Most Fun trip from an EVSE perspective

So I'm happily charged to 100% and returning home from work. Due to "interesting" traffic patterns I end up in the far left lane and blew by the Sun City Exit. OOPs and a bunch of four letter words!! :shock:

The next exit had me down to 2 bars. Of course I haven't a clue how far I am from civilization. Low and behold! A fire station! So in I drive and walk into the fire station with my 110 trickle charger in hand to ask if I might 'borrow' some electricity. Had a long and interesting conversation with the fireman about the training he attended to learn how to disable the electricial cables if necessary. Anyway that was 110, after 2 hours I had enough range to get to the City Hall charging station 12 miles away.

Discovered that Palmetto has a Volt and a Ford Van that are electric and two dual 240 charging stations! The height of luxury living! and it was free!!. Of course my husband drove his 35 MPH tracker down (45 miles) to take me to dinner on the river while we waited for the Leaf to have enough bars to get home.

We arrived home at 10pm and I had 2 bars again. Of course because I leave at 6:30am, I wasn't fully charged on 110v before I had to leave. But the 240v that the City of Lakeland has in their parking garage got me back to full strength by going home time!

Lovely adventures....

09Bamb00 said:

... The next exit had me down to 2 bars. Of course I haven't a clue how far I am from civilization. Low and behold! A fire station! So in I drive and walk into the fire station with my 110 trickle charger in hand to ask if I might 'borrow' some electricity. Had a long and interesting conversation with the fireman about the training he attended to learn how to disable the electricial cables if necessary. Anyway that was 110, after 2 hours I had enough range to get to the City Hall charging station 12 miles away. ...

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If you had two bars, you likely had plenty of range to go 12 miles to the City Hall station, but I guess you didn't know how far away it was?

The last two bars should give you 20 miles if you paced your driving between 35 and 40 mph. So that L1 in the fire station perhaps was unnecessary.

Also why would missing one exit require so much of extra charging on the way ?

mkjayakumar said:

The last two bars should give you 20 miles if you paced your driving between 35 and 40 mph. So that L1 in the fire station perhaps was unnecessary.

Also why would missing one exit require so much of extra charging on the way ?

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And miss meeting the Firemen? Where are your priorities?

My best trip was last summer on Independence day. We went to visit friends while they were camping and see the local fireworks. I needed 5 to 8 hours of L1 to get home. Easy just plug in at the RV power pedestal next to the RV. 90 minutes later the power to the entire area goes out. What to do, what to do. An hour goes by and after the ribbing for my electric car bring down the whole grid I started to wonder about getting home. Well the RV next over fired up his generator to run his air conditioner in the heat and allowed me to plug in. It was still a longish drive home with less than 10 miles to spare. That was cutting it pretty close for a newbie.

Hmmm... these cities and exits don't mean anything to me. OP, can you update your location, in the event we need to know in some future thread?

cwerdna said:

Hmmm... these cities and exits don't mean anything to me. OP, can you update your location, in the event we need to know in some future thread?

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South of St. Petersburg FL

Nekota said:

cwerdna said:

Hmmm... these cities and exits don't mean anything to me. OP, can you update your location, in the event we need to know in some future thread?

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South of St. Petersburg FL

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Well, it doesn't help many of us if the OP posts in/starts another thread where location is relevant.

If only the field were mandatory and where people need to at least indicate their state, if living in the US...

Ah, now I see. I know nothing about the area, but from Google it looks like it was 11 or 12 miles between exits, and she got off at 97th St. E. With two bars left she could definitely get back to the Sun City exit - even at 65mph! But we don't know how far she had to go after she got off I-75.

Monday morning quarterbacking is easy, but here's what I'd suggest for the next time:

1. Go right now to Tony's table, print it out, and keep a copy in your glove compartment. (View image, and then print.)
2. If you miss an exit like that, reset the trip mileage immediately (hold the TRIP button in for a second). Then you will know what you are up against when you finally do get off the freeway.
3. Watch the bars, and remember what the trip mileage says the last time you lose a bar before you can stop.

When you finally do get off the freeway, take a deep breath and relax, then think it through like this (numbers are only examples): I've got 11 miles back to Sun City, then 4 miles home from there. I want to keep a 5 mile margin, so I need 20 miles. I dropped to 2 bars just a mile ago, so Tony's chart says I can go 22 or 23 miles if I hold my speed down to 60. That gives me a 7 mile margin. I can do this!

Ray

mkjayakumar said:

The last two bars should give you 20 miles if you paced your driving between 35 and 40 mph. So that L1 in the fire station perhaps was unnecessary.

Also why would missing one exit require so much of extra charging on the way ?

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I missed an exit from a freeway in Sweden once, it was well over 10 miles to the next one. Maybe 25 miles total to get back again...

Okay, It is 47 miles from the charging station in Lakeland. It had been raining therefore I had AC, wipers, lights. Of course I was happily going home so I wasn't driving to conserve energy. Until I blew by the exit. At that point I was down to 4 bars (probably 3 something in reality). Of course Carwings won't give me the distances to the nearest station that isn't in the opposite direction and that I couldn't get to anyway.... And since I was driving I wasn't going to use Chargepoint App...

At that point, I didn't remember how far it was between Sun City Center and the next exit. So I slowed down to 50 mph. (In this part of Florida people will drive over you if you are traveling less than 65 mph even in the right lane with your hazards on).

Anyway, it was a very interesting adventure and I discovered lots of nice people, including that fireman.

Now I know where this is and can blow by Sun City, swing by the fire station to say "Hi" and go to Palmetto to charge to get home.

The most amazing trip I've made in the LEAF so far was the first one I made in the Hertz rental LEAF on April 2, 2011. It was only the second time I'd driven a LEAF (the first was 2 weeks earlier, a 5 minute drive at the National Harbor Drive Electric Event in DC). This time there was no one there to meet me or give me any advice on how to drive the LEAF. And this was the first time I'd ever driven in the Manhattan traffic. So it was exciting on a number of levels. My destination was a place I'd never gone, but was a Mecca for a former broadcast engineer, the Armstrong Tower in Alpine NJ.

When I rented the Hertz LEAF again in July 2011 and drove it to my home on the north side of Philly was interesting. I stopped at a couple Nissan dealerships, including the one I ultimately got my LEAF from, and attracted quite a crowd. Most of those who worked at those dealerships had never seen a LEAF in-the-flesh. It was interesting later on when I got my LEAF; they just handed me the keys and let me drive off; I guess they figured I already knew how to drive it, charge it, etc...

A future trip I plan to make is to somehow drive the LEAF from Philadelphia to Cincinnati to visit my family. At the rate the charging infrastructure is being built out in this part of the country, maybe that can happen in the next year.

If I lived in LA, a drive after dark on Mulholland might be nice...