Volkswagen ID.4 Mega Road Trip! Florida To Colorado With The Best Value EV On Sale

hello and welcome back to another out of spec motoring video this one's wild so last minute trip you join me here at the ritz carlton in amelia island florida we're just finishing up the concourse delegates it's been an amazing event we drove so many cool cars take a look at our sister channel out of spec reviews to see stuff reviews of old classic volkswagen things all the way to new rolls-royce ghosts and lucid airs pretty amazing but in this video we are taking and by we it's literally just me everyone flew home tyman's flying home and i said hey volkswagen we're here with you guys you have one of the only id4 pro the base cars in the press fleet here they gave it to timing which i thought was really funny everyone else that came with volkswagen got all first editions or pro s's time and got the base one but i was really happy so i said hey let's take the id4 pro on a road trip from here in florida all the way to fort collins colorado and volkswagen said sure we don't care so that's what i'm gonna do we're gonna leave here i missed my flight this morning intentionally i'm jumping in this id4 pro this is the 39 000 car has zero options it gets 260 miles of epa range because of these smaller wheels you get a little bit more range less rolling resistance less aero drag still has the ccs charging port of course so 125 kilowatt peak dc power we're gonna see the taper points tapers right at 45 percent but we're going to probably charge to 60 or 70 along the way we have tons of trunk space i have it with all of our camera gear and stuff so timing didn't have to drive home with everything we got this loaded up and it's just gonna be me the id4 electrify america and free charging to get me back to fort collins it's currently one in the afternoon and i have no idea when i'll get home but we'll find out let's go [Music] you join me here in the id4 where i have plugged in home 1808 miles away inside the pro is a little different than the cars we've driven together so we have cloth seats that i really actually like they feel nice super comfortable no glass roof in the base car but it does have travel assist as standard so if i scroll over here it will do lane centering and get us down the highway sort of like a little mini autopilot and it's a capacitive steering wheel so you don't even need to put torque into it you just need to touch it to tell it you're paying attention that'll become really handy of course we have wireless charging and all the other good stuff that's nice from id4 you can set all the interior ambient lighting however you want but what do you say we jump on the road figure out our first charging stop along the route and then head there and get into the groove of road tripping so leaving the jacksonville airport with 62 state of charge again this is the 77 kilowatt hour usable it's 82 installed i believe uh capacity on the battery pack so 77 kilowatt hours uh we have 156 miles of projected range i'm gonna put the car in eco mode right now and um we could go basically going over to colorado so we need to go west and a little bit north so in jacksonville we could go straight across to lake city electrify america and then valdasta georgia valdosta georgia's one up we're gonna do the one up it's 128 miles there we have 156 miles of projected range uh there's two different routes there's a longer route that takes the highway that's technically faster there's a shorter route that scenic that was only like eight minutes longer i think we're gonna do that uh because we save over 20 miles and looks like it's gonna be a scenic back road so let's start this trip off right see some scenery and uh hope you enjoy the views over to georgia where we're heading to our first electrify america charging stock [Music] so [Music] we are getting pretty close to our charger just about to cross into georgia right over here if you take a look up let's focus there we go welcome to georgia look at that says we're glad george is on your mind well glad to be in georgia anyway when you hit 10 state of charge in the volkswagen you finally get a percentage display here on the screen and mileage normally you just get your mileage uh guess oh meter range basically it's predicting its mileage based off your driving history this is different than a tesla where teslas will predict your range based off of a set constant the epa rated range of the vehicle which is harder to achieve there's pluses and minuses one of the minuses we've seen right here we've been driving this car around amelia island all weekend getting probably close to 300 miles on a charge if not more so as soon as we jumped up on the highway and started to use more juice well what started with a big gap in between our predicted range to the charging station to valdosta is now squeezing so rather than doing 80 miles an hour like when i started off i've had to back it down to you know 75 76 miles an hour so pretty neat says uh you know you get your battery light on at 10 this pops on and we'll make it just fine 22 miles predicted 16 miles there that's plenty plenty of range we are now at 4 state of charge we're just backing down on our power limit so you can see just over here at the end the car saying hey the total available power is a little less as i drive off the road let's put it back on travel assist and now it's doing lane centering nice uh gotta say for the pro the base car i know i mentioned it at the beginning of this video but man this thing is lovely it's so well built it's so quiet i'm saying this just as my personal opinion i really think this is one of the best value cars on the market we're gonna see how well it road trips though we're about to reach our first charger if my opinion is different at the end of this video well then that's just because it doesn't road trip well but my opinion uh my my guess i should say is this is going to be a pretty smooth and easy road trip i've yet to have an issue with an id4 on electrify america other than when the stations weren't working so i'm i'm fingers crossed for a pretty good uh pretty good showing here so i guess this is our exit let's take it i'll see you over at the walmart and we are arriving to the walmart here in somewhere in florida oh no wait we're in georgia uh so many police on the highway by the way they must have been doing some like speed trap major deal because there was about a cop every three miles for like the last 10 miles it was crazy um and i mean like six of them lined up at a time so let's think about where the charge port is on this car it is on the back passenger side so i'm going to pull in here and that's we're going to use this station so let's just pull up and hope we don't crash it it says 8 miles remaining beautiful day out here just above 90 degrees actually let's get this thing charging up so i'm going to open up our j1772 and ccs charging flap uh someone told me that there's a little place i can rest this and i think it's here and yeah i think it kind of just goes i don't know not gonna fiddle with that that can dangle if i owned one i would pull that port off instantly i don't want that cover so we are at a 150 kilowatt station again the id4 only takes 125 kilowatts so let's plug it in and any station any ea station that has greater 150 or greater can max this thing out all right i've swiped on the app to start charging let's take our ccs cable over plug it in oh that was like the nicest engagement and smoothest ccs plug-in i think i've genuinely ever had so let's see what we got going on here it's initiating charging and it is oh ramping up cable cooling hear that so that's the coolant going through the cable here to cool that down contactors just clicked we're at high speed cable cooling let's see how much communications been done everything should be talking to each other just fine at least that's what i'm hoping for i'm saying this and good luck okay this is good so normally what you would do is you'd use your volkswagen pass on the electrify america app and it'd be free charging for three years uh volkswagen is going to email me the login for this particular car but i'm just paying for it with my own account right now which is fine uh three percent state of charge 66 kilowatts it should ramp up there's 125 as advertised how about that man this thing pulls 120 plus kilowatts from dead from zero percent it's pretty impressive and this is my favorite color i believe it's moonstone gray anyway this is the best color the only problem with this color is you cannot get the light color seats this with the gray seats would be awesome but unfortunately volkswagen ordering doesn't uh doesn't let you do that so my friend dustin krauss who i've done interviews with on out of spec reviews he was in charge of contenting this car so you can all blame dustin for that i'm sure it's not his fault because he and i agree that would be the perfect combination so anyway look at this thing looks good the pro has different headlights as well so you get this sort of light signature that comes all the way around here and this all lights up which is different than the pro s and above or first edition the pro s also has a light up volkswagen badge this one doesn't but i think this looks the best during the day with this sort of light bar and it's a different headlight unit so tonight let's keep an eye on how bright those headlights are since i was just driving the the actually the first edition with the full led headlights these are still led we have some hand cook uh kinergy all season tires they're specifically made for evs you can see the ev designation down here in the bottom the fans just cool kicked on on the id4 to help cool it down let's take a look at charging power since this is the first time that i've charged an id4 in hot hot weather we're already at seven percent state of charge that's pretty good and uh squatted truck going by with a straight pipe that's how you know we're in the south touch to return okay uh yeah it's a little glitchy takes a while let's yeah there we go 128 kilowatts more than advertised but of course 125 is probably going into the battery the leftover the uh you know the three kilowatts extra is probably going to thermal management of the id4 anyway i'm gonna run into walmart i don't know what we're going to charge up to here when i'm inside i'll take a look around on my app and see where we might want to stop next on the route that we're heading to and we'll just figure it out station to station well folks i wasn't paying attention but we have our first issue oh no i was hoping this wouldn't be the case 32 kilowatts at 22 that doesn't make sense it's been doing this for a little while so um man all right so let's just do an unplug and re-plug in with that connector right there and i bet it will just ramp up not sure why this is the case i don't know if it's the car requesting that much power because it's a hot day or it's a communication issue or what's going on i'm not going to try and speculate i just know that 32 kilowatts at 22 is not good this car can do 125 kilowatts all the way into the 40 range so let's stop charging boop and let's plug in the other one oh