[jasdata]

Hello everyone, wanted to share my experiences and data i collected on my Ohio - Denver - Ohio road trip i took. First, the data! Hopefully i collected the important info, and i did my math right lol. Almost all of my charging was done with Electrify America, unless it was free at hotels, or i called out in the notes if it was ChargePoint. Total miles for the trip was around 2,850.
Couple important notes:

• These were all taken while running software version 1.7, UNTIL 12/9. I updated to 1.8 while at my hotel the night of 12/8.
• I planned my trip with ABRP, but used the car navigation so that it would pre-heat the battery. The charging stops it added aligned with what i had in ABRP with 2 exceptions on 11/30 and 12/9.

Overall, the trip went great, and the the XC40 was super comfortable to road trip in. Mechanical wise, I didn't run into any issues outside of apparently getting a nail in one of my tires (unrepairable, and ordered a new rear set). Thankfully the tire is holding up fine outside of adding air every few days. I didn't have too much range/charging anxiety during the trip until I got past Kansas City. After that, you basically have to stop at every charger along the way, and there are no real DCFC alternatives if those are not working. Range estimates were for the most part, pretty accurate, typically leaning towards the more conservative side. There were a couple instances where the estimated arrival SOC and actual arrival SOC was off by a large amount, and once instance when doing the math in my head, and knowing what my actual consumption was, i didn't think i could make it to the next planned charging stop and manually added an additional stop. So in summary:

• Doing long road trips in an EV are doable, but you do want to do some planning ahead of time and have alternative stops in case there are issues
• Based on the weather (wind, temp, etc) and speed, i don't think i would get more than about 160ish miles out of a charge (100% to 10% SOC). you might be able to squeeze more out, but if you mis-calculate, drive too fast, or have a strong headwind, you could end up in trouble
• By and large, the range estimates that Google provides are usually pretty close, and i usually ended up arriving with more SOC than what it estimated. Problem is there are a couple instances when i arrived with less, so that again comes down to planning.
• I was being overly cautious with my arrival SOC, and purposefully charged longer than i needed to. With the lack of available DCFC in some areas, i wanted to be extra safe than sorry.

And some pictures!

 

[jasdata]

Also other EV's i saw charging or otherwise on my trip:

• Mustang Mach-E's
• VW ID4
• Teslas
• BMW iX
• Chevy Volt
• Nissan Leaf
• A truckload of Rivian R1T's. They look awesome!

I didn't run into a single other XC40 Recharge the entire trip.

 

[vantablack]

love the report and pictures. good stuff

 

[SeattleCat]

Very nice. Lovely pictures. Great data. But more importantly you got to enjoy extended swooshing

 

[arijaycomet]

GREAT post and wonderful data! Thanks for sharing. If you are anywhere near NE Ohio (Cleveland etc) be sure to check out the Drive Electric NEO page. There are other DE pages in Ohio though so check those out. (I’m up in the Cleveland area, which is why I mention this, since you indicated your origin is/was Ohio).

We’ve taken a few big trips in our EVs over the last decade, and did a big summer trip in the Volvo. Your post is really making me hopeful they get the onboard charger fixed in time for our XMAS trip!

 

[BuzzyBud]

Excellent report and great pictures. My compliments and a job well done!
You mention how some of the Electrify America charge stations were not in good working order and/or slow. When they were in good working order what kind of charging speed did you see? Also, did you see many EVgo charge stations?
Did you see many Tesla charge stations? (I believe Elon will open his network within the next couple of years.)
Looking at your time entries, it seems like your XC40 battery was preheated prior to charging. Is that an accurate assessment?

 

[vantablack]

GREAT post and wonderful data! Thanks for sharing. If you are anywhere near NE Ohio (Cleveland etc) be sure to check out the Drive Electric NEO page. There are other DE pages in Ohio though so check those out. (I’m up in the Cleveland area, which is why I mention this, since you indicated your origin is/was Ohio).

We’ve taken a few big trips in our EVs over the last decade, and did a big summer trip in the Volvo. Your post is really making me hopeful they get the onboard charger fixed in time for our XMAS trip!

Would you prefer to road trip in your polestar or the xc40?

 

[MMK]

Excellent journaling, backdrops and tips! SUCCESS STORY, yay P8 !!!

