Taycan 4S Road Trip Experiences w/ Performance Battery

[f1eng]

While I don’t have my Taycan yet, another tip I find really useful is staying behind trucks or other big vehicles. You don’t want to get too close, but if you can find a truck going 75+ mph, you can save 15-20% over 2 hours of driving. I did this regularly with my Tesla if I was cutting it close to the next destination. Otherwise, I would have to drop down to 60mph. At highway speeds, air resistance is the biggest eater of battery

Yes I regularly follow a SUV if I find one going the speed I want to. A big gain.

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[bosbruce]

With 3k miles on my Taycan 4S, I thought that I’d share some of my road trip experiences in the car. To date, most of the driving has been longer trips including two 1000+ mile outings. How’s it been? Well, I’m going on another 1000+ mile road trip this week.

My car is spec’d with the Performance Battery. I also have the incredibly great looking and equally inefficient Mission E wheels. Reading the forums, you wouldn’t expect this to be the spec to gobble up miles, but indeed it is glorious for the purpose.

I went into Taycan ownership having experience with other EVs, including Teslas. We also have a Mini Cooper SE which we have road tripped as well – Yes, the range is around 100 miles on that one. I thought that I’d share my learnings with the Taycan thus far.

Planning

“If You Fail to Plan, You Are Planning to Fail” — Benjamin Franklin

When you’re flying a small airplane over long distances, you need to plan your stops. A successful EV road trip requires a similar flight plan.

I always start with PlugShare to scout out chargers along my route. Be sure to play with the various filters, because by default, PlugShare will hide some very good chargers that are just a couple of miles off of your route. While the PlugShare “score” is a good starting point, it’s also prudent to view recent check-ins and comments – know what the recent experiences have been.

Once I identify all of my charging stops, I add each of them to the PCM as destination favorites in the navigation. You can do this through a computer and web browser or while you’re sitting in the car.

Why the PCM step? I use the PCM to navigate to each charger individually. This properly conditions the battery for charging on arrival while also leveraging the PIRM, if your car is so equipped. I prefer to pick my own charging stops than have the PCM do so.

I try to leverage Electrify America chargers wherever possible (Plug & Charge), but also I keep RFID cards for Chargepoint, EVgo, Blink, and Flo with me. I find that the RFID cards are the most reliable way to activate other charging network chargers. Be sure to set up accounts for the various EV networks and request the free RFID cards in advance of your road trip adventures. The RFID readers seem to work much more reliably than the payment terminals on EV chargers.

While I have cut it single digit percentage close, I am more typically conservative with my charging plan. If for some reason, I run into an issue at a charging stop, I often position myself to be able to get the next one. It’s good to take the approach until you get comfortable with real world range for your own driving.


Driving

"America is all about speed, hot nasty bad-ass speed" - Eleanor Roosevelt… Talladega Nights

I have a bit of experience doing long-distance high-speed drives. With the Taycan, I was initially concerned that doing the same kind of thing in an EV would slow me down. Admittedly, I am not going quite as quickly as I would in a car like a 911, but I also take new satisfaction in the efficiency aspect. It’s an additional welcome challenge to liven up the drive. I like to cover a lot of miles and be efficient while doing it. With that, here are my tips.

• Range Mode. Always in range mode. My regular max speed is set to 85MPH. When PCM navigation is running, it automatically ups that max speed to 90MPH.
• Don’t forget that Range mode supports a full kick-down function. If you just jam the gas and floor it, you’ll get full beans for passing or when another opportunity arises.
• You can’t use Waze navigation and PCM navigation simultaneously, but if you just have Waze running in CarPlay, it will still call out hazards and speed traps.
• Leverage the coasting characteristic of the Taycan wherever you can. I even use the kick down feature to build momentum to coast. It’s extremely efficient.
• Yes, you can charge the battery on the downhills over mountains with just a little “brake” as you’re headed down.
• PCM navigation generally provides a very good prediction of the battery percentage when you reach your destination. You can beat that estimate by more than ten points as you get more efficient with your driving.
• Be mindful of temperature changes on your trip. I recently did a drive where temps dropped from 68F to 42F on a leg of my route. With that substantial swing, the sudden temperature drop dramatically impacted the range where I was already pushing things. I made it to the destination, but the range drop caught me by surprise, along with the snow flurries. While the PCM/PIRM estimate accounts for average temperature, it doesn’t consider that kind of dramatic swing that you may encounter in the mountains.

I currently have the Mission-E/Summer tires fitted. I went for more efficient wheels with my winter/wheel tire setup with the intent that they’ll somewhat help offset the winter temp range impact.

Charging

"There's a part of me that's always charging ahead. I'm the curious kid, always going to the edge." - Yo-Yo Ma

With the PCM warming up the battery for the charging destination, the speed of the Taycan charging is what makes it work for a road trip machine. I start with 85% and charge to approximately that level at each charging stop. On a 350kW charger, 15-20 minutes is pretty typical for me to get back up to that 80+ %. Yes, that’s pretty much in-line with a bathroom/gas station stop in an ICE vehicle. I've done it in as little as 10 minutes if that gets me to the next stop.

