Post your mi/kWh efficiency in inclement weather

[Keith58]

Just drove from San Diego CA to Phoenix AZ. There’s a 4,000 ft elevation change. I averaged 2.9 miles/kWh over 529 miles. I drove in rain (heavy at times), poor visibility, driving wind and darkness. I think the day I took my drive was the only day that it was predicted to rain ALL YEAR, between Yuma and Phoenix.

The planned distance between San Diego and Phoenix was 360 miles. I left my house at 100% charge, drove 280 miles to Dateland AZ, maintaining 80 mph much of the time, and arrived at the EA charging stalls with only 20% remaining.

When I arrived in Dateland the whole travel centre and gas station complex was completely dark. The power had gone out, probably because of the wind and rain. The Tesla supercharger stations were dark too. It was inevitable the EA charging stalls would be dark too.

Several minutes after my arriving, the power came back. The gas station reopened, but unfortunately the travel centre which sold the date milkshake decided to close right there and then, at 1800 hrs in the evening.

In the meantime, nothing on the EA app or PlugShare indicated that the EA DCFCs at Dateland would be completely dead upon my arrival. When I pulled up to my stall, there were already two Chevy Bolts and and Ioniq parked, none of them charging, all of them at low battery chaerge, and now in a dicey predicament.

The Tesla supercharger station and the EA station remained dark. At only 20%, I had two choices - drive 89 miles east to Buckeye AZ, or backtrack 63 miles west back to Yuma, which I drove past over an hour earlier. Lucid navigation predicted that I would arrive in Buckeye at negative (-) 17 miles. It also predicted that I would arrive back in Yuma at 0 (zero) miles. I decided to take the less risky option.

Wet and cold from the wind and the rain, and dateshake-less, I drove back to Yuma. I kept my speed at 60 mph, and drafted behind semi-trailers whenever I could. Often they would pick up speed and pull away from me. The drive back to Yuma was the longest hour of my life. But, keeping my speed at 60 mph, even the face of a headwind and wet roads, brought my efficiency back up tyo 3.1 miles per kWh. I pulled up to the fully operational Yuma EA DCFCs with 4% charge and 20 miles remaining.

I charged up to 90% in about 45 minutes, jumped back in my car and finally made it to Phoenix AZ, late at night, about four hours later than what I’d planned.

My drive from SoCal to Phoenix was a near disaster, no thanks to Electrify America. It was only the following morning, when a notice appeared on Plugshare and on their app, acknowledging that the Dateland AZ site was down for maintenance. What a clusterf*ck, a total $hitshow and a damn waste of an evening. My one silver lining was that at least, unlike two other hapless drivers at Dateland, I did not have to be towed anywhere.

This latest roadtrip experience has shaken my confidence in the viability of EV road tripping in anything other than a Tesla. The charging network for anything not-Tesla is just too spotty and too unreliable. I came away from this experience really, hugely disappointed, and very annoyed.

When I return to San Diego next week, I’ve already plotted where I’ll stop and charge, and Dateland AZ is not one of them. Boo, Electrify America. Abominable job you’re doing.

Lucid Air GT. 19 inch rims.

I can only imagine the frustration and anger having to make that decision. The loss of time and messing up at your schedule must’ve been intolerable.

 

[DeaneG]

For now, it's good to plan a trip assuming your primary charging station choice will be nonfunctional. Arrange the trip so that there is always a plan B.

I almost got stuck in the desert once when EA shut down two key adjacent highway locations simultaneously for renewal. Wound up at a 4-stall EA in Mojave, where I could get only one of four charging posts to work, and that one at only 66kW.

 

[kurious]

Road-tripping in our Lucids:
The larger batteries won't ever give me the full 410 spec range, but...
I wouldn't want to do it any vehicle with less range, smaller batteries, which is >90% of them.
I love how that still relatively big range gives me options when to charge en route.
Every time I do longer trips I learn what to do again, what to avoid counting on.
The lowest coefficient of drag means I'm making the most of the lot I've got.
I'm amazed I get the above AND luxury comfort, quiet AND super-fun performance AND gorgeous design...

 

[Cosmo Cruz]

Since March when I took delivery of my Touring, I am averaging 3.5 m/kWh. But that has decreased to about 2.5 the past couple of months here in the northeast.

Hi Ed. I believe I have seen you a few times. I live in Blue Bell...hang out at the Plymouth Meeting chargers mostly but do visit the KoP charges from time to time. See you at the grand opening of the Kids R US service center!

re: yeah...it's been unusually cold for this part of Florida (selling my snow-thrower). Cold is brutal on batteries. People forget how the old lead-acid "wet" batteries that you had to add water to from time to time, barely cranked the starter on the Ford in January, when they'd power a Lucid in the summer.

