Road trip SR Edition

[Pod]

Started our big trip to Florida in my SR XLT. Quite an adventure. Charging fine in Virginia and North Carolina. South Carolina becomes a DC Fast Charge desert real quick. Hoping Florida is easier tomorrow. Thank goodness for a little free ChargePoint at the local Hyundai.

Sponsored

 

[hturnerfamily]

that's the unfortunate reality for the time being...although the advent of NACS adoption by the CCS crowd, and the announced partnership between Tesla Superchargers and FORD vehicles, might give us many more options sooner than waiting on EA and CP and others to simply build 'more' DC Fast Charger locations.
Tesla Supercharger locations will give us many more options for HIGHWAY travel, but NOT for local and rural travel, for the most part. CHARGEPOINT seems to be the best for rural travel, and EA tends to be the go-to 'Walmart' location provider, which is great, but there can be way too much mileage between them. If they would not put 8 DC Fast Chargers in a 'single' location, and spread them out more, EA would be in a much better place to provide us CCS vehicles road-tripping headache-saving options.
If EA had two chargers at every Walmart in America, at least Walmarts more than 10 miles apart, we'd have this licked by now. Unfortunately, their belief is more about the shear 'number' of chargers they can pack into a single location.

When we have charging options, DC Fast Charging options, every 20 miles or so, along most every path in this country, then we'll no longer have to argue these points and worry about 'traveling' to most any destination, even if we 'forgot' to charge at our home overnight : )

 

[Pod]

Completely agree. It was weird, for the first time since I received my truck I had that sinking feeling, 10% left and no working chargers around. Thought I might have to resort to finding and exterior house plug somewhere. This after careful planning ( I kinda like the planning stage in a trip ). Broken or malfunctioning charges just muck up the work. Always gotta have a back-up plan.

 

[RickLightning]

PlugShare should reveal the broken / slow chargers.

 

[On the Road with Ralph]

I just completed my seventh EV (Pro SR) road trip of more than 500 miles; two trips were more than 1500 miles. Maybe it’s because I used to be a pilot, and I’m accustomed to doing a bit of pre-planning before taking off, but I simply don’t experience the anxiety about crossing EV deserts that I see expressed here. With 10K miles of experience with all kinds of terrain and weather, I’ve acquired at pretty accurate sense of the Lightning’s range capabilities and how to best optimize them.

Just yesterday, for example, I departed Kingman (AZ) on a long stretch of Route 66 to California that was FAR from any EV services; the truck had less than 35% charge (more on that in a second). I ignored the GOM, did my own math and drove intelligently. I arrived in Needles with plenty in reserve. But…

The EA station in Needles - for NOT the first time - was throttled down on all four dispensers. The best I got was in the mid-40s (the others were getting even less) and I was stuck there for a full hour longer than I should have been. I will also note that I left Kingman closer to empty than full because the EA station there was packed (including three Lightnings) with a waiting line; I didn’t stay.

I recount all of this because it has become clear to me that EA may be the greatest obstacle to the electrification of personal travel in the US. Their chargers, especially if you include the widespread throttling, are incredibly unreliable. The number of dispensers at each station is already pathetically inadequate. Their layouts are often hard to navigate, especially in a full-size truck, and impossible if towing anything. At the very least, they should be in the target of a class action lawsuit; I’d also support investigations by the governmental authorities who negotiated the Dieselgate settlement, because I think EA’s business practices are a bad faith response to what VW was obligated to do.

One thing became very clear to me on this most recent trip: 2023 is America’s first electric vacation summer. EVs are on the road in record numbers and the charging networks, especially EA, are not remotely ready to handle the demand (unless you drive a Tesla). And it is not rocket science. Gas stations with pull-through lanes and related motoring conveniences have existed for roughly a century; more recently, Tesla demonstrates daily that it is possible to operate an EV charging network that is easy to use and reliable. EA needs to gets its act together - NOW - or it is going to be roadkill as manufacturers shift to NACS and EV drivers can opt to use Tesla superchargers.

 

[RickLightning]

I think taking a trip with an EV, on a holiday weekend, is as dumb as flying on a holiday weekend. We've put thousands of miles on your EVs on the highway, I'm not doing that on a holiday weekend.

 

[On the Road with Ralph]

If EA had two chargers at every Walmart in America, at least Walmarts more than 10 miles apart, we'd have this licked by now. Unfortunately, their belief is more about the shear 'number' of chargers they can pack into a single location.

ROFL. First, EA doesn't pack a "sheer number" of dispensers into 98% of its locations; you are lucky if it is the standard four. In the SW US, right now, the average EA site has less than 50% of the dispensers it ought to have. And that doesn't begin to address the fact that they are often not working or are deliberately throttled. Don't get me started on their stupid layouts...

As for Walmart, perhaps you haven't heard, but it has formally announced it is entering the EV charging business and that over 1000 Walmarts in the US are going to get EV facilities. And they probably won't be crappy EA stations. While its announcements have been thin on details, informed minds think it will be a partnership similar to what Walmart has with Murphy Oil for gas stations. I, for one, hope they get together with ChargePoint. Their current DCFC chargers are not blindingly fast, but they ARE reliable, and Walmart might actually want chargers that give an EV driver time to go in the store and buy stuff. I can also see them integrating DC fast charging with their pick-up service.

Sponsored