Unlike the Tesla’s, I haven’t had to wait for a charger yet, but on a few occasions, I have encountered a slower charging vehicle taking up a 350kW charging spot. It’s a little frustrating to see a Mustang Mach-E only able to charge at 50kW taking up a 350kW charger.

Last week, I arrived at an Electrify America charger with a Hyundai in the only 350kW spot. Before I even said anything, the owner, who saw my car rolling up, ran up to me in my car and said that he would move to a different charger, because he knew that my car could charge faster on it. I thanked him profusely for his etiquette and accommodation. That’s a good dude! Oh, and my charging rate justified his move. He was blown away.

Additional Thoughts

I know that, for some. the above may already be obvious, but I thought that it might be useful to share on the forum. The charging speed, not the range, is what makes the Taycan a super-capable road trip EV. When you drive it to its strengths, it’s pretty awesome. I hope that folks found this helpful and please share your own thoughts. Thank you!

Thanks for the writeup... Glad your experience has been so positive...

I'd love it if you could add some details of the efficiency (/total potential range) you got under different weather and speed conditions. In my EV driving (Mostly Tesla/Mach E, some Bolt and Volt before those),range was the biggest factor as I don't like having to schedule multiple stops when one can do. Hope my 4S with the more efficient turbine wheels exceeds its 230 mile EPA estimate.

Also, BTW, think you have some EV confusion... Mach Es charge at up to 150kW rate, though any EV may slow down depending upon temperature or SoC... You might be confusing Mach E with Bolt which I think does max out at 50kW (if you have the DC FC option at all)...

 

[bosbruce]

Yes I regularly follow a SUV if I find one going the speed I want to. A big gain.

Just hope you have a nose guard to reduce damage to your nose for this approach!

 

[Deleted member 6348]

Also, BTW, think you have some EV confusion... Mach Es charge at up to 150kW rate, though any EV may slow down depending upon temperature or SoC... You might be confusing Mach E with Bolt which I think does max out at 50kW (if you have the DC FC option at all)...

Mach E’s with the standard battery max out at around 115kW and more typically hang around 50kW in the real world, because Ford’s charging curves aren’t awesome. There’s supposedly an update coming, but the standard battery Mach E’s are particularly slow at the DC chargers.

I’ve decided to go with the Lariat trim w/extended battery for my F150 Lightning primarily due to the poor charging performance of the standard battery in that truck.

At the moment, there’s no reason to be plugged into a 350kW charger with a Ford.

 

[bluedonkey]

Any range information?

We've done a few long trips in the 4S now too (similar spec with the performance battery and the Mission E wheels), and most of the time we're averaging ~3 miles/kWh which equates to getting about 250 miles if you went 100% to zero. We typically aim to charge around 10% remaining. Last long trip we did was 200 miles from home to the first charger and we got there with 14% left. Started around 95% for that stretch. The real trick for the Taycan though is we went from 14% to 87% in 19 minutes - faster than my kids could finish their snacks!

 

[bosbruce]

Mach E’s with the standard battery max out at around 115kW and more typically hang around 50kW in the real world, because Ford’s charging curves aren’t awesome. There’s supposedly an update coming, but the standard battery Mach E’s are particularly slow at the DC chargers.

I’ve decided to go with the Lariat trim w/extended battery for my F150 Lightning primarily due to the poor charging performance of the standard battery in that truck.

At the moment, there’s no reason to be plugged into a 350kW charger with a Ford.

There certainly are not many reasons to plug a Ford into a 350kW charger, though all 150kW chargers being taken when I arrive to plug in, some having power/connectivity issues, or having wrong side connectors (so many EA stations have connectors that require certain EVs to back up over the curb or use another connector) all come to mind as valid reasons. EV charging etiquette is key to allowing any EV road trips, and I will often chat with people arriving when spots are full to let them know when I'll be done so they can decide to wait or head to the mall/bathroom first etc...

Agreed Ford's charging curves are super conservative (Tesla was the opposite, and my Model 3 often charged above 100kW rate when it was below 20 degrees outside, and it sounded like someone was hitting the bottom of the car with a sledgehammer as battery pack expanded during charges), ... I hope I see better charging curves with Taycan 4S, and with the 800v architecture I'm sure it will be an improvement.

That said, my standard range + premium Mach E typically charges 115 kW from 20-70% unless it is cold (and has peaked at 127 kW), so my experience does not match your claims on typical real world charge rates. (Anecdotally, the couple of times I was having slow charging for first 10 minutes because it was ~ 25 degrees out and I didn't pre-heat, I spoke with Taycan 4S owners in stalls nearby and they were getting 91-95kW charging rates after preheating... took my Mach E about 10 minutes to get to 80kW rate those cold days). I haven't done a road trip since a major software update that will make DCFC past 80% useful on Mach E and make the overall charging curve a bit more aggressive, but I've had no (non-EA) issues apart from the extreme drop off at 80% and cold weather DCFC.