 

[arijaycomet]

Would you prefer to road trip in your polestar or the xc40?

Overall BOTH are quite comfortable vehicles, so it is pretty close. That said, the more open/spacious feel of the XC40 interior, coupled with the larger trunk space, and higher stance / more commanding view of the road, makes the Volvo the favored vehicle for long trips. It may not grip the road with as much confidence, but it is hardly lacking in that regard. And while the Polestar may be a few tenths of a second faster, I cannot perceive this that greatly by the seat of my pants.

That said ... back in the summer, while driving home from the mountains of Tennessee up to Ohio ... there was a really big accident on the expressway. Google Maps didn't want to divert me, but Waze (on my phone) showed a big time savings getting off the freeway. In doing so we spent a solid 20-30 mins driving along the edge of a mountain, beautiful vistas, and some amazing twisty roads (marked around 45 MPH and the XC40 could barely do that, feeling its weight, size, height). In that instance, the Polestar 2 would have been far more fun on those roads, though my passengers might not have enjoyed the back-and-forth driving fast along the mountains' crest hahaha..

 

[Greg S]

Thanks! Great data and pics. Only thing I would have liked to see on your chart is how many miles on each charge leg as that would be interesting (to me anyway). I know you said 160 miles practical range. Our freeway efficiency tends to be a bit better because our speed limits are lower (100-110 kph, so 60-65 mph) and drivers pretty much sit at the limit, not like ‘merica where you can get away with 10-15 mph over and if you don’t do that you get run over! We need a lot more chargers here, ASAP! Happy motoring.

 

[Stephen Cerruti]

Only thing I would have liked to see on your chart is how many miles on each charge leg as that would be interesting (to me anyway).

On our Thanksgiving trip our legs were:
88m-135m-139m-35m Eastbound (actual)
88m-131m-100m-73m Eastbound (planned)
26m-125m-127m-113m-30m Westbound (actual)
26m-125m-127m-147m Westbound

On the eastbound trip we overcharged at the 135m stop because we were eating lunch. This allowed us to bypass our planned stop and reselect the stop at 139m.

On the westbound trip ABRP thought we could make the last leg home starting at 84%. That 147m leg is on the I-8 through the Cuyamaca Mountains over the Laguna Summit. I don't believe we would have made that from 84%. But 113m got us into an urban area with a choice of chargers. Also the westbound had an extra charge because we hadn't charged during our stay.

A note here: ABRP and Google Maps always want us to take I-10, we did this going eastbound and realized that Google Maps and ABRP are always going to get this wrong. Traffic on the 10 will always make the trip take longer than taking the 8 but especially during holiday travel periods.

160 mile practical range is based on 100% beginning state of charge (above). I don't think you want to use that, and certainly not something higher except on your first leg of the day.

204 miles - 10% bottom end - 20% top end (because charging above 80% wastes time) = 204 - 61.2 = 142.8
This is in good weather without a lot of climate control, albeit with a speed demon driving. (The speed limit is 75 MPH in AZ and please refer to your comment referencing 10-15 MPH higher.) And, yes, the P8 does fine for extended periods at 75 + (10-15) MPH.

 

[Greg S]

On our Thanksgiving trip our legs were:
88m-135m-139m-35m Eastbound (actual)
88m-131m-100m-73m Eastbound (planned)
26m-125m-127m-113m-30m Westbound (actual)
26m-125m-127m-147m Westbound

On the eastbound trip we overcharged at the 135m stop because we were eating lunch. This allowed us to bypass our planned stop and reselect the stop at 139m.

On the westbound trip ABRP thought we could make the last leg home starting at 84%. That 147m leg is on the I-8 through the Cuyamaca Mountains over the Laguna Summit. I don't believe we would have made that from 84%. But 113m got us into an urban area with a choice of chargers. Also the westbound had an extra charge because we hadn't charged during our stay.

A note here: ABRP and Google Maps always want us to take I-10, we did this going eastbound and realized that Google Maps and ABRP are always going to get this wrong. Traffic on the 10 will always make the trip take longer than taking the 8 but especially during holiday travel periods.

160 mile practical range is based on 100% beginning state of charge (above). I don't think you want to use that, and certainly not something higher except on your first leg of the day.

