While y’all been following WWDC, I hopped into the car with my family and started a 6 week road trip across the US. From SF to New York and back … *drum roll* … in an EV, our lovely BMW iX 50.
This will be a fun adventure but I feel confident as we get around 300 miles of range, the car is super comfortable for long rides and we just had it serviced & everything looks good 👍
Charging will be mostly Electrify America (EA) since we got 2 years free with the car.
I’ll document our trip here.
After a long hour we went from 12% to 90%. Then we drove straight to our destination (fancy Hollywood) which we reached with 27%.
Overall 380 miles, 7.5 hours with ~6 hours of driving. Roughly 2.7 miles per kWh (22.7 kWh/100km).
Our hotel has level 2 charging stations so car is charging as I type and should be 90-100% by the time we leave tomorrow! Which is very nice. Which hotel fills up gas cars over night for you?
Tomorrow we’ll start slow and then head east towards Arizona. Good night!
Just completed the longest stint between charging we ever did in the car: 272 miles (438 km). From 100% to 11%. Would have been around 300+ miles in total.
Currently charging ⚡️ at EA in Needles in the Mojave desert. Not many chargers in this area, closest is 35 miles, so we gambled a little bit with this charger and only ~10% left. We triple checked if the station is up and running before when passing by the previous one.
Not much in walking distance, so we have dinner at McDonalds 🍔
Second part of the drive to Flagstaff was 215 miles. Going from 95% to 12%. Much less efficient at 2.1 miles/kWh compared to 3 miles/kWh earlier. Meant we had to put in a short 15 min charging stop around 40 miles before our destination in Williams, AZ.
Probably due to these factors:
- Drove 85mph vs 75mph since we were longing for the hotel :-)
- It was still 39 degrees Celsius for a bit, presumably requiring extra energy for battery cooling
- Western Arizona has hilly terrain
Luckily all EA stations along the route where up and available, giving us a few options. Distances of EA chargers vary from 35 to 130 miles along the I-40.
Both stations (and any that we checked in the app) were empty tonight. We were the only ones charging. Coming from the Bay area, where you usually have to wait before a spot opens, this feels so cool. Like the joy of an empty highway.
Our Fairfield has free level 2 chargers from Chargepoint (shared with the Hampton Inn next door). To my surprise 3 out if 4 were still available at this late hour and with full hotel parking lots. I guess not many dare to do such EV trips 😄
We might get from 25% to ~70% overnight (depends on when we leave). That means we’d need 2 charging stops on our way to Santa Fe tomorrow. Which also includes a stop at the Petrified Forest National Park.
See you tomorrow!
A few observations on spending the time while charging:
- EA in this area of the country is often located next to Walmarts. Good if you want to grab something there. Not so practical if you want to get food while charging.
- In general, it‘s unlikely that a charger will be next to your favorite restaurant as we figured.
- To save time on longer trips, it can be helpful to get food to go before you hit the charger (from some restaurant in town nearby) and then eat while charging.
Regarding the car: The BMW iX is awesome for long highway driving. Super comfortable, extremely quiet, great adaptive cruise control, lots of space.
The AC works very well (quiet but cools super fast) and you can start it remotely from the phone, which is nice when it’s 40 degree celsius (100+ Fahrenheit) outside.
We‘ll stay at Santa Fe for 2 nights and will surely enjoy our day off from driving tomorrow 😄
The hotel only has wall plugs, which means super slow level 1 charging. Better than nothing, but it would take ~4 days to charge from 24 to 95%. So we might get to around 50% after 2 nights, which could be enough to hit the road running and do the next fast charge on the way (our next stop will be Amarillo, Texas).
See you on Friday!
Update from Amarillo: added another 340 miles on the odomoter today. Started at 50% (~25% is all we got from the wall plug in 1.5 days). Visited Los Alamos and had to charge twice.
I wanted to arrive with 50%, because the hotel in Amarillo has no charger. Unfortunately heavy rain over northern Texas, lots of wind and me pushing made the last part of the drive inefficient: The car estimated up to 59% after the last stop but that quickly ran down to 44%. 2.1 miles/kWh vs 2.8 earlier in the day.
I keep driving the iX in efficient mode. But I am not sure it makes a big difference. Yes, I can feel it soften the air conditioning, the pedal response is notably slower and it will warn you if you push too hard (eg > 75mph).
However, on these long highway drives I always use the great adaptive cruise control (Driving Assistant) and not sure if that behaves any different from normal (Adaptive) mode. At least the car’s own estimates don’t seem to change if switching between the modes 🤷♂️
Things I noticed in the BMW iX:
- Somewhere between 60 and 80 mph is where it goes from efficient to inefficient. I assume this is where air resistance increases notably. Car warns at 75mph if in Efficient mode.
- Temperature wise between 10 and 25 degrees Celsius might be the comfort zone for the battery. Below and above is where it needs heating or cooling, “wasting” extra energy.
- The app has a bug that underreported current SoC while charging by 10% a few times today. Made me nervous 😄
And while Electrify America is nice, there is always some issue:
- one out of the usual 4 chargers is offline for maintenance
- it doesn’t connect to the car or charging won’t start
- it doesn’t recognize the card tap (I default to starting through the app now)
- charger doesn’t go to full speed - eg getting 35kW when it should be 198kW. Requiring to switch cable/charger until it works. Wasting time…
So while distribution of charging stations is great, it’s not always plug and go.
Today we drove to Oklahoma City, with a stop at the Cadillac Ranch and (extremely hot) Palo Duro Canyon.
Started with 44%, fast charged twice (the usual), and arriving with 22%. No overnight charging on both ends. About 2.4 miles/kWh (average of 80mph).
The usual charging hiccups: starts with 130kW then silently drops to 33kW when away from the car; switching charger brings it to optimal 181kW. Puzzling. Always keep an eye on the rate! Unfortunately not shown in the BMW app but EA app has it.
Today was Oklahoma City to Springfield, MO. About 300 miles. Started at 22%, charged twice for ~30 min each to about 85%, arrived with 34%.
Had the same issue again of charge rate dropping drastically after a few minutes. Not sure if car or charger is the culprit. It eventually worked after restarting. Changed the battery fan setting from “Automatic” to “Unrestricted”, maybe that makes a difference during hot days? Will see the next few days.
The hotel here has four level 2 chargers from ok2charge. Not free but $0.45 per kWh. We gladly pay as we need 100% tomorrow to explore the Ozarks before heading to St Louis. The first EA charger on the way (in Lebanon) is down so we need all juice we can get.
There is one Tesla charging at the hotel too. Since I had no guarantee a charger will be free, I checked before that there would be a backup fast charger nearby to use in the morning if necessary (yes, EV Connect).
I should probably post more pictures. For now the Missouri Welcome sign will have to do.
If you are still reading, thanks for following along! See you tomorrow.
@alexkli thanks for taking us along.
I'm curious, how much more time and energy do you think you spend on planning the trip in the EV compared to a 'regular' road trip?
And what's the ratio of time spent for driving vs charging during a day like that where you're starting with an empty battery?
Alexander Klimetschek
Gregor Schmidt
Firejourney
Rob