TaycanATL
Member
- First Name
- Jeff
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2021
- Threads
- 3
- Messages
- 15
- Reaction score
- 63
- Location
- Atlanta
- Vehicles
- '21 Taycan 4s, Tesla X Performance, F150
- Thread starter
- #1
Last week I took my first road trip, which included my first experience charging away from my house at an EA location, driving from Atlanta to Nashville and back. I was nervous with range anxiety as well as confused how to plan the charging stops before I began, and so I thought I would share some newbie lessons for others who like me are clueless. After reading posts here, I downloaded a number of apps (A Better Route Planner, Plugshare, EA, Chargepoint) in addition to Porsche Connect to help me plan my route and charging. To my surprise each of these apps yielded very different suggestions for charging stops. Porsche Connect was the only app that required me to stop once, whereas all of the others required two stops, which seemed way too conservative to me. I decided to go with Porsche but was ready with a couple of backup locations if my range depleted earlier than Porsche expected.
Driving conditions were great: sunny and around 60 degrees, and on the highway I had cruise control set at 79 mph and was in Normal driving mode. Leaving ATL at 100% charge, I hit some normal Atlanta traffic but nothing bad. Fortunately, I made it easily to the single predicted Connect charging stop: an EA in TN where I used a 350KW charger. When I reached the stop I had 79 miles of range left, so all the other apps that would have had me stop earlier were unnecessary. I had traveled 176 mi, so the indicated range of my 4S was 252 mi, 10% better than the EPA estimate.
My only challenge then was figuring out how to use the EA charger. After plugging it in, going through the menu on the charger, and looking through the EA app, I didn't see how I could start and get free charging. A call to their customer service from the number on the charger yielded a helpful woman who told me I needed to use the Porsche Connect app, which I had looked at but didn't see how to do it. This is somewhat convoluted: click on the bottom left icon Explore, which brings up the map. I saw an icon for my car and another with a number in it, which is the charger. Next, click the number icon which then brings up the EA station, then click a button to start charging, then select which charger I was using at the station, and then plug in the charger after the app was going. I am not sure how I would have figured this out on my own!
In all, it took me over 10 minutes to figure out how to use the charger, but only 24 min. of charging to take me from 31% to 83%, which got me the rest of the way to Nashville with about half charge left where I had the hotel valet plug it in overnight. My return trip the next day, I stopped at the same charger but it went much faster since I actually new what I was doing.
In summary, my experience, is that the Porsche Connect app worked well for both route planning and for charging, but it needs some serious redesign as it is not intuitive or user friendly. I also feel much more comfortable traveling with the car now after seeing the real world range of the car. Hope this is helpful for other new owners!
Driving conditions were great: sunny and around 60 degrees, and on the highway I had cruise control set at 79 mph and was in Normal driving mode. Leaving ATL at 100% charge, I hit some normal Atlanta traffic but nothing bad. Fortunately, I made it easily to the single predicted Connect charging stop: an EA in TN where I used a 350KW charger. When I reached the stop I had 79 miles of range left, so all the other apps that would have had me stop earlier were unnecessary. I had traveled 176 mi, so the indicated range of my 4S was 252 mi, 10% better than the EPA estimate.
My only challenge then was figuring out how to use the EA charger. After plugging it in, going through the menu on the charger, and looking through the EA app, I didn't see how I could start and get free charging. A call to their customer service from the number on the charger yielded a helpful woman who told me I needed to use the Porsche Connect app, which I had looked at but didn't see how to do it. This is somewhat convoluted: click on the bottom left icon Explore, which brings up the map. I saw an icon for my car and another with a number in it, which is the charger. Next, click the number icon which then brings up the EA station, then click a button to start charging, then select which charger I was using at the station, and then plug in the charger after the app was going. I am not sure how I would have figured this out on my own!
In all, it took me over 10 minutes to figure out how to use the charger, but only 24 min. of charging to take me from 31% to 83%, which got me the rest of the way to Nashville with about half charge left where I had the hotel valet plug it in overnight. My return trip the next day, I stopped at the same charger but it went much faster since I actually new what I was doing.
In summary, my experience, is that the Porsche Connect app worked well for both route planning and for charging, but it needs some serious redesign as it is not intuitive or user friendly. I also feel much more comfortable traveling with the car now after seeing the real world range of the car. Hope this is helpful for other new owners!
