NYLEAF
Well-known member
UPDATE: 7/28/2014
Thanks to everyone's help with planning this EV Road Trip. Here's a quick trip report from our EV road trip.
The original plan called for us to leave my house at 6am and get to DC by 1pm. Instead, we were actually on the road at 6:46am. Thankfully, traffic at this hour was light, and we arrived at our first stop, the Holiday Inn Express in East Brunswick, NJ at 7:49am. Unfortunately, we found the spot in front of the QC ICEd!
By parking on a very sharp angle, we were just able to get the plug connected. This station is officially rated for 20kW. In reality, we saw a peak of 18.5kW, and once we reached an SoC of 70%, it started to taper down. After watching a few minutes of "Pitch Perfect" on an iPad precariously perched on the dashboard, we disconnected and were on our way to our second stop of the day.
Just over an hour later (9:23am), we arrived at the Wyndham hotel in Mt. Laurel, NJ, home to a 50kW station owned by U-GO, the same provider from our first stop of the morning.
This station is networked on the GreenLots network, meaning we needed to use a GreenLots RFID car or the GreenLots App to pay for the station's use. I had attempted to obtain a GreenLots RFID before leaving for the trip, but I was assured by the phone representative that using the smartphone app would be easier than obtaining a card. However, when we arrived at the station, I made my first mistake of the day. Once I had started my session on the GreenLots app, I plugged the station into the car, not waiting for the station to actually tell me to do so! I had seen an image on the touchscreen demonstrating how to plug the car in, and I assumed that it was telling me to actually do so. In reality, having the car plugged in before the station was ready caused the session to fail. I called GreenLots and had them start a session for me over the phone. Seven minutes after arriving, my Leaf was happily sucking down 47kW from the station.
The charging rate began to taper down again just 7 minutes into the charge, falling into the mid-20kW's around 65% SoC. This U-GO Station is set to charge $7/hr, and it does not prorate by the minute, which led me to stay for as long as I could to ensure I got my money's worth. This was probably mistake #2 for the day. Seeing as how are next stop was only 37 miles down the NJ Turnpike, we should have charged just enough to get us to our next stop. When I realized how full the battery was getting, I approached the machine and pressed "STOP", only to be greeted by a message on the touch screen instructing me to tap my RFID card to end the session. Perplexed, I opened the GreenLots app on my iPhone and attempted to end the session. With the app "unable to connect to server at this time", I was unable to stop my car from charging! I called GreenLots again -- the friendly representative explained that sessions started by the call center must be ended by the call center, as well. A few minutes later (9:54am), all was well and we were off again.
We arrived a short while later (10:30am) at the Flying J travel plaza, on the NJ side of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, home to the only Blink quick charger on the entire East Coast.
(Borrowing this photo from PlugShare)
I tapped my never-before-used Blink card and started charging the car. I've read a lot of negative things about Blink QCs on these boards, so I was extra happy to have this one work flawlessly! We quickly ran inside to (finally) grab some breakfast at Denny's. Knowing that our next stop was two states and 70+ miles away, I planned on staying here for a full charge. Twenty minutes later, just after placing our order with the waitress, I checked my phone and noticed the car had stopped charging. I excused myself from the table and went back to the car to start another $5 charging session. Although I had chosen 100% the first time, I knew a second session would be needed to reach 100%.
At 11:16am, I received a notification on my phone that the car was done charging for the second time. Unfortunately, our waitress wasn't as prompt as the charging station. We finally got the check, used the restrooms, and were back in the car at 11:45am. I started the car up, glanced over at my Android phone running LeafSpy, and felt a knot form in my stomach; although the car had 12 out of 12 bars showing, LeafSpy was reporting 227 Gids, only 81% charged! That was certainly not enough to get us the 70 miles we needed to reach our next stop in Towson, MD. However, with the car thinking it was fully charged, I had no way of charging it up any more. Left with no other options, all I could do was hope that LeafSpy was wrong. Maybe it was a glitch, I thought -- after all, the battery temp had just hit the hottest ever, 9 bars (114F according to LeafSpy).