 

[Bus Driver]

Road-tripping in our Lucids:
The larger batteries won't ever give me the full 410 spec range, but...
I wouldn't want to do it any vehicle with less range, smaller batteries, which is >90% of them.
I love how that still relatively big range gives me options when to charge en route.
Every time I do longer trips I learn what to do again, what to avoid counting on.
The lowest coefficient of drag means I'm making the most of the lot I've got.
I'm amazed I get the above AND luxury comfort, quiet AND super-fun performance AND gorgeous design...

Amen to all of the above. It’s been a few days since the experience I described earlier. Now that I’ve calmed down I can appreciate the greater flexibility my Air GT afforded me, a flexibility not available to the other EV drivers unfortunate enough to pull into Dateland AZ on a rainy and windy Friday night. At least I didn’t drive myself into getting stranded.

 

[Nova _AT]

Drove DC to Miami without any wait times at any of EA chargers so-far. Got 3 M/kwhr. Fingers crossed for the drive back. At couple of stations screen in the station was not working but plugged in charged. Saw people struggling with other charging stations. Will report back after the return trip.

 

[Mkatz]

GT with 19 inch wheels. I’ve averaged 3.7 all year round in NJ with 4.0 in summer and 3.5 in winter without trying to conserve . Today at 48 degrees I drove in Smooth setting and tried to be efficient and hit 4.0 for my 21 mile commute at 65 mph. Definitely not as spirited as I normally drive and not nearly as fun.

 

[Bus Driver]

Road Trip Update, with apologies to @DeaneG for co-opting his thread with my moaning about EA -

So the drive back from Phoenix AZ to San Diego CA went a lot, lot better. I wasn’t intending to stop at the benighted EA DCFC at Dateland AZ, the location that gave me such a headache a few nights previous, I was intending to stop either in Yuma AZ or El Centro CA. In any case, as I was approaching the Dateland exit on the 8, I remembered that I never got to pick up my “dateshake”, because the travel centre café had decided to shutter their doors very early that dark and rainy evening. So I pulled off the freeway.

Approaching the charging station, I noticed that three of the four stalls were occupied, and all appeared to be charging normally. Hooray! Until I pulled up the one available stall and noticed that not only was the charger screen very dimly lit, but there were several lines of ominous looking MS-DOS(?) code scrolling through. I dialed EA Customer Care to request a reboot, got promptly put on IGNORED, when presently a BMW SUV-EV-type-thing vacated a stall at the end. I dove for that stall right away and started charging.

Charging from 50% to 95% appeared normal, and took about 45 minutes. Not surprising really since I began my charging session at an already high state of charge. After my experience the other night I wasn’t about to complain.

On the remaining 240 mile drive home, I maintained a slightly higher cruise speed overall, at 85 mph. I shot up to 111 mph on some stretches and on one occasion stayed at 100 mph for about ten minutes. Then, I chickened out because of cops possibly prowling the area, and because my charge level started dropping quite dramatically. It’s astonishing to watch the rate at which your battery level drops when you sustain very high freeway speeds.

On the windy stretch westbound through the Cajon Pass, which separates the desert from San Diego’s hilly back country, I got into a somewhat ill-advised drag race with a black Toyota T100 truck of all things! The thing about the Lucid is that it’s so well planted on the road, its driving dynamics so confidence inspiring, that it gives genuinely mediocre middle aged drivers like me a false sense of driving proficiency. So there I was taking bends with a posted speed limit of 45 mph (yellow, safety related speed llimit sign), at close to 100 mph! Very foolish of me to have been baited, and I don’t recommend this kind of behaviour at all. But, in that moment it was too late. I’d taken up the challenge and I charged ahead, determined to stay ahead of this jerk in the black Toyota truck.

Much to my surprise, the T100, while never passing me, was never far behind, even at speeds between 90 to 100 mph. He must have been really working to keep up with me, and he must have known the road really well. I, on the other hand, wasn’t so familiar.

Anyway, shooting out at the western end of Cajon Pass, and starting to worry about my decreasing range, I pulled over into the right lane and let the truck pass. He quickly pulled away into the distance and rounded a bend, and fell out of sight. Rounding that same bend several seconds later, lo, what do I see - CHP with blue and red flashing lights turning, had pulled the T100 over! I leaned heavily and heartily into my horn as I passed them by.

For the rest of the drive home, I slowed down considerably, from over 85 mph to 75 mph. Lucid navigation had predicted that from 95%, I would arrive home at 26%. But I had had several stretches of shall I say, really spirited driving, and it looked like I would arrive home with considerably less charge than that. My aim was to arrive home with no less than 20%. That way the car wouldn’t be sitting in my garage at a low state of charge (less than 20%), waiting for several hours until midnight, before charging.

