Roadtrip from Boston to Halifax, NS - 2025 Taycan Cross Turismo

[corgidad]

I live in Upstate NY and have family in Conway.
I would love to visit with my Taycan 4S, but getting beyond Concord is a challenge.

There seems to be one DCFC in Concord NH (and with 10 PlugShare score! I'm shocked)
https://www.plugshare.com/location/574764

If you can make it there, you likely just need to top off as Concord NH is only ~80 miles from Conway. Assuming you can level 2 or even level 1 charge at family's.

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[KLHubb]

The problem is once in Conway, charging for trips in the White Mtns.
I need to get my brother to put in a level 2 AC charger for me.

 

[corgidad]

The problem is once in Conway, charging for trips in the White Mtns.
I need to get my brother to put in a level 2 AC charger for me.

Right, White Mtns area is still a DCFC desert... Good luck with getting your brother to do that

 

[Grover]

Many thanks for the very useful review. I drive annually from St Louis to our house in Chester NS via close to Boston, Halifax then about 60 miles south to Chester. Unfortunately we bring too much stuff for my little Taycan. Anybody ever put a trailer hitch on a Taycan?

Please feel free to drive from Boston to St Louis and write that up for me. I would be happy to not only let you use my home charger but feed both you and your dog dinner!

 

[corgidad]

Many thanks for the very useful review. I drive annually from St Louis to our house in Chester NS via close to Boston, Halifax then about 60 miles south to Chester. Unfortunately we bring too much stuff for my little Taycan. Anybody ever put a trailer hitch on a Taycan?

Please feel free to drive from Boston to St Louis and write that up for me. I would be happy to not only let you use my home charger but feed both you and your dog dinner!

I think I've seen a post here someone custom made something that can be used for towing or maybe just bike rack? I think he may or may not have a friend who can do metal fabrication

IMO towing a trailer will kill the efficiency, especially driving at highway speed - I suspect you'd be able to go above 180 miles with a full charge...

It is such a long drive from St Louis MO to NS! And thank you for your hospitality!
I remembered I passed Chester NS when I went on a day trip from Halifax to Lunenburg. The whole coastal area was beautiful. I want to go back in the summer when it's warmer

I also stopped by Mahone Bay. Picture to prove it:

 

[RacingDuck]

It's only made for bikes.
The mounting is probably not able to take the forces of a trailer - although they made versions where you could attach a trailer.

 

[Jonathan S.]

Yeah, I’ve never seen a real v4 station. And even though the v4 stalls have longer cable, it still doesn’t reach the DC charging port on the right side of the car if I pull head in, because the cable comes from the left side of the stall… I didn’t try backing in, because there’re two stalls that are drive thru type and I took them instead.

Two of the Electrify Canada stations worked great. They’re probably newer as they are all the latest version of the stations. And the other chargers I used in Canada are FLO which is known for its reliability (not speed though). The ChargePoint in West Gardiner also worked great. I haven’t had a problem with ChargePoint chargers, both AC and DC.

VT really needs to get more DC chargers. I love Woodstock VT and I loved cycling in VT this past summer.

Our Western Mass cycling can holds its own against Vermont - whether road, gravel, or mountain!
Skiing though, not so much…

Charging, two recent major improvements are a new (and hence functional, at least so far) EA in Lee on the Pike, and in Northampton on I-91 a Ford dealer with six plugs near a two-plug VW dealer as backup.

Driving across on Route 2 though is pretty hopeless!
I’m at a lonely outpost DCFC in Greenfield right now…drove this morning from my Twin Mtn NH house to skin/ski at Stowe while charging at 5.8kW (adjacent to two lifts, one of them a gondola with eight passenger cabins, so you’d think they could install something better than four 24a units?).

