How Bad is an Electric Car Road Trip in the Mach-E?

what's up everybody Matt Moran here in our 2022 Mustang Mach e and in this video I'm going to find out what it's like to road trip in this vehicle so uh it'll be our first road trip in the Maki and actually my first kind of electric road trip I did a quick little trip in a Tesla a few years back but otherwise I just wanted to see you know there's a lot of information out there in mixed experiences some people have terrible experiences with charging stations other people have great experiences and no issues um and so in this video I just want to share my experiences of we're going to be doing about us it's about 400 Mile Road Trip we're going to be doing uh three different charging stops most likely and um I'm just gonna you know try it out here and see how it goes we're gonna have the whole family here with us I'm filming this the day before um so I got it all washed up and ready to go for tomorrow but you know I'm just gonna give my experiences here uh we'll see if it's good bad ugly whatever we'll uh we'll see and go on the adventure together here so to give you a little bit of a preface here for this 400 mile road trip we are going from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania here to Seattle City New Jersey to do a little beach trip for a week and so um you know we're gonna be mostly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike for most of it we'll be hitting up Electrify America stations primarily uh the Ford app is not routing me through Electrify America stations currently because they're doing maintenance on the Electrify America stations and that's causing a bug so that Ford they I actually pre-programmed the trip last week and it was like having no issues and then they did this change with Electrify America and now it's not even showing the station so be Flying Blind a little bit I was hoping to use Ford's nav system but it sounds like I'm just going to have to use the other navigation apps and so I'm using a better route planner which is a third party thing that also has an app and they programmed out and I kind of manually programmed the original Ford Plan before the Electrify America stuff the Electrify America stations are supposed to still be working just fine but we'll find out if that's true or not but um so that's going to be the basic overview is just you know hitting uh those three stops and uh should be pretty uneventful it's looking like you know we only are going to be stopping for like 10 minutes of the first one and then only for like 23 minutes to the next one and then a little bit of a longer stop but it should be a fairly easy trip even here with a standard range Maki with all-wheel drive only 224 miles of range again that's the expectation we'll see what happens we'll see you know what's up with the charging stations and all that and how these apps work I'll be trying to discuss that a little bit here in this video as well but a little bit of an overview of preface of uh you know what's in store and what we're planning here and so yeah let's uh get out on the road and see what happens so I was pleasantly surprised when I came out to the car in the morning to leave that we actually were showing 229 miles of range instead of the 224 the car is supposed to max out at another nice surprise was that the front came in handy for me and I was able to actually put my rolling duffel bag in there instead of putting it in the back and stacking it on top and blocking my rear view partially it was really nice to be able to fit that in there along with the Ford mobile charger and so one thing I really love about the Maki is you have that front but anyway out on the road here we saw a nice WRX STI nice and early in the morning and one interesting thing was that I was surprised that it was telling me the blue Cruise was on but it wasn't allowing me to do the hands-free thing it kept telling me to keep my hands on the wheel I later discovered that that was because I didn't do a software update and the blue Cruise Maps need to be updated like every three months otherwise you lose that hands-free functionality um so for the entire drive out to New Jersey I wasn't able to use the hands-free feature but anyway the first stop here at the Bedford sheets for the first Electrify America stop here I pulled up I selected one of the 150 kilowatt charging stations since that's what the Maki peeks at for its charge rate didn't want to take up any of the faster Chargers so I plugged it in here and um this is something this is my first time using one of these public Chargers and it was a little unwieldy using that a charger it's pretty heavy tough to use with one hand um but so I plugged it in I was waiting and it just kept saying connecting to vehicle and um I just was like wow this is taking a little bit of a while I wasn't expecting to take that long and it just never ended up working the very first time I stopped at a public charger and it didn't work definitely a little scary uh you know because you're hoping and depending on these stations to work and the very first time I plugged in it didn't work now thankfully there's only one other car at this station at this moment so I was able to you know go into one of the faster 350 kilowatt Chargers and plug it in and thankfully that one did work and so this is why it's important to have you know plenty of these Chargers out there and make sure you don't get to one of these Chargers with you know a five percent battery level in case you need a limp somewhere else um you know it's good to have you know buffer there and that is one nice thing is speaking of the buffer the vehicle did more efficiency than I was expecting so the better Rod planner app was saying that I'd only have 40 battery when I got to the station I actually had 49 and even still this stop was really just a top off stop just to kind of get me just a little bit of charge to make it to the next one um but honestly we actually because you know we had a baby with us you