I drove from Pella IA to Minnetonka MN yesterday, and I got very frustrated with the car's ability to show me available chargers. Before I set out, I tried looking at chargers en route. I turned off the EA only toggle, and it showed NONE! I happen to know there are several, very close to the freeway, Chargepoint has a very extensive network of DC fast chargers along I35, not to mention the EA chargers at Albert Lee. Anyway, I decided to take the car's recommendation of stopping at an EA at Albert Lee (which it picked from an apparently non-existent list!). It predicted a charge of 10% on arrival, and since it was cold and windy, I figured it was a long shot, I know a reliable DC Charge Point location in Ames that I could stop at if things looked dicey along the way. When I reached Ames, I was ahead of my projected charge, so I decided to risk it. I figured that if I could stay above 3mi/kW I would be OK. At around 80 miles out, things looked bad. The wind had picked up and the temp had dropped, so I began lowering my speed to hit my target. Best I could do is 2.7 at 50mph. I decided to start looking for options. The car itself figured the same thing, but made terrible recommendations for charging. It chose a charger 25 miles from the freeway, and with that massive 50-mile diversion, it was only 5 miles closer than the one in Albert Lee! I figured I could still make Albert Lee, but decided to look at other options. I found a Charge Point DC charger available next to the freeway, 20 miles south of the AL charger! And not only that, but the car knew it was there too (I finally coached the map to show it to me by searching for "chargepoint"). When I came in close proximity to the CP charger, I figured I could make it to Albert Lee with about 4% remaining. Miraculously the car agreed with me, but before we arrived at that conclusion together, the car, at one point, decided I could not possibly get anywhere, and just gave up. Plotted a big red bar on the map where I would be dead at the side of the road. It took the EA option away from me, and wouldn't let me even look at it, without manually plugging in its address. Oh, by the way, this happened south of that chargepoint charger I mentioned before! As I said, the car knew it was there, but would rather me die with no power than take me to it. Anyway, I did indeed make it to Albert Lee with 4%, and the EA charger worked flawlessly. The car has a lot of information that it doesn't present. I am constantly dividing the miles to go by the miles/kW number in the trip meters to figure my SoC at my destination. I usually get it spot on, but for goodness sake, why do I have to tax my brain with this arithmetic? The dash gives a fictitious miles available at the destination, which is useless because the car can never achieve the EPA numbers, and the map stays frozen on it's initial guess, unless I replot the route. The initial estimate is better than it was, but still far from perfect, and conditions do change along the way, especially in a midwest winter. A few degrees change, or a flip in wind direction can make a huge difference.
