Planning a 3000 mile road trip

[Copcar]

Last year my wife and I made a trip billed as our “last hurrah”. From WA state to ME and return, 6750 miles 30 days. Our vehicle was a 2006 Dodge Sprinter Van (5cyl diesel) with a 24’ Leisure Travel Van RV build. Going East it was through Canada, returning, through the Northern part of the US. September so no climate issues I thought I was through with road trip challenges BUT now we are planning a trip to Arizona in February with our 2021 BEV i3. So fellow fools I need your experienced advice.

Road miles expected 1350 miles each way broken down to 337 miles/day, 4x85 miles charging stops on the Northern half and 3/115 miles on the Southern half. I-5 at Portland, Ore is 161’ MSL at Siskiyous Pass 4,310 feet. No driving in snow conditions. Northern half of the trip will likely have night time parking below freezing, day time low 40’s. At my home on Whidbey Island, the range of (Cop Car) my black & white i3 at full charge and 50 degrees is 170 miles which usually provides about 150 actual road miles .

At this writing Electrify America is my prime charge provider. Tesla superchargers are in my gun sight. My charging plan is to charge to 50% more range than I need to reach the next charging station. Where altitude changes, severe cold or lack of interim charges in case of an emergency are an issue, charge to maximum. Always set to EcoPro.

When would be the best time to charge for the last charge each day. Do it at day's end or wait for the morning using preconditioning? If L1 charging is available at the motel, should I plug in?

 

[Mondomensch]

Sounds like fun! Since you will be doing a lot of charging cycles, I would think it would make sense to charge up to 90% at the end of the day some days and let it sit like that overnight to allow battery cell balancing to happen.

 

[alohart]

Since you will be doing a lot of charging cycles, I would think it would make sense to charge up to 90% at the end of the day some days and let it sit like that overnight to allow battery cell balancing to happen.

I think I'd charge to 100% just to have a little more for the next day should unexpected problems arise. Looking for lodging with EV charging opportunities, even just a 120V outlet, would be worth considering.

 

[websterize]

Sounds like an amazing trip. When your BEV isn't moving, it should be charging, at any amperage, and especially overnight.

Each summer my kids and I take a road trip in a 120 Ah BEV. It's about 350 miles each way. At ~70 mph, in warm ambient air, we get about 3.5 mi/kWh, or ~130 miles of range per charge. It's July and conditions are ideal for the high-voltage pack: warm ambient air, scant elevation change, minimal headwinds — everything winter out West isn't. Freezing ambient air is the big offender. It drastically lowers range, or, conversely, can make the journey a lot longer. I had to drive the same route in winter once and saw ~2.75 mi/kWh. It was a long day.

On the summer trip we fast charge three times. For the first two sessions, we'll see 15% SOC to 90% SOC in 30 to 40 minutes, with a flat 45-50kw curve all the way to the low 90s SOC. The third charge is 15-minute splash-and-dash/bathroom break. The great thing about the frequency of stopping to charge every 90 minutes is you can drink caffeine the whole day. The fastest we've made the journey is 7 hours, door-to-door.

The only Tesla Superchargers that work with the i3 need an adapter, called a "MagicDock." These are built-in to the stations, which, unfortunately, are still few and far between in North America. https://www.plugshare.com/map/tesla-ccs-locations. BMW is working on CCS adapters, but they're currently unavailable in the U.S.

 

[eNate]

My cross country experience with the i3 was good -- educational, problem free, and thoroughly enjoyable despite the compressed schedule (1,700 miles over 48 hours).

https://www.mybmwi3.com/threads/1700-miles-in-48-hours-120-ah-bev.17445/

My suggestion is only to have a basic plan figure out on ABRP, which it sounds like you already have. It took me most of my trip to dial in a 4.5 mi/kWh efficiency that finally caused ABRP to begin accurately tracking what I was actually seeing on my display. ABRP's stock value at the time was in the low 3's and way, way off.

I rolled into a few charging sites in the low digits and never really sweated it. My "backup plan," if you can call it that, was an AAA card that would get me to the next (or, I guess, prior) charging spot. Fortunately, not needed, and every CPO is pretty well networked that you ought to be able to know ahead of time whether any particular site is up or down vis Plug Share or that provider's website. I've found BMW Nav's internal data to be pretty good in this regard, but not batting 1000 and missing some finer details.

DC charging above about 85% is an awful time suck and should generally be avoided, unless the leg distance calls for it or if you have the time to kill, i.e. attending to other activities. An overnight L1 or L2 topping off to 100% is great if available and convenient, but not anything I would seek out if it involved extra hassle, expense, or diverting from the route (to detour to an out-of-the-way hotel, for instance).

Oh, based on what your route planning spits out, try to figure out if you can stick primarily with one or two DC providers and sign up for their premium membership to save a few cents per kWh at the charger.

 

[Mondomensch]

…
Oh, based on what your route planning spits out, try to figure out if you can stick primarily with one or two DC providers and sign up for their premium membership to save a few cents per kWh at the charger.

Here in the south SF Bay Area, I’ve found that local cities often have a few publicly available fast DC CCS chargers in their municipal centers that have kWh costs 1/2 or even 1/3 of the normal commercial chargers, even though the municipal charger may be operated by a big commercial network.

For example, the Los Altos civic center has a ChargePoint DC charger that costs $0.33/kWh, and adjacent level 2 AC chargers that are free for now as they were just installed a month ago.