3000 mile road trip (long story)

[Dsinatore]

Call me nuts but we did it. We did a road trip with our new 2024 Air Pure. Prior to purchasing the Air we had a trip planned to New Orleans from Pa. Of course we were going to fly since it would be 17 hour drive and lately my wife and I don’t drive long distances anymore. At least that is what we thought. Along comes the Air and we say, “Let’s give this electric thing a full test”. Trip was all scheduled through Asheville, then to Atlanta, then onto New Orleans for the trip down. Yes that was before hurricane Helene! It changed to Knoxville, then Birmingham then N.O. Having only driven 1000 miles locally on the car the trip seemed a little crazy but we wanted to give it the full try. The day before we leave software 2.4.2 got download. I was happy about that since it made improvements to the assistant. Off we go! Lucid navigation takes us to our first charging station and lo and behold, not an EA one. After 10 mins or figuring it out it takes off and 25 min later, we are charged. You see I have never charged anywhere other than a EA charger and that was infrequent. So a little frustrating but we got through it. The trip was just days after Helene ravaged the southeast and there were several states with power outages including Tn. So we called ahead to make sure hotels had power and charging stations were operating. Two more charging stops before Knoxville and both were EA chargers. Zero problems and into our hotel. We even tried to pick hotels with chargers, too bad there were all NACS ones so we didn’t get to take advantage of them. I wasn’t smart enough to check if they were the universal ones. Toured Chattanooga for the day charged at an EA, Finely stadium, where we met a service tech who worked for the charging station manufacture there who gave me some good insight there, then went onto Birmingham. As we went farther south charging clusters started getting more scarce. Found a fast charger at a Toyota dealership thanks to Plug Share where we did a full charge for free. Thanks to Kirk Toyota. Stayed at an Embassy with EV charging again, all Tesla. Onto NO where we found an EA at the Mercedes plant in Vance, Al. No charging stations of any kind on 59 going to NO, so had to divert to Gulfport to charge prior to going into NO. Nice vacay in NO for 6 days. Didn’t drive the car. Software update, 2.4.10, while we were there. Messed up the nav showing the car in the middle of the gulf. On to Memphis for the start of the return home. Up 55 to Hammond to the EA charger in Hammond. Then off to an EA in Jackson Ms. From there to Memphis. Did the tour of Graceland and an EA charger in Memphis. Had to do a few EVGo chargers between Memphis and Louisville. No problems with any of them. No EA charger in Louisville but there was one in Georgetown. Again out of the way but it topped us off. From Louisville to home had to stop 3 times. Two EA and one at a Ford dealership with a bunch of FM chargers. Zero problems on the final leg charging. There were other issues both with nav and car quirks. That summed up the 10 day, 3000 mile trip. Averaged 4.0mi/KW. Certainly didn’t hit the 5.0. If you are still reading this, I guess I captured your attention and will try to sum up my frustrations that we had. Don’t get me wrong the trip was a 95% success. Here was the 5%. First off, my wife and I shared the driving. Every time we switched off we had to reprogram the nav to our new location. When our profiles changed so did the nav. Now this is good for the radio but very bad for nav. The other strange thing with the nav, is the stop for charge in Cambridge, Oh. The charger it was sending me to was a none EA charger but 4 miles sooner there was an EA charger at a Walmart. That was technically closer to 70 then the none EA one. This got me mad enough to send a text to Lucid asking why. Of course I had to vent about the nav changing every time we changed profiles. There were occasions when we reprogrammed the nav the nav changed the route which was frustrating. The occasional nav telling me to turn at the wrong location was also frustrating but not too frequent thankfully. So the trip was a success and the issues I had were for the most part minor. Charged a total of 10 times at an EA charger and 4 times at others. Only 1 issue where it would not charge. That was an old EVconnect charger at a dealership. No reason given why. Total cost to drive the 3000 miles was right around $100. Thank you Lucid and EA. A total of 400 Kwh of charging. Lastly, the wife and I are still happy. Happy trails Lucid owners.

 

[borski]

Sounds like a great trip! Good questions on the charger selection!