no this is not gonna be this trip we are gonna have a good trip on electrify america with the volkswagen id4 a volkswagen product with a volkswagen charging network this is gonna work wonderfully i'm just putting that energy out let's plug this thing in and get it charging okay i've plugged in here at the 350 kilowatt charger it doesn't make a difference again this can pull the power uh oh i see a red light and i've initiated charging what does it say charging start error oh i saw in plug share someone else had issues with number three looks like we're all connected here the cable cooling is making a weird noise like it's not running maybe it's just cool enough where it doesn't need to run it says thank you for choosing electrify america and we're already at 71 kilowatts let's wait for the refresh because sometimes we don't get the full story until the screen refreshes 127. so not the car requesting that little power that was a charging station error i mean look i maybe maybe not but this is how i determined it right so if the car had pulled again 32 kilowatts here my guess would be it was the car requesting that little power so potentially something got hot in the charging system over there or there was just a little bit of a bug either way we're back to charging at 127 kilowatts although the cable cooling is really quiet it's working just fine and we're still at 127. so i'll keep an eye on this in the car but there is a little bit of an issue in the car it's not a huge deal which is the car doesn't show you the kilowatt power that you're charging with it shows you in miles per minute and i talked to my friend dustin about this and he said this might get updated in the future where you can just touch this and it'll show you kilowatts purely a software thing the car knows how much energy it's taking uh but at least i know seven miles per minute is 127 kilowatts so that's at least if it shows six or seven i know we're getting good speed so we'll just keep an eye on that well we're heading up towards atlanta and then after atlanta chattanooga so still charging up here at 71 percent uh roughly at about 70 kilowatts just under i think 66.67 so uh car is happy to charge it showed 105 degrees up here on the dash i don't actually think it's that hot outside it's toasty but that temperature sensor was a little optimistic as to how warm it was anyway really nice and cool in here i have to say one of the most impressive parts of id4 for me is how amazingly cold the air conditioning is i have this thing set to like 75 degrees because it's just ice cold coming out uh pretty interesting anyway let's talk charging stops and how we're going now i don't know how far we'll make it tonight it's 5 30 p.m right now i may have drank a little bit too much last night and not feeling my best totally fine to drive of course but definitely like need some recovery time uh with that said though i'm still fine to drive feeling great got my starbucks of course you know i can't live without this and since i've been drinking that man have i just become a totally different and much happier person so we have a charging stop on the way to atlanta the next one's 86 miles up the road by the time i finish sending off some emails and getting camera gear all reorganized i already had about 140 miles of predicted range so i said okay well let's see what the next one is at that point now we're not charging at 128 kilowatts the maximum that we can we're charging at 67.68 which isn't ideal uh what i'd love to do is just charge until it tapers and then head to the next one uh however we had already charged enough where right now we have 167 miles predicted and it's exactly 167 miles to our charging stop we're at 73 percent state of charge so if i leave now theoretically i driving the same way i'd pull in with zero i think we charge to 80 85 so that's another six uh to ten percent extra roughly and then we'll just head out and go the nice thing about id4 is it doesn't fall off a cliff at 80 percent just smoothly tapers down and honestly that 80 to 100 time on this charging curve isn't bad if you're curious when i mentioned charging curve what it actually is i have a whole in-depth charging curve analysis video on our out of spec reviews channel just look up on youtube id4 charging curve and it'll pop right up i'm sure at least i hope if youtube likes us you'll find the video so uh yeah maybe another five minutes here 10 minutes something like this and we'll be on the road by the way let's take a look at some stats before we leave on that first stretch so we drove three hours 15 minutes average of 52 miles an hour we used three miles per kilowatt hour honestly not terrible considering the speeds i also believe it's been tracking our energy usage while we haven't been moving and slowly whittling this down i think that is the case um so not totally sure but even here 220 miles three miles per kilowatt hour so that's about what this car does apparently anyway we'll just keep an eye on it whenever i remember to check it at chargers so we can see the efficiency in these temperatures again yeah still this thing thinks it's hot we are at 82 state of charge right now i really like the screen here this is nice the pro gets all this black trim and honestly i think it looks just as good as the pro s or the first edition really impressed with the base car quality and content here i think i'm gonna go unplug us here at 83 to 85 percent uh we have 190 miles projected only 167 to go i think that's plenty and let's rock and roll shall we [Music] awesome [Music] uh [Music] so [Music] we have arrived in forsyth georgia with eight percent state of charge here we are looks like we're at charger number two so i'm gonna get out the electrify america app activate charger number two and plug this thing in here we are it says please plug in okay let's grab the cable let's plug it in nice warm days these cables are easy to manage when it's cold outside these cables get quite stiff and they're hard to move but that was an easy plug-in we're definitely connected the charger says initiating charging the volkswagen's blinking white here it means it's communicating oh fans are on cable cooling's ramping if things go well we should hear the secondary level of cable cooling here in a second and i go there it goes and so now we're all handshake communications still happening contactors just clicked on the car and the charger and i think we are charging yes and uh pretty simple process let's head over and see how much power we're actually charging with here so continue you don't want to hit continue twice because it's also in the same position as the stop charging button design flaw design flaw all right so 69 kilowatts 126 kilowatts nice maxing this thing out this is how it should be first try and we are good to go as expected look at this thing looks nice a couple little bug splatters here on the front but uh that means it's just a good road tripping car hey i'm going to see if i can try and turn these headlights on i kind of want to see what they look like because they're different than the first edition that i tested see we're at nine percent now already looking good let's go headlights uh it's parking lights won't let you turn them on says please switch off the lights hold on let's see if we can force the car on with the little start button over here now the car is on and now the headlights are on doesn't look like there's any uh poor cold weather lights in this oh i got out of the seat so start button again now the car is on without my weight in the seat looks like the headlights are on see what these things look like yep still led of course just more of a reflective led than a projector led it seems doesn't look bad honestly for a base headlight unit is that a bad thing no i think that looks pretty good let's take a look as to what they look like with just the parking lights on so that's just parking lights now and ah here you get the light band inside the light there you can see it just comes over here but i don't believe this is lit on the base one i believe it is just yeah just in the headlight housings but i think that looks fine i think it's a good good looking headlight unit and not that dissimilar from the uh from the upgraded model in the us we only get the base tail lights no matter the model in europe they get the really cool fancy 3d tail lights but we only get the base unit here for our silly fm vss stuff but overall i i'm just so thrilled with how this car drives let's take a look at our charging power already at 12 still doing 128 kilowatts loving it living the dream perfect day here really nice sunset over the walmart this is great i was briefly talking about how well this car drives and i actually think the pro is a little bit nicer to drive than even the first edition or the pro s because of these wheels and tires uh with a a wider tire of course with a i should say a larger tire profile it can soak up some bumps a little bit better it's pretty quiet you almost hear nothing on the road i've always said each our id4 is kind of like a cheap e-tron uh because it gives you that same sense of solidity and build quality and on pro s and above you get massaging seats uh this one doesn't have it but i do like this cloth seat option and i think the seat even lets you get a little bit lower inside the car so no complaints from me and i'm loving this color this is turning out to be a pretty fun trip great to drive travel assist is awesome and a lot of looks on the road a lot of people looking at this thing i also love the volkswagen key look how nice that is very premium so i just ran in and used the restroom at the walmart here we're already up to 41 i swear i walked in peed came out we're 41 that's pretty good i gotta say that's not bad this works this is probably a really good package we're down to 113 kilowatts here at 41 percent and um the next charger that i want to go to so basically we there's a whole bunch of chargers in la la where am i thinking atlanta and so what i thought was let's get on the other side of atlanta charge up very quickly on the way to chattanooga it's only 180 or 190 miles from here in foresight to to the chattanooga electrify america station we can do that in this car but that requires a really deep charge i was thinking we'd charge up to maybe 45 50 to where it tapers and then we'll just run to the next station and get max speeds again and do a little charger hopping on the way to chattanooga now charger hopping doesn't have such a huge effect on the id4 unless the distances are really long and that's because it can hold a pretty uh high percentage of its max power pretty deep into the pack i mean 60 you're still doing somewhere over 80 kilowatts on a car that can max charge at 120 so or 125 it's not like you're really saving that much time like a tesla where you can do like 250 kilowatts at the bottom and then you're down to like 60 kilowatts later on in the pack but i think most people are probably just going to charge these to 80 then head to their next destination but i think let's try a little out of spec road tripping here uh early on in the trip figure out if this works we're down to 170 or 107 kilowatts we're at 