohio, weren't anything close to clean. This could be because of the holidays, since the stores were extra-busy and probably short-staffed -- but in any case, it wasn't pleasant.
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