After crossing the Delaware Memorial Bridge, we avoided I-95 and opted for Route 40 (Pulaski Highway) instead. This road runs parallel to I-95, but with a top speed limit of just 55mph. The slower speeds and calm traffic allowed me to achieve a 4.8 mi/kWh efficiency. Two hours and 6 minutes later (1;51pm), we had arrived at the eVgo station in Towson, MD. This route should have only taken about 1:45 according to Google, but we used the car's built in navigation and had it set to "shortest route", meaning it took us through some residential areas with very low speed limits as we got closer to Towson. That was probably mistake #3 (or #4, if we count the waitress at Denny's) for the day. We arrived in Towson with 29 Gids, indicating to me that perhaps something was wrong with LeafSpy (or the readings it was receiving from the Leaf) after all.
Charging in Towson gave me the opportunity to use yet another never-before-used charging card, my eVgo card! I happily tapped the card to the reader, only to see a message saying "Card not authorized". After a few more tries gave me the same result, I called the number on the screen. The friendly agent started my charge for me in just a few moments, and at no cost! Awesome. The agent assured me the issue with my card would be fixed by Monday for my return trip to NY.
We spent 27 minutes charging here, giving us time to purchase some much-needed Red Bulls at Walgreens and watch a few more minutes of "Pitch Perfect" on the iPad. With 210 Gids in the tank, we left for our final destination at 2:25pm. This is, unfortunately, where we made our final mistake of the day. Instead of using the wonderful App "Waze" to navigate us through Friday afternoon DC-area traffic, we relied on the navigation skills of the Leaf to take us the final 60 miles to our hotel. Unfortunately, it took us through some awful traffic in Maryland, and then dumped us on city streets in the center of our nation's capital to make the last few miles of our journey on LBW. At 4:22pm (just 3 minutes shy of 2 hours after leaving Towson), we finally arrived at our hotel, the Key Bridge Marriott, in Arlington, VA.
My plan for charging in Arlington was to take the car to a Walgreens just a mile or so from the hotel and use their eVgo QC. However, when checking in, I asked if there was anywhere I could plug the car in. Sure enough, they directed me to a parking lot that is typically used for tour bus parking and showed me a few outlets I could use. Sadly, none of them were working! After a few phone calls between the front desk and engineering, they assured me they would find some way to juice up my car. We went into DC to do some touring, and when I came back, I found a yellow extension cord tied up to the railing next to my car. The employees at this hotel went above and beyond!
Our return trip took place today, 7/28/14. We essentially did the same trip, just in reverse. We attempted to get a full charge at the eVgo station in Towson, in preparation for the long drive back to NJ, but we weren't able to get the eVgo station to go past 227 Gids. This must be some sort of limitation with the Leaf. (We also couldn't get my eVgo card to work, and had to call twice to start both our charging sessions). We made it on LBW with a few miles to spare. Today's trip went faster, thanks to the lessons learned on Friday's trip.
In total, we traveled 554.6 miles. We never finished watching "Pitch Perfect". Here's a link to my LeafSpy logs from the trip down and the trip back, for anyone interested. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16V40V1WH62-VQvMxuccjPfw0etOQGO1aliobFVYTRLA/edit?usp=sharing. The charging sessions are color-coded: Blue is the Holiday Inn Express, Orange is the Wyndham Hotel, Red is Flying J/Denny's, and Green is Walgreens/eVgo. The GPS data seems to be off, not sure why. Speed looks accurate, though.
To those who question taking an EV on this type of trip...you're right. If time is a consideration, don't take an EV on a road trip. We went into this trip knowing it would take longer. Ultimately, we had fun, and made lots of great memories. No regrets!
