If going on a long trip in an EV

[DonTom]

Buy a Tesla.

I agree with this. Don't consider anything else, unless you do not expect to need to charge while on the road.

Not an issue in my case--and I always check Plugshare for their last use before I go anywhere on my EV motorcycles.

We don't need to bother with that when driving a Tesla. Just drive and it is extremely rare to find a Tesla Supercharger that doesn't work. And the car will let you know before you get there even if it did happen, even if they are all busy.

-Don- Reno, NV

 

[ex-member]

Buy a Tesla.

I agree with this. Don't consider anything else, unless you do not expect to need to charge while on the road.

Not an issue in my case--and I always check Plugshare for their last use before I for anywhere on my EV motorcycles.

Don't need to bother that with a Tesla. Just drive and it is extremely rare to find one that doesn't work. And the car will let you know even if it did happen, even if they are all busy.

-Don- Reno, NV

Gotta say though, BC hydro and FLO are super reliable. Literally never had a failure of either.

 

[DonTom]

Gotta say though, BC hydro and FLO are super reliable. Literally never had a failure of either.

I wish I could say the same for here in the USA. Many CCS chargers have been broken for years.

AFAIK, we do not have BC Hydro and FLO anywhere in the USA. The only time have heard of those is from you.

Check on Plugshare for:

Donner Summit Rest Areas on I-80, CA, EB and also WB.

And:

Dutch Flat, CA

Incline Village, NV.

MiddleGate, NV

Rhy Patch, NV

Hawthorne, NV

Austin, NV

And several others--all broken for many years.

On my 2020 Esse Esse 9, I could go more places five years ago than I can today.

Fortunately, my Energica Experia has enough range to skip a charge station and can go almost anywhere. It can do nearly 300KM (190 miles) on a full charge if I do not ride it too fast.

I now keep the 2020 Esse Esse 9 bike in CA where the WORKING CCS DCFCs are usually closer together. But some exceptions even for CA such as the extreme NE CA

You can see why I want the Tesla Magic Dock, but so far, not even one in the entire state of NV.

Tesla has it all covered. Now it's mostly overkill with Tesla, IMO. Ever find a place you could not drive to in your Tesla up in Canada? And would a CCS car be the same there?

BTW, in the above video, the guy says the Bolt charges at 50 KW. For mine (2022) it is 55KW. But the Chevy Equinox (which replaces the Bolt this year) can charge at 150KW (which comes out to around 70 miles added in a ten-minute charge. My Bolt would take close to a half hour to get the same charge. But I couldn't care less. The only time I used a DCFC on it was just to see if it worked--it worked fine at 55KW.

Even many of the Tesla superchargers can only do 150 KW. There are still many V2 Superchargers still in service. I am not sure if Telsa has a plan to upgrade all of these.

-Don- Reno, NV

 

[DonTom]

Another thing I should mention. I often try a credit card and get "declined".

This is very common with good credit cards at CCS chargers here in the USA. So then I have to use my least favorite way. Waste about ten minutes in some stupid app where I could be charging that time. It takes several minutes for my Smartphone to boot up, as I normally keep it off.

BTW, I do not agree with his "don't buy a Bolt" for everybody. I knew about this issue when I purchased mine and I could not care less. It only gets charged at home, 12KW. The same rate as my Tesla.

BTW, I now have my Tesla here in Reno as the weather is already starting to get lousy here. The snow season will soon be here and the Tesla (AWD) does better in the snow than my 4WD Jeep did. I discovered that last year.

Light rain here all day today. A good time to be stuck indoors with my bug.

-Don- Reno, NV

 

[old RV guy]

Another thing I should mention. I often try a credit card and get "declined".

This is very common with good credit cards at CCS chargers here in the USA. So then I have to use my least favorite way. Waste about ten minutes in some stupid app where I could be charging that time. It takes several minutes for my Smartphone to boot up, as I normally keep it off.

