Feb 8 - 9 Roadtrip Annapolis MD to Wilton CT and back
Thank you for the comments!
I very much enjoyed reading here about other people's fun
We are currently actually on a road trip as I write this (SO is driving ) from Annapolis Maryland to Wilton Connecticut this weekend and currently on the way back to Annapolis.
We have had many of the same experiences mentioned above but in particular I'm laughing because no one mentioned the fact thay I'm freezing my ass off at this moment driving down 95 after a full charge in New Jersey and now looking at about a hundred and nine miles of range before we get to the Chesapeake or Maryland house with the wonderful high speed free chargers. So far this morning after starting with a full charge of only a hundred eighty miles (wondering where my 230 mile range went!!) in New Jersey at the Wyndham just off of the turnpike. We've only gone about 50 miles and we have used another 30 miles of charge trying to stay warm! Currently it's about 25 degrees out.
Frequently turning off the heater to extend the range.
Probably the most exciting part of our trip occurred last nightat around midnight when we went over the GW Bridge and Waze instructed us to take the lower level. Only to find out that it was actually closed right before we got on to the bridge and we were then routed on to the Henry Hudson parkway. This would have been anxious under any circumstances but in this case, we had calculated our distance almost to within 15 miles of the Molly Pitcher rest stop so naturally we freaked out!!!! Fortunately the detour was relatively brief (less than 5 miles) so we were able to make it to the New Jersey Turnpike charging station without a tow truck!! But with 10 miles of electric fumes remaining.
Shame on Waze for not knowing that the lower-level was closed!
Lesson learned needed more margin of safety! Which we would have happily had had the Chevy dealer in Wilton CT had had a functioning DC charger . The charging station we ended up using in Darien Connecticut seemed exceedingly slow. We gave it about 45 minutes and still had barely enough range to get to Molly Pitcher. Some of the other big lessons learned had to do with the fact that you only get 30 minutes of charging at the evgo stations and then they turn off.
Also that some Stations don't reliably finished charging even for 30 minutes and will cut off prematurely. Additionally pretty disappointed in the Chevy dealer charging Network. All in all evgo was our savior, their stations worked reliably and in particular last night's Tech was wonderfully supportive.
Clearly the only way to know what is possible is to attempt it. But... there were some surprises. First that 30 minutes doesn't get you anywhere near full charge we typically saw about 50 miles of range in 30 minutes at the fast Chargers just to be clear these are the level three DC Chargers I'm talking about! The next challenge was that waiting for the Chargers to complete especially the ones that failed caused us to end up in much worse traffic than originally anticipated so our trip from Annapolis to Wilton Connecticut which frequently takes us about three and a half hours ended up taking us over 6 hours. But I guess we should be happy that we made it at all without freezing our butts off or a tow truck!!!
Probably the biggest surprise was fortunately that there was no competition for the charging stations they were all readily available. I suspect that will change! I also cannot imagine doing this in a vehicle with any less range than the bolt. For example my understanding is a Nissan Leaf is about a hundred miles of range that would have literally doubled the number of times we would have had to stop for charging and we might not have been able to go from point A to point B at all without significant detours and or relatively fast charging. Also a quick look at plugshare shows me that there are no fast charging stations currently available on 95 basically from Richmond to Florida. Definitely some work needed there! Kudos to Royal Farms by the way they clearly have an impressive number of DC charging stations already operational in Maryland. Based on our observations adding charging stations would definitely be a competitive advantage for hotels. We specifically picked the Wyndham for that reason and have never stayed in one before. The other big surprise was that we could not specify more than 30 minutes of charge at one time on the evgo charging stations. We understand that will change but for now that's a biggie because after our experience we really wanted to get some sleep at 1:30 a.m. understandbly after our challenging day! But had to trigger the charge for the second time in the middle of the night.
Just arrived at Chesapeake House... charging station available!!!! Yippee! But seriously looking to get warm and breakfast! Arrived here with 95 miles of charge remaining.
We stopped at Maryland house on the way up and ended up only getting about 10 minutes of charge initially because the station cycled off prematurely. Switching to a different charger did the trick but cost us an extra 30 minutes. Definitely hoping we won't have that experience again!
I just went back out into the cold to double-check all is fine this time. Whew!
Another lesson learned, plugshare is a wonderfully impressive app also the evgo app works quite well too. But Chevy definitely needs to do more to make their stations both accessible and fast.
Here is a photo of the two bolts ( mine and a stranger's) currently charging at the Maryland house stations.
My SO is trying to make a 9:30 meeting in downtown Baltimore so rushing to make it with fingers crossed!! All in all it was a fun adventure and I am very appreciative that my SO was willing to give this a try. Part of our logic was that it would be fun to compare our experiences this time with the same trip 2 years from now! I’m excited about this future and love my Bolt!
