First Road Trip Success - Porsche Palooza

DerekS

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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:
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. The charge times were not tedious at all, this is easily a viable alternative to gas.
  4. 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.
TLDR: First road trip went well, car and EA network exceeded expectations
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What were your charge times at Stops A and B, and how much battery charge did you get from each of those? There are many parts of the US that I'd be afraid to let the Taycan get below 30-50 miles of range left, in case there's a problem with a charging station and you'd have to go potentially some more significant miles before finding a station that works. You were fortunate, but many have documented significant problems at public-charging stations across America, and I've heard that some states like Arkansas do not have charging stations over wide areas (meaning potentially a lot of driving out-of-the-way to get to one).
 

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I know this has been said 517 times on this website, but big plug for folks to get ABRP and Plugshare apps and do simultaneous planning for their roadtrips. I also have the EA app which sometimes show different info than Plugshare.

Congrats and thank you for sharing the experience!!
 

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very helpful!
I can't control my driving style that well so I'm not sure these range planners don't work for me..lol
 

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Could you not raise your front end over the curbs? Unless you’re driving the RWD model.

Also, other than EA what other network of level 3 chargers would it route you to?
 


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DerekS

DerekS

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What were your charge times at Stops A and B, and how much battery charge did you get from each of those? There are many parts of the US that I'd be afraid to let the Taycan get below 30-50 miles of range left, in case there's a problem with a charging station and you'd have to go potentially some more significant miles before finding a station that works. You were fortunate, but many have documented significant problems at public-charging stations across America, and I've heard that some states like Arkansas do not have charging stations over wide areas (meaning potentially a lot of driving out-of-the-way to get to one).
They were partial charges, if I remember right A-B was from 60% to 85% which took about ten minutes.

B-C was a deeper charge from 15% to 85% which was around 15 mins.

The last one in Rogers was 5 mins but I let it run a little longer.
 
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DerekS

DerekS

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Could you not raise your front end over the curbs? Unless you’re driving the RWD model.

Also, other than EA what other network of level 3 chargers would it route you to?
Yep it's the RWD. Honestly it _might_ have cleared the curbs, but I didn't want to try. I generally use the front cam to make sure the lip doesn't touch anything.

For my home trip tomorrow, I will be using EV Gateway level 3 chargers at 200kW. I should be able to make the trip on only two stops, and around 100 fewer miles.

I've got a Tesla destination charger at my lodging too, which I'm charging with a TeslaTap.
Interestingly, they also provide a J-1772 charger but it kept erroring out during the charge.
 

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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:
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. The charge times were not tedious at all, this is easily a viable alternative to gas.
  4. 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.
TLDR: First road trip went well, car and EA network exceeded expectations
Thanks for the encouraging report. I’m about to take off on a trip myself. you mention a “charging planner.” Which one was it: Porsche Connect or Charging NA? Thanks again. Steve
 


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Yep it's the RWD. Honestly it _might_ have cleared the curbs, but I didn't want to try. I generally use the front cam to make sure the lip doesn't touch anything.
What front cam are you referring to?
 

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Great to hear positive experiences, I wish all of them were like yours! I do not have any "vitriol" towards EA, I just can share my experiences (like you do yours). Mine have not every matched yours. I would prefer if we all had the same experience you had.

I will be heading out on a longer road trip with an EV and a route planned by ABRP. All the destinations are EA, so we shall see. Fortunately its a route that has alternatives just in case.
 

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The charge times were not tedious at all, this is easily a viable alternative to gas.
No offense, and I’m glad you had a good trip, but I just looked that trip up and I would have driven that straight without a second thought in an ICE, so…viable? Maybe. But definitely not preferred. Stopping at all when I don’t have to is tedious.
 

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great trip report - glad everything worked for you - the problme isn’t that EA does’t work - the problem is you can never tell _IF_ EA is going to work - when it works - EA + Taycan is the best EV on the market right now - but sheesh when it doesn’t work it’s horrible

it’s not the functionality - it’s the reliability

more efficient trips for you if you push your charging stops closer to 30% SOC or less - you’ll find faster charging time makes up for the lower SOC and you‘ll have fewer stops…but I realize that’s not always possible due to route and charger locations

glad you had a good trip - I also find road tripping w/EV not to be horrible - it’s really much better than people realize or fear.
 
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DerekS

DerekS

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No offense, and I’m glad you had a good trip, but I just looked that trip up and I would have driven that straight without a second thought in an ICE, so…viable? Maybe. But definitely not preferred. Stopping at all when I don’t have to is tedious.
So about that...you're absolutely right. I forced the EA-only route out of abundance of caution (and for a lot more miles than I needed to.)

In my defense, when I entered the direct route, Porsche had me charging at two Francis Energy stops, both listed at 30kW, for 4 hours of total charge time. That was unacceptable to me.

However, the long day of EA driving was a bit much so I took the direct route home and made an interesting discovery...Porsche marks a lot of chargers incorrectly (aside from the EA ones.)

The first stop was a Walmart in Wagoner OK. It was marked as 30kW on PCM but was actually 100kW. 52 mins charge for $17.69.

The second stop was at "Rover Taxi" in McAlester OK. It was also marked as 30kW and turned out to be 50kW. 33 mins charge for $11.44.

All told we made it home in around 6 hours vs close to 10 on the forced-EA route.

Moral of the story: take the PCM's route but don't be too upset by its charge time estimates. Verify the chargers on Plugshare first to get the real scoop.
 

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Moral of the story: take the PCM's route but don't be too upset by its charge time estimates. Verify the chargers on Plugshare first to get the real scoop.
Good information. Thanks.
 
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DerekS

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Thanks for the encouraging report. I’m about to take off on a trip myself. you mention a “charging planner.” Which one was it: Porsche Connect or Charging NA? Thanks again. Steve
The Porsche Charging Planner built into the PCM.

Next time I do a road trip I am not going to overthink it, or try to force EA. I'm going to just enter the destination and let the PCM tell me where to charge.
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