Seattle, WA <-> Ashland, OR (April 2022, Taycan Turbo S, ~1000mi)

[R88]

Just back from a fun road-trip down from Seattle, WA to Ashland, OR with my girlfriend and our dog. We have good friends in the Bay Area and a yearly tradition of meeting "in the middle" in Ashland. This was the first time with my Taycan (Chilli) - and the first long trip in her besides picking her up from Bend in north Oregon. Ashland is a cute little town in Oregon - famous for its Shakespeare festival, but surrounded with beautiful mountains and a lot of fun back roads. This is a pretty straightforward trip, but thought some photos and context would be fun to share as I found a few EV-specific tricks on the way.

Seattle-Ashland:
We did the trip down in one day. Pretty boring drive on I-5 outside of some pretty fun mountain passes in southern Oregon. Those were mainly characterised by overtaking many trucks going <40mph in the slow lane. Beautiful scenery. Chance to open up a bit. Though most of the trip I was grateful for InnoDrive (say what you will, while a Porsche is "meant to be driven", long monotonous stretches of interstate are meant to be forgotten... plus I think this did 80% as well as autopilot did on my Model 3). Oh and damn - the BUGS in central Oregon. Windshield and front bumper were plastered with them.

Our itenary was:

1. Lunch at Nong's Kao Man Gai in Portland (amazing chicken rice - can't recommend enough. Nice and light for a road trip lunch too!).
2. First charge stop: Electrify America - Walmart, Tigard, OR (had around 15% charge) - worked flawlessly @ 350kw.
   
   
   (sorry for the park job... was looking at the wrong lines when driving in to the spot)
3. Second charge stop: Electrify America - Dairy Queen, Sutherlin, OR(again got there around 15-20%) - also worked flawlessly @ 350kw. Got coffee at Starbucks there while waiting.
   
   
   
4. Third charge stop: Electrify America - Walmart, Grants Pass, OR (got there with like 30% charge)
   1. We just stopped here to get an extra 20-30% to give us some buffer for driving at the destination in case charging wasn't ideal there (wasn't necessary).
   2. This location SUCKED. There were a couple of 350kw chargers, but one was offline and the other output <30kw even at fairly low SoC. Trying to be clever, I moved over to a 150kw charger hoping it would give me a decent charge. Had to unplug/replug 4 times to get it to start charging (~1min/attempt). Eventually did so I went into Walmart to grab some snacks. Didn't get a notification, but this charge lasted less than a minute before stopping. In the end plugged into the slow 350kw charger and we sat around for 15mins. Very frustrating. If I'd left it on the very slow 350kw charger from the start it would have saved us time.
   3. 
      
      
      Parked outside the lines this time because I was trying to be in range of as many charger cables as possible to find one that actually worked! It was empty other than us and was ready to move if I got in the way. As you can see, the dog was also unhappy by this point.

Ashland (1 week stay)
Our destination Airbnb (up towards Mt Ashland) had a garage and the 120v outlet resulted in ~1.2kw - slow, but enough to get 10% or so overnight. That actually turned out to be fine for the week, because we spent a lot of time at the cabin, and when we went out to downtown Ashland, the 15min drive from the cabin to town actually gained ~1% of battery. Downtown Ashland has free 10kw AC chargers at a central parking lot, so more than fast enough to charge over a few hours downtown to make it back up the mountain with plenty to spare. Stopped over every time we were downtown. Was at high SoC most of the time in Ashland area. Oh - and we had a fun drive up to the Mt Ashland ski resort where there was enough snow left for my friends' kid to do some sledding and for our dog to run around off-leash in snow the first time. In general, LOTS of nice mountain roads to really take advantage of the car.

Ashland-Yachats (day 1)
On the way back we decided to drive up the Oregon Coast and break it up over two days. I picked an inn, Fireside Motel, in Yachats, OR, which was both dog-friendly and had an EV charger.

We drove back up to that EA charger in Sutherlin to get about 10mins extra charge so we could make it the inn with enough charge to get to the next charger in case of issues (an EV reality, but also turned out to be unnecessary). After this point the drive became spectacular - highway 138 to 38 up to 101 were empty and extremely fun to drive. Lots of twisty turns and straights. 101 was alright - too many towns and hiding cops though less busy than expected.

Once we got to Yachats, it turns out there's a free 50kw CCS charger downtown as part of the "West Coast Electric Highway"! We plugged in, walked 5min for a nice dinner on the dog-friendy patio of Ona (great clams and oysters), and came back to 100% charge so didn't even need to use the inn's charger.

Yachats-Seattle (day 2)
The heavens opened for our last day - it rained non-stop the whole way back. I went for a run before leaving and got soaked but some nice views of the Oregon Coast. We basically went up 101 past Astoria into WA then up past Olympia - stopping at Cannon Beach for an unremarkable lunch. This drive wasn't as fun: 101 up through OR was a lot of slow, terrible, drivers afraid of the rain (luckily mainly disembarked onto 18 towards I-5 after Lincoln City). There were a few spots after where I could open up but overall there were a lot of towns and not a lot of open road on this part of 101. Crossing into WA I was very cop-adverse due to being pulled over before by hidden cops in this part, so nothing too exciting.

