I don't know about you, but in another 5-10 years, I'll need to hit the head every 30 miles instead of 300! Maybe Telsa will add an on-board head along with their self-driving cars
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On the way home yesterday, I saw one of those Lucid's recharging next to mine. It was quite the car.
At this point, EVs are still enough of a novelty (to me) that recharging stops can be fun. There are a wide number of EVs to gawk at/drool over, and the owners are happy to talk about them. It was like an impromptu 'new car party'. Helped pass the time. I saw at least 3 BMWs, that Lucid I mentioned earlier, a VW, an Audi, a number of Kia/Hyundais, and a very strange looking Mercedes. All of the people I met were interested in my Volvo, they'd heard of them when they shopped, but hadn't yet seen one. At one stop, I was parked right next to a blue Volvo C40. It was the first time either of us had seen another one on the road. We both took pictures
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The 300 mile drive can be done in 5 hours with good traffic, and no stops. With me driving, and a packed lunch, I've done it in ~6 hours in a gas powered car. One stop for gas, and two for bladder relief. Overall, in the EV that 6 hour trip took 8 hours.
The EV added roughly 2 hours for 2 recharge stops. We ate our lunch at the first stop. All the stops were at large shopping malls or Walmarts. All had bathrooms & food available, with better quality than what you find on the 'service centers' on major highways.
The Google Map navigation system in my car was much better at finding suitable charging stops than I expected from using my phone or desktop computer. It may be a newer version, or Volvo/Polestar has developed it's own version in collaboration with Google. Either way, it was very good.
I was disappointed how
Electrify America's 150 or 350 kW chargers didn't actually deliver anything close to what they promised (see Charger kW rating vs. Actual Avg kW in the table below). That might be blamed on what the shopping malls or Walmart were willing to pay for. Providing abundant 400V DC current requires lots of juice and BIG transformers. In Electrify America's defense, their smart phone app worked fast & flawlessly. I recommend it over using a credit card. And Electrify America is widely said to be among the best, at least on the east coast. Tesla still has more chargers where ever I looked, but I don't know their charging power.
I also learned that
PlugShare is a useful free app to have on your phone. It tells you where fast DC chargers are located regardless of the network brand, how many are actually functional, how many are in use, and shows brief customer comments. I had previously thought they weren't good on the east coast, but I was wrong.
I learned an interesting tidbit from the Lucid owner I spoke with. He said Electrify America's capital investment start-up money came from VW's settlement with the US Govt. over it's diesel engine emission fraud case from a few years ago.
Here's the full disclosure for my first 5 road-trip recharges. Only once did I have to wait my turn to plug in, only about 5 minutes. (I avoided driving on the weekends.)
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