44 i'm thinking we should go again under 90 miles to our next destination the car is predicting 110 miles of range and i was like ripping it on the way over here trying to burn juice because i over charged at the previous one so let's unplug now that was a super easy charging stop and head to the other side of atlanta i think it's just on the north end of marietta where we're heading so coming over this way down to 103 yeah we're tapering pretty quick so stop charging and wait for it to stop stopped release and we are good to go yeah if i owned one of these i'd remove this little silly flap that's annoying because you have this cover here anyway so close we go and off to the next charger in marietta georgia this was a super easy stop absolutely perfect as i hope this trip goes again haven't received app information it was only 3.70 to charge everyone says ea's expensive and that's only in certain states charging certain ways let's rock and [Music] roll [Music] uh [Music] welcome to marietta georgia we have arrived around 11 let's check the data since charge 2.9 miles per kilowatt hour 81 miles man this thing was pretty efficient because i was just absolutely bombing through atlanta traffic it was awesome so let's get this thing plugged in uh looks like some screens are dead over here this one's missing some leds could use a little bit of service and upkeep but uh overall all is looking pretty good and i believe at least on the app it says all of these chargers are available and working anyway we're at number six so let me open up the electrify america app get this thing plugged in all right here we go and we are in says it's initiating charging this is a really nice install i believe it's a 10 bank install here uh just northwest of atlanta uh really huge this is what we need to see i'm the only one here super interesting i suspect in a very short period of time these are gonna start to get filled up but it looks like electrify america is already working on that so i'm gonna let this charge up because chattanooga will be the next stop but i am hungry um and i'm just in the middle of an empty parking lot so i don't know what i'm gonna do for food i have chosen to use electrify america for most of my charging on this trip for one main reason charging speed they are consistently uh hosting 150 kilowatt and higher charging stations except for very select few stations that are limited to 50 kilowatts and i believe all of those have or are in the process of getting updated to at least 150 kilowatt stations so i don't have to go oh it's an evgo station is it one of those older 120 amp units 125 amp units that can only do maybe 40 50 kilowatts at best on something like this uh or is it a charge point cpe 250 that are very reliable but usually only do between 50 and 62.5 kilowatts i've seen like 75 100 and 150 kilowatt installs but generally those are pretty low power and it just removes a lot of hassle i know when i get to an electrify america station while it is known for having some bugs and issues hopefully it's getting better so far my experience is getting better if last charging session is anything to go by um very rarely do i ever think oh i won't be able to charge here maybe i'll have a bug here or there but i know at least between the all of the chargers installed at the locations i'll be able to play around with it try different plugs and then worst case scenario i'll call electrify america's support who's always very helpful and honestly very supportive and they'll give me some suggestions and restart chargers and we'll get going so at least in the last while i've not been able to not charge at an ea station so that's generally why i prefer them the app is so much less convoluted than plug share where plug sure will show you anything from a 24 kilowatt unit all the way up to a 350. there is a new option in plug share now where you can filter by showing available chargers and you can also use a better route planner but generally i like to plan my stop stop to stop a better route planner is a great idea at the beginning of the trip for me and it might be something a normal person would follow it just comes down to i don't want something telling me what to do at the start of the trip i want it to calculate in real time based off my driving and because there's no baked in a better route planner in this car or a service such as that i do all that calculations on in my head and change our route around right now the id4 does not add charging stations through its on-board navigation system uh it is a software flaw and it is being fixed and updated uh very soon to the cars so it's a problem today but it's not going to be a problem for much longer let's just say in another six months if id4 doesn't have route planning well then maybe i'll start talking about it and making a little bit more noise because it's very important to have plug-in charge and good route planning i've ranted for a while i'm just looking around for food trying to find anything oh this is gonna be potentially let's just wait in the car and we'll get something off the highway is what i'm thinking highest power i've seen yet 131 kilowatts so planning out our next stop here i want to go someplace pretty special and that is going to be the volkswagen chattanooga factory which today doesn't build evs but one day very soon we'll start building volkswagen id4s right here in america this particular one was built in germany but in the future volkswagen will be producing id4 here in the us and even at a lower price point this car is 39.9 but the smaller battery us-built id4 will be 35 grand before federal tax credits before all the other stuff now we'll see if volkswagen has any tax credits left or what the situation will be then but at least based off of today's numbers that's going to be just the most amazing value especially if you live in new jersey you'll get such a good car because that in new jersey gives you an extra five thousand dollars off an eevee at the point of sale so it's about 95 to 100 miles up to the factory from here we're at 40 state of charge these charging sessions have just been blindingly quick 11 minutes we're already topped up and uh yeah we're down to 114 kilowatts so i think let's go to 50 state of charge this thing's been pretty efficient and uh wind is in our favor we'll have a little bit of a tailwind on the way up i use an app called windy for that so i think 50 we'll head out we'll tour the volkswagen factory or at least as much as we can see at night i've never actually been there before but i'd love to get a picture of this in front of the chattanooga factory and then we will be off to the electrify america station just a little bit east of there we are detouring slightly to do this but i thought it'd be a cool thing to include in the video [Music] wow [Music] and you join me here at spring hill suites just down the street from the ea station i was getting pretty tired on the way over here we're right by the volkswagen factory in chattanooga and i said hey let's just stop in here at the uh spring hill suites because they have a charger eight kilowatt charger by the way pretty nice we'll be topped up in the morning hopefully with this shouldn't be an issue and uh plugging in at nine percent here activated the charger through the blink app which is a total disaster if you're a guest and not a men uh member they don't accept apple pay you got to put in like all your billing details card details it took forever so i hope they sort that out and can just let you apple pay that would make my life easier anyway i guess blinking blue means it's charging let's take a look at the id4 and see how well this is working it shows green that's good and let's make sure that we have the car set to charge to 100 because uh typically volkswagen recommends an 80 charging limit i agree with that and uh yeah we have 25 miles it says 9 hours and 10 minutes left to go so it's gonna just charge straight through the night and uh hopefully be ready to go it's charging at 27 miles per hour charged to 100 you can see this little light here the red is uh basically where we are and this is our charging indicator it'll just fill up throughout the night on this little id light so you can peek in i think that's so neat i actually don't know if it continues to do that when the car is off but just a neat little use of this light this light will also give you directions so if you have a left turn coming up you'll just get a whoosh of light going across to the left which is perfect for me so this is how you change the charge limit just like a tesla more or less we're gonna go maximax on this thing so let me go check in we have almost a thousand miles on the clock as of now and uh yep let's just let this puppy charge up all night good morning just getting up it's about 8 30 in the morning can look outside it's a beautiful sunny day i can see the volkswagen charging down there so let's go see what it's charged up to i haven't checked in the app but my suspicion is it's near full charge but i don't think it's done charging yet you know with big batteries level two chargers when you're road tripping and you pull in at midnight you want to leave at 8 in the morning well sometimes that's just not enough time to charge these things up but guess what it's going to get us more than enough range i hope at least to get to the next ea station total range confidence here so let's go down to the car grab starbucks first thing and then head over to volkswagen group plant chattanooga where it will be the future home of id4 [Music] it is an absolutely gorgeous morning here in chattanooga what a nice place past some gorgeous homes in the rolling hills last night on the way up here id4 is looking good and happy connected to its blink charger i'm sure it was kind of expensive we'll take a look at the total cost here in a little bit the blink charger app since i'm a guest did not update with cost but i think it shows it's still charging and uh it's just a big battery again this thing's 82 kilowatt hour gross 77 kilowatt hour usable 92 percent so uh let's unplug and go all right let's unplug oh wait sometimes with these cars because it's charging i don't i have auto unlock of this cable off so i have to click the unlock button and then it will let me pull it out it's a very german way of programming charging cables let's see that was 31 and 44 cents holy shnikeys come on blink even at a guest rate i understand it would have been 50 less expensive and that was not much time at all that's total ripoff it says 8.3 kilowatts but i don't think the car was actually getting that much i don't know maybe it was wow brutal anyway good thing we have free charging on electrify america right so i totally forgot what i was talking about oh yeah the european vehicles with type 2 don't have the little latch release like our type 1 j1772 connectors do like this right here so you need to click the unlock on your key and then it will release the charging cable so sometimes some of that programming gets carried over not a big deal let's jump in and go to starbucks good morning welcome to the starbucks this is gary what's happening for you hey could i have a trenta strawberry