204 miles - 10% bottom end - 20% top end (because charging above 80% wastes time) = 204 - 61.2 = 142.8
This is in good weather without a lot of climate control, albeit with a speed demon driving. (The speed limit is 75 MPH in AZ and please refer to your comment referencing 10-15 MPH higher.) And, yes, the P8 does fine for extended periods at 75 + (10-15) MPH.

Great info - thanks! LOL yeah I wasn’t insinuating the original poster was speeding...just noting that here we get better range because we only drive about 60-65 mph (converted) with no fear of getting run down. The original poster had average speeds above 70 mph on some legs, so yeah, that means they were likely doing 75 mph.

 

[jasdata]

Excellent report and great pictures. My compliments and a job well done!
You mention how some of the Electrify America charge stations were not in good working order and/or slow. When they were in good working order what kind of charging speed did you see? Also, did you see many EVgo charge stations?
Did you see many Tesla charge stations? (I believe Elon will open his network within the next couple of years.)
Looking at your time entries, it seems like your XC40 battery was preheated prior to charging. Is that an accurate assessment?

For charging speeds, i got as high as 150KW when i was pretty low on battery, mostly around i would say 10-20% SOC. Once i got to around 50-60% SOC, it dropped to around 60KW. That is a good metric i should have captured, hindsight being 20/20. As far as issues, let me expand on that a little. i probably should have talked more about that in my first post.

So the first issue i ran into was i would say half of the charging stops had at least 1 station that was down. Considering that most stops i was the only car charging at the time, not a huge deal, but wanted to mention it. The one station that was most worrisome was the one on 11/30 at Wannamaker Rd. That was a smaller EA location with only 4 chargers. 2 were completely dead, and the other two had the message "charging speed is reduced for software upgrade and maintenance". I typically should have been getting around a 60KW charging rate at 50% SOC, but was only getting 40KW on one station. so I ended up unplugging and moving to the last working station, and was able to get 60KW. Again, a pain and inconvenience, but could have been much worse if there was a second EV trying to charge at that station at the same time as me. This did end up biting a Mustang Mach-E driver who ended up kind of shadowing me my last 2 EA charging stops into Denver. (Cool guy who was driving from Georgia to Denver. Talked to him for awhile at multiple stops) I got the only working charger that would put out more than 40KW, and had to charge to 85% ish before i could continue to the next stop. He showed up about 10-15 minutes before i was done charging and ended up trying every other terminal and each one would only give him 40-50KW. So he ended up using that until i finished, and then took my stop so he could get 150KW. Same thing happened at the next charging stop as well (plus this one had again, a completely dead charger).

Second issue I ran into was mentioned in the above: I continuously ran into that **** "charging speed is reduced for software upgrade and maintenance" at almost every EA charging location, and almost EVERY SINGLE STATION. Which begs the questions:
1. Who's stupid idea was it to do software updates on all of the chargers at the same station AT THE SAME TIME!!! I mean come on, really?
2. Why did these updates literally take days upon days to do? I ran into the messages on the way home on the same stations that had showed the message on my drive out to Denver 7+ days ago. Now granted not nearly as many stations showed that message on the way back as they did on the way out, but still, very odd and VERY frustrating.

Regarding Tesla charging stations, I didn't really look for them, and at least where i stopped, the EA stations were not next to any Tesla superchargers (or I'm blind, which is a possibility lol).

For pre-heating, I don't know of a way to "verify" pre-heating was taking place, however that was my primary goal of using the built-in Google Nav and having it select the charging stops. I think based on the speeds i got, that the battery was being pre-heated though.

As far EVgo stations, i didn't see any until i got to Denver. Once there, I remember seeing several around.

 

[jasdata]

Thanks! Great data and pics. Only thing I would have liked to see on your chart is how many miles on each charge leg as that would be interesting (to me anyway). I know you said 160 miles practical range. Our freeway efficiency tends to be a bit better because our speed limits are lower (100-110 kph, so 60-65 mph) and drivers pretty much sit at the limit, not like ‘merica where you can get away with 10-15 mph over and if you don’t do that you get run over! We need a lot more chargers here, ASAP! Happy motoring.

Lol, yea i was thinking the same thing about mid-way thru my trip back home, but didn't feel like editing the spreadsheet and having a bunch of incomplete data. I'll remember to collect it next time i take a long trip though.

