First big Taycan road trip - Thoughts / Suggestions?

[DougFrisk]

After the issue finding a functioning charger yesterday we decided to check all of our potential stops today and found that while ABRP and Lorelai both think that the charger in Dickinson ND is functioning, Plugshare disagrees. We're sitting in the welcome center at Mandan ND at a 60 kW charger waiting for the car to get enough range to bypass the next stop. We need 220 or so miles of range to do that so we are here for a while.

I'm finding that the Porsche Intelligent Range Manager isn't that smart. It had us stop at a 350 kW EA charger an hour ago, but only wanted to charge enough to get to the 60 kW charger we're at right now. I stayed past the 58% suggested by the car until the charge rate dropped below 60 kW which was above 85%.

I'm also calling BS on this business of "we'll adjust your speed so you arrive at your destination faster" sales point for PIRM. No, slowing from 80 to 65 is not going to extend my range enough to avoid a charging stop where even at 60 kW I'm charging much faster than the 15 MPH differential.

For the most part this is North Dakota on I-94 (my wife Lori took the photo from the passenger seat)

We should be hitting our first winery in a couple of hours, but while I'm updating Plugshare I thought I'd update here as well.

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[Tooney]

@DougFrisk I have found that the MyPorsche app and the EA app do a pretty good job of showing unavailable charging dispensers. When we road trip, we normally monitor upcoming charge site stops on those apps. If MyPorsche app shows -- or ? for a dispenser, usually means it is not working.

 

[DougFrisk]

Got in a bit later than hoped. Too much fun chatting with winery owners. A quick 45 minute to one hour stop stretches into a two hour tasting and cheese plate a couple of times and it messes with the schedule.

Here's Fluffy Fields Winery in Dickinson ND, mostly Marquette and Frontenac.

The second winery was the Tongue River winery which is run by a 75 year old couple who have been making wine for fun and profit since he was 18. He's very much a viniculturalist who is working with other winemakers to create hardy northern wine grapes. They have quite a few fruit wines as well and it was only after we left that I realized that we probably just met a couple of actual 60s flower children.

The third charging stop was broken as predicted so it was good that we charged enough in Mandan to skip it. The real mess didn't happen until we reached the hotel. The Marriott website listed this hotel as having EV charging, I called the front desk before making reservations and was told they have six Tesla destination chargers. Yeah! A chance to use the 48 amp adapter. Turns out the hotel (Laurel MT) is a Tesla DC fast charge site, so power power everywhere but not a watt to charge. Luckily we had needed to top off just a bit before reaching the hotel and since it was an EA 350 kW I let it charge until it dropped below 200 kW on the chance that the hotel would only give us 3 to 5 kW. We need to backtrack about 10 miles to that charger in Billings to make our 150 mile first leg comfortably, but not quite the mess we had the first day.

I should add that charging in Sport mode to the desired range plus 20 miles and then driving in Range mode works quite well for distance planning It charges pessimistically and drives gingerly. At least it works well until PIRM decides as you're driving 85 MPH down a Montana freeway that you will arrive faster if it limits the top speed to 65 and slams on the brakes and brake checks the semi you just passed.

 

[kort]

Unfortunately the northern route put us at a 180 kW station at a car dealership which we arrived at to find it was broken and has been broken for 2+ weeks.

the lesson to be learned is to never depend on using a car dealership's charger.
many dealerships will not allow other brands to charge at their chargers. many dealerships do not maintain the chargers, you will find many inoperable ones.
lastly many dealerships will only allow charging during business hours.
operating a charger can be costly and dealerships are loath to giving away free electrons.

Even porsche dealerships can be very inconsistent, my local dealership's L3 chargers are locked and an employee needs to unlock the chargers which always seem to be not working.

I once went to a dealership to cosign on a car my son was purchasing and I plugged my taycan into their L2 charger and some nimrod flew out of store and chased me away despite the fact that I was there to buy a car from them.

 

[Uknown]

As you are new to the intelligent range manager, one tip: Whenyou park overnight and plug in, make sure you do NOT have tomorrow’s destination in the satnav. One of Porsche’s dumb design choices is that the car will say “oh, I’ve planned a 50 minute charging stop enroute tomorrow so i don’t need to charge overnight”. Got caught by that a couple of times on road trips.

When I do overnight hotels I make sure to push direct charge before I leave the car, since I want it to 100% in the AM. Direct should ignore the routes etc…

 

[daveo4EV]

As you are new to the intelligent range manager, one tip: Whenyou park overnight and plug in, make sure you do NOT have tomorrow’s destination in the satnav. One of Porsche’s dumb design choices is that the car will say “oh, I’ve planned a 50 minute charging stop enroute tomorrow so i don’t need to charge overnight”. Got caught by that a couple of times on road trips.

that is amazingly stupid!

 

[DougFrisk]

Day three started with a fine patina on the front of the car and not enough range to make it to our first charging stop.

Because of the miscommunication with the hotel about which types of EVs could charge at the hotel we needed to backtrack about 20 miles and charge a cold battery a bit above 80% to get the segment distance plus 25 miles I've decided we want to charge to.

Yesterday was just travel, a reasonably ambitious 648 miles by the map. We ended up putting 704 miles on by the end of the day. Long, but in some beautiful country.

