First big Taycan road trip - Thoughts / Suggestions?

[kort]

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.

the speed limits can be adjusted via the pcm

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[fgwinn]

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.

I thought my close to 900 M/B nights was a lot. But, 2000 puts you in a completely different league. On my 6800 mile trip in April/May I stayed at Marriott properties with EV chargers on all but three nights. Chargers seemed to be more available and better maintained at hotels where fees were assessed compared to hotels with complimentary charging. When L2 chargers were not available at hotels we opted to top up at nearby L3 chargers before checking in since it was not practical to preheat the battery before leaving on the following morning.

 

[fgwinn]

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.

That is especially true if you check in at the hotel late in the evening. I find that arriving at the hotel by 5:00pm or 6:00pm significantly improves the chances of getting a charger spot.

 

[daveo4EV]

tip - as you're driving put each segment (point a to point b) into the PCM navigation - battery percentage @ destination is pretty accurate, and updates real time while you're driving - you can monitor and adapt based on how you're doing in terms of battery percentage and you'll be fine - don't be afraid to stop "early" and use a reliable charger vs. pushing for optimal distance

use the Tesla app to see if there are magicdock Superchargers when you're driving and those wil lbe extra/bonus chargers you can use - overnight charging at hotels is a great way to stay

the Eritage Winery in Walla Walla washington has Tesla Chargers and an excellent Syrah that was quite lovely and is a wonderful place to stay.

Trefethen Winary in Sonoma is excellent and has lovely wines! And EV chargers in the parking lot and I used to race with John Trefethen the owner/founder of the winery.

plugshare is your friend for vetting charging locations - don't believe the PCM navigation for charging, but you can rely on it for distance estimates segment by segment.

speed is the range killer and beware head winds - 60 mph into a 15 mph head wind is the aero-dynamic load of 75 mph driving - very very high consumption - this is why it's useful to watch the battery estimate @ destination in navigation real time - this will tip you that you're consuming more than normal…

you'd be surprised how much range you can gain simply by shaving 3-6 mph off your cruise speed…

I drive convservatively for the 1st half of each segement, and then ramp up speed as I pass the 50% point on any given segement…

my PCM threshold is 8% arrival power

let us know how it goes ;-)

 

[f1eng]

speed is the range killer and beware head winds - 60 mph into a 15 mph head wind is the aero-dynamic load of 75 mph driving - very very high consumption

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.

 

[kort]

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.

I've done this many times on the less crowded roads.
usually you can find a truck running over 70 mph, jump in behind him, maintain the 2 second rule of spacing and you can get almost 20% more range.

 

[Scandinavian]

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.

Very nice to have Acaptive Cruise Control at these occasions, isn’t it?
??

 

[f1eng]

Very nice to have Acaptive Cruise Control at these occasions, isn’t it?
??

Actually I don't find that cancels the ways in which adaptive cruise control is annoying and I never want to sit in a long peloton of vehicles speeding up and slowing down all together. This is an increasingly common nuisance on our motorways today as more people put their brains in neutral and sit there

Edit to add

I very rarely travel on motorways and try, now I have retired, never to travel when the traffic will be heavy so the occasions when ACC could even possibly help are quite rare.
Our Prius has it and I appreciate it in heavy traffic but that has only happened 5 or 6 times in the 7 years we have had the car, mostly I am on a normal road or in a traffic level where ACC is pure frustration.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

[…] This is an increasingly common nuisance on our motorways today as more people put their brains in neutral and sit there

…which they can do, being enabled by automated driving assistance systems.

I detest any type of driving assistance with a passion. If I want to be driven on a longer trip, I’ll take the bus/train/plane etc. However, I will grumbly admit they do come in handy when fatigue sets in. Unbeknownst to me, lane keeping was standard/included in my spec, so for the first few hundred miles of the original pick-up drive, I was wondering/getting disappointed that the car doesn’t keep my line and the steering feedback is “inconsistent”. Once i discovered the setting, I disabled it and it has remained that way.