-------------------------------------------
I'm planning a road trip to Washington, DC at the end of this month, and I'm hoping to take my Leaf. There will be four adults in the car (including myself), plus luggage -- so probably around 800lbs or so. The Leaf is a 2012 model with about 28,500 miles. Last time I checked a full charge on LeafSpy (about 2 weeks ago) I was at 264 Gids, AHr was 64.18 and SOH was 97%, so my battery is in pretty good shape, as far as I can tell.
Here's my proposed route... https://goo.gl/maps/segHf
Home to Holiday Inn Express, E. Brunswick, NJ (UGO Stations 20kW CHAdeMO): 51.4 mi
Holiday Inn Express to Wyndham Hotel, Mt. Laurel, NJ (UGO Stations 50kW CHAdeMO): 50.6 mi
Wyndham Hotel to Flying J Travel Plaza, Carneys Point, NJ (Blink 50kW CHAdeMO): 34.7 mi
Flying J Travel Plaza to Walgreens, Towson, MD (eVgo 44kW CHAdeMO): 71.0 mi
Walgreens to Washington, DC (Hotel Level 2 Charging): 61.0 mi
I know to make sure my tires are up to 40 psi before I leave, and I know to try and drive slow and steady on the highway to increase mi/kwh. Any other advice? The return trip would follow the same route, making the same stops. My biggest concern is the length of the stretch between the Blink Station in NJ and the eVgo Station in MD (plus the fact that I'm relying on a Blink station to begin with, but this particular station does have a good reputation on PlugShare, and I do have a Blink Card ready to go.)
My plan is to leave home at 6am and hopefully get to DC at 1pm. I might try and follow (not draft) a slow moving truck on I-95 between NJ and MD to increase efficiency. Should I maybe consider local roads instead? I'd really rather not stop at a L2 on the way. Will I have issues trying to get the Blink QC to give me as close to 100% as possible? There is no L2 at this location to finish charging on. Am I correct in assuming that I'll have to restart the Blink QC after 80% so I can charge to 100%, and that this will charge me the $5 fee again?
Thanks!
Thanks to everyone's help with planning this EV Road Trip. Here's a quick trip report from our EV road trip.
The original plan called for us to leave my house at 6am and get to DC by 1pm. Instead, we were actually on the road at 6:46am. Thankfully, traffic at this hour was light, and we arrived at our first stop, the Holiday Inn Express in East Brunswick, NJ at 7:49am. Unfortunately, we found the spot in front of the QC ICEd!
By parking on a very sharp angle, we were just able to get the plug connected. This station is officially rated for 20kW. In reality, we saw a peak of 18.5kW, and once we reached an SoC of 70%, it started to taper down. After watching a few minutes of "Pitch Perfect" on an iPad precariously perched on the dashboard, we disconnected and were on our way to our second stop of the day.
Just over an hour later (9:23am), we arrived at the Wyndham hotel in Mt. Laurel, NJ, home to a 50kW station owned by U-GO, the same provider from our first stop of the morning.
This station is networked on the GreenLots network, meaning we needed to use a GreenLots RFID car or the GreenLots App to pay for the station's use. I had attempted to obtain a GreenLots RFID before leaving for the trip, but I was assured by the phone representative that using the smartphone app would be easier than obtaining a card. However, when we arrived at the station, I made my first mistake of the day. Once I had started my session on the GreenLots app, I plugged the station into the car, not waiting for the station to actually tell me to do so! I had seen an image on the touchscreen demonstrating how to plug the car in, and I assumed that it was telling me to actually do so. In reality, having the car plugged in before the station was ready caused the session to fail. I called GreenLots and had them start a session for me over the phone. Seven minutes after arriving, my Leaf was happily sucking down 47kW from the station.
