recent road trip

kort

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I recently returned from my longest trip to date in my taycan. We started in NE FLA planned on visiting Cape May NJ and an unexpected family issue required me taking two runs from Cape May to Bethpage LI before returning to FLA.
here's the good bad and ugly.
the good is how pleasant driving the car is driving long distances I especially appreciate how well the car will accelerate while driving at speed. If I'm cruising along at 70+ MPH and want to get ahead of someone the car jumps to 90+ in a flash.
the bad. the failure of the PCM to only display Porsche/NA chargers requires a bit more hand work to manually find EA chargers and then manually input them. on my first charge stop it routed me to a chargepoint unit about 15 mile past the EA Charger in pooler GA. it was a 62 amp unit and the time it would have taken to double back to a faster EA charger wasn't worth so I topped up in about 40 minutes.

then the "fun" began.
the next stop was at an EA unit in waltersboro SC, a fail to charge, fortunately I had about 100 miles of range because that part of the world is a bit of a charging desert, I had to drive 40+ miles out of the way to an EA charger in N. Charleston SC, and again it was a total fail to charge but here there are other options and I wound up at a slow, 50 kw and expensive EVGO unit, 75 minutes and $33. later I was back on track to my planned stop for the night Florence SC where I charged at the hotel's L2 unit.

the next day we hit the road making a stop at an EA charger in Rocky Mount NC, this place was an oddity, 2 of the 6 units was offline I plugged into unit 3 but it didn't appear on the app, regardless after hitting buttons on the phone and the unit the charge started, there were a few options within 30 miles so I was ok if it didn't charge.

after the odd session in rocky mount we made it to our next overnight stop, VA Beach, they had tesla destination chargers and the teslatap unit performed well after I instructed the valet on how to get it installed.

our next days driving was to Cape May NJ, which was in range of VA Beach I used the Lewes DE ferry and I had to disable the car's alarm because the boat rocking set off the alarm.
Stayed in Cape May, again the tesla destination charger worked well.

then I had to take 2 emergency trips to Bethpage NY, stopping both ways at an EA charger in Tinton Falls NJ, interesting stop at an outlet mall where they had the EA charger, a tesla supercharger and an EVGO charger, I charged here without incident and may have learned something, leaving the car on while starting the charge got the charging to start with no issues, that might be an answer that needs more testing.
I stayed at a marriott hotel with 2 L3 chargepoint units which apparently haven't worked since May and neither Chargepoint or the hotel are eager to get the unit working. In addition the hotel had an L2 unit for there EV van which after talking to the driver is never used anymore, I plugged in for a couple hours then went out, upon return they cut the power to the L2 unit to keep me from using it, FYI this is the Marriott in Melville NY, a very unfriendly to EV driver place.
in an adjacent office complex was a Chargepoint L2 with 2 units, one was offline and the other was installed but not not completely initiated so I called into chargepoint and they informed me that it was up to the unit's owner to finish the install which consisted of adding a 3 digits code. unbelievably I took a spin by the unit the next day and it was up and running. so that bailed my out of taking a 30+ mile round trip to top the car off. I had decided earlier that for the return trip I would get the car to VA and load the car onto the autotrain to lessen my charging anxieties, my wife wanted no part of that and I put her on an 8 AM flight out of JFK that got out before the storm fouled things up. At JFK NY state installed EVolve NY chargers, .35 per kw hour so I put about 50 miles into the car just to assure of making it to wilmington DE and have range to search for nearby alternatives if the EA failed to charge.
Wilmington DE is a bit of a crossroads and there were 8 units there, 2 were inoperative. I saw all sorts of other EVs there. I picked a 150 KW unit which gave me a charge but it was only at 31 kw and after 10 minutes it crapped out, I moved to the adjacent unit and got it going and charged at 126kw.
back to wilmington, there was a guy there in a mustang on a 350 unit that he couldn't get to charge so he moved to another unit and with EA's help got a charge going. then a woman in a volvo came. couldn't get the 350 unit the ford was on to charge and the mustang left and again with EA's help she got it going. she was a total newbie and was not a happy camper. as I was getting ready to go a VW ID 4 pulled in to the inoperative unit which I pointed out and also told him about the slow unit I was on, I said I was almost done he thanked me and waited for me to finish and he took over.

from there I drove the car to Lorton VA, stopping to charge a few miles from the train depot at a station with EA chargers that I've never seen, in fact I drove by it once thinking that they weren't EA chargers. here there were 6 chargers, 5 CCS one chademo, and only one unit was operational but I got a charge from it using my newly found "trick" of keeping the car on when initiating a charge.
from there it was a long train ride back to Florida.

an odd thing happened, after I pulled into the autotrain loading line another taycan arrived. so there were 2 of us on that train. the loader had said he had only seen one other use the train.

the other taycan on arrival in FLA
Porsche Taycan recent road trip IMG_5143
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Your colour is chalk/crayon or coffe-beige?
 

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Man that is a rather depressing account (but thanks for sharing!) - one of the trips we are planning for the new year (being massively optimistic here that my rescheduled build might actually arrive in Jan) was from Houston to Bethesda to visit with our daughter. I guess I have time to anally plan and map out where every charge option is from here to there but the no. of inactive or simply dysfunctional EA chargers you encountered is more than a bit disappointing. Obviously, like you, will have all the other apps loaded (i.e. EvGo, ChargePoint etc incl ABRP) and have a teslatap for overnight hotels when available, but east coast long distance looks like a real challenge.
 


