Sherman's March to the Sea, and the other Sea, and back again

ChasingCoral said:

Updates are great but isn’t the scheduling supposed to mean something? We pulled out of the last of yesterday’s 3 charging sessions and Sherman’s Sync 4a screen went blank and restarted twice while driving and this came up:
View attachment 5817
4.1.2 will be a quick learning curve.

Click to expand...

Not only did this sudden switch to the new interface confuse us, it seemed to really screw with Sherman's range estimates. We hadn't set up our spreadsheet to independently calculate our efficiency/range. On the next driving day (Raleigh, NC to Walterboro, SC), the range estimates were waaaaay too high. The result was starting legs with a 30 mile buffer (range > distance to charger) that started dropping fast. We ended up dropping for a while to 45 mph, then back up to 50 mph on our leg heading into Walterboro and arrived at the EA in Walterboro with 5 miles of range. That was a bit of a white-knuckle experience.

To top it all off, the Walterboro EA was the first lame charge station of the trip for us. Charging peaked at 90 kW and dropped to around 50 kW at the first (150 kW) charger and not much better when we moved to a 350 kW charger. An Ioniq 5 only got 85 kW and should have been pulling over 200!

At least we had some good beer to drink: our first charge session of the day was a really slow charger (<50kW) but it was at Dirtbag Ales in Hope Mills, SC. Who cares how slow the chargers are when the beer is that good! I love it when breweries install chargers. This was a really good application for a 50kW ChargePoint unit.

Sorry I'm so behind on updates here. I'll have a chance to get y'all some real data tomorrow. In the meantime, here's an update on Sherman on ice (also posted in a separate thread):

I've been in the Dallas area for the last few days and yes the roads are as icy as the national (and local) news stations are saying. Coming from Maryland where we have often received nasty ice and freezing rain, I have real experience with these condition. We drove back about 40 miles yesterday in the area that received the worst of the sleet accumulation along with freezing rain. Today we did about 40 miles roundtrip on roads largely covered with ice.

Driving our Lightning on the icy roads has been a white-knuckle experience, as it should. That said, our Lariat ER with the stock All-Season Generals has been the most sure-footed truck and one of the most sure-footed vehicles I've owned. The only vehicle more sure-footed on ice was our Subaru Outback with Blizzak winter/snow tires we had living in Colorado and for a while back in MD. I watched multiple trucks and a few cars spinning out or unable to ascend minor grades. One pickup truck we were following fishtailed four times, once turning sideways across the road. Sherman only had a few minor bobbles and one brief slide I was able to quickly arrest.

That said, we will not be hitching up the travel trailer and heading west tomorrow as planned. Sure-footed is one thing but towing a trailer on ice is another.

Here's our efficiency and range so far on our trip. The biggest variable is speed. With our trailer we are averaging:
60 mph: between 0.9-1.0 mile per kWh
55 mph: over 1.0 mpk
50 mph: almost 1.3 mpk

I wish I had more complete energy use data but the "My EV Driving" on the Ford Pass app has been a little flaky.

BTW, I also have charging data on these rows of the spreadsheet, so some repeated lines like Walterboro, SC are caused by having to restart chargers.

Charging at EA stations has been pretty good. We have yet to wait on a charger (except for a Tesla owner who was on the phone with EA trying to figure out why he couldn't charge there -- no he didn't have the new CCS to Tesla adapter), or have to leave a station without a charge at EA stations. However, most EA stations had one or two stations offline and that was often out of 4 chargers.

We have had issues at a couple of ChargePoint stations at car dealerships. One may have been the truck refusing to top off when we were over 95%, so we moved to an L2 charger. One in New Orleans would not work at all. Otherwise, the ChargePoint chargers we used were extremely reliable but a little slow.

You can watch a series of 1-minute videos rating each charge session and evaluating how well the sessions were set up for charging with a trailer at the Twitter account @RateYourCharge and my handle @MarkEakin.

Jan. 17
Day 1: Silver Spring, MD to Raleigh, NC
Any time you have to charge 3 or more times in a day, the reduction in charging to 20-80% SOC or slowly charging from 80-90% results in a real loss in time efficiency. The good news is that on day 1 the Ford navigation was pretty solid in its range estimates. Because we were going 60 mph on day 1, our buffer would get eroded a little but we pulled into stations with 10-30% SOC and felt pretty comfortable.

Buffer: the difference between predicted Distance to Empty and distance to destination. DTE in the Guess-o-Meter when navigating comes from the navigation calculations and is generally much more accurate than the GOM reading when you first start the truck. The Navigation DTE takes speed and road conditions into account.

The biggest challenge came when the Sync 4A screen rebooted twice and came up in the new UI (see Sherman's March to the Sea, and the other Sea, and... above). Our arrival at the end of the day had a bit more erosion of the buffer than we expected but we didn't know why.

First Charge, Richmond, VA.

We knew this charge station and knew it would have a fair setup for charging with a trailer.
@RateYourCharge video:

Stop 2: Emporia, VA
Another charger I'd used before was fairly good for charging with a trailer.

Stop 3: Rocky Mount, NC
The setup for trailer charging was pretty bad. Fortunately, the only other EV that came to charge was a Kona that only charges at ~50kW, so the one charger I left open worked fine for them.