Fast forward to last fall, returning from Laguna Seca, 2-3am somewhere North of Mt Shasta into Oregon. It’s a pretty curvy 2 lane highway, opening to 3 occasionally. I am tired, been up for 20hrs and driving for the last 8-9. I close my eyes for a half-second nap, realize this isn’t great and wake up in a panic almost 2 lanes over. It was a gentle corner, and luckily in a section with that third lane. Normally I stick with the rightmost lane when there is no traffic, but was hogging the left on this occasion- a further lucky circumstance. This could have ended badly, and ALK was made exactly for this scenario.

Tl;dr: if you’re tired and insist on driving, turn on all the automation you’ve got.

 

[leibao217]

From my recent experiences, don't rely on hotel chargers... In many cases most of them are either occupied all the time or are simply down for maintenance...

 

[Tooney]

Exploring perceptions of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in older drivers with age-related declines

 

[f1eng]

Exploring perceptions of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in older drivers with age-related declines

I live in a place where I don't need to drive and will definitely stop when I can't see or similar.
So far I am still exasperated by drivers not being able to judge the width of their cars or driving thoughtlessly but I hope I can recognise when I am making mistakes and should jack it in. My most recent accident was in 1986.

When he was teaching me to drive my father told me to beware of drivers wearing a hat to drive in. It has always been good advice and it is surprising how often I notice somebody driving badly and observe they have a hat on.

I don't wear a hat to drive yet.

 

[Jonathan S.]

From my recent experiences, don't rely on hotel chargers... In many cases most of them are either occupied all the time or are simply down for maintenance...

And yet another factor is the charging rate.
If the hotel has the typical ChargePoint model, and both plugs are in use, more like L1+.
In such a scenario, running the math, a Taycan owner pulling in late at night running on only spare electrons and hoping to depart at 100% won’t be able to do so until early in the morning…after staying for two nights!

 

[daveo4EV]

when traveling and planning I "curate" my hotels - when possible I either stay at a hotel that is close to fast charging - or has decent L2 charging (NEMA 14-50 or 7.2 kW or greater EVSE) - this is not always possible, therefore I adjust my plans for charging prior to hotel arrival or just after depature (look for "near by" charging that fits the bill)

but normally I'm able to find functional and effective L2 charging, but it takes investigation and planning.

worse case I charge w/my mobile EVSE with L1 charging and get 10% overnight - and then find my first charging stop earlier in the day than one would like, but we do what we have to do.

near by KOA or campgrounds w/NEMA 14-50's are acceptable "backup plans" but rarely ideal.

while very very rarely used - a good road warrior kit is sometimes essential and can smooth out areas lacking in pre-installed EV infrastructure - but it's a high price to pay (both money and storage-volume) to carry a kit like this around given how infrequently it's used…

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...and-useful-road-warrior-ev-charging-kit.6812/

I've always said EV's will never strand you (there is electricity everywhere) but they can delay you (very very slow charging) - but for me personally that is typically a rare outcome…

YMMV

I would never travel anywhere with an EV with out a TeslaTap (or equivlant - NACS EVSE to J-1772 Vehicle adapter)

 

[DougFrisk]

Day 1. A short 334 miles today just to make sure our processes are down. Lorelai* and ABRP disagreed on the best route. Because we knew there was construction on the southern (ABRP) route (MN 2 and 200) we went with the northern route (MN 210) which is about the same distance and time but honestly the swamp was prettier along 210 so win!

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. Plugshare had the info, ABRP and the PIRM didn't. That required backtracking 25 miles to another 180 kW charger run by the local power company.

Sadly, the 180 kW is aspirational as the cord is 200 amps. To get that you need to be pushing 900 volts (which the charger can do) but the Taycan cell voltage maxes out at 4.1 volts times 6 cell pairs per module times 33 modules or 812 volts. If I'd stuck around to 80% charge it might have reached 160 kW, but the best I got was 155 at 60% or so.

Which was enough to get us to our first winery, we can now check North Dakota off the list. I had a lovely Marquette, the estate grown Frontenac is OK. They try to use locally sourced grapes so it's almost exclusively the hardy wine grapes developed at the University of Minnesota.

Reached the hotel a bit ago and are charging at 5.6 kW which will get us barely to what we need by the morning.

Pretty successful for a first day even with the wasted hour backtracking to a functional charger.

*Years ago I had a friend who named her GPS Sirena because it always seemed to want to send her to her destruction on rocks. With the Taycan we decided we needed a slightly more Teutonic name but with the same theme for the nav system so Lorelai it is.

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