acai could i have that with light ice no water and no inclusions please all right what else for you that should do it 541 buddy all right thanks see you up there nice oh yes there we go we can start this day off properly and here we are taking the exit for volkswagen drive how neat is that i love that they have the streets named after volkswagen this is pretty cool gotta say i always love visiting car manufacturing plants and factories or tier one suppliers because it's just nice to know where stuff comes from and so soon when we start to see the entry level id4 it's gonna be coming out right around here so let's take a right now i think they make uh the passat and the jetta here currently i'm actually it could be some of the suv products although i think most of those are in mexico so not totally sure but uh let's just continue around and man this feels very factory like it's just like pulling up to uh yeah any major factor you have the four lane roads lots of truck traffic car carriers yeah pretty neat i love the vibe around stuff like this and look how beautiful it is off in the distance wow those rolling hills in the fog this is gorgeous and there's the factory damn is that thing just absolutely massive holy smokes all right let's see if we can find a good photo op i want to get a picture they have a nature park what that's cool all right ferdinand pitch way i love this okay let's go oh there's the volkswagen sign all right let's see if we can get a cool picture down this way take a look at this over here so we are at the volkswagen factory i guess they build atlases here too because there's just a million atlases in the parking lot they have a little test track where they take the cars on rumble strips up and over hills just on the side here this is where the trains go and take them out to port for export or to different cities across the u.s and soon they will just be filled with the base version of the id4 now i'm not sure if they'll be building the 77 kilowatt hour usable pack like this car the 82 kilowatt hour gross here but i do know that we'll be getting the smaller battery here for sure i believe it's 55 kilowatt hour usable and honestly that's going to be plenty of range for so many use cases personally i'll always get the longest range possible just because i have this channel we go on road trips across the country to crazy places most people don't do that and honestly i see a trend towards smaller battery evs and just greater frequency of charging stations we won't get into the weeds i'm not so sure uh the whole charging infrastructure problem is as easy to solve as many people think mainly because there's no free market business case for dc fast charging at this point but i will say the cars are getting really good and they do fit the lives of many people so it's been fun to tour around here at volkswagen plant uh chattanooga it says uh we are in a u.s foreign trade zone and i will get shot or something i don't know but i'm just going to get out of here and we're going to hit the road off to colorado but it's been so fun to see the future birthplace of the id4 and men is this place just absolutely mega-huge well i have a good time driving around checking out the volkswagen factory really always fascinated with stuff like this uh maybe someday we'll get to tour it once id4 production starts i think that'd be kind of fun to bring to you guys um let's talk about route plans so i just pulled up the electrify america app we're going to be heading towards nashville and then northwest of there so there is a charger on the other side of nashville that we can stop in at and that's uh i think it's cook no cookville's i don't remember anyway the farthest away charger that i think we can reach is 192 miles it's just northwest of nashville uh we have 213 miles of predicted range so that would be the best plan it's just a get as many miles out of the way now that we can it's 9 a.m and let's plug in in about 190 miles now this would be a challenge in my model 3. my model 3 does about 200 highway miles on a full charge um and it's a model 3 performance so i'm actually really impressed with the id4s highway range it's not doesn't seem to be quite 260 mile epa which is uh as expected but it is really honestly fairly fairly good at speed and i'm not talking like 60 mile an hour highway speed we're doing like 80 85 so let's just head towards nashville worst case we'll just charge up in nashville and then hop along uh but i'd love to see if we can stretch it that 195 miles or so and we're not on a full charge that's the other thing if we're on a full charge i know we can make it we're at 89 percent so let's just jump on the road here and head on northwest or at least in the direction of nashville tennessee [Music] i think we were getting like 3.2 3.3 miles per kilowatt hour last time i checked but we just came on that big climb yeah 3.3 miles per kilowatt hour even after the big climb out of nashville that is that's impressive that's roughly 300 watt hour per mile considering the speeds and how high i just climbed up that's on a warm day like this 89 degrees you can just rock and roll i love this thing on a road trip it just i don't know what to do with all this range so heading over to the walmart i'm gonna plug in i have to do a quick podcast so it'll be a a plug-in in two seconds then jump on a podcast we'll see how long it takes i might end up over charging here just because i need to uh do this quick little podcast with aptera on our inside evs podcast so if i uh overcharge a bit then that's that i won't be able to show you the plugging in process since i need to do this very quickly but i think as you just saw we were at roughly 13 state of charge stop at the red light go quickly and um yeah you can make right on reds in the us now we just need to find the charger well we've been here for about 30 minutes charging up and uh two people have iced the chargers not to be i mean it is tennessee i don't think many people know what these things are there's actually no signage here at all that i can see that says uh non-evs uh can't park here so you know i guess we'll just give them the benefit of the doubt they did not know anyway we're already at 79 we've been here 33 minutes we've added 54 kilowatt hours i'm not gonna unplug just yet because i haven't had a chance to see uh where our next stop is that's pretty amazing though i mean we just finished up that call i'm i'm hungry i want to go find food but the car is all ready to go so i really want to find a zaxby's whenever i'm in the southeast that's my go-to zaxby's or bojangles we don't have them in colorado anymore so let's um let's find our next charging stop on the way northwest and then we will head out of here zaxby's yeah it's been so long last time i was on the east coast i got bojangles that was in the mustang mach e road trip with the model y i think i took the bottle y over there and so now we get some zaxby's this is worth all of the time delay i'm not in a huge rush to get home and all the chicken fingers and the zack sauce can't wait we have 189 miles to go 210 miles predicted let's make sure we are in eco mode actually there's something i want to do i want to go into custom and configure everything so uh it has a suspension setting but i actually don't think this car has active dampers steering comfort drivetrain eco adaptive cruise control sport this way it'll close the gaps real quickly i prefer that climate control we can run eco climate control the problem with uh eco mode is the adaptive cruise control system gets really lazy and you end up leaving huge gaps even with your gap adjustment here set to the closest you can see there's tons of different uh adjustment levels here i can make it bigger here too so at least with this way now set in the custom drive mode everything's eco except for the adaptive cruise control is exactly how i like it so let's uh jump right on the road now and see if we need to stop in paducah which just to give you a reference as to where we're going you can see we're in clarksville here here's evansville uh zoom out a little more it doesn't let you anyway nashville's right here there you go there's nashville that's the biggest city that most people will recognize paducah is a charger right there and then we're gonna head up so we're literally passing one if we need to stop in but uh so far we're looking pretty good let's head out [Music] so [Music] and we have made it to the walmart here in mount vernon let's take a look at what percentage we did this thing goes forever seven percent not even a problem let's just set that back up into 100 just in case something happens 19 miles projected just fine what i'm gonna do is activate this charger now the reason that i use this station and i keep getting stations with the screen on the opposite side is the id4 charging port is here on the back passenger side which honestly it's not really that big of a deal it doesn't bother me that much but i think i would have preferred it to be on the driver's side i'll get that plugged in in a second but i wanted to show you i don't like to block the chatimo stations here since there's just one chatimo so i'd try and use those last if possible just because a kia soul ev first gen or a leaf pulls up they won't have the ability to use any other station and at least this way i can just pull in normally plug in and we're good to go so let's use this one here 150 kilowatt station number one and we'll get it charging all plugged in it's initiating charging i love the port on this particular id4 is perfect with all of these ea ccs ones normally they're a little snaggy and hard to get in and not machined properly but i think whoever has been manufacturing the ports and the connectors are getting better because these are sliding in here we are getting 123 kilowatts it's seven percent toasty day out here and uh really just absolutely enjoying the drive that was a long stretch big distances in this id4 pro and i gotta say my gut feeling says i'm doing way more distance between chargers in this car than i do typically in my model 3 performance just a really honestly not bad road tripper now would i love 175 200 kilowatt charging absolutely but i do like the charging curve i feel like 15 20 minutes at a charger and i'm good to hop to the next it's really you know while it's not mind blowing or pushing the limits it's totally acceptable we are performing the good old out of spec splash and dash maneuver hopefully we'll do more of these let's take a look we just reached 53 percent uh we are down to 78 kilowatts that doesn't seem right doesn't matter let's hit stop and unplug it just rocketed straight up there we have 130 something miles predicted on our gesso meter but again it's only uh 99 miles to our destination on the other side of st louis so i'm gonna try and use all of the energy that we have and jump over there let's unplug we are unplugged i should say i'm gonna jump in the car and let's start charger hopping it's gonna be great st louis kansas city and then west from there [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] welcome to the west side of st louis let's see we are at eight percent state of charge 20 miles