know we had to change the diaper we had to you know give her a top off as far as you know her feedings and stuff and so as a result we ended up staying at that charging station and longer and we ended up going to a much higher you know charge rate than we needed to I would have left if there would have been people waiting for the charger just to be polite but thankfully you know we were able to stay there and I was able to top off the battery so we had way more charge than we actually needed to have so it was kind of nice to have that buffer and not be running on fumes you know and uh but you know I found that you know most of the stops that you can see the second stop here same deal you know we arrived with a higher charge than we needed and the second stop here in Carlisle uh same deal you know we stopped we went into the bathroom we you know changed the diaper gave her a feeding that stock we also planned around our lunch so we had our lunch there in the car and that was a longer stop you know we needed to stay even with the larger battery buffer you know we still needed to stay there for about 20 minutes or so take it up to a 76 battery level um and so you know but you know we just were doing the normal stuff we weren't waiting around we weren't you know uh waiting for the car to finish charging the car was always ready to go before we were and as you saw I only needed to get the 76 percent I ended up quitting at 87 again I would have left sooner because it really slows down once you get to 80 um and I would have left if there was someone waiting for the charge but thankfully there wasn't so I didn't feel bad you know getting a little bit of extra range there and topping it off um the charge rates though were pretty slow as you can see it was 30 kilowatts um by the time I got to 87 percent there um but whenever it was lower you know it certainly is faster so that's one thing is you know if you're unaware of the way these batteries work in electric vehicles you know they advertise this peak charge rate of like 150 kilowatts for the Machi you only get that if you're like at five percent battery level otherwise you're gonna be you know I think for the first 20 or 30 percent you're at like 100 kilowatts or so and then it drops like 75 on average and so uh you know we kept on motoring along here but by the Third charge stop uh this was another one that was actually at a mall and uh this one I did need to top up just a little bit more just to get to the beach I only needed to stay there for 10 minutes uh that's basically all I did end up staying there for was just a quick you know we changed the diaper um you know let her run around for a minute and you know that was about it and we were you know ready to go again but this one I I do want to point out like there was a guy with a BMW I3 which is you know slow charging vehicle that a lot of them have the gas engine back up and he was just hogging one of those spots I didn't know where the person was at and like this ionic 5 was trying to find a charger um and thankfully they were able to find one of the other ones but if that spot was a little bit busier you know you have this guy in an I3 just sitting there browsing around the mall when he doesn't probably need to be sitting there that's just part of this evolving infrastructure you just got to make sure that you're you know thinking of the other drivers out there who need to get to where they're going and need their charges as well and uh so just you know one observation I saw but otherwise you know all the other charging stops everyone was very friendly and one other thing I noticed at this charge stop in particular as you can see those little flaps had opened up there in the Maki I think it had been getting pretty hot you know doing the back-to-back fast charging and this is also In the Heat of you know late summer uh afternoon and so you know that certainly I think I guess these things pretty hot but thankfully the car performed flawlessly the entire Drive had no issues and you know it was Rock Solid reliability wise and so that was great you know that it could you know handle a 400 Mile Drive and in a day you know in the middle of summer heat and I was able to you know still do really really well and it's also you know so comfortable it's a great Highway Cruiser really nice you know road trip companion and uh so anyway we hopped back in the car and headed for the beach so we rolled into Sea Isle City with about a 10 battery charge there left and uh so I was just really happy overall that aside from that very first scare I mean it was a totally uneventful trip it was you know totally Flawless as far as the charging the car performed great the Chargers performed great and I have no complaints it was really great and I'm glad we're able to get to our you know destination without any issues and when we got to the beach house we were staying at thankfully we were able to use the garage so I was able to plug in and charge the vehicle with the slow you know mobile charger and so I mean it took half the week to get back to 100 but I was able to you know keep charging the vehicle all weekend that also gave us juice to everybody you know run around town um in the car and it didn't have to be limping around on a 10 battery so that definitely made it easier but you know if you are going on one of these road trips and you don't have the luxury of using a garage or an outlet you know at the place you're staying at you know just try and find a hotel that has a destination charger many of them do some of them have Tesla Chargers you can buy an adapter for um but you know I highly recommend you at least that way you can start off your day with a full charge or at least you know some charge so that you know you're not trying to find a public charger at the beach here or wherever you're at and during the week I also went ahead and did the update so we were able to do blue cruise on the way back but as you'll see it showed me that the update was completed successfully but it