Knew I had to charge along the way in order to pick up our daughter at her high school in Amherst then drive back up to Greenfield Community College for her ski patrol course.
Tried the 100kW Flo charger at Ben & Jerry’s. Will never make that mistake again!
Fortunately while engaged in that mistake I mitigated it somewhat by realizing that I could an unused L2 cable (at a unit that was either ICE’d or perhaps had a flawed parking layout).
Arrived at GCC with 2% and now charging at 28kW on a permanently derated 62.5kW ChargePoint.
Fortunately the class is four hours long so I had plenty of time to wait for an Ioniq 5 to finish (bought used in Maine for only $29k with 4k miles) and then let a Bolt hop in so as to make it back to Montague from Montpelier (where the driver is starting a new engineering college).

 

[Jonathan S.]

Excellent write up, been stated a number of times that good planning makes EV trips very doable with very little stress.

My planning for today’s trip was meticulous.
The outcome though was quite stressful.

Which is always what has happened to me whenever I’ve dared charge in the northeast anywhere except for Magic Docks (and the lonely NEVI station in Bradford VT).

 

[Jonathan S.]

Thanks very much for this write-up. You are brave. The planning and suspense add to the sense of adventure. I guess in a few years it won't be like that anymore. Note that going north up 93 in central NH is terrible but getting a little better. There are two DC chargers in Concord, and at least one in Tilton (which was Volta but is is now Shell). Still, the White Mountains are in a DC desert for non-Teslas.

I’d be so nervous about relying on such a small station like in that Tilton mall. The PS reviews do look better now that it’s no longer Volta. But just a pair of Bolts and you’re skunked.

By contrast, that Ford dealership looks like the real deal. We almost stopped there this summer but ended up not needing to charge. Looks like a big improvement upon the Manchester NH EA which has gone through major bouts of dysfunction. My wife’s parents live nearby but I’ve never dared charge there.
I looked just now out of curiosity and here is what counts as a positive review (from an Audi GT cousin of ours):

 

[Jonathan S.]

The problem is once in Conway, charging for trips in the White Mtns.
I need to get my brother to put in a level 2 AC charger for me.

Before I bought my place in Twin Mt, I took a lot of trips in May 2023 to a friend’s place in Jackson NH with my wife’s i4.
Even though my friend owns a Model Y, he never bothered installing L2 at his place up there, relying instead of the relatively short drive from his primary residence in the Lakes Region and the free charging at AMC PNVC.
Once I thought about staying at hotel in North Conway, but even that was slim pickings for a place with enough L2 units to be assured of overnight charging.

The one exception is Great Glen / auto road. Probably because manager is an EV driver (which I know because he posts his PS reviews under his full name, often of the dysfunctional West Lebanon EA).

 

[KLHubb]

Interesting.....I wonder why the hotels don't install charging units....one would think it would be a draw. A few level 2's can't break the bank. Our Peace Corps reuion rented an inn in North Conway two years ago, and the owner panicked when I inquired about charging my Taycan. Of course, all I needed was a 50 amp 240 NEMA outlet, but he was adamant.

 

[Jonathan S.]

My hunch is that it’s a vicious cycle from half-hearted investment. A hotel owner falls for the ChargePoint sales pitch, installs two 24a units, which get almost no use since no sensible EV driver would plan an itinerary around such an uncertain charging situation.

 

[KLHubb]

Yes...I can imagine that it would be under used, until more than a few EV's show..when it would piss off the guests who could not charge conveniently. I keep thinking that, if they have a gang of washer/dryers, they could piggy back on that service. Laundry plus charging.

 

[Jonathan S.]

Exactly. The typical bank of two units is just too unpredictable for access. Ditto for the Flo stations with just a single 100kW charger in VT. Or the network the VT state govt is still only starting to build out from 2019 and 2020 funding for 17 stations of two 50kW chargers, many of which are already broken.

 

[KLHubb]

I tend to use my 2020 4S for traveling to places within round-trip distance...Syracuse, Rochester, Binghampton....any place within about 130 miles.
It's easy to get to NYC, since there is convenient charging along the way.
However, I haven't risked using the Taycan to get to our farm in Lancaster County, PA.
It appears to be quite feasible, but I don't want to ruin the trip with a case of range anxiety excitement.

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