ButMahElectrons
New Member
We took a great little road trip to the Detroit metro area this past weekend.
It was a fantastic weekend for a drive. And it gave us a new opportunity to check out the fast charging network on the way from IL.
Which....leads me to saying...the network is "not great."
But! The Lucid itself was fantastic! Smooth, trouble-free, and we even started liking the built-in navigation, from two CarPlay fans.
My intent was to use the car's nav as much as possible, especially to work on finding charging, and to get auto-preconditioning.
The one caveat, which might have to do with the relatively short distance from CHI to DET, was that it had us arriving to Ann Arbor with less than 5% charge, LOL.
But it also took us to an EA charge station right in Ann Arbor. Which would've been inconvenient to meet our dinner plans.
So I became my own advocate, leveraging PlugShare, and found out there was a newish EA station outside of Kalamazoo, that was NOT in the Lucid's nav.
Manually setting that up, and manually setting up preconditioning, it ended up being a perfect stop midway, charging from 40% to 80% in just under 25min.
There was no better evidence that the charging infrastructure is just too light. We grabbed the very last charging stall and watched at least half a dozen EVs circle us while charging.
I was at a 150kwh station, and interestingly enough, the car and charge station read out that we started with 175kwh for the first few minutes! Apparently more than our stated station.
Saturday, we went into downtown Detroit with family, which was a small disaster because of the NFL draft setup.
There's hardly ANY EV charging in downtown Detroit, except for a smattering of ChargePoint 6kwh stations (which we ended up using).
Prior to being relegated to a slow charger, PlugShare/Lucid Nav (with EA only, turned off) took us to the RenCen, GM headquarters, where they had four EVGo/Ultium chargers.
It was a perfect spot! Right on center display on the riverwalk and near our restaurant.
However, we quickly learned that 2 of the 4 chargers were flagged as Broken.
1 of the 2 working units that we pulled up for, which someone vacated, was ALSO broken, and the person pulling away was moving to the next working charger.
SO, IN FRONT OF GENERAL MOTORS HEADQUARTERS, are 3 broken chargers, which have been reported broken on PlugShare.
Kind of embarrassing! You'd think those would be flagship locations. But no, even if they were working, they were in quite battered condition.
That's what had us move to a Charge Point station in a garage, and only charge up with what we used on the drive in, in our amount of time eating out.
The drive home was equally pleasant, if not for its quirks.
We charged back up to 85% at a local EA station in Ypsilanti, which thankfully had all but one working charger.
One caveat. We WERE at a 350kwh station, and even when trying to unplug and restart, we only maxed out at 140kwh, which took us about 40min to charge.
Again, the Lucid Nav had us pulling into home with 1% battery life and no other charge stops along the way.
So I again manually forced the top off stop in Kalamzoo again. Which, again, was a great stop, with working chargers, just very very congested.
There was a closer station I was looking at on the Lucid Nav/PlugShare, in Michigan City, IN. However!
The EA app said that ALL but 1 of the 6 stations there were broken, and according to comments, were broken for at least a few days.
In summary, even though we didn't have a horrible charge experience, we could easily see how it could go south quickly, if things are not working properly, too busy, or you're not your own advocate and really planning out these charge stops.
I fear that anyone that just "goes and sets up auto Nav charging destinations," could certainly end up in a bind where you're waiting for a while, swapping between users and broken equipment. Or even hunting around for chargers on very low battery, which can be scary.
Home charging so far, if you're set up for L2, really is the best setup so far.
We had a handful of conversations on the trip where we went back and forth on, is it worth spending money expanding and improving the driving charging networks? OR, to put more of that funding into better public transit?
The answer is probably both! And a high speed train between CHI and DET would've been amazing!
But this is America, and we're realists, so we really do need a few more charging stations that are more reliable, along I94.
Cheers!
It was a fantastic weekend for a drive. And it gave us a new opportunity to check out the fast charging network on the way from IL.
Which....leads me to saying...the network is "not great."
But! The Lucid itself was fantastic! Smooth, trouble-free, and we even started liking the built-in navigation, from two CarPlay fans.
My intent was to use the car's nav as much as possible, especially to work on finding charging, and to get auto-preconditioning.
The one caveat, which might have to do with the relatively short distance from CHI to DET, was that it had us arriving to Ann Arbor with less than 5% charge, LOL.
But it also took us to an EA charge station right in Ann Arbor. Which would've been inconvenient to meet our dinner plans.
So I became my own advocate, leveraging PlugShare, and found out there was a newish EA station outside of Kalamazoo, that was NOT in the Lucid's nav.
Manually setting that up, and manually setting up preconditioning, it ended up being a perfect stop midway, charging from 40% to 80% in just under 25min.
There was no better evidence that the charging infrastructure is just too light. We grabbed the very last charging stall and watched at least half a dozen EVs circle us while charging.
I was at a 150kwh station, and interestingly enough, the car and charge station read out that we started with 175kwh for the first few minutes! Apparently more than our stated station.
Saturday, we went into downtown Detroit with family, which was a small disaster because of the NFL draft setup.
There's hardly ANY EV charging in downtown Detroit, except for a smattering of ChargePoint 6kwh stations (which we ended up using).
Prior to being relegated to a slow charger, PlugShare/Lucid Nav (with EA only, turned off) took us to the RenCen, GM headquarters, where they had four EVGo/Ultium chargers.
It was a perfect spot! Right on center display on the riverwalk and near our restaurant.
However, we quickly learned that 2 of the 4 chargers were flagged as Broken.
1 of the 2 working units that we pulled up for, which someone vacated, was ALSO broken, and the person pulling away was moving to the next working charger.
SO, IN FRONT OF GENERAL MOTORS HEADQUARTERS, are 3 broken chargers, which have been reported broken on PlugShare.
Kind of embarrassing! You'd think those would be flagship locations. But no, even if they were working, they were in quite battered condition.
That's what had us move to a Charge Point station in a garage, and only charge up with what we used on the drive in, in our amount of time eating out.
The drive home was equally pleasant, if not for its quirks.
We charged back up to 85% at a local EA station in Ypsilanti, which thankfully had all but one working charger.
One caveat. We WERE at a 350kwh station, and even when trying to unplug and restart, we only maxed out at 140kwh, which took us about 40min to charge.
Again, the Lucid Nav had us pulling into home with 1% battery life and no other charge stops along the way.
So I again manually forced the top off stop in Kalamzoo again. Which, again, was a great stop, with working chargers, just very very congested.
There was a closer station I was looking at on the Lucid Nav/PlugShare, in Michigan City, IN. However!
The EA app said that ALL but 1 of the 6 stations there were broken, and according to comments, were broken for at least a few days.
In summary, even though we didn't have a horrible charge experience, we could easily see how it could go south quickly, if things are not working properly, too busy, or you're not your own advocate and really planning out these charge stops.
I fear that anyone that just "goes and sets up auto Nav charging destinations," could certainly end up in a bind where you're waiting for a while, swapping between users and broken equipment. Or even hunting around for chargers on very low battery, which can be scary.
Home charging so far, if you're set up for L2, really is the best setup so far.
We had a handful of conversations on the trip where we went back and forth on, is it worth spending money expanding and improving the driving charging networks? OR, to put more of that funding into better public transit?
The answer is probably both! And a high speed train between CHI and DET would've been amazing!
But this is America, and we're realists, so we really do need a few more charging stations that are more reliable, along I94.
Cheers!