predicted plenty plenty plenty let's get this thing topped up and we are charger hop in so let's see what number we're at i guess i could plug in on three or four let's plug into four here we go wasn't it funny that this one was number one at the last one that's a little bit funny it's the same site layout it's just they're numbered differently and it's getting windy out here we're starting to get a pretty big headwind and it looks like it continues all the way over to colorado right now we are connecting to vehicle and i assume all will be good and we'll start charging here pretty quickly i'm going to run in use the facilities here at walmart uh walmart's aren't the best place to hang out but also they kind of have everything you need so not the end of the world but i will say i don't personally enjoy going to all the walmarts however take a look panda express uh not hungry though still so full from the zaxby's welcome lisa thank you here we go let's see what we're getting 9 kilowatts 10 11 12 13 4 6 13 18 23 28 30. ramping up and i assume it's funny how some stations update in real time some do like that screen refresh like we saw at the beginning of the trip and we're ramping up over 120 kilowatts now kilowatts peaking out 125 again is max let's let this thing charge up until it starts to taper and we'll see if we can make it to the next ea station so i've gone in use the restroom we're already at 22 state of charge doing 129 kilowatts just shredding uh i'm gonna jump in the car take a look at our next stop so it'll be 125 miles to our next stop along the way uh we're just charger hopping charger to charger we are currently at 31 charging again at 125 plus kilowatts i know that because the volkswagen tells me seven miles per minute and as long as we're at seven miles per minute then i know we're at max speeds wish it would show kilowatts but at least i get some idea of charging speed where i don't have to get out and check every time we're at 1416 miles on the car so far this last leg uh let's take a look since our charge pretty inefficient 2.7 miles per kilowatt hour but i was booking it again this is the out of spec way high speed high charging power equals an overall faster road trip and um at least that's the theory we've proven it a couple times uh since we started today i think we've averaged yep 3.1 miles per kilowatt hour and on the entire trip of 964 miles so far we've averaged three miles per kilowatt which is just like 321 hours per mile 330 watt hour per mile roughly so great great efficiency really love this thing and uh we'll unplug probably around 55-ish percent and head to the next charger all right i think we're getting close to the time to unplug this thing let's take a look yup 57 let's unplug now when i was charging the car it was showing close to 130 miles of range just before but then when i actually keyed up the car there was a little hidden start button it went up to a close to 145 miles of range and the reason is i'm pretty sure it does its range calculation in normal mode and then when it wakes up it goes into eco mode calculations so that's another reason that uh i think it's pretty hard to run out of charge in this car because it's always a little bit conservative i really don't have an issue with that i think that's actually a pretty smart way i've also kept the climate on yeah so see 141 miles turn it on 140 240. it's always doing little calculations anyway 140 miles indicated 125 to go will be just fine [Music] so [Music] so [Music] and welcome to walmart here in uh not really sure where we are columbia missouri maybe how do i zoom out on this thing let's see uh well let's let's try the volkswagen built-in navigation system and map and here we are and we want north up because i don't know how to look any other way and i've zoomed out too much we are in west of columbia we're in booneville with four miles of projected range because i just used all of our available energy up in speed and that is two percent state of charge so let's activate this electrify america charger directly behind the car right here we have a 350 kilowatt unit doesn't matter no one else is here there's another 350 available once these stations start to get filled up i would say it would be unfriendly practice for me to plug in my id4 at a electrify america station that's more than 150 kilowatts given the current charging you know software and hardware because if ionic 5 or ticon rolls up then i would be blocking their ability to charge fast but guess what we're the only ones here so i'm gonna charge on number two i just opened the electrify america app the vw id4 charging pass swiped on this charger very simple takes two seconds you know plug and charge is great for new ev owners but once you figure out how to use the app it's no problem there are a couple issues with having to use apps to activate such as cell service or phones glitch or apps glitch it would be one uh less problem if this car had plug and charge but i'm okay with it it's not not a make or break decision and it should get software updated pretty soon we're initiating charging it says zero dollars thank you very much that you do still get charged idle fees with free charging if you're wondering id4 can also take max power from dead so we should see again 120 plus kilowatts here uh let's take a look and man i'm just impressed with how reliable and awesome the charging has been so far hopefully i don't jinx myself the cooling the thermal management systems of the car have been amazing been driving fast been charging fast yep here we are back up to peak speeds at two percent and uh yeah nice nice little walmart really cool uh winnebago class a rv over there and we're gonna just charge up the id4 pro here in missouri all right folks i think we have a little bit of a charging bug here so we're on the signet high power chargers that caused all of the problems with our tycon cannonball now i've heard they've got new software but look at this 72 kilowatts why why would it be doing that let's see if the fans are on on the volkswagen and i think this might be the same problem that we had in florida so fans definitely on but not running at max power uh what i think i'm gonna do is plug in this uh this number one charger right here next to us i wonder why it's doing this 72 kilowatts i wonder if it did a thing where it overpowered the volkswagen like it did with the tycon and rather than just shutting off the charge like we were having issues with it just said hey limit me to to whatever amps would be 72 kilowatts so i'm gonna activate number one i try not to take the chatimo spots but that's the benefit of kind of parking close to both of these and we'll see if we get more than 72 kilowatts if it goes back to full power then it's likely a charging station and car communication bug uh and if it doesn't then it means the car is too hot so we will do a little bit of diagnosis 70 yep so there we go it wasn't the id4 requesting less power we'll see if it thermal throttles again but um i would say we're back up to where we should be just a weird little bug but that's why you got to keep an eye on charging speed and that's why it's so important to have a charging speed indication inside the car because if i was sitting in there and you know it shows six miles per minute right now if it didn't show six or seven i would have known something was wrong that's good it'd be even better if we had kilowatts whoa camera's going all over the place so here at 37 state of charge is where it just starts tapering off peak and then by the time we get down to 50 is kind of about when we want to leave so we'll probably leave right around or just before 50 it's 90 miles to independence missouri which is the next electrify america charger along the way now typically i'd like to go maybe a little bit more than 90 miles but the next charger on our route is 168 miles so that means we would have to charge up to 80 or 90 percent to make it i firmly believe it will be faster to unplug here in just a couple minutes do a quick top up at the independence charger again right off the highway and then head off past there to i'm not even sure somewhere along the way on i-70 it's i-70 the whole way across now here at 43 we're still sitting at around 110 kilowatts and uh we'll just go until it tapers pretty much under a hundred that's when we're going to leave or if it starts to hover around 100 kilowatts i think uh yeah 20 faster is worth the move to go we can make it there on the charge right now 45 miles to go or 45 to go 90 miles would mean 200 miles on a full charge which means we'd really have to be ripping it so we can definitely make it there now and now it's just a matter of what's going to be the most time efficient so we're at 107 kilowatts i think we'll leave and just yeah down to 106 107. i think we'll leave just here in a in a minute or two and here at 49 we are at 100 kilowatts that's roughly what we'll get at 50 and then it will taper down from there if i remember correctly the last charging stop we were down to 78 kilowatts at 50 i definitely think there's something thermal going on with these chargers or the car not sure which that's causing it to charge differently at different states of charge very minor differences we're talking no more fluctuations than maybe 10 or 12 kilowatts but there we are 50 let's stop and unplug and uh yeah we just hit 99 kilowatts there i saw just waiting for the latch to be released maybe it's a little quicker if i click the unlock on the key and yep we're good to go and there we go that back in there this stupid thing back in here we are ready to rock and roll heading off to independence missouri see you over there [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] and we have arrived at a target not a walmart with 11 miles remaining oh i just saw the percentage i think it's five percent doesn't matter five percent perfect just kind of kept it at about 80 81 miles an hour just right about the speed limit just above and so now let's get it charging up and see how far away the next one is this is working wonderfully about an hour and a half in between with 15-minute 20-minute top-ups it's absolutely great nice 123 kilowatts as expected at five percent i think i'll run into target maybe and see what's going on we'll see we are just tapering off of max charge here yeah down to 109 kilowatts so we're about 15 kilowatts off of peak and we have enough range to get there 100 miles indicated only 82 to get to the station so fastest thing to do unplug and go uh this is probably our shortest leg of the entire trip i would love to actually try and push it but it's 180 something miles so the leg after this one once we charge up that's gonna be probably a 60 or 70 percent charge why didn't this stop i'm guessing the touch screen doesn't work and i have to use these little buttons yep that's exactly what it is that's why we were having issues before anyway let's wait for the latch to come undone and then we're good to go [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello from topeka kansas four percent arrival perfectly planned eight miles of predicted range and the weirdest station layout i just don't i don't i think