Based on this 720 mile roundtrip road trip, I’ve stumbled upon a personal rule of thumb. It seems to work, and while I’d never claim to be the brightest star in the firmament, I’m surprised that I hadn’t noticed it before - Assuming a 100% charge at the start, take your average mile/kWh reading and multiply by 100. That’ll give you your range available. For example, 2.9 miles/kWh will give you 290 miles. 3.1 miles/kWh will give you 310 miles, etc.

Based on this rule of thumb, if I’d wanted to drive from San Diego to Phoenix without stopping to charge, a distance of 360 miles, and been willing to arrive in Phoenix jittery as a cat in a roomful of stomping elephants, I would have had to do whatever it took to achieve an average efficiency of 3.6 miles/kWh. Namely, slow the heck down. As many of us on here know, factors like topography, weather, wind, outside air temperature, road conditions, etc have some bearing on efficiency, but none more so than speed.

Lucid Air GT. 19 inch rims.

 

[DeaneG]

I'm glad the return trip restored your mojo!

 

[victoryroad]

Not sure about mi/kWh but I drove 320 miles from DC to New Haven on Thursday afternoon / evening. Temperature in the 40s and 30s. Left at 100%, arrived at 8%. Three of us in the car, HA set to 82 when traffic allowed.

Realised before the drive home yesterday that tires were on the low side at 46. Inflated them to 50 and that, and / or the fact that it was at least 10 degrees warmer, had a significant on consumption … on the return leg we left at 98%, got home at 13%.

OK, so 3.1 m/kWh. (103 kWh for 320 miles). About what I got on a cross country in March at about freezing temperatures but at no more than 70 mph. Just me and my dog with a few bags. 19" wheels with Sotto Zeros, which I do not believe are as efficient as the AS tires. You are brave to run down to an 8% SOC. I never let my SOC go below about 20% before charging if I had to go to a more distant charging station.

 

[Adnillien]

I shot up to 111 mph on some stretches and on one occasion stayed at 100 mph for about ten minutes. .... It’s astonishing to watch the rate at which your battery level drops when you sustain very high freeway speeds.

I love the definition of high freeway speed!

 

[GMan]

Not sure about mi/kWh but I drove 320 miles from DC to New Haven on Thursday afternoon / evening. Temperature in the 40s and 30s. Left at 100%, arrived at 8%. Three of us in the car, HA set to 82 when traffic allowed.

Realised before the drive home yesterday that tires were on the low side at 46. Inflated them to 50 and that, and / or the fact that it was at least 10 degrees warmer, had a significant on consumption … on the return leg we left at 98%, got home at 13%.

Great point. Suboptimal tire pressure _will_ impact efficiency

 

[Halodde]

FWIW I just drove 163 miles using 52 kWh (3.2 mi/kWh) with cabin temp set to 68° on auto and cruise set to 70 mph on the highway for 95% of the trip. Outside temp was below freezing between 26° and 31°. Also I used the heated steering wheel and rear defrost.
Touring, 19" with aero inserts

Interesting to see what some people consider 'inclement'

 

[Halodde]

For comparison, drove back (after charging) with cruise at 79 and heat at 74 and got 2.7 mi/kWh

 

[DeaneG]

For comparison, drove back (after charging) with cruise at 79 and heat at 74 and got 2.7 mi/kWh

So roughly a 15% drop in range at a constant 79mph compared to constant 70mph.

 

[Halodde]

So roughly a 15% drop in range at a constant 79mph compared to constant 70mph.

Yeah. The other differences to consider would be 1. the possible elevation change (which should be minimal but possible since the 3.2 was heading east and the 2.7 was going west). And 2. the wind which was almost definitely a headwind on the way home with the 2.7

 

[Ampere]

Lucid Air Touring, 19-inch wheels:
Headwind 25 mph
Ambient temp 39 degrees
Rain
flat terrain
Heater set to 66 degrees with seat heaters on low
speed 71 mph (or 73 on the Lucid speedometer)
Efficiency: 2.9

 

[moytoyx]

Touring 19" no inserts. NJ to Boston around 25° 65-75 mph no heat no steering wheel heat only defroster got 3.2 over 252 miles. Return trip but temps around 42° got 3.8 over 270 miles. Wish I had those massaging seats .

 

[JerseyStrong]

Just drove from Henderson, NC to EA in Stafford VA. TEMP WAS 23 degrees in Henderson rising to 39degrees in Stafford. Car had 96% charge but defrosting pre-conditioning and heater took their toll. Arrived with 16% battery charge. Drove 186.7 miles with avg of 2.8 mi/kwh. Down from 3.5 overall lifetime avg.

 

[Gandalf]

Drove 180 miles R/T to the Denver airport yesterday. Outside temp was ~17 degrees, traffic on the highway was moving between 75-85 mph. Averaged 3.2 mi/kwh. Lifetime (16,000 mi) is the same- 3.2 mi/kwh.