First big Taycan road trip - Thoughts / Suggestions?

[DougFrisk]

Looking to do a bit of a road trip. Plan is to leapfrog out to southern Washington state and head south through wine country to Sonoma/Napa and spend a week or so there before heading home. I'll see if I can post how it's going as we travel.


I've scoped out the route using ABRP and Plugshare, all hotels have EV charging as confirmed with a phone call to the front desk. I have a Tesla to J-1772 adapter. I've even confirmed the newly "upgraded" PMC+ actually works.

Very few DC chargers between Duluth and Billings above 60 kW and the ones that are on the route aren't conveniently located. There's one mid-route segment starting at a 60 kW site that's 200 miles to the next charger, I'm not looking forward to that one. Once we reach Billings though there are a comfortable number of 350 kW chargers the rest of the route, though not enough that we can take a day to drive Going to the Sun road.

I've enabled the 3 free months of Active Lane Keep, Innodrive and the Porsche intelligent range manager. I'll see if I value them enough to keep them.

Thoughts? Questions? Suggestions? Witty remarks?

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[Jonathan S.]

Do I get to be the first to criticize Innodrive in this thread? (I cancelled by FOD subscription to that long before the free trial period ended.)

Definitely curious to know how the hotel overnight L2 charging works. So many hotels that feature L2 charging have too few units and no means of a valet service to swap cars out once finished so someone else can use them.

Do you definitely have your EVSE L1 pigtail packed? If desperate, that ~1.5%/hr can make a critical difference!

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

You’re missing out on the best of Washington. (Or Oregon, for that matter.) Hopefully you’ll avoid the fires, too. Good luck!

 

[DougFrisk]

Do I get to be the first to criticize Innodrive in this thread? (I cancelled by FOD subscription to that long before the free trial period ended.)

Definitely curious to know how the hotel overnight L2 charging works. So many hotels that feature L2 charging have too few units and no means of a valet service to swap cars out once finished so someone else can use them.

Do you definitely have your EVSE L1 pigtail packed? If desperate, that ~1.5%/hr can make a critical difference!

Innodrive so far has been; OK. Without an active route it seems to be mostly the same as ACC. With an active route it will drive more aggressively than I do around local residential streets. Haven't had a chance to do much road trip type driving.

My experience with L2 charging at hotels has been reasonable so far, I've found a new favorite in Minneapolis, the AC Minneapolis west. They have 10 L2 chargers in the underground garage. As long as I can get one of the 10 spots it's just like charging at home. Most of the hotels on the route have 6 chargers, 4 Tesla 2 J-1772 is common. The one in Salt Lake City has 1 11 kW charger, but it's behind valet parking and they just move the cars around overnight to see that charging gets done, I figure a healthy tip to the valet staff should get me the charge I need.

I have the NEMA 5-15 cord and have tested it when I tested the 14-50 using my homemade L14-30 to 14-50 adapter.

 

[DougFrisk]

You’re missing out on the best of Washington. (Or Oregon, for that matter.) Hopefully you’ll avoid the fires, too. Good luck!

In my former life I spent quite a bit of time in Washington, Spokane, Wenatchee, Yakima, and a significant amount of time in Redmond/Seattle. Strangely, not much time in Oregon.

Winery wise I'd love any suggestions you have.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

Ah, I see. So then you know my reply was a trap. (Ok, there are nice bits of/in WA, but they’re wrapped in crowds and smoke around this time.)

Winery wise I'd love any suggestions you have.

Oh. Uh, hmm. Can I .. interest you in beer/breweries? My oenophile rating is “has heard of Franzia”.

 

[anonymouse]

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.

 

[anonymouse]

Innodrive so far has been; OK. Without an active route it seems to be mostly the same as ACC.

I like Innodrive and use it most of the time. The biggest feature for me is that it recognises speed limit changes 98% of the time and slows down so you are at the right speed when you reach the sign - even Tesla doesn’t do that. It has saved me from a few speeding tickets. It will also slow in advance of sharp bends. Unlike Tesla Autopilot it can suddenly disengage mid curve, but generally it is a good supplement to your driving and could save your life if you lose concentration.

 

[gramorris]

@DougFrisk just done the same thing and halfway on the trip.

Innodrive- I can’t say I can tell it’s running so I think I have some work to do to test it.

ALK - I like and will probably keep after the trial.

Range Manager - I’ve turned off as I found it the most frustrating feature and probably because it seems to completely fail if you want to take some control over charging stops. Change driving mode and it wants to reconsider the route. Obviously doesn’t recognise Tesla chargers if you need to use them. Once it has reconsidered the route I’ve had it rapidly decelerate the car if it thinks I’m driving too fast and wants a lower maximum speed.

I’ve found the constant map updates equally frustrating. That too can trigger route updates, map reloads and that’s not particularly useful as you’re approaching a junction. So look out for those.

 

[Jonathan S.]

I like Innodrive and use it most of the time. The biggest feature for me is that it recognises speed limit changes 98% of the time and slows down so you are at the right speed when you reach the sign - even Tesla doesn’t do that. It has saved me from a few speeding tickets. It will also slow in advance of sharp bends. Unlike Tesla Autopilot it can suddenly disengage mid curve, but generally it is a good supplement to your driving and could save your life if you lose concentration.

That was exactly my problem with Innodrive: it slowed down to speed limit. Exactly the speed limit. Even on highways where literally nobody around me was driving the speed limit.

 

[Tooney]

Impressive trip. Looking forward to reading about it. Good luck.

 

[fgwinn]

....Thoughts? Questions? Suggestions? Witty remarks?....

If you are staying at the Courtyard in Rapid City, watch out for the deep potholes near the chargers. When I stayed there 3 months ago 50% of the destination chargers were not working.

 

[DougFrisk]

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 an interesting tidbit. I'll make sure not to route beyond the hotel at the end of any given day.

 

[DougFrisk]

If you are staying at the Courtyard in Rapid City, watch out for the deep potholes near the chargers. When I stayed there 3 months ago 50% of the destination chargers were not working.

I will be staying there and will keep an eye out for the potholes. In fact, the whole route is populated with almost exclusively Marriott/Bonvoy benefitting from a few years of 50% to 80% on the road leaving me with about 2000 night and super elite lifetime status.

Can't be worse than the Sheraton in Deadwood which boasts of 2 EV charging spaces that are permanently occupied by a couple of lifted pickup trucks.

 

[kort]

Looking to do a bit of a road trip. Plan is to leapfrog out to southern Washington state and head south through wine country to Sonoma/Napa and spend a week or so there before heading home. I'll see if I can post how it's going as we travel.


I've scoped out the route using ABRP and Plugshare, all hotels have EV charging as confirmed with a phone call to the front desk. I have a Tesla to J-1772 adapter. I've even confirmed the newly "upgraded" PMC+ actually works.

Very few DC chargers between Duluth and Billings above 60 kW and the ones that are on the route aren't conveniently located. There's one mid-route segment starting at a 60 kW site that's 200 miles to the next charger, I'm not looking forward to that one. Once we reach Billings though there are a comfortable number of 350 kW chargers the rest of the route, though not enough that we can take a day to drive Going to the Sun road.

I've enabled the 3 free months of Active Lane Keep, Innodrive and the Porsche intelligent range manager. I'll see if I value them enough to keep them.

Thoughts? Questions? Suggestions? Witty remarks?

you really cannot rely on hotels that say that they have chargers because many times the chargers are out of order. also many hotels have only one or two chargers and they are already being used. you need to locate alternatives near whatever hotel you are planning to charge at.

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