daunted by DCFC

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Qisl

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I'm a little daunted at the prospect of DCFC charging. I've only ever charged at home. I've decided it is about time to start driving around the Texas countryside in my electric MINI Cooper, and I find that there's a dearth of fast chargers out there.

When I use plugshare to plan a route, it maps me out into the middle of nowhere beyond which there are no more DCFC chargers. I have to keep to the main highways if I want to go anywhere.

And one route had multiple charging stations in a row where repairs were being made. (But I really love the comments that people leave for the stations that they charge at.)

Have any of the Texas owners here done much driving in Texas?

I've been contemplating replacing my Outback with a longer distance EV (esp. given all of the bad climate change news), but I'm beginning to think that replacing it with a 2024 clubman is a more viable option for distance driving. (There are different reasons on why the Outback needs to go.)

Texas is supposed to add DCFC charging stations to each county seat, but the rollout has been really slow.
 
Have you tried A Better Route Planner? PlugShare’s route planning is pretty rudimentary compared to ABRP, even more so now that Rivian is including their car-reported station reliability scores in the app.
 
Qisl said:
I'm a little daunted at the prospect of DCFC charging. I've only ever charged at home. I've decided it is about time to start driving around the Texas countryside in my electric MINI Cooper, and I find that there's a dearth of fast chargers out there.

When I use plugshare to plan a route, it maps me out into the middle of nowhere beyond which there are no more DCFC chargers. I have to keep to the main highways if I want to go anywhere.

And one route had multiple charging stations in a row where repairs were being made. (But I really love the comments that people leave for the stations that they charge at.)

Have any of the Texas owners here done much driving in Texas?

I've been contemplating replacing my Outback with a longer distance EV (esp. given all of the bad climate change news), but I'm beginning to think that replacing it with a 2024 clubman is a more viable option for distance driving. (There are different reasons on why the Outback needs to go.)

Texas is supposed to add DCFC charging stations to each county seat, but the rollout has been really slow.
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Texas in size is so big you need EV with 1000 miles range Clubman is not going to do it anyway in Texas In New York at least I can cover NJ.CT. PA .in SE and a future don’t look so bright if you look at a picture IMG_1501.webp we doing so good with EV infrastructure as in Staten Island NY .have 1/2 million population I can use 2 DC charging station available for me for my EV .Teslas different story I didn’t count but maybe 50
 
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inferno10 said:
Have you tried A Better Route Planner? PlugShare’s route planning is pretty rudimentary compared to ABRP, even more so now that Rivian is including their car-reported station reliability scores in the app.
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I've looked at ABRP. And indeed, it does have better routing. But the thing that I like about plugshare is that it shows alternate charging stations, and allows users to review the station, including when they were last there. In contrast, ABRP only shows operational or unknown status, and for my route, most of the stations have unknown status. So, I'd also need to cross reference between the two to look up the status.
 
Qisl said:
I've looked at ABRP. And indeed, it does have better routing. But the thing that I like about plugshare is that it shows alternate charging stations, and allows users to review the station, including when they were last there. In contrast, ABRP only shows operational or unknown status, and for my route, most of the stations have unknown status. So, I'd also need to cross reference between the two to look up the status.
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Qisl that what you need going for adventure in Texas with SE when you run out of electrons in your Beautiful SE IMG_1503.webp
 
Qisl said:
I'm a little daunted at the prospect of DCFC charging. I've only ever charged at home. I've decided it is about time to start driving around the Texas countryside in my electric MINI Cooper, and I find that there's a dearth of fast chargers out there.

When I use plugshare to plan a route, it maps me out into the middle of nowhere beyond which there are no more DCFC chargers. I have to keep to the main highways if I want to go anywhere.

And one route had multiple charging stations in a row where repairs were being made. (But I really love the comments that people leave for the stations that they charge at.)

Have any of the Texas owners here done much driving in Texas?

I've been contemplating replacing my Outback with a longer distance EV (esp. given all of the bad climate change news), but I'm beginning to think that replacing it with a 2024 clubman is a more viable option for distance driving. (There are different reasons on why the Outback needs to go.)

