DerekS
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Derek
- Joined
- May 25, 2021
- Threads
- 91
- Messages
- 2,024
- Reaction score
- 3,526
- Location
- Frisco, TX
- Vehicles
- 2023 Taycan GTS
- Thread starter
- #1
I took my first road trip in the Taycan today from Dallas to Eureka Springs Arkansas.
I do not have PIRM, just using the standard charging planner.
The planned trip was:
- Leave at 100%
- STOP A: Charge in Ardmore, OK
- STOP B: Charge in Bristow, OK
- STOP C: Charge in Rogers, AR
- Land at the cottage which has destination chargers
Things went pretty great, all things considered. Every EA station worked first time, without complaint, and via plug-and-charge.
A surprising finding: when the charging planner is active, the car/charger/app is aware of this, and will tell you when you've charged "enough" to make it to your next leg. You _can_ keep charging if you wish, but it was really nice not to have to manually track the percentage.
Stop A was fine without much to report. We hit the charger at around 60% and got a 150kW charge. The only hicky with this stop was the car's map didn't know where the charger was, and had us driving behind Walmart trying to find it. We ultimately eyeballed it ourselves.
Stop B started out fine, but we were running pretty close. The car estimated we'd be at 20 miles when we hit the charger, then we had an unscheduled detour that cost us an extra 10 miles or so. The car snapped to this and was smart enough to find us a "booster" charger, A Chargepoint at Tinker Federal Credit Union which at 100kW was pretty decent. When we finally landed at Stop B, the parking curbs were too far back - I had to block the stalls and parallel park to get charged, which I felt badly about, but nobody else showed up while I charged. These really need to be moved back as lower-slung cars like the Taycan will scrape. Anyway the charge was fast and we were on our way.
Stop C was another uneventful stop, except that it was the fastest charge of the day - we landed with a low SoC and got a super fast 260kW charge to 50% in less than ten minutes. Again we left once the planner said we had what we needed and made it to our destination.
My key takeways from this experience:
I do not have PIRM, just using the standard charging planner.
The planned trip was:
- Leave at 100%
- STOP A: Charge in Ardmore, OK
- STOP B: Charge in Bristow, OK
- STOP C: Charge in Rogers, AR
- Land at the cottage which has destination chargers
Things went pretty great, all things considered. Every EA station worked first time, without complaint, and via plug-and-charge.
A surprising finding: when the charging planner is active, the car/charger/app is aware of this, and will tell you when you've charged "enough" to make it to your next leg. You _can_ keep charging if you wish, but it was really nice not to have to manually track the percentage.
Stop A was fine without much to report. We hit the charger at around 60% and got a 150kW charge. The only hicky with this stop was the car's map didn't know where the charger was, and had us driving behind Walmart trying to find it. We ultimately eyeballed it ourselves.
Stop B started out fine, but we were running pretty close. The car estimated we'd be at 20 miles when we hit the charger, then we had an unscheduled detour that cost us an extra 10 miles or so. The car snapped to this and was smart enough to find us a "booster" charger, A Chargepoint at Tinker Federal Credit Union which at 100kW was pretty decent. When we finally landed at Stop B, the parking curbs were too far back - I had to block the stalls and parallel park to get charged, which I felt badly about, but nobody else showed up while I charged. These really need to be moved back as lower-slung cars like the Taycan will scrape. Anyway the charge was fast and we were on our way.
Stop C was another uneventful stop, except that it was the fastest charge of the day - we landed with a low SoC and got a super fast 260kW charge to 50% in less than ten minutes. Again we left once the planner said we had what we needed and made it to our destination.
My key takeways from this experience:
- I now have a great deal of confidence road tripping this car. It is smart enough to plot out the charges, and if circumstances change it's smart enough to find alternate chargers.
- EA gets a lot of vitriol online but I don't think it's deserved, at least from my (admittedly limited) experience. Everything "just worked" as it's supposed to.
- The charge times were not tedious at all, this is easily a viable alternative to gas.
- I optimized my trip for EA chargers - I didn't want to chance it with other networks - and it lengthened the trip by a considerable amount. On the way home I'm going to roll the dice with the sketchier networks, as I have enough confidence the car can get me out of a jam if I need it to.
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