 

[bosbruce]

“Range” depends upon a lot of factors. I am typically not starting at 100% SoC. Usually, I am at 80-85% SoC with the PIRM guess-o-meter showing 155-165 miles. I’ve have driven legs where I see a resulting range of 180 miles, higher than the initial guess at departure for the SoC. I’ve only seen it swing dramatically the other way with a large cold temperature swing.

While I try to be smart about it, to be clear, I’m not babying it. By the trip computer, I’m averaging 68-70MPH on these journeys, which includes traffic, construction zones, and taking exits for the chargers. I am making good time.

Again, there are a lot of factors at work here. For example, a gas powered car doesn’t add gas to the tank going downhill. An electric car does that. Driving from Pennsylvania through West Virginia and Ohio uses a different amount of electricity than the reverse trip — just like a gas powered car gets different mileage depending upon which way you run it. Fortunately, PIRM is smart about elevation changes.

Would the PB+ battery make a difference? Meh. On the trip that I am doing this week, an additional 30-50 miles of range wouldn’t enable me to skip one of my planned charging stops. If there was an option that added 100 miles of real world range, different math, but I am not sure that I would want to be hauling all of that battery around. Having driven both a PB and PB+ Taycan, I prefer the lighter weight of the PB car. It’s noticeable.

It is the literal classic case of “your mileage may vary”. Once you get a feel for how the car behaves, uses power, etc, so-called range anxiety disappears.

Good to hear someone's "Butt-o-meter" confirmed my guess-o-meter (and $-o-meter ) that standard battery would handle/brake better than PB+ as it is carrying significantly less weight (though still super heavy for a sports car). If PB+ did more than just make up for the weight of the battery in the acceleration I might have considered it... That said, I'm hoping the standard battery real world range is a lot more than EPA 199 at conservative highway speeds. But 95% of my driving will be < 100 miles so should only matter on occasion if it doesn't beat that by at least 30 miles...

 

[02bluesuperroo]

Your comment about the person moving their car off the 350kw charger when you pulled in brought a damn tear to my eye.

 

[f1eng]

Just hope you have a nose guard to reduce damage to your nose for this approach!

I am an engineer so I don't follow that close unlike some for whom Newton's laws are presumably a mystery .
"Nose guards" aren't really a thing here, I have only seen them much in Japan and US, not even sure where I would be able to get one here.

 

[bosbruce]

I am an engineer so I don't follow that close unlike some for whom Newton's laws are presumably a mystery .
"Nose guards" aren't really a thing here, I have only seen them much in Japan and US, not even sure where I would be able to get one here.

Sorry I was sloppy with my terminology... Paint Protection Film is the more trendy nose/hood protection these days, though not as protective (or blatantly visible) as the nose bra/guard of yore.

In any case, I purposely keep far back from all vehicles to avoid road rash though I know range could be greatly extended by tailgating large SUVs or even 18 wheelers.

 

[Deleted member 6348]

PPF will start to look particularly gamey if you spend your time tailgating.

 

[f1eng]

Sorry I was sloppy with my terminology... Paint Protection Film is the more trendy nose/hood protection these days, though not as protective (or blatantly visible) as the nose bra/guard of yore.

In any case, I purposely keep far back from all vehicles to avoid road rash though I know range could be greatly extended by tailgating large SUVs or even 18 wheelers.

I understand.
Here in the UK it depends very much on the road.
The motorways are pretty free of debris though I don’t use them much and I don’t have any stone chips on my current car (4 years old).

The country roads are crudely surfaced with stone clippings on a sprayed tar layer, which relies on road users driving over them to stick the stones to the tar. Every time a new layer is done there is a 20 mph speed limit applied for a while to reduce damage but they are mainly slow roads anyway.

High speed trips home from France (before I retired) often resulted in broken headlights and chipped windscreen and some paint damage too.

PPF is new to me. We used to put something similar on the leading edge of racing car bodywork, it was originally intended to protect the leading edges of helicopter blades but the thinner stuff for cars looks like a good, if expensive, idea.

 

[f1eng]

PPF will start to look particularly gamey if you spend your time tailgating.

The motorways here are pretty busy a lot of the time so running in a long stream of traffic is unavoidable quite often.

Edit:
It was this fact and observing how much better my fuel consumption was when traffic was like this decades ago that lead me to check out what a powerful effect it was.

Driving too close to another vehicle is just stupid (or ignorant).

 

[TYKHAAAN]

This a great write up! I've experienced similar in my road trips too. 23k miles on my car with road trips from North Alabama to Orlando, New Orleans, Charlotte NC and a few other shorter trips. One thing I'll add is WIND! I got hit with a double whammy on my return trip from New Orleans when the Temps dropped to the 30s on that day and a vicious head wind gusting up to 40-50 mph gusts the entire trip back, dropped my range severely. I think I got less than 200 miles on 90% charge on that leg.

You are dead on tho about the speed of charging that makes this vehicle a road tripping king. If you precondition the battery and run your charge down to 10% or less when you stop, your charge speeds will be super high. if you want a more safe and conservative cushion, it'll still charge at a really good rate if you precondition the battery first.

 

[enginerdify]

Fantastic write up! Posts like this make this forum a great wealth of information!

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