Texas is supposed to add DCFC charging stations to each county seat, but the rollout has been really slow.
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Plugshare can be tricksy for route planning. If there are plenty of DCFCs, it works fairly well. If not, then it's best to just use it to look for DCFCs in an area between your start and end, then plot your own route with detours to hit those elusive DCFCs in Hicksville. No, wait, that's Alabama.
Plugshare relies on people to report on charging. I drove to Washington DC on Monday. 3 of 4 of my plan A chargers were dead, despite the most recent plugshare reviews being positive. One of the plan Bs was dead, too. Leave a quick review everywhere. Can be as simple as 'worked fine'. Far more useful: 'couldn't charge'. A new one on one of my routes kept getting reported dead, I kept trying it, whenever I drove past. Guess who made the first positive review, as well as the most negatives?
 
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Hello! Fellow Texas SE owner here. (And my other car is an Outback!) I have only done one excursion in the Mini that I would consider a "road trip" but I do often use DCFCs, mostly in cities near me. Even in a city where there are decent charging options I don't always find success on the first try but I've never had any major issues. My biggest trip was out to Houston and back, which was about 200 miles each way. This was back in early 2023, so there were even fewer charging sites and I had to take a circuitous route to make it work. It was objectively less convenient than in the Outback but honestly went fine considering I was relying on several sites with a very limited number of stalls and no backup options. I made a detailed blog post about that trip if you want the nitty gritty (https://miniwattauto.com/2023/12/15/taking-the-mini-outside-its-comfort-zone/). There has been significant development of charging sites along that route and around me since then but I find that they are not necessarily in the most strategic places (at least in terms of road tripping a ~100 mile EV) and the pace has been inconsistent (some potential sites seem to languish for months while others pop up out of nowhere).

In terms of route planning and finding chargers I agree with the other members that Plugshare and ABRP are going to be your most valuable resources. And as you mentioned, I find them most useful in tandem (use ABRP to plot a route and use Plugshare to vet the proposed stops). However, I'll add that you should keep an eye on the Mini app. It is still not as useful as the other two, but it has improved. It shows live availability (don't know how accurate) and sometime this year they added Plugshare rating and pictures; although you can't actually read the reviews so it's kind of useless. All I'm saying is that they seem to be actively developing the app, so there's a chance it will be worthwhile in the future.
And finally I'll add that you should also keep an eye on Superchargers. I'm sure we'll be waiting a long time yet for large-scale access, and Tesla seemed to abandon the magic dock even before everyone adopted NACS, but inexplicably 2 magic dock sites popped up in Central Texas within the last month or so. Any magic dock site should show up in Plugshare but I still think it's worth checking Tesla's app every now and then to confirm what's available. They are really strategically placed so it could be the link that opens up a new route for you.

I encourage you to get out there in the Mini and hope it goes well!
 
I finally took a drive in my EVs from Dallas to Austin in my SE ALL4 and then in my SE.

The first trip was in the SE ALL4, and I hit probably 3x more fast chargers than I needed to. I had forgotten that the charge curve slows down after 80%, so the first stop (in Ennis at a Walmart) didn't amount to much for the SE ALL4; second stop was at a second Walmart in Bellmead; third stop was at some strange place I'd never heard of called Buc-ee's (https://buc-ees.com/) that had over fifty Tesla chargers and roughly 8 CCS chargers. (Buc-ee's is a really strange place.) That trip was roughly a month ago.

The second trip was last weekend in my SE, and I had to stop at all three places; skipping one wasn't an option. It was great, however, only hanging around for thirty minutes for a charge. The trip down on Sunday afternoon was a little busy, forcing me to wait for a charger twice. This time I bought some ghost pepper beef jerky at the Buc-ee's.

(I sure hope that the soon to be completed chargers between Dallas and Austin don't become never completed chargers due to the change in administration.)

Downside? Looks like I'll be racking up more miles on both vehicles. My SE is no longer just a city car.

(I mostly used abrp, but I did use plug share to get a feel for the plugs that both cars wanted me to go to.)
 
I wasn't sure if you were joking about Buc-ee's, but it guess it's possible in DFW area. Surely you have been to Howard-Edward-Butt for groceries?

Anyways glad to learn that you were able to do the Austin trip on both the U25 and F56! I much prefer my U25 for highway driving because of the radar cruise control and auto lane centering. For urban driving, F56 hands down.
 
chrunck said:
You live in Texas and have never heard of Buc-ees? That can't possibly be true.
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It is absolutely true. There's one north of me in Denton. But, other than on planes, I haven't been out of the DFW metroplex since before the pandemic.
 
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