the lines are just wrong i can't figure out how the heck you're supposed to park here but anyway i kind of just stuffed it here and we can pull from any of these stations i guess so let's uh do station number one shall we for whatever reason in the ea app it showed number one was not available but number two is working fine ramping up over a hundred kilowatts now at four percent as expected and i am ready for food so what do we have around here there's a mexican restaurant on the other side of the parking lot there's a gas station here and a mcdonald's all the way over there wrong way uh oh yes just finished up a little steak and shake heading back to the car i think we're charged up 55 60 something like that it's a hundred and twelve miles to salinas so let's go do it and after a long walk across the parking lot we are making it back to our little id4 let's see what we're charged up to hear the fans still running so everything should be good yeah fingers crossed we are charged up enough to go i'm sure we are so 112 miles really kind of want 55-ish percent roughly for that at these high speeds oh 72 we're good to go awesome so i'm gonna unplug and we're off to celina [Music] it is 12 27 in the morning we are at 14 state of charge we are just arriving to our hotel here in actually very beautiful salina kansas we're downtown like i don't know maybe three miles off the highway they have charging stations here i found this through plug share plug share has a really unique feature where you can search just for hotels with charging stations and i like uh like that quite a bit so let's get this plugged in now maybe we'll have the same situation as last night where by the time we go in the morning we will uh not quite be fully charged but this will save us a charging stop for sure at least we'll be able to get on the road we're gonna skip the salina the salina supercharger or i should say electrify america if you can't tell i'm pretty tired you can see the id light is going let's try that thing where we hit the lock button and see if the light stays on does not it does at least it does for now i wonder if there's a time limit i'm certainly not gonna wait around to find out let's unload and head out oh well it has felt great to sleep in it's 9 41 in the morning and i've had one of the best hotel experiences i've ever had i want to take you on a quick tour of this hotel i actually don't even remember what it's called homewood suites here in salina kansas it's downtown it's not right off the highway it's about three miles from the highway homewood suites by hilton and what a gem uh i've stayed in some real sketchy hotels along i-70 in kansas and you know it's difficult to find charging out here and so to find a hotel this nice in such a beautiful downtown i had no idea celina was this cool so what do you say we go explore if i find my room key somewhere i saw something about a free starbucks drink in there yeah they gave me water bottles but that's i think just because i'm a hilton dude um open seven days a week complimentary brewed coffee with the purchase of a pastry how about that no cash value well that's not some serious value i wonder if i can make that work for a refresher if not no big deal super nice let me show you around my room so here is the view from the outside really nice little downtown area it looks honestly pretty nice i don't know i'll subscribe it forgive me for not making the bed uh yep they only had the two bedrooms left but it was not bad i think i only paid like 110 bucks to stay here you have one shower here which actually i totally forgot about holy smokes i didn't realize so i showered in here this morning because i was like i'm gonna shower so i'll go shower but i guess this is the preferred shower location the only thing i don't like about this this bugs me about showers welcome to kyle's hotel reviews i don't like how you have to go in there turn the water on and then instantly get sprayed with cold water they need to have the spigot in a place where you don't get affected so maybe i did make the right choice anyway really nice lighting in here everything's gorgeous nice room but then this isn't just the hotel room i have all of this too i have a whole living room lounge area the same view i assume out the windows let's take a look this is like the new place to stay going across i-70 in kansas a full kitchen a desk look we have a stove top a microwave a dishwasher refrigerator all for like 110 bucks i think with tax everything in i'm just like amazed and there's a car charger outside i don't think the car is finished charging though i think there needs to be 80 amp charging at hotels i'm sort of getting more and more convinced of this with more higher power higher charged power what am i trying to say higher battery capacity evs all right let's go to starbucks and get this day going nice elevator it's the new schneider elevators these things are freaking awesome and they have a starbucks ad they know who they're targeting and it's kind of neat you need to use your room key to get up to the room i've never seen that in sort of regional hotels usually in big cities though how nice this is so beautiful we're charged up to 91 percent i believe again a case for faster onboard chargers and faster ac charging right here don't need it for daily use but you do need it for you know sort of kind of everything else i have to click the unlock that european weird coding there we go and now let's rock and roll interesting we're down to 89 i wonder if the bms was a little confused because it was indicating 93 then 91 and now 89 percent it's possible that the air conditioning when i was pre-conditioning did draw that much power but i don't think it's that's really truly likely so let me take you a little on a quick little tour of this hotel man this is a beautiful beautiful little area so i don't know if they're doing like a revitalization project of celina but i have to say normally when i come to kansas i'm trying to get out of kansas and this is the first time that i'm like hey i would actually kind of want to go maybe spend a couple days here and explore all the little shops and stuff i don't know it seems kind of cool look at this downtown area this is such a beautiful downtown strip there's the hotel with the starbucks in the bottom yes i got starbucks and um yeah sorry about the bugs on the windshield i will try and find a spot to clean them i know everyone complains about bugs on the windshields in our videos but this is just a nice little nice little town gotta say anyway we are hitting the road heading west on i-70 not sure where we'll charge but we'll start figuring that out when we get on the road because i was driving this thing so aggressively last night it's predicting such little range on a near full charge and that's my fault because i was just shredding it over here i'm sure that will increase as we drive more normally [Music] today [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we have somewhere around the 50 region stopping to charge here uh we actually probably could have made it to the next one which was about a hundred miles from here but there was like 9 000 cops on the road and one guy was just holding up a traffic jam that was about three miles long and i'm like you know what i want to stretch my legs use the restroom and i figured we'll just time that with a little bit of a top up charge then hopefully we can let all that mess get ahead and then shred along so let's activate this charger plug this thing in we're not going to get peak peak speeds but hey may as well when you have to stop time it with a charging point we are plugging in 44 and we are at 94 kilowatts i think normally it does a little bit more than that but the battery's probably still a little bit cold we did have a ton of wind and uh yeah just not not too bad so we'll see how this goes and i'm gonna run into walmart for a few minutes and this will just be a quick top-up looks like we have some gnarly weather coming in we've been here just for a few minutes eight minutes we're already up to 60 percent we're still doing 80 kilowatts not bad but i think we're good to go so 60 105 miles to get to colby kansas and we are charger hopping this is how it should be now if i had received a 100 charge last night if that hotel charger got me an extra 10 we would not have had to stop here i also could have hyper-miled it a bit but hey we're in kansas open road big speed limits fast id4 this thing is very comfortable at speed top speed is 100 miles per hour so i'm not absolutely shredding but uh hey this thing is unbelievably stable at 100 wish it would do like 130 because i think this that would be a a real good top speed for a car like this 100 is just a bit compromised i think personally but that won't affect most people foot on the brake starts it up don't even need to hit a button into drive drive by the way is like no regen until you touch the brake pedal b mode's more like one pedal driving so it doesn't come all the way to a stop yet but that might come through software in the future so let's utilize that amazing uh turning circle here just the best turning radius and off we go to colby kansas [Applause] [Music] and we have made it and plugged in here at walmart we plugged in at 13 kind of took it easy so alyssa's parents are taking their id4 in a road trip and i had to walk them through their charging plan and get their car place set up and they really don't know how to use their car so i'm like here's what you need to do and i just kind of drove very very normally but something a little concerning is going on here where we are capped at 90 kilowatts can't get any more so what i'm gonna do is try to activate number four that charger there and see if we can get back up to our normal 120 plus kilowatt charging that we're used to on the id4 from our road trip so far and i've switched stalls over to this one here in our charging i was just on the phone went right up to 130 kilowatts not sure why we didn't get max speed on this particular station but that's why you always need to monitor your charging speed again 90 kilowatts not the end of the world but we're getting at least 40 to 45 faster charging just by switching stalls that will more than make up for the amount of time it took to unplug and re-plug back in so nice day out here windy of course as it always is in kansas at a walmart and uh yeah just gonna charge up and we'll figure out where the next one is almost home getting there can't wait to get back and see the dogs charging up here in colby we have a hundred and ten miles to the i-70 diner in colorado we'll be crossing into mountain time zone here along the way i believe it's just as we exit colby will cross into mountain time zone very much looking forward to getting back on my time zone and uh yeah just having a blast wish i live farther away i don't want the trip to end i'm having so much fun we're charged up to 52 we're doing four miles per minute according to the volkswagen i don't know if that miles per minute is based off of driving usage but i will say now that we're driving or you know how the range is adjusting i think it's based off of your driving history because as