Had more fun with the route planner. Apparently yesterday morning the road between Seattle and Pasco was closed for a few hours possibly due to an accident. Three or four times we'd got "The route has a complete closure, no alternative route can be found." Then she would reroute us half way across Washington state, adding on hours of travel time. Then she would change her mind. It got annoying enough that we changed the destination to Spokane which was still six hours away at the time. The road between Seattle and Pasco was not closed by the time we reached it.

All EA charging today and let me just say that EA absolutely rocks. They take a lot of crap, but my actual charging experience has been top notch. Plug and charge works well, except for the part where you have to stand there for 45 to 90 seconds while the car negotiates with the network and then have 5 seconds to hit continue after its authenticated or the transaction is cancelled.

One thing of note. When we left, the wear on the tires was consistent across the tread, I checked last week. After 1700 miles in range mode at highway speed the inside edge of the front tires is visibly wearing. It's thousands of miles from failure, but I can see tires failing after 8 to 10 thousand miles if most of your travel is done in that mode. I've switched to normal mode and the lowered (second lowest) setting.

The slightly higher tire pressure might also be combining with the negative camber to cause the wear. The full load pressure for our tires is 38 front 40 rear. I normally run them at 36 and 38 around town, but for this trip I took them up to 39 and 41 cold in an attempt to get that little bit of extra range. I can see combining the negative camber with the pressure increase you get from highway speed driving causing the tires to ride on the inside edge.

Combine that with the standard slight toe out you have on the front of an AWD and you create a triple threat to the inside of the tires. Come to think of it since it deenergizes the front motor when cruising that's probably aggravating the toe out issue.

 

[gramorris]

Combine that with the standard slight toe out you have on the front of an AWD and you create a triple threat to the inside of the tires. Come to think of it since it deenergizes the front motor when cruising that's probably aggravating the toe out issue.

I’ll remember to check mine when we’ve completed our trip. We have been running in range mode with high pressures

 

[Tooney]

@DougFrisk Thanks for the trip update. Glad things are going well.

I've had a couple of road trips where nav unit showed "route has complete closure".
Once we made a substantial change to avoid the supposed closure.
Other times I have seen the message pop up near home. I don't think it is reliable. Nav unit upcoming delays/work areas do seem reliable.

Out of curiosity, why are you traveling in range mode? When I have compared normal and range modes in route overview, the supposed savings with range mode was not significant. As a result I usually use normal mode and possibly adjust speed if real push for more range is needed.

 

[Jonathan S.]

Would be interesting to quantify the efficiency impact of driving in the lowest suspension height vs the second lowest.
Especially graphed against the speed, since the efficiency impact must start increasing dramatically up above 70mph or so.
Ditto for graph of efficiency against speed up above 70mph.

Re hotel chargers, so many of them are those lame ChargePoints. I have a pair that I can use for free near my house, just a short pleasant jog away on a bike path. But they’re so slow that they wouldn’t work for a quick overnight hotel stay if pulling in close to empty and wanting to leave asap in the morning.

 

[DougFrisk]

@DougFrisk Thanks for the trip update. Glad things are going well.

I've had a couple of road trips where nav unit showed "route has complete closure".
Once we made a substantial change to avoid the supposed closure.
Other times I have seen the message pop up near home. I don't think it is reliable. Nav unit upcoming delays/work areas do seem reliable.

Out of curiosity, why are you traveling in range mode? When I have compared normal and range modes in route overview, the supposed savings with range mode was not significant. As a result I usually use normal mode and possibly adjust speed if real push for more range is needed.

Range mode because the PIRM does its supposed magic only when in range mode. So far its magic seems to be limited to slamming on the brakes when it does a route recalculation. We have given up on range mode and the PIRM now.

 

[M3Taycan]

Here is my 2023 Taycan 4S road trip from VA to FL to GA to NC to VA. I mapped out the Electrifly America EV (EA EV) charging stations, and others. I made sure I stopped only at SAMS/Walmart/SHEETZ since you can order food and use their restroom facilities.

I only had 4 events where I had to wait for a charge (~15 to 30 minutes max).

I had 3 events where the EA EV would not communicate with the Taycan (after 3 times unplugging and plugging in). I switched over to another station and it worked.

We drove between 110, 157, 175, 201, and 220 miles before recharging.

Only once I got down to 15 miles before recharging, but I did not panic.

This was a 10-day road trip to visit family and friends in August 2024.

The Taycan handled the trip with ease.

 

[wmras]

@DougFrisk Thanks for the trip update. Glad things are going well.

When I have compared normal and range modes in route overview, the supposed savings with range mode was not significant. As a result, I usually use normal mode and possibly adjust speed if real push for more range is needed.

Our Turbo S has PDCC and Range mode disables it. On a curvy road, Range mode makes the car wallow so badly that everyone feels ill - used it once but never again and I agree, it makes little difference in range.

 

[DougFrisk]

I’ll remember to check mine when we’ve completed our trip. We have been running in range mode with high pressures

Just took this photo and you can very clearly see the differential wear. When we left both sides had roughly the same wear.

 

[DougFrisk]

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 heard 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.

Addendum: They do, currently back at the hotel getting ready for dinner and getting 7.3kW from the Tesla charger which is right in line with a 40 amp circuit with a 32 amp draw, don't need to charge but I really wanted to try out the Tesla to J-1772 adapter.

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