The charging rate began to taper down again just 7 minutes into the charge, falling into the mid-20kW's around 65% SoC. This U-GO Station is set to charge $7/hr, and it does not prorate by the minute, which led me to stay for as long as I could to ensure I got my money's worth. This was probably mistake #2 for the day. Seeing as how are next stop was only 37 miles down the NJ Turnpike, we should have charged just enough to get us to our next stop. When I realized how full the battery was getting, I approached the machine and pressed "STOP", only to be greeted by a message on the touch screen instructing me to tap my RFID card to end the session. Perplexed, I opened the GreenLots app on my iPhone and attempted to end the session. With the app "unable to connect to server at this time", I was unable to stop my car from charging! I called GreenLots again -- the friendly representative explained that sessions started by the call center must be ended by the call center, as well. A few minutes later (9:54am), all was well and we were off again.
We arrived a short while later (10:30am) at the Flying J travel plaza, on the NJ side of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, home to the only Blink quick charger on the entire East Coast.
I tapped my never-before-used Blink card and started charging the car. I've read a lot of negative things about Blink QCs on these boards, so I was extra happy to have this one work flawlessly! We quickly ran inside to (finally) grab some breakfast at Denny's. Knowing that our next stop was two states and 70+ miles away, I planned on staying here for a full charge. Twenty minutes later, just after placing our order with the waitress, I checked my phone and noticed the car had stopped charging. I excused myself from the table and went back to the car to start another $5 charging session. Although I had chosen 100% the first time, I knew a second session would be needed to reach 100%.
At 11:16am, I received a notification on my phone that the car was done charging for the second time. Unfortunately, our waitress wasn't as prompt as the charging station. We finally got the check, used the restrooms, and were back in the car at 11:45am. I started the car up, glanced over at my Android phone running LeafSpy, and felt a knot form in my stomach; although the car had 12 out of 12 bars showing, LeafSpy was reporting 227 Gids, only 81% charged! That was certainly not enough to get us the 70 miles we needed to reach our next stop in Towson, MD. However, with the car thinking it was fully charged, I had no way of charging it up any more. Left with no other options, all I could do was hope that LeafSpy was wrong. Maybe it was a glitch, I thought -- after all, the battery temp had just hit the hottest ever, 9 bars (114F according to LeafSpy).
After crossing the Delaware Memorial Bridge, we avoided I-95 and opted for Route 40 (Pulaski Highway) instead. This road runs parallel to I-95, but with a top speed limit of just 55mph. The slower speeds and calm traffic allowed me to achieve a 4.8 mi/kWh efficiency. Two hours and 6 minutes later (1;51pm), we had arrived at the eVgo station in Towson, MD. This route should have only taken about 1:45 according to Google, but we used the car's built in navigation and had it set to "shortest route", meaning it took us through some residential areas with very low speed limits as we got closer to Towson. That was probably mistake #3 (or #4, if we count the waitress at Denny's) for the day. We arrived in Towson with 29 Gids, indicating to me that perhaps something was wrong with LeafSpy (or the readings it was receiving from the Leaf) after all.
Charging in Towson gave me the opportunity to use yet another never-before-used charging card, my eVgo card! I happily tapped the card to the reader, only to see a message saying "Card not authorized". After a few more tries gave me the same result, I called the number on the screen. The friendly agent started my charge for me in just a few moments, and at no cost! Awesome. The agent assured me the issue with my card would be fixed by Monday for my return trip to NY.
We spent 27 minutes charging here, giving us time to purchase some much-needed Red Bulls at Walgreens and watch a few more minutes of "Pitch Perfect" on the iPad. With 210 Gids in the tank, we left for our final destination at 2:25pm. This is, unfortunately, where we made our final mistake of the day. Instead of using the wonderful App "Waze" to navigate us through Friday afternoon DC-area traffic, we relied on the navigation skills of the Leaf to take us the final 60 miles to our hotel. Unfortunately, it took us through some awful traffic in Maryland, and then dumped us on city streets in the center of our nation's capital to make the last few miles of our journey on LBW. At 4:22pm (just 3 minutes shy of 2 hours after leaving Towson), we finally arrived at our hotel, the Key Bridge Marriott, in Arlington, VA.
