First big Taycan road trip - Thoughts / Suggestions?

[Jonathan S.]

Love the musical instrument reference, very clever!

BTW, for public L2 charging, all the Clippercreek units I’ve used are full-strength 48a. Big contrast with the ubiquitous ChargePoint units.

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[daveo4EV]

Let's see, I left off at the end of Day 3. Since then it's been pretty straightforward but busy days. We arrived in Pasco Washington where we spend two days at six vineyards. The Taycan collected compliments at several.

Here we are at Goose Ridge Vineyards. We also visited Badger Mountain, Terra Blanca, Kiona, Fidelitas, and Elk Haven in the southern Washington region.

Charging at the hotel in Pasco was interesting technically $10 for 4 hours at 5.5 kW, but they let us charge all night. Each time we plugged in we had to ask them to turn on our specific charger.

Since it's just about harvest time the vines are absolutely laden with grapes right now.

Leaving Washington state we decided to follow the left bank of the Columbia River valley rather than take the interstate. Well worth the extra time, it's a beautiful drive.

Outside Portland we visited the Helvetia winery. A little mom and pop place in the middle of the forest. Forgot the camera in the car, so no photos but it's a little estate winery in a very relaxing setting. The nav system did make an effort to save us time on this trip by routing around a line painting crew working on the road. Unfortunately it decided to take us down a winding one lane gravel road, underneath a century old railroad bridge and finally down a section line that was actually just some rural dude's home. We decided to backtrack when we hear the banjos. It wasted 20 minutes but on the plus side by the time we'd worked our way back the line painting crew was finishing up for the day.

We stayed at the full service Marriott in Portland where the charging is behind the valet parking. Worked perfectly and charged from 25% to 95% overnight, though the 20 year old valet I left the car with was a bit overwhelmed by the car.

From Portland on to Medford Oregon where we stopped at Dancin Vineyards and Roxyann winery before checking into the hotel. Dancin has a lovely tasting facility and beautiful setting. Roxyann is in an old barn and has a lovely Bordeaux style wine.

Since the side trip leaving Pasco went so well we decided that instead of taking I-5 south to Sonoma we'd take 101 through the redwood forests. Highly worth the extra two hours, the Taycan made the 7% grades and twisty roads down the coast effortless and we got to see the Pacific and the big trees.

Now sitting in our hotel in Healdsburg mapping out which vineyards and wineries to visit for the next 4 days. Charging here is good, a nice row of six Tesla (AC) chargers and 2 Chargepoint chargers. The Chargepoints are only 5.5 kW so I'm going to see if the Tesla chargers have more power tonight.

welcome to California - I've done the same drive from Walla Walla (near Pasco) in my Gentian Blue 2020 Taycan Turbo - it is in fact lovely drive - hope you enjoy Napa!!

lovely trip reports - I'm enjoy'ing your updates they are wonderful!!

 

[whitex]

I often slipstream SUVs and trucks. You can keep a safe distance behind and still get a good drag reduction because they are almost all really sh1t aerodynamically.
Unless the road is very quiet there is usually one going at a speed that suits me.

I have done it for years on long journeys, it saves a lot of fuel on IC cars too.

At what distance behind a large SUV do you think the aero drafting benefit starts?

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

At what distance behind a large SUV do you think the aero drafting benefit starts?

It’s when you can read the state byline on the license plate.

 

[DougFrisk]

At what distance behind a large SUV do you think the aero drafting benefit starts?

A 1.5 second following distance behind a semi has a significant impact, behind a van or SUV you need to be about 1 second behind. If you have the power meter up you can see the change in power consumption there.

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