When it comes to road trips we have to think about charging and it becomes a part of the planning. I went on many road trips by myself and always planned it out, looking for chargers and adding up drive time and charge time and possible detours and so on. This is unique to an EV as with an ICE car you don't plan, you still just drive and fill up when needed.
One of the most fundamental things I leaned on a recent 4k mile road trip with the entire family was the concept of charging time vs drive time vs total time. Or should I say lack of understanding. I myself am very familiar with EVs and charging technology and optimizing it. To my family it was in some cases counter intuitive and made them feel frustrated. While I tried to minimize charge times by running on a lower level state of charge, they always wanted me to charge all the way (to be safe) and suggested to skip charging stations on the way. In their mind driving longer and skipping a charging stations would make it faster. Every stop feels like a delay to them, making things longer ("Why are we stopping again? Can't you just charge all the way?"). I tried to explain that the battery charges faster when empty and slower when it gets fuller, resulting on more stops yet still overall shorter trip time. But it's just such an odd concept that works against common sense and what we have learned driving ICE cars.
The new trip planning feature supposedly helps by telling you exactly how much time you need to charge and notifies you when you are good to go. Unfortunately the system is far off and works very poorly overall. It even is counter productive in the same sense that is rather wants you to charge longer and skip a Supercharger on the way, even though doing so it adds more total time. In many cases it underestimated energy usage by so much that we were forced to drive significantly below the speed limit just to make it to the next station. We didn't even have bad weather, not even rain. It was just way off. It added to my family's frustration when I said to charge less to optimize time only to find out we had to slow down to make it because the prediction was so far off.
I think there is still a lot to be done in terms of educating EV drivers and what a good charging strategy is on road trips. Most people are not familiar with battery technology and don't want to learn. The significant change in charge speed depending on state of charge and it's consequences are too complicated of a concept for the majority. I really hope Tesla will be able to fix this drawback to a degree. Their solution right now, the trip planning software, does a terrible job. Not only does it favor longer charge times into higher state of charge, it also has some serious bugs. It sometimes wants you to go <em>back</em> to the Supercharger that you just left! When you plug in and leave the car and then come back, the navigation and trip energy graph are gone. It's stuck in a "calculating' state. You have to cancel the trip and start over.
The lack of a database of public charging stations in an EV's navigation system is simply inexcusable as well, but sightly OT here.
One of the most fundamental things I leaned on a recent 4k mile road trip with the entire family was the concept of charging time vs drive time vs total time. Or should I say lack of understanding. I myself am very familiar with EVs and charging technology and optimizing it. To my family it was in some cases counter intuitive and made them feel frustrated. While I tried to minimize charge times by running on a lower level state of charge, they always wanted me to charge all the way (to be safe) and suggested to skip charging stations on the way. In their mind driving longer and skipping a charging stations would make it faster. Every stop feels like a delay to them, making things longer ("Why are we stopping again? Can't you just charge all the way?"). I tried to explain that the battery charges faster when empty and slower when it gets fuller, resulting on more stops yet still overall shorter trip time. But it's just such an odd concept that works against common sense and what we have learned driving ICE cars.
The new trip planning feature supposedly helps by telling you exactly how much time you need to charge and notifies you when you are good to go. Unfortunately the system is far off and works very poorly overall. It even is counter productive in the same sense that is rather wants you to charge longer and skip a Supercharger on the way, even though doing so it adds more total time. In many cases it underestimated energy usage by so much that we were forced to drive significantly below the speed limit just to make it to the next station. We didn't even have bad weather, not even rain. It was just way off. It added to my family's frustration when I said to charge less to optimize time only to find out we had to slow down to make it because the prediction was so far off.
I think there is still a lot to be done in terms of educating EV drivers and what a good charging strategy is on road trips. Most people are not familiar with battery technology and don't want to learn. The significant change in charge speed depending on state of charge and it's consequences are too complicated of a concept for the majority. I really hope Tesla will be able to fix this drawback to a degree. Their solution right now, the trip planning software, does a terrible job. Not only does it favor longer charge times into higher state of charge, it also has some serious bugs. It sometimes wants you to go <em>back</em> to the Supercharger that you just left! When you plug in and leave the car and then come back, the navigation and trip energy graph are gone. It's stuck in a "calculating' state. You have to cancel the trip and start over.
The lack of a database of public charging stations in an EV's navigation system is simply inexcusable as well, but sightly OT here.