Amazing Canada Road Trip

[ksn]

I was torn about taking my Lucid (Touring 19 " , no aero wheels ) instead of my ICE car on a 1000+ mile roadtrip from New Jersey to London, Canada. Eventually my wife and kid convinced me that the comfort of Lucid would outweigh any other issues we would run into and I am glad we did.

To prepare for the trip I armed myself with a Tesla to Lucid J1772 adapter, tire inflator and for the first time charged my car to 90% SOC (first time over 80% SOC ). Since we were traveling with my kid and decided not to drive more than 2.5 hours at a stretch. I planned to make 3 stops before reaching the Canadian border and had selected the EA stations I wanted to stop by. All three of them had 350KWH chargers but I used only the 150KWH chargers after reading stories on this board about some issues cropping up after using 350KWH chargers. The first and third stops were within a mile from the highway and the second one was 3 miles from the highway

1. Electrify America Charging Station, 2 Industrial Park Dr, Binghamton, NY 13904
2. 655 New York 318, Waterloo, New York 13165
3. 7200 Niagara Falls Blvd, Niagara Falls, New York 14304

Shout out to EA, not sure if I just lucked out or if EA is getting better, every single charger in each of these stops works both ways and speed was consistently over 120 kWh. The first stop was a a gas station, had a nice store with shower, Wendy's and a dog park. The second one was at a premium outlet mall with lots of options for food and enough shopping to keep the wife happy. The last one was inside a strip mall with plenty of shops and food options. I didn't have to wait for a charger at any of the stops

We left Tuesday morning around 8.00 am and I charged for around 20 to 30 minutes at each stop to get the SOC up to 90 %. I reached my destination around 6.00 pm with 208 miles of battery left. We travelled a distance of 520 miles averaging 3.8 m/kwh driving at an average speed of 75 m/hr. We had spend around 2 hours across the 3 stops.

In Canada, we used the L2 charger at my friends house. We started he drive back on Saturday morning around 8.00 am with an SOC of 90 % and retraced our way back with stops at the same charging stations. One the way back I only charged to 80% SOC at each of the three stops. We were back by 6.00 pm after covering a distance of 1052.8 miles averaging 3.8 m/kwh

I received the new software update while in Canada, but I didn't install it until we came back home. I drive the car a lot (over 8k miles in 8 months of ownership) but this trip has helped ease my anxiety about taking the car on longer road trips. I could have made it with fewer charging stops but I decided to play it safe


Pro's

• Excellent driving comfort
• Car handling was great
• No road noise
• Car's connectivity was great and we had no issues using Spotify
• Seats were really comfortable
• ACC was great (I did not use HA) and after 8 hours of driving I was not fatigued at all

Con's

• The car navigation was not the greatest. It couldn't recognize my destination address in Canada and most of the times would not give me the most optimal routes within the US. I used Waze as my primary navigation tool
• CarPlay - CarPlay worked like a charm for the first 4 hours of the drive. After that it stopped working for an hour and then started working on and off for the rest of the first leg. on the way back it never worked and so my wife was holding the phone and navigating.

Lucid Sightings: I just saw one other Lucid during this entire trip. It was another ZR touring in PA/ NJ border on the way back home.

At every stop there were a lot of folks looking at the car and taking picture (I was watching from a distance). There were a lot of Canadian folks enquiring about the car and telling me they are hoping for a cheaper model since the current models would force them to pay an additional luxury tax.

Overall this was our best road trip experience and we can't wait to do more roadtrips in this amazing machine.

 

[Demosthenes]

Agreed. Excellent road trip car. I’ve taken the car many times from San Diego to Vancouver. 25k+ miles on it now. As much a pleasure to drive now as it was when new. The software has improved by leaps and bounds compared to the early days including the native nav which is now much better at planning long distance charging routes. Unfortunately, general charging infrastructure in Canada remains relatively poor imo.

 

[ksn]

Agreed. Excellent road trip car. I’ve taken the car many times from San Diego to Vancouver. 25k+ miles on it now. As much a pleasure to drive now as it was when new. The software has improved by leaps and bounds compared to the early days including the native nav which is now much better at planning long distance charging routes. Unfortunately, general charging infrastructure in Canada remains relatively poor imo.