Return charges weren't that great (and I was tired so didn't take pictures):

1. First, Electrify America - Fred Meyer, Warrenton, OR. The one working 350kw charger was occupied by someone in a Kia which definitely can't charge that fast. Furthermore, they were at 97% SoC when we arrived and at 98% SoC when we left (+20min later). Why?!! Breaking the EV bro code, man. There needs to be some better education about how to use high-speed chargers. The 150kw sufficed though.
2. Second, Electrify Amerca - Lacey, WA. First 350kw charger didn't work (wouldn't connect to the vehicle). Second one (on the same pedestal - had to move to the adjacent charger so it'd reach) did and got a good rate of charge. Had similar issues when I stopped here on my drive home from Bend.

Overall, a great trip - and my first big one in the car (done plenty before with the Tesla). Didn't miss much from the Tesla except the simplicity of the superchargers (plug in and go vs plug in and wait ~1min anxiously and then possibly needing to reposition your car). Obviously everything else was a lot more fun in the Taycan.

 

[R88]

Oh I should add - I mainly used A Better Route Planner to plan it out (adjusting the Taycan mi/KwH to match what I've been seeing) and manually navigated using the Porsche navigation to each charger so it would precondition the battery. On the way back I just trusted Porsche's navigation and it turned out its estimates were within a few % of reality every time. In the future, I'll probably just use Porsche's planner. This is way different from the Model 3 which consistently overestimated the range it cold get.

 

[B61]

occupied by someone in a Kia which definitely can't charge that fast. Furthermore, they were at 97% SoC when we arrived and at 98% SoC when we left (+20min later). Why?!! Breaking the EV bro code, man.

You should left a note to the driver, maybe (s)he won't do it again...

 

[tigerbalm]

I enjoyed reading your trip report – especially as I've driven[1] along much of that route myself and even once stayed in the Fireside Motel. It was great to read that its doable in an EV.

Reading your reports about Electric America chargers is interesting. It would seem that our experiences here in Europe with IONITY are much better – reliability wise.

What tyres did you use? I see some snow in some of your pictures – was there any on the road and did that provide any challenges?

[1] In a rental Nissan V6 forgettable – with the V6 guzzling petrol but providing no power!

 

[RCorsa]

Love it. Great write up. I just did that drive from Grants Pass to seattle in my truck pulling a new Malibu up for the spring/summer and was thinking it would be fun to drive to the Bay Area to see familyin my new Turbo S so this is a good 50% road map.

 

[R88]

You should left a note to the driver, maybe (s)he won't do it again...

Driver and his wife were both sat in the car the whole time. I didn't particularly want any confrontation but if there had been no where else to charge I might have had a word...

 

[R88]

What tyres did you use? I see some snow in some of your pictures – was there any on the road and did that provide any challenges?

There wasn't any snow on the roads at this point. I'm on all-seasons so some light snow would have been fine I think but not sure it'd've been smart to do it in the middle of winter.

 

[ciaranob]

.............
Reading your reports about Electric America chargers is interesting. It would seem that our experiences here in Europe with IONITY are much better – reliability wise.
...............

Depends what part of the US you're in it seems - in TX to date I've used 7 separate EA stations across the state over 3 months with a total of 13 charging sessions - 100% successful PnC charging, not a single issue.

R88
Nice account - thx for sharing - need to get back to Oregon, been too long!

 

[cometguy]

Oh I should add - I mainly used A Better Route Planner to plan it out (adjusting the Taycan mi/KwH to match what I've been seeing) and manually navigated using the Porsche navigation to each charger so it would precondition the battery. On the way back I just trusted Porsche's navigation and it turned out its estimates were within a few % of reality every time. In the future, I'll probably just use Porsche's planner. This is way different from the Model 3 which consistently overestimated the range it cold get.

Were you able to use the Taycan navigation, as described here, without getting any additional options for this? (i.e., is this available in the standard Taycan?)

 

[jenzfc]

I'm just here to thank you for sharing your experience, I'm a sucker for these stories. And second, I FREAKING LOVE MAMBA GREEN!!!

 

[KTC]

I love Nongs, and did almost the same drive as you. Seattle to Tigard in one charge when we stayed in the Willamette Valley.
Hope you have a great trip!!

 

[Crazycanuck]

Glad you got to do this trip before your baby’s 12v died

 

[Avharrisjr]

We’ve done 6 Bremerton WA to SF Bay Area round trips in the last 6 months. Used Porsche Nav with Charge Manager turned on and had pretty good results. Couple of times it wanted us to charge for short periods of time well before battery got down to my desire to charge level. Last trip activated EA charging stations from the MyPorsche app on my Android phone. Car is at 16000 miles. Still gorgeous, but got some bugs on the windscreen.

Sponsored