Road trips and charging EVs

This is Jesse Dovi from Dovi Motors in Cortland, NY and in this final article it is time to learn about public charging and road trips in your EV. If you missed my earlier articles, be sure to visit TompkinsWeekly.com and search “Jesse Dovi” to catch up.   

Thank you so much for reading along with me over the last few months. We have spent a day in the life of owning an EV, talked about winter driving and charging, and today we are going on a road trip. My first road trip in an EV was from Cortland to Rochester. A few days before I was going to leave, I realized, “oh no, I need to figure out where I’m going to charge.” I had read a lot about EV charging but didn’t have any firsthand experience. I searched for the Fordpass app on my cell phone and found that there was a level two public charger near my house, so I drove down to check it out. This was a Charge Point brand unit and there wasn’t any way to use a credit card reader to pay. Instead, I had to download the ChargePoint app on my cell phone, then purchase a minimum of a $10 charge card, which was then stored in my “Apple Wallet” on my phone. While the process wasn’t difficult, it did take a number of steps to complete. Fortunately, everything worked and 10 minutes later I was charging my Mach-e at a public charging station. The charger maxed out at about 6KWh, which is a very slow charge, so after about 15 minutes I decided I had done enough waiting and headed home. 

That night I plugged into my home charger to get the battery up to 100 percent and I set the car to precondition the next morning, so that the cabin and battery would be warmed up before I left. I also found a couple of locations along my route in the FordPass app with level three fast chargers. I made sure to log into my connected services account with Ford and claim the 250KWh of free fast charging that came with the car, and I downloaded the Plug Share app on my cell phone.  Plug Share is a third-party app that is kind of like a social media app for EV charging. It is nice because people report when chargers are broken or slow so that hopefully you don’t drive to a charging station just to find it is in a shady place or doesn’t work. In case you haven’t noticed yet, public charging with an EV involves a lot of apps! 

The next morning I drove up to Rochester and took care of my business there. Once complete I had about 40 percent of the battery life left, or a little over 100 miles of range. I could have driven straight home and I might have made it, but there definitely was the possibility of cutting it too close, so I headed over to an Electrify America fast charger that was nearby. There were a total of three stations with two plugs each, and there were two cars already charging. These chargers had two different style plugs, one of which was the one I needed. I took the large heavy plug and inserted it into the special DC charge port on my vehicle. Fortunately, everything worked!  The charger was able to automatically detect my VIN number and connect to my FordPass account to see that I had 250KW of charging available. It initiated the fast charging and began adding energy to the battery at a rate of 125KWh. This is 20 times faster than what I was getting at the charger near my house! 

The chargers were in a plaza that included many stores like Wal-Mart, GameStop, and most importantly Five Guys Burgers and Fries! I walked away from my vehicle and headed over to pick up some fries and a milkshake. After getting the order I sat down to enjoy and my phone notified me that the charge had reached 80 percent and that the charge rate would begin to slow down. I finished up my food and headed out. When I arrived at my vehicle the charge station indicated that my battery was at 89 percent and it was now charging at just 25KWh. As the battery gets closer to 100 percent the charging slows down, so fast charging is only intended to get the vehicle to 80 percent or 90 percent capacity. I unplugged the charger, and it automatically deducted the KWh from my FordPass account and my car indicated over 200 miles of range. Now I didn’t have to worry about running out of energy before getting home.  

I realized that this is a simple trip, and many people will have much farther to go with much more complicated charging requirements, but I think the experience will help you to understand some important points about EV charging. First, smartphones and apps are very important when it comes to charging. This is a very different experience than going to a gas station.  Second, you must do some pre-planning before you go on a trip. You can’t just jump in the car and expect to find charging on every corner. You will have to map out your route and then do some research via apps to find out the best places to charge on your way.   

I hope that you have enjoyed this 4 part series on electric vehicles and remember to look up myself, Jesse Dovi or my cousin Luke Dovi at Dovi Motors in Cortland to get the best real life advice on how to navigate the complex landscape of electric vehicles!