True, outside Toronto region the infrastructure for fast charging was almost non existent. We had planned exclusively for L2 charging when in Canada

 

[nototrader]

I’m still amazed at how you get 3.8. My trip so far from jersey to Montreal has averaged 2.5. I guess my avg speed might be above 75mph.

 

[nevadagame]

I’m still amazed at how you get 3.8. My trip so far from jersey to Montreal has averaged 2.5. I guess my avg speed might be above 75mph.

I’m a 3000 mile trip from Denver to Portland Oregon over lots of mountains in both directions of course staying at a solid 75 I got 3.3 long-term (3000) miles

 

[ksn]

I’m still amazed at how you get 3.8. My trip so far from jersey to Montreal has averaged 2.5. I guess my avg speed might be above 75mph.

Might be elevation as well, in addition to speed. My drive from NJ to Binghamton leg was averaging around 3.2 thru the Pocono mountains.

 

[RichMalden]

, outside Toronto region the infrastructure for fast charging was almost non existent

I've been to Canada twice with mine, coming from Boston. My destination is halfway between Montreal and Quebec and there's 3 ECs along my route. 2 more in Montreal and 1 in Quebec. It's really a nice cluster of DCFCs.

They've worked really well for albeit a relatively small pocket of an area. They're usually at Canadian Tire stores which seem more like Walmarts despite their name.

The Maritimes seem to have a dearth of DCFCs which is really too bad as that's my favorite area.

 

[joec]

I’m still amazed at how you get 3.8. My trip so far from jersey to Montreal has averaged 2.5. I guess my avg speed might be above 75mph.

I drove home from the airport yesterday (about a 50-mile trip). Light rain. Had the cruise control set to 87 mph. Got 3.3 efficiency.

I honestly don’t know why some people are only getting in the 2s on a regular basis. I’d have to pound the heck out of my car to get anywhere near that low.

 

[nevadagame]

Might be elevation as well, in addition to speed. My drive from NJ to Binghamton leg was averaging around 3.2 thru the Pocono mountains.

I don’t really understand why, understanding the laws of physics, but on my last long trip that included climbing 11,000 foot Eisenhower Pass and 10 1/2 thousand foot Vail pass and back down to Glenwood Springs, from Boulder, Colorado, and by the way, Glenwood Springs and Boulder Colorado are 5500 feet, so there was no gain or loss in final altitude, I got the best kilowatt economy of the whole trip in the sections where dramatic ups and downs took place, 3.5!

 

[Neurio]

I drove home from the airport yesterday (about a 50-mile trip). Light rain. Had the cruise control set to 87 mph. Got 3.3 efficiency.

I honestly don’t know why some people are only getting in the 2s on a regular basis. I’d have to pound the heck out of my car to get anywhere near that low.

Summer tires and high speed. You've got the 19s, so not as much a factor.

I'm at lifetime 3.0 mi/kWh generally driving how I want (mostly 75-80 on my 9 mile highway trip to work and back). When I tried, I got 3.7 with HA set to 71 on a drive to LA, but that was both painful and relaxing to do as everyone flew past me...

Haven't seen much difference on the 20s since I switched, but haven't paid a ton of attention either

 

[PlaterB]

My wife and I just traveled in our Air Touring (19" wheels) around Canada for 10 days. The trip went from Rochester, NY to Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City. In every city hotel parking had Level 2 chargers, which was OK for overnight charging. On the highways, there are many fast DC chargers, usually at rest stops (combined with gas stations) that recognized my Chargepoint app, giving us enough juice in less than an hour any time we needed to top off. The GPS stopped working soon, claiming that it was offline, so we used my wife's USB-connected iPhone via AppleCarPlay and Google maps. That worked well the entire trip. When we got back, a Lucid Customer service guy said we should've downloaded maps of the Canadian provinces for use offline and the GPS would've had no issues. Carplay somehow disconnected my Android (Pixel 6A) phone's contacts syncing, so, I had to re-enable it when we got back. Perhaps if I had created a separate profile for my wife, that wouldn't have happened, but she seldom uses her phone in my car, and she never drives it.
Overall, we were getting 3.5 - 3.8 M/kWh with AC on and driving mostly 75 mph.
A note on charging - Quebec has many more fast chargers on their highways than Ontario.