Your charging experience?

D

dBdt

Member
On trips along the major US highway system in the Northeast and Central Atlantic, what is your experience when stopping to charge? I am wondering about things like,
-How long do you need to wait for a charger to become free for you to use?
-What level of charging (rate) do you typically find?
-What about during heavy travel days near holidays?
-Does it change if your route planning has to go past areas like NYC via Garden State, Tappan Zee bridge, and coastal CT? Do you need to bracket that area and charge ahead of crossing it?

I'm thinking about my first EV and, while I get the notion that I usually stop every two or three hours for 15 to 30 minutes in my ICE, I don't have a feeling for the things above to help me gauge what long trips will be like.

Can I think of long trips as "just take a break for 20 minutes every couple of hours and pick up 10 minutes of charging on a supercharger?" If not, what similar sentence would you say captures what it is really like?
 
I am on the west coast so I can’t speak to that part of your question, but I have done long road trips. My typical routine is as follows: I start with a full charge ~260 miles, drive for 2 hr charge for 15-20 minutes, new range after charging 230miles (130+100), drive for two hours stop for meal and charge to 80% (208) then 2 hrs drive, 15-20 minute charge (178 miles), drive for 2 hours charge, stop for meal charge to 80%. If the first meal stop is breakfast I can repeat this process 5 times for a total of 650 miles in a day. Four 15-20 minute stops and three 30-45 minute meal stops. Drive time 10 hours, charge time 2.5 - 3hr 35 minutes. YMMV
 
Very helpful. Thank you. Do you actually stop for 15-20 min to get 15-20 min of charge, or do you need to add time to that to actually wait for a charger to clear? Even at holidays? It sounds like you are using the Tesla fast chargers. Would this change much if you had something other than a Tesla? I'm not trying to start a Tesla debate, but am wondering how much their charger network really matters for road trips. In another thread, someone mentioned that Tesla is hinting they will open their network, though.
 
dBdt said:
Very helpful. Thank you. Do you actually stop for 15-20 min to get 15-20 min of charge, or do you need to add time to that to actually wait for a charger to clear? Even at holidays? It sounds like you are using the Tesla fast chargers. Would this change much if you had something other than a Tesla? I'm not trying to start a Tesla debate, but am wondering how much their charger network really matters for road trips. In another thread, someone mentioned that Tesla is hinting they will open their network, though.
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I drive a Hyundai Kona electric. I have actually never been in a Tesla nor do I personally know anyone who owns one. All of my travel charging has been on CCS fast chargers. At home I have solar. 90% of my charging is at home. I primarily use the following fast chargers when I travel: CalTans (At rest stops. They are free courtesy of the state.), Electrify America(EA), Charge Point, and EVgo. I use PlugShare to plan my trips and make sure I am stopping high rated sites. Usually I will only stop at site rated 8 out of 10 or higher. I have done 2 road trips over 2500 miles over the last couple of years. The rest are day trips in the 200-400 mile range usually every couple of months.

Only one time in over two years of driving have I had to wait. It was at a free charge station. It was a lunch brake so I wasn't in a hurry. I asked the other driver and they were almost done so it was only a few minutes. If it had been longer I could have gone done the street to EA where there were a half dozen available chargers. Of course it would have cost me, so the wait was fine. Other than that I rarely see others charging and there are usually plenty of station available at
EA sites.

I haven't done road trips over holidays so not sure if there is an impact at CCS chargers.
 
Suggestion for the OP: If there are highways you're likely to use on a road trip, check them out on PlugShare. You'll see what fast charging options are available and what people say about them -- if a station is chronically busy or broken (not common, but it happens), PlugShare users will note it.
 
Bruce M. said:
Suggestion for the OP: ...check out PlugShare.
Click to expand...

This helped. I set up two vehicles in PlugShare, a Bolt and Model 3 Std+ and set a route up the coast into NH. I limited stations to 50 kW as a way to limit to Level 3 but stay low enough to get more than Tesla superchargers. For the Bolt, there's a sizeable gap in New England. I could probably cross it, but I don't see how to get distance along route for the charging waypoints, so not sure. That gap is halved if I switch to the Model 3.

If I change to 70kW charging, the Bolt options are sparse, but probably get me there. The Tesla options don't change. When I look at comments of customers, the stations that come up for the Bolt have a lot more complaints than the stations that come up for the Tesla. Could be a case of negative experiences lead to feedback? For the Tesla charging, there are a number of cases where people report not seeing full charge rate, but I can't tell if they were topping off and this would be normal. In one case, it was near a holiday and there's a comment of "all stalls full," so it might then be load sharing? Overall, my sense is higher rates than for the Bolt options.