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Eeesh sound like a bit of a lottery! We had a much more positive experience in Europe (Switzerland, Germany, Holland, UK, France). A couple of the Ionity fast chargers showed errors connecting but switching to another one solved it. Put car in park, plug charger, swipe Porsche card seemed the most successful approach.
 
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kort

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addendum to my post.

I had many many driver take control alerts and a couple of hard auto braking caused by the alerts despite having none of the driver assist functions turned on at the time.

regarding my many fail to charge issues, I've discovered that by leaving the car on when plugging the EA charger into the car seems to work well. It worked well on the last 3 EA stops on 150 kw units, more testing will need to be done until I would declare this to be a work around.
 
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kort

kort

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Eeesh sound like a bit of a lottery! We had a much more positive experience in Europe (Switzerland, Germany, Holland, UK, France). A couple of the Ionity fast chargers showed errors connecting but switching to another one solved it. Put car in park, plug charger, swipe Porsche card seemed the most successful approach.
I, porsche and EA seem to have no clue as to where the problem lies. I believe that there are some EA chargers that are just bad, I also believe that I have the now discontinued 19.2kw onboard charger that precludes me from using plug and charge to be affecting the comms between the car and the charger like I said the answer is a bit nebulous. I may have found an answer which is to leave the car on when plugging in versus turning it off, I've had three successful charging sessions doing this, more research on my part needs to happen before declaring it a fix.
 


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kort

kort

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Great report! I live about 15 mins from that Marriott. I would have let you charge overnight. Maybe we should set up a ring of Taycan households in case of emergency charging needed.
thanks for the offer.
I somehow got the people at levitton to get their unit turned on.
the SOB GM of the marriott cut the power to his unused dedicated L2 to keep me from using it.
 
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kort

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Man that is a rather depressing account (but thanks for sharing!) - one of the trips we are planning for the new year (being massively optimistic here that my rescheduled build might actually arrive in Jan) was from Houston to Bethesda to visit with our daughter. I guess I have time to anally plan and map out where every charge option is from here to there but the no. of inactive or simply dysfunctional EA chargers you encountered is more than a bit disappointing. Obviously, like you, will have all the other apps loaded (i.e. EvGo, ChargePoint etc incl ABRP) and have a teslatap for overnight hotels when available, but east coast long distance looks like a real challenge.
my best an only advice it to plan your charging stops and try to locate alternatives to the EA network. what did me in while in S. Carolina was that the nearest L3 charger was about 45 miles away in the wrong direction.
 

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@kort thank you for the write up and sorry to hear about your ongoing issues with a number of the EA chargers. As I have written about in other postings, I have done the long distance trip back and forth between Georgia and Connecticut several times without incident. I will be doing the trip again in October. I have used many different EA locations along the East Coast but have not used any of the ones mentioned in your report. During my last trip, I was able to initiate charges at 7 of the 8 EA locations without any problems. The remaining location required a call to EA because the particular charger did not show up on the Charging NA app. The EA rep was able to initiate the charge for me. As far as your point on leaving the car on or off when you initiate the charge, I believe that EA prefers the car to be off. However, I almost always have the car on when I plug in. Once the charge is underway, I will turn off the car, lock the doors and go into Walmart or the mall where the EA charger is located.
 

XLR82XS

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Maybe we should set up a ring of Taycan households in case of emergency charging needed.
Great idea. I'm down for SWFL assistance
 
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kort

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@kort thank you for the write up and sorry to hear about your ongoing issues with a number of the EA chargers. As I have written about in other postings, I have done the long distance trip back and forth between Georgia and Connecticut several times without incident. I will be doing the trip again in October. I have used many different EA locations along the East Coast but have not used any of the ones mentioned in your report. During my last trip, I was able to initiate charges at 7 of the 8 EA locations without any problems. The remaining location required a call to EA because the particular charger did not show up on the Charging NA app. The EA rep was able to initiate the charge for me. As far as your point on leaving the car on or off when you initiate the charge, I believe that EA prefers the car to be off. However, I almost always have the car on when I plug in. Once the charge is underway, I will turn off the car, lock the doors and go into Walmart or the mall where the EA charger is located.
Like I've noted many times, I think that my issues are twofold, one part is the fragile EA network and the other is the conflict baked into the car. I have been on EA chargers that had just charged another car prior to be hooking up and I was not able to get a charge going to which leads to believe that the car itself is part of the issue. I am getting a software update next week, the saga continues.
 

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I am the coffee
Looks great in real life.… :clap: :clap:
I’m expecting mine CT (coffee) any day now; few minutes ago, just got a message from a dealer, it’s on the road… but without TPMS.
i’ll see it soon…then i’ll join coffee club :rock:
 

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Great report! I live about 15 mins from that Marriott. I would have let you charge overnight. Maybe we should set up a ring of Taycan households in case of emergency charging needed.
If you own a Chargepoint home unit you can choose to publish it on their app. It might get a little busy at your house though...
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