we're really picking up the speeds and we have a big headwind here in kansas even at 130 kilowatts delivered i haven't seen seven miles per minute i've seen six so i think that miles per minute is based off of the gesso meter which that's pretty annoying so anyway let's uh weird quirks here with the volkswagen just give me a kilowatt screen it'll make my life so much easier at least in the electrify america app reliably now you can monitor your charging speed and i think it updates every minute so that's not terrible you don't have to get out and look you can just look in your ea app uh now we are yep gonna charge up to 60 110 miles to go we'll be ready to head to colorado back home and here we are rolling up on 60 just crossed over look at that good timing let's click a little button and we are doing 83 kilowatts at 60 we'll hit stop thank you very much for the juice and i finally got the login for the volkswagen stuff so i'm using the volkswagen press uh login why won't you unlatch there we go and it's zero dollars so we charged up from 20 to 60 percent in 17 minutes uh zero dollars of course 30 kilowatt hours honestly you know it's while it's not rapidly fast maybe it's just because i'm so busy but uh man it's feeling like you don't need much faster charging than this don't quote me because i know i'm going to say we need faster charging but i'm just saying on this particular trip i think i'm working so much while i'm stopped that uh i feel like i can't get anything done to be honest but this is the out-of-spec way we're going 137 miles predicted what mode are we in comfort let's go eco nah let's go comfort then we can just do some good speeds on the way and we've arrived to the i-70 diner typical out of spec style one percent three miles remaining love this spot i've never actually been able to charge here so i'm gonna oh super windy i'm gonna get this thing plugged in right over here on the chargers it says this one is unavailable let's see if this one is available fingers crossed i'm sure it will be we are good all right i'm gonna get it uh activated plugged in and start this puppy charging from a dead battery and we are connected and plugged in at one percent let's take a look to see how quickly we're going really nice install love this right off the highway extremely convenient cool little diner i might end up going in here for a little snack and maybe we can even make it home on one charge i am starving so we'll just let this thing charge up we're in no huge rush and then we'll figure out our next stop or maybe it'll just be home one percent ramping up should do 120 plus kilowatts here at one percent so it does its little dip and now it will start to climb 50 plus kilowatts we'll see if it dips down i'll keep an eye on this because uh now that it's starting to get a little warmer out at 86 kilowatts it should be doing more than that i'll see if that doesn't increase i'm gonna switch chargers so it's crazy windy out here but i just checked the electrify america app and it was still charging pretty slowly so i'm not sure why that is the case yeah 89 kilowatts doing the same thing it did before okay so here we plugged in it's doing the same 88 kilowatt charging or so now i'm gonna move over to a different unit we'll try that 350 kilowatt on the end and see what it does well i was really looking forward to getting a good luncheon but i haven't had a chance so i switched stalls over to the 350 kilowatt uh unit here unlike we've seen in the past we're still limited to 90 kilowatts and we're still doing it now and i think we're down actually into the 70 kilowatt range at 62 which is what it should be at um but that's very weird i think it may have something to do with temperature or another thought could be perhaps this site because it's such in the middle of nowhere has like a total output power that it can actually output without just totally bricking the grid i don't know definitely not cool and different behavior because normally an unplug and a re-plug or switch stalls always up to this point got us back up to 125 kilowatts not sure anyway i just left it plugged in because i've been on the phone with alyssa's parents at their electrify america station and because this car doesn't have plug-in charge her dad doesn't know how to use his phone sorry for throwing you under the bus there but it was just a like okay open the app don't plug in first because he's like oh i'm plugging in and he's trying to open electrify america find the charger and swipe the problem is that would take him two minutes then the charging session would time out and the car would go red and it wouldn't let him charge so i was like just don't plug it in find the charger you're at and then go and he was thinking that the numbers here on the chargers you can see each port which way am i trying to go here okay so there's the left one and this one this is number one that's number two meanwhile the charging number that you have to swipe on is up here and so it was just a disaster so i was like final answer just facetime me and i can't activate the charger for them because i'm geographically too far away because you need to be within a bubble so plug and charge can't come soon enough for these types of situations once they figure out how to do it they'll be good but they're just not great with their phones they just switch from android to iphone they're trying to figure everything out and that took uh yeah probably 20 25 minutes just to get them plugged in and charging that you know when i show up to a charger it's instant i'm swiped on the app plug in go because i know how to use it but there i guess you know a lot of the steps that i take for granted as to usability which is just opening the app and plugging in um you know that's easy for me to operate a phone it's not for some people so this is uh you know barriers to entry they'll figure it out they got it and uh they they plugged in at five percent typical uh out of spec road tripping i gave them the farthest away charger i thought they could make it to and they had plenty of buffer and they felt good about that no range anxiety he said he was just monitoring his speed so that he would pull in uh right right around dead so that worked out great they're in emporia virginia right now just north of the outer spec track that you guys know and they're heading up to uh rhode island so wish them the best of luck on this trip and alyssa's flying out there i think tomorrow so maybe we'll even get some some clips of them with their new id4 for a little mini road trip video with her in the car man glad i'm not there almost home but man this has been the worst charging stop of the trip in terms of speed i'm hungry but we're kind of at the point where we can leave now and just go i don't want to wait until we have enough range to get home to fort collins we'll just stop at one of the chargers outside of denver for like five ten minutes just to get enough to go so let's head out we have about 67 percent state of charge been here for quite some time and uh yep i think that's the case now i could just stop and eat but i kind of want to get home so we have enough range to get on the road and uh it's 180 miles in total to get home so i think we'll just need like a 10 minute top up at our next stop and here we go merging onto i-70 west for the first time or i should say for the last time because then we'll be going on i-25 wide open throttle we got some energy to burn we have about a 10-mile buffer let's get up to speed and maybe we'll stop in westminster one of those around north denver just for a quick top-up to get home to fort collins all right loving it couldn't ask for anything better and welcome to just outside of denver we're on the north side the northernmost ea station currently installed in colorado i believe or at least on this stretch of i-25 there's another one going in in loveland which will be super convenient coming up here soon i'm swinging by panda express getting some food no complaints here and then just behind us in the next parking lot over is the ea station so i figured i'll eat some lunch while we're charging i'm just gonna run through the drive through now so this works perfectly yeah the ea's just over there man check out this sprayer that thing is so sick nice coming to a channel maybe on youtube maybe sooner than you think wink nice little shopping center we have a king supers over here a whole bunch of good stuff and there are the chargers love it so many uh dc fast chargers in the denver area they're only 150 kilowatt uh ones but that works for me to be honest let's back this thing on in i am not lined up properly but that can be changed just with the turn of a steering wheel and someone left a can there let's get this thing plugged in i think we're at seven percent well it's the first time on this trip that we've been able to use the new signet dc fast chargers and in we go somehow come on there we go nice that's a nice install fresh pavement new area coming in only problem is it's about two miles off the highway but this is not intended to be a highway charging solution that's because they're only 150 kilowatts the 350s are only for highway uh locations so we'll let this initiate and charge the 150 will max out the volkswagen's charging curve of course so it's no problem for us here we are ramping up back to the speeds we should be getting 123 kilowatts right there nice we don't need much of a top up i figured i'll just eat my lunch whatever percentage we're at once i'm done eating is what we will leave with enough to get home i think i really only need about 15 maybe 20 to get up to fort collins it's not that far but i'll just eat some lunch and then take the free juice at 124 kilowatts right now and charge it up to full overnight well finished lunch as quickly as i could now we are all charged up 44 more than enough to get home a little bit of unplug action wait for it to click off you have to wait for cable cooling to stop come on release it's up to the charger release it there we go and we're good to go this back in its port nice off we go to home that was it let's go home well guys it's been a few days since the trip i arrived home wonderfully amazing trip actually still have the id4 it's actually been a few weeks later and uh really enjoying that car so keep an eye on for more eevee adventures here of course we have like i alluded to sprinter adventures coming etc and more dog stuff sorry to wake you up ellie by talking i know i'm a terrible owner i should have let her sleep anyway very impressed here with the charging infrastructure the car itself is just amazing really good car and hopefully volkswagen supports it with constant over-the-air updates hopefully you guys enjoy these videos i know this was a really long one but if you stuck through it that's pretty amazing because i was even having trouble editing it but yeah thanks for watching as always you guys make trips like this possible and a huge thanks to volkswagen for providing the vehicle for this trip again not sponsored by volkswagen they just said take the car on the trip and uh that's exactly what i did and showed you what happened so thanks for watching see you on the next one