also was showing me that I guess because you know we're driving the less efficient you know higher speeds on the highway the range that was quoting me there for the outbound trip on the way back home was going to be 217 miles so it was you know adjusting that range accordingly it very much varies depending on the circumstances the weather everything you know as far as how much range is predicting you'll have but whenever it was time to head back home you know I tried using the Ford pass app again once again it still was not communicating with the Electrify America stations and it also just was picking this Hyundai dealer's level 2 charger it loved that charger and wanted me to keep going there and I don't know why because there's other evgo fast charges within the vicinity I could have gone to as well thankfully you know a better route planner they had a better route for me here and so interestingly you know since I was uh starting with 100 charge from Sea Isle City it didn't want me to stop at the mall because that would have been too close and opens a slower battery charge so it instead this was suggesting that I go all the way to Philadelphia and then charge up and you know top off the battery just a little bit there in order to get to the sheets in Carlisle and so that was the plans that's what we ended up doing and thankfully now with iOS 16 on the iPhone they actually have Maki integration so it'll actually be able to read the battery level from the car with carplay and they also have multi-stop routing now so I was able to actually run the navigation through Apple Maps and it was able to give me predictions for how much range I would have left and it also is suggesting that same route as a better route planner so it's pretty intelligent with its routing and so as they would actually use that I was able to you know see okay here's how much battery I'll have left and and it was kind of nice to you know have the maps be working with the car to keep tabs on everything to make sure I was going to have enough range to get to each of the stops and so that was a really nice feature I'm really glad that you know they were able to integrate that and I mean you know the timing was just perfect because that literally just came out like a week ago and I was able to use it here and it did work pretty well although every time I would reach a stop in Apple Maps it would kind of get confused and sometimes I'd have to reload the entire route and it wouldn't be able to just resume from where I was stopped at there so it's not perfect still a little buggy but still better than nothing and really nice to have that since the four pass thing wasn't working properly so anyway uh we headed out here on the road on the drive back and thankfully the hands-free function was working out thanks to that software update and so it was really nice to have now I still think it is not as good as a Cadillac super cruise I think that system is much better in in many ways but this was decent you know it was a little iffy with the lane placement the lane placement wasn't Supernatural it loved hugging right up against 18 wheelers and stuff and so I would actually take manual control and you know get myself a little bit further away from traffic and stuff but it certainly was a little bit of a fatigue reducer and a little bit nicer to have than just regular adaptive cruise control but uh you know nice to have it hopefully they'll do some more improvements they just announced they're going to have an improvement here uh the next couple of months uh to give you a better Lane change capability and better Lane placement and all that kind of stuff so I'm sure blue Cruise will get better but wasn't in love with it here on the first uh you know trip here we did but anyway first charge stop here in Philadelphia um you know since I was already starting at a 60 charge you know it wasn't super fast but it's still a decent charge right here I ended up getting up over 80 kilowatts there before it kind of throttled me but um again just by the time we had changed the baby's diaper got all that stuff and we're ready to go the car was already ready to go before we were every single time it all all these charge stops the car was always ready to go before we were it was not inconvenient it did not take any longer than any gas powered stop we would have done just because of our circumstances again not everyone has babies and you know everyone wants to you know do these power trips but I mean you can see it was also you know pretty cheap too so I mean that was again you know pretty short charge there from you know 60 to 87 again I would have left sooner if someone had been waiting um but thankfully you know we were able to have some lunch there and get a nice large battery top off there uh before we hit the road again but um you know all these uh charge stops by the way were super cheap even if I had paid for them it was free because of this maintenance the electric fire America is doing on the network so entirely free for the driving on this road trip which is awesome but even if we did have to pay it was like even the biggest charge stops were like 10 bucks so I mean you'll save a ton of money over gas if you're road tripping one of these things and you're willing to deal with the slight inconvenience of you know having to stop for a little longer which again in our case wasn't an inconvenience whatsoever um so anyway we made it to the second charge stop here and Carlisle once again same charger as last time and you know work flawlessly and this one you know is going pretty quick but I was a little disappointed in the charge rate at this one because 29 I should still be peaking over 100 kilowatts um and yet I'm you know sitting at 83. so that is another thing is even if your car can accept a super fast charge it doesn't always mean you'll get that super fast charge sometimes the Chargers uh can only put out a certain amount it just depends on a million different factors the weather the temperature of your battery