My plan for charging in Arlington was to take the car to a Walgreens just a mile or so from the hotel and use their eVgo QC. However, when checking in, I asked if there was anywhere I could plug the car in. Sure enough, they directed me to a parking lot that is typically used for tour bus parking and showed me a few outlets I could use. Sadly, none of them were working! After a few phone calls between the front desk and engineering, they assured me they would find some way to juice up my car. We went into DC to do some touring, and when I came back, I found a yellow extension cord tied up to the railing next to my car. The employees at this hotel went above and beyond!
Our return trip took place today, 7/28/14. We essentially did the same trip, just in reverse. We attempted to get a full charge at the eVgo station in Towson, in preparation for the long drive back to NJ, but we weren't able to get the eVgo station to go past 227 Gids. This must be some sort of limitation with the Leaf. (We also couldn't get my eVgo card to work, and had to call twice to start both our charging sessions). We made it on LBW with a few miles to spare. Today's trip went faster, thanks to the lessons learned on Friday's trip.
In total, we traveled 554.6 miles. We never finished watching "Pitch Perfect". Here's a link to my LeafSpy logs from the trip down and the trip back, for anyone interested. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16V40V1WH62-VQvMxuccjPfw0etOQGO1aliobFVYTRLA/edit?usp=sharing. The charging sessions are color-coded: Blue is the Holiday Inn Express, Orange is the Wyndham Hotel, Red is Flying J/Denny's, and Green is Walgreens/eVgo. The GPS data seems to be off, not sure why. Speed looks accurate, though.
To those who question taking an EV on this type of trip...you're right. If time is a consideration, don't take an EV on a road trip. We went into this trip knowing it would take longer. Ultimately, we had fun, and made lots of great memories. No regrets!
-------------------------------------------
I'm planning a road trip to Washington, DC at the end of this month, and I'm hoping to take my Leaf. There will be four adults in the car (including myself), plus luggage -- so probably around 800lbs or so. The Leaf is a 2012 model with about 28,500 miles. Last time I checked a full charge on LeafSpy (about 2 weeks ago) I was at 264 Gids, AHr was 64.18 and SOH was 97%, so my battery is in pretty good shape, as far as I can tell.
Here's my proposed route... https://goo.gl/maps/segHf
Home to Holiday Inn Express, E. Brunswick, NJ (UGO Stations 20kW CHAdeMO): 51.4 mi
Holiday Inn Express to Wyndham Hotel, Mt. Laurel, NJ (UGO Stations 50kW CHAdeMO): 50.6 mi
Wyndham Hotel to Flying J Travel Plaza, Carneys Point, NJ (Blink 50kW CHAdeMO): 34.7 mi
Flying J Travel Plaza to Walgreens, Towson, MD (eVgo 44kW CHAdeMO): 71.0 mi
Walgreens to Washington, DC (Hotel Level 2 Charging): 61.0 mi
I know to make sure my tires are up to 40 psi before I leave, and I know to try and drive slow and steady on the highway to increase mi/kwh. Any other advice? The return trip would follow the same route, making the same stops. My biggest concern is the length of the stretch between the Blink Station in NJ and the eVgo Station in MD (plus the fact that I'm relying on a Blink station to begin with, but this particular station does have a good reputation on PlugShare, and I do have a Blink Card ready to go.)
My plan is to leave home at 6am and hopefully get to DC at 1pm. I might try and follow (not draft) a slow moving truck on I-95 between NJ and MD to increase efficiency. Should I maybe consider local roads instead? I'd really rather not stop at a L2 on the way. Will I have issues trying to get the Blink QC to give me as close to 100% as possible? There is no L2 at this location to finish charging on. Am I correct in assuming that I'll have to restart the Blink QC after 80% so I can charge to 100%, and that this will charge me the $5 fee again?
Thanks!