you're welcome
must admit I was super confused to be gone for a couple of weeks and find my "the car made a for a great stressfree cold as hell roadtrip as I could want" had become "Tesla is the only car for road trips"
I find the tone (on the forum) draining. as somebody who joined in 2021, surrounded by excited helpful wannabe (and a few lucky) owners, it was great. I was religous in reading & contributing. I am sorry to say a lot of that energy has left me. it has become a chore.
Regarding EA
I used EA four times in this journey, and while I change station twice, my charging experience was quick and painless.
Was it as efficient as a gas station? nah. I've never charged a tesla so I cant compare. but the EA experience wasn't awful. Maybe I am lucky, but not so lucky as to go rush and buy a lottery ticket.
And in the three long roadtrips I have done including to Scottsdale and Bend from Bay Area I have always managed a charge at an EA station. so to me, EA hasn't let me down. have there been times where it was the 3rd or 4th station? yes, but always got a charge. have I been happy to be throttled? nope. but I have always got a charge. and with enough range I can take >20% in <10mins and move on.
I just got back from a short road trip to Breckenridge, and I too had no trouble with EA. I had to launch the Lucid App and tap the EA button, then choose the correct charger, but then it just worked.
I had not been prompted to do that app thing before, but I got a push notification on my phone letting me know how to do it, so it was no big deal.
My charging speed wasn’t great at 68 kWh on a 150 charger, but I was at 50% when I started, it was about 2 degrees outside, and I failed to precondition, so I wasn’t expecting miracles. Got up to 80% in 20 minutes and went on my way.
With that little top off on my way up the mountain, I ended up getting back home four days later with about 48% charge left. (Downhill driving is the best.) So I didn’t really need to charge, anyway. But it was nice to have the peace of mind.
My Touring continues to impress me with range. On snow tires, in negative temperatures, I’m still averaging about 3.1 mi / kWh. That’s with heat seats, steering wheel, heat on, and music playing. And it was bumper-to-bumper traffic on the way up the mountain for a good portion of the trip.
Also of note: I parked in a non-heated garage while there, and slept in a bedroom that was over the garage. Despite my fob and phone being well within Bluetooth range, the car only lost about 2% charge in three days of sitting there. It woke the car up whenever I went out to the garage, of course, and probably some other random times throughout the night, but it had no impact on my ability to get home without charging. And my fob batteries seem to be doing fine.