 

[jasdata]

On our Thanksgiving trip our legs were:
88m-135m-139m-35m Eastbound (actual)
88m-131m-100m-73m Eastbound (planned)
26m-125m-127m-113m-30m Westbound (actual)
26m-125m-127m-147m Westbound

On the eastbound trip we overcharged at the 135m stop because we were eating lunch. This allowed us to bypass our planned stop and reselect the stop at 139m.

On the westbound trip ABRP thought we could make the last leg home starting at 84%. That 147m leg is on the I-8 through the Cuyamaca Mountains over the Laguna Summit. I don't believe we would have made that from 84%. But 113m got us into an urban area with a choice of chargers. Also the westbound had an extra charge because we hadn't charged during our stay.

A note here: ABRP and Google Maps always want us to take I-10, we did this going eastbound and realized that Google Maps and ABRP are always going to get this wrong. Traffic on the 10 will always make the trip take longer than taking the 8 but especially during holiday travel periods.

160 mile practical range is based on 100% beginning state of charge (above). I don't think you want to use that, and certainly not something higher except on your first leg of the day.

204 miles - 10% bottom end - 20% top end (because charging above 80% wastes time) = 204 - 61.2 = 142.8
This is in good weather without a lot of climate control, albeit with a speed demon driving. (The speed limit is 75 MPH in AZ and please refer to your comment referencing 10-15 MPH higher.) And, yes, the P8 does fine for extended periods at 75 + (10-15) MPH.

Totally agree with you. I think my longest route was 145 miles between charges, and that was going from 96% SOC.

 

[jasdata]

Great info - thanks! LOL yeah I wasn’t insinuating the original poster was speeding...just noting that here we get better range because we only drive about 60-65 mph (converted) with no fear of getting run down. The original poster had average speeds above 70 mph on some legs, so yeah, that means they were likely doing 75 mph.

75mph is the speed limit on quite a large chunk of I-70. so no real speeding

 

[JalexJ]

I wonder about the charge times indicated in ABRP plans.

When I do a test plan on ABRP from Madison WI to Denver CO, it shows the first charge in Iowa City getting SoC from 23-74% taking only 31 minutes.

I'm new to EV autos and my experience is that DC fast chargers take way longer to charge than is suggested by ABRP. For example, I got in a pickle last week and the charge at a public station from ~10 to 70% took more than 2 hours. The temperature was around 40 degrees. My experience having charged 5-10 times at public stations (labelled DC Fast) and at the dealer has been that a more or less full charge takes about 2 to 2.5 hours.

Am I doing something wrong that the charging station or does DC Fast mean something difference from what I think it means? Any ideas and/or guidance would be appreciated.

 

[BuzzyBud]

I wonder about the charge times indicated in ABRP plans.

When I do a test plan on ABRP from Madison WI to Denver CO, it shows the first charge in Iowa City getting SoC from 23-74% taking only 31 minutes.

I'm new to EV autos and my experience is that DC fast chargers take way longer to charge than is suggested by ABRP. For example, I got in a pickle last week and the charge at a public station from ~10 to 70% took more than 2 hours. The temperature was around 40 degrees. My experience having charged 5-10 times at public stations (labelled DC Fast) and at the dealer has been that a more or less full charge takes about 2 to 2.5 hours.

Am I doing something wrong that the charging station or does DC Fast mean something difference from what I think it means? Any ideas and/or guidance would be appreciated.

One item to observe is the difference in DC Fast Charge stations. Some are labeled 50kW, others 150kW and some are 350kW. I could see the 50kW station taking the 2+ hours.

 

[Stephen Cerruti]

Yes, there is a wide range of DC Fast. The ones ABRP is going to recommend will be at least 150kW if available. These will do 23% to 74% in about 30 minutes.

There are a lot of 50kW hour chargers out there and some of the older, and especially free, chargers were down around 40kW. These will take longer obviously. You should be able to see charge details independently in the plugshare app.

 

[JalexJ]

One item to observe is the difference in DC Fast Charge stations. Some are labeled 50kW, others 150kW and some are 350kW. I could see the 50kW station taking the 2+ hours.

Oh... Doh. So I need to understand the difference between Levels 1,2,3 and all the various level of kWs (honestly, I've not noticed or have blocked out these data). Thanks for the clarification.