880 mile Taycan and E-tron (SUV) road trip - E-tron charges faster

[manitou202]

I found this charging profile comparison. When charging the Taycan I was typically starting in the 30%-50% state of charge range. According to this I should have been hitting well above 200kW. I did not experience this even though I was using the 350kW chargers. I rarely hit above 150kW during this trip. Most of the time it charged at 105kW or below.

It would be easy to blame Electrify America and not the Taycan, but using chargers at the same locations (both 150kW chargers and 350kW chargers) my E-tron consistently hit 150kW every time.

So I wonder if there is an issue with my Taycan. It should have performed better than what I saw.

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[manitou202]

Thanks for the info.

I also believe that the nav maps and navigation are the same basic HERE material. Ex NavTec etc. I think HERE was aquired from Nokia and bought by the German main car manufacturers, VW group, BMW, Mercedes etc. Surprised by the fact that they had different information about chargers in their database and both not being fully up to date. That is disappointing since Charge Point and ABRP etc seem to be much better updated about available charging stations as well as available chargers. That must be an easy win for Audi and Porsche to implement!

Looking forward to hearing about your experience on your return trip.

The worst part about the Audi is it shows you all of the gas stations but not the charging stations.

 

[manitou202]

I will add that my experience with charging Tesla's is that they rarely hit the claimed charging speeds and typically don't match the published charging profiles. It's like goldilocks and everything needs to be just right in order to charge at the speeds they claim. Compare this to the Audi which just seems to hit the 150kW every time. This was my first multi-stop road trip in the Audi and it was impressive. So I wonder if something similar is going on with the Taycan. Maybe everything needs to be just right to hit the impressive charging profile.

 

[JimBob]

Sounds like the guy at Taycan needs to call the guy at Audi and have a conference call with the guy at EA

 

[SCSEV]

My wife and I just drove our Taycan Turbo S and Audi E-tron from Colorado Springs to Phoenix (880 miles). We are headed back in a couple of weeks but I wanted to share some interesting observations during the trip.

I drove the Taycan the entire way and my wife drove the E-tron. My oldest son rode with me and I had the Taycan pretty loaded up with luggage and gear. The E-tron had our other two kids along with two large dogs, and a roof box. If you are unfamiliar with this drive, the starting elevation is about 6000ft and ending elevation is about 1000ft. Along the way the elevation varies quite a bit. The majority of the drive is relatively straight open highway where we had the cruise control set to 80mph. The winds were modest although they can be brutal in Northern New Mexico and Arizona. The temperature was also fairly moderate (30F - 75F). We ran the heat in the morning and A/C in the afternoon, but nothing real extreme.

We also used only Electrify America chargers along the route and stopped at 10 different charging sites. Overall I was very pleased with the EA network. We can across two individual chargers that wouldn't work (one no response, another faulted twice after 5 minutes of charging), otherwise no issues. This is similar to my experience taking our Tesla on road trips. You would occasionally come across a charger that wouldn't respond or was extremely slow.

Efficiency
Taycan average: 375 watts/mi
E-tron average: 445 watts/mi

The average efficiency was about what I expected. The Taycan dramatically outperformed the EPA rating and the E-tron was pretty close considering the speeds we were driving. The longest stretch was 153 miles. The E-tron is also very similar to the 2018 Tesla Model X 100D we used to own. On a cross-country road trip with similar speeds we averaged about 440 watts/mi in the Tesla. This is interesting because the Tesla had an EPA rating of 295 miles and the E-tron (2019) has 205 miles. But in reality they had similar efficiency and their usable battery size is close. So their range is much closer than what the EPA rating would tell you.

Charging Speed
This was the most surprising observation during the trip. Because we charged both vehicles at the same time, I was able to easily observe the difference in charging speeds and the profile. A typical charging stop would go something like this. Pull up with the Taycan at a 10-15% higher state of charge. Begin charging both vehicles. The Taycan would jump above 150kW for a brief period of time and then slowly taper to 100kW. Around 80% the taper dropped well below 100kW. The E-tron however would immediately jump to 150kW and hold 150kW until 80%. Then it would drop to about 100kW and hold that to around 90%. As a result, most of the time we would leave with both vehicles having an equal state of charge. The E-tron would make up the 10-15% deficit through faster overall charging speeds.

