Extended road trip DCFC break down
I just wrapped up an 8 day long road trip where I drove from Boston to Indianapolis and back. Drove just over 2300 miles and had an average efficiency of 3.5mi/kWh. Was overall pretty pleased with the trip and it showed me that EV road tripping definitely takes a different mindset, but the forced stops every 90 minutes actually made the trip quite a bit more enjoyable than just iron manning and stopping every 2 hours for 5 minutes to bio and/or fuel up.
Here's a break down of all of my DC fast charging stops. I burned through the rest of my 250kw of free charging from Hyundai and ended up paying just over $50 out of pocket. My trip was broken up into 4 primary travel days and I started each day with pretty close to 100% charge.
My biggest discovery coming out of the trip was the benefit of running the battery from 60% -> 15% and back. You can get 70+kw up to 60%, but the charging speed drops off a cliff above this SOC. I stretched where I had to due to availability, but absolutely tried to keep it close to 100 mile legs most of the time.
Happy to answer any questions.
Posted Jun 19, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC
I just completed my own 2750 mile Kona trek. First time ever using fast chargers and the like. Was rather painless until I hit the first 3 of 4 stations offline moment with a guy sitting on that charger going for +90% charge. Long wait just sitting there watching him. :-)
As you said, I found the driving not to be as exhausting when I had to take more frequent breaks, walk around, etc.
I pulled a 4.2 mi/kWh average for the whole trip. It was interesting to observe what other have talked about, watching my efficiency at 55, 65, 75 mph. It made me aware enough to tend to set the cruise control to 73 on 70 limit roads and just go with it. I'd never had adaptive cruise control until this car, I'm a big fan of it now. :-)
I don't quite have the confidence to run the battery down as low as you did, I always wanted to try to have enough range left for a plan B charger if necessary. Plus I just wasn't burning battery as fast as abetterrouteplanner was thinking I would.
I vetted the crap out of all of my charging stops ahead of time. I opted to charge early and skip one in Northern Ohio that had 3/4 unavailable. Started the trip fairly conservative but quickly realized that it was silly as I didn't have any real issues on my first few legs. Was running ABRP with an OBD2 adapter feeding live SOC. I was generally within 3-4% of the estimated SOC on each leg.