BTW, I do not agree with his "don't buy a Bolt" for everybody. I knew about this issue when I purchased mine and I could not care less. It only gets charged at home, 12KW. The same rate as my Tesla.

BTW, I now have my Tesla here in Reno as the weather is already starting to get lousy here. The snow season will soon be here and the Tesla (AWD) does better in the snow than my 4WD Jeep did. I discovered that last year.

Light rain here all day today. A good time to be stuck indoors with my bug.

-Don- Reno, NV

Kara Swisher has a bolt and says she loves it. I think it's perfect for urban commuter driving like around here in the DFW metro, especially if you're home charging.
As for snow, I drove a front wheel drive Escort to school in Colorado Spgs..in the early 80's, through all manner of ice and snow and never missed a class. Our all wheel drive Outback is no slouch either.

 

[DonTom]

I think it's perfect for urban commuter driving like around here in the DFW metro, especially if you're home charging.

Yep. Not a great vehicle for a thousand-mile trip, but it can be done. Besides, some people enjoy the longer charge stops.

Like I do.

Not much difference if I am typing out messages like this here at home or during a charge stop in the middle of nowhere, far from here. I often need longer charges during my electric motorcycle rides, not once have I not found things to do at a charge stop. Perhaps a hike, a lunch stop, typing messages like this one, BSing with somebody else at the charge stop, etc.

IMO, some people are in a habit of rushing everywhere--and not a single reason to rush--just habit. A bad habit, IMO.

-Don- Reno, NV

 

[blw2]

Well.... the premise of the thread is a bit over dramatic, but yes, valid point.

I can't speak to the reliability on the Tesla side of things, but on the other side...yeah, there does seem to be a lot of maintenance issues and outages....but I've never seen a location that didn't have at least some of the EVSE units working.

What I find most annoying is that they sometimes aren't showing that they are down. So I go through the process of plugging in and then trying to run the process of initiating the charge...either by card or more commonly by app on my phone.... it tries to work, and maybe does...but it's slow....or it works for a minute then faults out, etc.... Hugely annoying.
I've had to wait a couple times now, but only once for a long while. Multiple units were down and there was a lot of traffic....and the way these things are arranged like parking spaces, there's no great way to line up so nobody knows who's up next!

Anyway, bringing things to reality, Tesla does seem to have a robust network and generally are located in decent places, while the plethora of other networks are sometimes in less than ideal locations and it's not uncommon to see a unit or two offline or throwing problems....
BUT
I've been on many long road trips in my "not a tesla" Audi in the SE of the US, and have never gotten stuck!

 

[DonTom]

I've been on many long road trips in my "not a tesla" Audi in the SE of the US, and have never gotten stuck!

I also never got stuck. Ironically, I once got unstuck in Lodi after I could not find a working charger in Elk Grove, CA.

If it were not for the working charger in Lodi, I would have needed to call a tow truck, because I would have then been "Stuck in Lodi":

-Don- Reno, NV

 

[old RV guy]

I also never got stuck. Ironically, I once got unstuck in Lodi after I could not find a working charger in Elk Grove, CA.

If it were not for the working charger in Lodi, I would have needed to call a tow truck, because I would have then been "Stuck in Lodi":

-Don- Reno, NV

CCR caught **** over that song from the city of Lodi. It was too funny.

 

[DonTom]

What I find most annoying is that they sometimes aren't showing that they are down.

I normally check Plugshare for the latest check-ins to see if they are working.

However, I have seen working ones NOT work on my Energica motorcycles. Sometimes there are compatibility issues with some weird makes, such as my Energica motorcycles. There was a time about a year ago when Chargepoint did a FW update to their chargers and then not a single Energica motorcycle could use any Chargepoint in the USA (not sure about other countries). Fortunately, this only lasted a few months and then all the Chargepoints worked with Energica after Chargpoint did another OTA FW update.