We were being pretty conservative with our charging and tried to fill the E-tron above 80% because of the potential high winds. Because we were filling to a high state of charge, this allowed the E-tron to catch the Taycan. If we were simply trying to see which vehicle could make the overall trip the fastest the Taycan would easily win. We could have used the bottom half of the battery more effectively and stopped charging when the rate started to taper. It's efficiency would have allowed for this. But the E-tron clearly showed that being able to maintain a high rate of charging to 80% and beyond offers a lot more usable battery capacity. My 2018 Model X for example typically peaked at 130-140kW, tapered to around 100kW at 50% and then dropped to 50-70kW from 60-80%. As a result it would take 40 minutes to charge the Model X to 80%, which is painfully slow. Our E-tron can basically use the entire battery capacity during a road trip. Our longest stop was only 29 minutes. The majority of the stops were 15-20 minutes and the E-tron would go from roughly 35% to 90% during that time. It would be a huge improvement if Porsche could match the charging profile of the E-tron from 50-100%.

Charging Apps
Any frustration I had during this trip was because of the stupid car and charging apps. We have free charging for the Taycan (3 years) and 1000kWh free for the Audi. Both require using the car's own app to activate the free charging. This is such a pain on the ass. I really wish they could create a universal standard and simply get plug and play to work like Tesla. I know it's supposedly coming to 2021 Taycan's for EA chargers, but this needs to be across all brands and charging networks.

The other app issue I ran across is trying to find the next charger on the vehicle's onboard NAV system. I only use the onboard NAV system so I can determine what is the expected state of charge at the next destination. I find this very helpful while charging to determine what state of charge I need to reach in order to make it to the next stop. 50% of the time I struggled to find the next charger using the onboard NAV system. Sometimes I was able to use another app (like Plugshare) to "send" the next charger to the onboard NAV. But this only worked sometimes. I ended up typing in the address manually multiple times which is annoying. The other problem is Porsche's onboard NAV occasionally gave me bad directions and didn't provide accurate traffic updates. In a perfect world I could use Google Maps or Apple Maps through CarPlay and have the car tell me the estimated state of charge at the destination using the third party map.

I'll add anything else that I come across on our way home.

Charing in Santa Fe

Great information. We just picked up my wife’s E-tron Friday and I pick up my Taycan this Thursday.

 

[Scandinavian]

The worst part about the Audi is it shows you all of the gas stations but not the charging stations.

That sounds like my experience at the start of my ownership! I took my car to a friend who wanted to experience the charging in the car. We looked for a charging station in the navigator, found one and plugged it in the navigator. Happily drove there to show it. Surprise surprise NO CHARGER but a petrol station!

But after a few months that seemed to correct itself. Now it has corrected itself. Is there any way you can update the Audi navigator?

 

[rich_r]

Does your Taycan have the optional 400V DC converter? If so it'd be interesting to see how fast it charges on the 150KW chargers you used with the Audi. Maybe there is something suboptimal about EA's 350KW chargers right now.

 

[manitou202]

Does your Taycan have the optional 400V DC converter? If so it'd be interesting to see how fast it charges on the 150KW chargers you used with the Audi. Maybe there is something suboptimal about EA's 350KW chargers right now.

It has the 400V DC converter. I will give the 150kW chargers a try on the way home. I'm also going to make an effort to keep to state of charge lower at a few stops and see if it changes.

 

[Kingske]

Thanks a million @manitou202 for this great account of your trip. Looking forward to learn more about the return journey...

 

[Taycanbob]

I found this charging profile comparison. When charging the Taycan I was typically starting in the 30%-50% state of charge range. According to this I should have been hitting well above 200kW. I did not experience this even though I was using the 350kW chargers. I rarely hit above 150kW during this trip. Most of the time it charged at 105kW or below.

It would be easy to blame Electrify America and not the Taycan, but using chargers at the same locations (both 150kW chargers and 350kW chargers) my E-tron consistently hit 150kW every time.

So I wonder if there is an issue with my Taycan. It should have performed better than what I saw.

The point is that you never started to charge below 30%. If you begin at 5 or 10%, you hit without any problem the 250-260kw/h and will follow thw courb. My advice would be, when you are on the road with both cars and will stop at the rhythm of the Etron, to start at home with around 25 % less.

 

[Vik]

Does your Taycan have the optional 400V DC converter? If so it'd be interesting to see how fast it charges on the 150KW chargers you used with the Audi. Maybe there is something suboptimal about EA's 350KW chargers right now.

It has the 400V DC converter. I will give the 150kW chargers a try on the way home. I'm also going to make an effort to keep to state of charge lower at a few stops and see if it changes.

In the US, isn't this option useless? I thought all non-Tesla DC fast chargers in the US (that are over 50kw) are on the 800V system.

 

[manitou202]

In the US, isn't this option useless? I thought all non-Tesla DC fast chargers in the US (that are over 50kw) are on the 800V system.

No. Quite a few other charging networks (particularly older chargers) like ChargePoint only have 400V options. It’s best to add the option just in case.

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