Finally home tonight after 2 weeks of driving the Lucid for 3400 miles, all without a hitch (well, a small one this AM, which I'll describe shortly).
For those who have had issues with the car, my sympathies, but honestly the only thing I had to fear on this trip were flying rocks and bugs. Well, I should include truckers and stupid drivers...anyone who has driven in Europe knows that pulling over as soon as you pass is the only way to drive, and man, that's just not the way we do it here...folks can will drive side by side with a truck for miles, oblivious to the line up behind them. I know we've all been there, rant over.
A big reason for the trip was to check out the car, but many friends and family were on the route, so that was where the real fun was had. Shout out to the first unexpected discovery: the small college town of Valparaiso, Indiana, a prosperous little town with nice architecture, restaurants, and an excellent B&B. Next, was the gorgeous drive down the Pennsylvania Turnpike from Beaver Falls to Arlington, VA. Another couple of weeks and I would have had the fall colors, but still very pretty - hadn't realized I had climbed so high but seemed like hours going down the turnpike to Delaware, and then VA. Lots of EA chargers on route, often at the official "Rest Stops" which on the east coast have multiple food / service business's at each stop.
By far, the most beautiful drive though, was getting on the Blue Ridge highway after leaving Monticello (btw, none of the Charge Point chargers there are operational). You're basically on a ridge, with valley views alternating on each side - goes on forever, and just stunning.
So, returning to the only issue I had the entire trip, which was this morning when my Navigation curser froze in Davenport, Iowa. It just stuck thinking I was going to stay there and didn't want to leave (uh, no). Despite multiple resets of the car it would not update its location, so I used the phone for rest of trip. I will try the Valet card version tomorrow, and then call service if it doesn't work.
After all of the above, probably the most interesting moment and discovery on the trip my last charge, when I met an EA tech who was doing maintenance on the units in Albert Lea, MN. He mentioned that the reason the EA chargers have two hose pumps per machine is not so two cars can use it at same time (news to me: they can't), but rather for redundancy, since the hoses are apparently so finicky that it's better to have back up in case one breaks. He said EA uses independent contractors for installation and they routinely screw up the wiring or put it in so things get kinked after a few uses, so techs have to regularly take the machines apart and redo them. Said the design of the chargers came out of Italy, and for many of the machines they didn't include a valve to release the coolant, but apparently now are (note: seems like an Italian espresso machine designer may have been involved). We agreed that there is often very little real world difference from using the 150's vs. the 350's, unless you're nearly empty - the 350's usually drop off to the 150 range within a few minutes.
Full inspection and cleaning of the car tomorrow, but clearly it passed the test: 3.4 on smooth, for 3400 miles (all EA) at no cost other than some indigestion from bad vending machine snacks.