I have also heard of such issues with other makes. Also the opposite, where my Energica worked fine and an older Chevy Bolt could NOT charge right after me.

IMO, CCS runs a rather complicated program in their chargers. The reason is that they must accept countless different battery voltages as well as many other variables, such as the battery temp and more.

-Don- Reno, NV

 

[DonTom]

CCR caught **** over that song from the city of Lodi. It was too funny.

First I heard about that.

I would think the city of Lodi would have liked it. It put their town on the map for many.

Perhaps Lodi wanted to push the issue to make Lodi even more famous. I bet many people have visited Lodi because of that song. Which usually means income-- for Lodi.

This world runs mainly on BS!

-Don- Reno, NV

 

[DonTom]

and maybe does...but it's slow.

I find many if not most of the "slow" fast-charging to be operator error where the battery temperature isn't perfect for a fast charge because they do not know how to precondition the battery.

For example, Tesla will only precondition the battery when the navigation system is used to get to the Supercharger. I am not sure about the newer Teslas, but this way is kinda stupid because there is no way for me to pre-condition to a CCS charger. But my Tesla is a 2018 model-- before they had CCS compatibility for Tesla. I changed my charging control unit to make mine compatible with CCS but there is still no way for me to precondition the battery for a CCS charger.

This means, especially on a very cold or very hot day, navigate to the Tesla Supercharger even when you know its location (and it cannot be too close--this can take a few minutes).

Different makes have different ways of battery preconditioning, but many people do not RTFM so they don't know.

No way to precondition electric motorcycle batteries. My Energicas will charge above 20KW on a perfect day, but only around 8KW when very hot or very cold. And if superhot or supercold, it will not charge at all.

-Don- Reno, NV

 

[DonTom]

CCR caught **** over that song from the city of Lodi.

I recall where the idea of the song came from.

Somebody the group knew hitchhiked to Lodi to find out that Lodi had a very strict and strongly enforced law against hitchhiking (probably in the early 1960's) and felt they got stuck there.

-Don- Reno, NV

 

[old RV guy]

I recall where the idea of the song came from.

Somebody the group knew hitchhiked to Lodi to find out that Lodi had a very strict and strongly enforced law against hitchhiking (probably in the early 1960's) and felt they got stuck there.

-Don- Reno, NV

I hitched East to West across the country in the early 70's, mostly I-10 from Florida to San Bernardino. Then up from Florida to Charlottesville, Va, spending the summer at U.Va. with the college ladies. My best friend was baking bread at a bakery just across from the campus.

 

[Isaac-1]

Speaking of hitch hikers, we saw one on Hwy 550, north of Durango yesterday, this was the first hitch hiker I had seen in years. We could not have picked him up if we wanted to as we had a full car, we were riding with my wife's cousin and her great uncle who were acting as tour guides, they have a couple of cabins on a lake about 20 miles out of Durango, and split their time between Colorado and Louisiana. We heard lots of stories about the area, went down various dirt roads, saw moose etc. Heard stories of my wife's great uncle driving a bread delivery truck down Hwy 550 when it was a single lane back in the 1960's, etc.

 

[John From Detroit]

CCR caught **** over that song from the city of Lodi. It was too funny.

I agree. Good tune

 

[Derby6]

I thought this was a finish the sentence post...

If going on a long trip in an EV don't forget your extension cord.
If going on a long trip in an EV bring extra batteries.

 

[Tulecreeper]

CCR caught **** over that song from the city of Lodi. It was too funny.

I recall where the idea of the song came from.

Somebody the group knew hitchhiked to Lodi to find out that Lodi had a very strict and strongly enforced law against hitchhiking (probably in the early 1960's) and felt they got stuck there.

-Don- Reno, NV

Having lived most of my life in the N California Central Valley, I have been to/through/past Lodi many times. Although it has grown over the decades, there still isn't much of anything there. Basically, it is Stockton's northern armpit. It's southern armpit being Manteca.