in the car the temperature of the outside you know air I mean there's a million variables so you know those advertising rates I think you know they're a little misleading but you know just keep in mind that that's an ideal you know number but I mean here's another stop eight bucks to do that charge there um and it was a nice large chunk that we you know regained back and then we hit the road again and took in the beautiful views here of the Pennsylvania Turnpike it's so nice driving on the turnpike if you've never done before it's not cheap with the tolls these days but um you know it's just it's a really nice road to drive on nice high speed limits and all that and so the last charge stop charging in Bedford once again that same charger was unavailable and there was other cars there waiting so this was uh not ideal because I ended up having to sit there and wait now thankfully the way the conditions were um there was two cars ready to go pretty soon after we arrived so we only had to sit around for about five or ten minutes before um we're able to you know take one of those Chargers after someone left and you know slide in there and uh started charging up and as a nice fast charge too as you can see this uh one we ended up getting up well over 100 kilowatts for the charge rate so that was good um but that you know again just shows the limitations of you know if one of these Chargers is down you got three Chargers and you got a bunch of people road tripping this was also around Rush Hour on a Friday so um you know maybe a little bit more busy than if we would have you know done a weekend drive or something but you know just illustrates like you know if these Chargers aren't going to always be 100 functional all the time you know then you got to make sure that you have a plenty of them out there and so you know I'd love to see Electrify America more than four charging stations you know maybe add a few more just give themselves a little bit of a buffer or just improve the reliability so these things are never down um you know and then that way you don't ever have these worries but anyway um you know everyone was very friendly at that chart stop by the way too people were just hanging out and talking and uh the one guy was actually even calling Electrify America to try and get that other charger fixed but you know there was no luck there it just wasn't being fixed for whatever reason and then once again you know that was another stop where you know we basically just did all the usual stuff going to the bathroom getting a snack getting drink changing the baby's diaper feeding the baby and then you know we're back in the car and the car was basically ready to go and uh you know no inconveniences whatsoever so I think overall the real takeaway for me is that um you know in our experience it was no more inconvenient than a gas stop I think a lot of people if you actually were to hit a stopwatch from the second you pull up at a gas pump and you time yourself for how long it takes you to pump your gas and then go into the convenience store grab a snack grab a drink go to the bathroom stand in line at the register and then come back out you know you might be surprised just how long that actually takes you and whenever you say oh man it's gonna take 20 minutes to charge the car if you plan it right you know and you plan it around lunch stops and refreshment stops and bathroom breaks um it really isn't going to be much more inconvenient as long as again the charges are functional and there aren't a bunch of other people at them those are the only two unpredictable things you never can really predict you can definitely use the plug share app that certainly helps you to weed out some of the less reliable uh stations or you know give you a heads up if you see that there is a charger that's down ahead of time but aside from that you know those are just really two unknowns but you know it's certainly something I wouldn't you know hesitate to take another road trip in an electric vehicle again I think we're planning on you know doing more road trips in the Maki in the future for sure and I have total confidence that you know there'll be hopefully as uneventful as this one was but anyway I just wanted to give you guys that you know little insight there because I see a lot of horror stories about you know oh Chargers never work this infrastructure isn't ready this is a nightmare and all this stuff and you know I've seen on the forums that's not always true and a lot of people have no issues on road trips and a lot of times you know people are using these Chargers every day to get to where they need to go reliably so uh just happy to be able to provide you know a Counterpoint to all the negativity out there as far as the charging infrastructure goes it worked great for us uh you know some of the other networks might not be as reliable but Electrify America aside from that one being down you know it was really reliable always worked and you know it was a really good setup and so anyway that's our road trip in the mock e so let me know in the comments below what you think about you know the charging infrastructure and uh what it's like the road trip in an electric vehicle let me know if you have any experiences of your own driving electric vehicles on road trips and you know what it's like um for you I'd certainly love to hear everyone else's experiences um but overall I'm very happy to report that ours was a really good experience thankfully but anyway thank you all very much for watching I'll see you guys on the next one take care

Channel: Matt Maran Motoring

Views: 55,457

Keywords: matt maran motoring, subaruwrxfan, electric car road trip, ev road trip, mach-e road trip, mache road trip, mach e road trip, 2022 mustang mach e, electric cars, electrify america, charging stations, charging stops, electric car charging, electric car fast charging, electric car fast charger

Id: 1rOctiaohPQ

Length: 18min 56sec (1136 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 26 2022