For those who have their own garage (or a private driveway) where they can charge their electric vehicles (EVs), these cars may be good enough for the daily commute or a quick shopping trip, but otherwise, well, just read Christian Seabaugh’s recent account in MotorTrend of an unplanned 600-mile drive (there had been a family emergency) in a Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat extended-range pickup. Extended range, eh?
Some extracts:
Comfortable with a 93 percent charge and 287 miles of range . . . I tapped our destination into the navigation, and the onboard route planner spit back the expected route up I-5 with just two charging stops of 45 minutes each planned, one in Harris Ranch 226 miles north and the other just north of Sacramento. This seemed ambitious given our Lightning had crested 200 miles on a charge exactly twice up until this point. (That’s not a typo. EPA-rated for 320 miles, we managed just 240 on our official Road-Trip Range test, one of the high-water marks.)
So, the 600-mile journey would involve “just two charging stops of 45 minutes each.” As a reminder, Seabaugh was driving this distance in response to a family emergency. The prospect of two charging stops of 45 minutes each cannot have been welcome, and that was, he writes, optimistic. As he notes, “official” range of an EV has a way of falling far short of what it’s meant to be. Of course, that can be due to weird, unpredictable factors, such as the weather being too hot or, well, too cold.
And even without a family emergency, two 45-minute stops on a 600-mile journey seems, well, rather a lot of time spent charging, but I guess that’s just the Luddite in me, failing to appreciate that a slower journey is, in fact, progress.
Seabaugh was relying on Ford’s Blue Oval charging network, the largest in North America, apparently. From 2024, Ford drivers will gain access to 12,000 Tesla superchargers, which, after reading this account, seems to be just as well.
Seabaugh:
Things were looking promising schedule-wise as we passed Kettlemen City, a hair under 200 miles and just over four hours into the trip. We seriously considered stopping, as the Electrify America station in town sports 10 towers, but figuring the Ford knew more about their real-time availability than we did (and averaging a comfortable 2.2 miles per kWh), we pressed on. Besides, it was only an extra 30 miles to the Electrify America station the Lightning picked out for us at Harris Ranch in Coalinga, a popular stopover almost exactly halfway between Los Angeles and Sacramento. That would turn out to be a fateful decision.
We pulled off I-5 with 37 miles of range and a 14 percent charge, navigated through the 98 Tesla Supercharger stalls, dodged the holiday crowds stopping for dinner, and found the distinctive green glow of Harris Ranch’s six Electrify America towers. Two were occupied by charging vehicles, one was completely offline with its screen dark, and one showed a “Charger Unavailable!” message, but the final two appeared to be online. We plugged into the first open tower, yet despite futzing with the connector a few minutes, the charging session wouldn’t start. I reached over to grab the cable from the adjacent charger to try that. No dice.
A line was forming up now, and the two vehicles fortunate enough to actually be charging were nowhere near charged, so I called Electrify America. In the past, I’ve had luck getting the company to remotely reset its chargers to get a charge session going. After waiting on hold for about 10 minutes, I finally got an agent on the line and explained the issue. She told me that the Harris Ranch chargers were “tagged for maintenance” and apologized for the trouble. She tried a reset, but the four broken towers were unresponsive.
And Seabaugh’s problems didn’t end there. Read the whole thing for all the grim details — a saga of slow chargers, broken chargers, long waits for chargers, long waits at chargers, and an unexpected hotel stay.
But at least the return trip was “essentially” uneventful. Essentially.
And while you are on the MotorTrend site, click on this link and scroll down to the story by Frank Markus, in which he describes driving an EV (a 2022 Lucid Air Grand Touring) from Detroit to Memphis and back.
Here’s an extract:
The Memphis Winterpocalypse cometh: 5 degrees, wind, snow, glare ice, and idiots aplenty in hiked-up 4x4s spinning out. Arrived in town with 188 miles of range, made two 22-mile round trips to my parents’ house, range dropped to 39 miles upon arrival the third day (with just 55 miles driven) and I thus entered turtle mode. Had to drive 9 miles heater off and feet freezing. Hooked up to 350-kW charger, nobody else around, and the station recognizes the car instantly and starts charging. At 7 kW. One hour and 45 minutes to full charge was the estimate while a “Charging limited by cold battery” message appeared. Apparently the Air’s battery was not warmed by an hour of driving, during 40 minutes of which I had the cabin heat on at 65 degrees. Charge rate eventually maxed at 100 kW.
So, cold weather (in this case, very cold weather) will not only hit an EV battery’s range but affect the ability to charge it.
Back to Markus:
Also, running the heat torpedoes the range in town. I have busted out the 110-volt Level 1 charger and am using it to merely maintain charge in the 16-degree weather. When plugged in, the Air just shows 362 miles of range (far from its 446-mile rating) and 1 day, 16 hours to a full charge the whole time; 1 kW of charging just keeps the battery warmish and keeps it from losing range.
At one point, Markus comments that “carefree long-distance EV road-tripping in America’s heartland isn’t a thing yet, in my experience.” Indeed, and that’s the heartland. Now imagine driving around somewhere more remote.
The ability to hit the road and then just go and go and go has long been a quintessential part of the American experience, but, unless things improve significantly, those days may be ending, with no measurable benefits to the climate to show for it any time soon — if ever.