You can also see the pattern of one or two chargers dead at each location.

Jan. 18 was a non-driving day in the suburbs of Raleigh. I had a chance to use one of these fast EVGo chargers for the first time and set up Autocharge +, the EVGo answer to Plug & Charge. I'll let you know how well that works next time I get to an EVGo

Jan. 19
Driving day #2

The first charger was a 50kW ChargePoint. Yes, it was slow but it was at a brewery, so the slow charging wasn't a big deal.
Hope Mills, SC (Dirtbag Ales)
Unfortunately, I now saw my DTE estimates had become rather inaccurate and my buffers were falling faster. My guess is that the UI interface also nuked the data on my trailer.

Stop 2 was a serious charging session.
Florence, SC -- another we had used on a prior trip with the Mach E
Another fair setup for trailer charging.
I should have realized the truck was having range estimation (DTE) issues when we arrived with only 7% SOC.

Unfortunately, the drive to Florence to Walterboro was a real white-knuckle experience when my range really dropped. I reduced speed to 45-50 mph to eek my way to the charger, arriving at 4% SOC.

Stop 3: Walterboro, NC -- another known charger
If Charger 01 isn't in use, this is a good setup for trailer charging as I could drive in across neighboring parking spots. The chargers are off to the side of the lot so few cars park over there.

After charging we went out for BBQ and Wallydocked for the night (sleeping in the camper in the Walmart parking lot). We then topped off in the morning. This was the first lame EA station and every single charger was SLOW. While I peaked near 100 kW, charging was largely at 60-80 kW. I moved from a 150 kW charger to a 350 to gain some speed. Even the Lucid and the Ioniq 5 were only drawing 80 kW and it wasn't cold.

Driving Day #3 was met with a new strategy: slow down. I tried some 55 and 50 mph legs, the latter aided by being on a side road.

Charging session 1 showed a really good setup for trailer charging in Pooler, GA

Richmond Hill, GA
We then added a top-up a short distance down the road when the Navigation indicated we needed more juice to make the next major stop. Again, not a bad setup for a trailer:

Brunswick, GA
We knew this setup was not a good one for charging. Lots of Walmart shoppers got annoyed at us blocking part of the entry lane that led to the front door!

Yulee, FL
This FPL Evolution station had a great setup for a trailer. All chargers were pull-ins on the side of a subdivision road. This made trailer charging easy. The 350 kW units were definitely faster than the 150 kW units.

Lake City was the worst EA setup for pulling a trailer. EA: Don't stick the chargers in a little alcove off the gas station parking lot!

Next stop: a few days at the Okefenokee Swamp and charging at Stephen Foster State Park

1/23
Driving Day #4: On the road again after a few days in the Okefenokee Swamp.
I've determined that to get the range I want and accurate DTE estimates, we'll be driving 50 mph for most of the trip. Yes, you get to chargers slower but you have lost less juice. This will also get your to farther chargers.

Valdosta, GA
Another good setup for trailer charging. I even got to compare my IBSM Lariat with an Iconic Silver:

Tallahassee, FL was a real pain.
EA took their station down on 1/9. It was supposed to be up sun two weeks. We checked in Valdosta and the EA app said it was still down. However, as we approached Tallahassee the app said it was online. We arrived to find one of the new Gen 3 EA stations with balanced power distribution with fully-installed hardware but no software to run it.

This meant we had to trek to southern Tallahassee to find the Public Service Commission's free but slow ChargePoint station:

1/24
An overnight at an RV park didn't get us a full battery so we had to charge soon in Chipley, FL

Chipley, FL
This could have been so much better if they didn't stick the chargers between a couple of landscaping islands:

Unfortunately, we still didn't quite make it to Pensacola, so we pulled off in Holt, FL to charge for an hour at an RV park. Friendly people and $3 per hour charging fee. Worked out great.

Pensacola, FL didn't work out so well. Two chargers could have been good as a pull-through but they were down. So was the next one. 3/4 were down. Fortunately, we could charge at the #4.

The last charge was in Saraland, AL, just north of Mobile.

We ended the day at a very nice RV park we found on Harvest Host (Sioux Bayou, Gautier, MS). Full charge over night and a gorgeous place to ride out the night's stormy weather.

1/25 We made it to New Orleans with no charging sessions but then found the only DCFC options in the city to be dead. We ended up moving our trailer from the Harvest Host site we had chosen to park on the street at a city park with a free overnight charge at a ChargePoint L2. Dinner at Mulate's was excellent!

1/26
We made it out of New Orleans to our first charge in Hammond, LA:
The charging setup was pretty good but it was a long walk to coffee and beignets!

Charge number 2 was at Breaux Bridge, LA
There was a great spot for a trailer pull-through but of course that was one of the chargers that was out of service.
We also had to restart the charging session when at 50% SOC the speed dropped to around 30kW. It was fine after we restarted on the other cable.

That night's charging was at our campsite at the lovely Indian Creek Reservoir:

Beautiful weather and 52° resulted in a nice couple of hours on my stand-up paddleboard and a bike ride for my wife.