My impression is that there is a real difference between a long distance trip using the Tesla network vs. other networks right now. I'd like to hear that is wrong...I'd like to have more options than Tesla. Also, I'm guessing that if I drive 2-3 hrs and then stop for a charge so that I'm charging with a somewhat depleted battery, the difference between 50kW and either 72kW or 150kW is real and significant.
 
Each car has a max charge rate chart, starting from a low SOC (eg 10%), all the way up to full SOC (100%). Generally the rate is highest early on and then starts tapering around 60 or 70% and really slows down at 90%. That is another reason to just charge to 80%. So for starters don't expect to utilize the full 100% battery capacity during the trip, unless you have extra time on your hands. And if the charger is not free, and is time based (most are), you will pay a lot more for that last 20%. So at the start of your trip best to do a regular slow charge at home to 100%. And if you overnight somewhere, try to pick a hotel with a free charger, so again you can start the next morning full charged.

I have only done one full day trip (one way) with my EV, and it worked out pretty well. Started off with a full charge, and then picked charging stations near amenities, so no time wasted. And I arrived at my destination (that had a free charger) with a minimal charge left. It was a long day, but really not much longer than if I was driving my ICE car.

Also, not sure what it is like where you live, but we have lots of free charging (fast and slow ones) here all over. As a result I have yet to pay for a charge in my EV for the 2+ years I've owned it. And unlike some areas of the US, CCS chargers are way more common here (not to mention free) than Tesla SuperChargers. The latter are only on the main routes, and not off the beaten path, so Tesla cars need a Chademo adapter (not cheap) to charge.

The good news is that you will see a lot more chargers getting installed everywhere in the next few years, so this concern should be eliminated soon enough. And most new ones are 350 kW and can really boost charging speed for the newest 800V cars like the Hyundai Ionic 5. I believe it is the fastest charging car out there now, and can charge from 10 - 80% in just 18 minutes. That's as good as an ICE car on a trip, considering you need eat and pee once in a while.
 
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Friday, July 23, we did a trip to Murfreesboro TN from Huntsville AL and returned. Temperatures ranged 91-94 F (33-34 C). So the L2 charging:
upload_2021-7-24_5-37-42.webp
Normally I run about 67% SOC so we added 19.5 kWh ($0.11 * 19.5 = $2.15) to support faster speeds, ~75 mph (120 kph) and air conditioning. Once we got to Nashville, we had a long lunch while the car charged:
upload_2021-7-24_5-53-14.webp
We arrived home with ~15 miles indicated. I put the car on charger only one of the dogs decided to go 'walkies' by herself. So we did a full charge (1.1 + 49.7) * $0.11 = $5.59 and the car shows 230 miles range, originally 240 miles. I will adjust the SOC limit back to 67%.

CONCLUSION
  • $17.10 cost :: extra charge at home, SuperCharger fee for 1 hour, recharge full at home
  • ~256 miles (~410 km)
  • 18:00 - 11:30 ~= 6 hr, 30 min including 1 hr lunch and ~30 min errand
Bob Wilson
 
So I’ve done two trips in my Kona. One a rather short ride from Boston to NYC and back, which is easy-Peary for the Kona as you can get into Manhattan on a single charge. However I juiced up just before entering the city so the car would be good to go on the return. That trip got a little dicey because on the return the weather cooled significantly and I had to run the heat. Made it to an EVGo on I90 with less than 10% left and it was dropping fast.

The other trip I made was Boston, MA to Milwaukee, WI. I used PlugShare to plan and the only major issues I had were bad routing markers for a set of chargers in Ohio. Never had to wait for a charging station but someone did have to wait for me one time. Had one frustrating problem with EVConnect station but that was resolved. My return trip was a lot more efficient that my outward bound journey. Don’t know if I trusted the car and charging station more or not but it was easier. My stops were every two to three hours at twenty to forty minutes each. The only real let down, the food choices were poor at most charge stops, ate a lot of junk food.

For me, EA is the best, lots of stations, with lots of fast charging stalls, had very few issues that weren’t user error. Then it’s a tie with EVGo and ChargePoint.

Agree with you about traveling into NH or VT, not a lot of good options yet if your visiting there or trying to get to Montreal.
 
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