Channel: Out of Spec Motoring

Views: 362,914

Keywords: Tesla, Model 3, model s, model x, tires, drift, skid, track mode, Kyle Conner, Roadster, Elon, Rich Rebuilds, Road Trip, Cold, Weather, Range, ESP, Track, Mode, Performance, Standard, Short, Review, Comparison, Buy

Id: ikheO2Nb3-k

Length: 94min 18sec (5658 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/realdippah]

Kyle's road trips are so enjoyable. His positive attitude is admirable.

Also; this is a long one - 1h 35min. Grab some popcorn.

[u/afishinacloud]

1:27:40 is a great example of why an app-based charger UI is a bad idea. People that are tech savvy really underestimate how unintuitive systems like that can be for people that aren’t. This shouldn’t be something you have to call up support/get help to figure out.

Having an app-based interface should be a secondary option if people want it, but the primary way needs to be much simpler. This is why Plug and charge is important as EVs go mainstream, but an alternative for cars that don’t support it is to have a simple card that you can tap to start charging without having to open an app and select a charger

[u/BMWAircooled]

Oh, folks know they are chargers. In the Southern US, we have a lot of "mouth breathers" who block chargers.

In Hickory NC it's known that BAT (Big Ass Trucks) block chargers 'cause it's "America". Idiots.

[u/paulwesterberg]

Oh man, his inlaws bought an EV and can't get the EA chargers to activate so now he is EA tech support.

[u/BMWAircooled]

80 in Georgia will get you for over $300.