Pre-trip:
After a successful Texas to Colorado EV road trip this summer, my wife and I decided to forgo our PHEV Volvo and take the Lightning up to Omaha for Thanksgiving. Although I was a little concerned with the lower temperatures up north, after creating a route in ABRP I was confident the truck would be able to make the trip. With our dog and an 8-month-old along for the ride, the goal of this trip was not to min-max charging and stop time but to simply arrive with all passengers happy and not stranded on the side of the road. We made more stops than if we didn’t have the baby with us and I typically charged the truck to at least 80% instead of leaving once I had the minimum charge needed to reach the next charger. Even with the extra charging time, the truck was usually ready to go before we were. This will probably change once our son is older, but the baby helps mask the Lightning’s longer charging time to 80%. In an ICE, the trip to Omaha from Austin is a 12-hour drive on paper without stops and about 13.5 hours with stops and traffic. In the Lightning, ABRP predicted 16 hours. We opted to break the trip into two days with a stop overnight in Oklahoma City each way.
I purchased a month of EA Pass+ for the discount pricing. It saved me a significant amount of money on my Colorado trip, and I highly recommend you sign up before any road trip you take. Although EA has a reputation of being unreliable/slow, that was not my experience on the last road trip, but I didn’t keep great records of each stop. I felt my experience was too subjective. This time around I kept very detailed records of each charge to better quantify the quality of the DCFC sessions.
The truck:
- 2022 Lariat ER
- Cold tire pressure set to 47 psi
- Approximately 500 lbs. of humans, dogs, and cargo
- Tonneau coverage installed over the bed to secure the luggage
- 80% of the frunk was taken up by a stroller which we only used once
- HVAC set to 65F and auto setting 1 the entire trip
- Charged up to 100% with a departure time set for the initial leg of the trip
- I capped my speed at 75 mph but would bump up to 77 mph if I needed a little extra speed to pass. For highways with a speed limit of less than 75 mph, I would drive 2-3 mph over the speed limit.
- I used the Ford Navigation system between DCFCs in order to take advantage of in route pre-conditioning
Trip summary:
- 1,928.6 miles travelled (including miles around town in Omaha)
- 1.7 mi/kWh average – Best: 2.3 (Dallas to Denton, TX) – Worst: 1.2 (Blackwell , OK to Wichita, KS)
- 14 DCFC stops during travel, 3 DCFC stops in town, and 2 AC charges in town
- $311.05 spent at EA for 1,064kWh (Average of $0.29/kWh)
- $98.87 saved with a pass+ membership
- $5.99 spent at Chargepoint DCFC for 57kWh (Average of $0.11/kWh)
- $0.62 spent at Chargepoint AC chargers for 14kWh (One session was free – Average of $0.04/kWh)
- $317.66 spent in total for 1,135kWh (Average of $0.28/kWh)
- 5 nights of 120v charging for 64kWh (Nothing is free, but it was free)
- Total time charging during travel: 7 hours and 56 minutes – 213 miles per hour of charging
- Average DCFC time: 34 minutes – Longest: 57 minutes – Shortest: 13 minutes
- Average miles driven between DCFC: 116 – Longest: 160 – Shortest: 65
- Average kWh used: 62 – Max: 100 – Min:41
- Average kWh added: 61 – Max: 105 – Min: 24
Before I move on to the trip report, just for fun, let’s say I drove a Power boost F150 with a 24mpg average and an average fuel price of $2.87
- 1,928.6mi / 24mpg = 80.36 gallons
- 80.36 * $2.87 = $230.63 fuel cost
- $87.03 more to drive my lightning. This is not surprising with how affordable gas is in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. I didn’t buy this truck to save money on an occasional road trip so no big deal. The savings in fuel are realized when I charge at home. And if we want to get real about “saving”, don’t buy an $80K truck. That’s a different conversation though.
The Trip: I’ll start out with a text narrative of the trip and will follow up with a technical breakdown of each charging stop for those who enjoy that level of detail.
Austin to Omaha:
Day 1:
We left Austin with a 100% charge and a warm, toasty cabin. The outside temperature was about 50F. Efficiency was great all through Texas, about 2 mi/kWh. We had two charging stops in Texas, Waco (Bellmead) and Denton. The only charging mishap for the day was a mild one. In Denton the charger derated from 160 to 80kW five minutes into the charge. I switched cables on the cabinet and the rest of the session was great maxing at 172kW. We hung around in Denton longer than we normally would to walk over to get some lunch at Chick-Fil-A. This did allow us to charge all the way up to 91%. Once we crossed into Oklahoma, efficiency took a nosedive due to a 15-mph head wind, averaging 1.6 mi/kWh. Despite the low efficiency and because of the high SoC upon departure, we made it all the way up to Oklahoma City where we ended the day with one more charge in Moore before heading to our AirBnB for the night. A few charging observations from the first day: All cabinets were fully operational at all three stations. I had no connection issues. Except for the one temporary derating in Denton, I was getting good speeds. The charging stations were not busy at all, and all chargers were operational, with no indication of reduced speeds.
Day 2:
There was a 120v outlet available to use so I was able to charge an additional 10% SoC overnight, leaving with 86% in the morning. After a quick stop at Starbucks, we turned north towards our destination. It was a chilly day starting off in the low 30s and only warmed to about 40F in the afternoon. The headwind woes continued and would gradually get stronger through the remainder of the trip, starting at 14mph in the morning and peaking at 18mph in the afternoon. We averaged a whooping 1.35 mi/kWh! Despite the cold weather and strong winds, we never got into an uncomfortably low SoC situation, but I did get a bit of range anxiety during one of the segments as the GoM and arrival distance were edging towards each other quite quickly. Maybe one day, and I won’t hold my breath, Ford will implement wind speed into its range estimations like Tesla does. We had a total of 4 charging stops this day with one of them being a lower powered 62.5kW ChargePoint unit. We stopped at this site, not because we needed the charge, but because the baby was extremely fussy and needed a 30-minute break. It was also on this day that I started getting the air dam fault message for the first time ever. Not sure if that means the air dam wasn’t working the entire time but it could have contributed towards the lower efficiency. Charging wise, it was a boring day. No connection issues, the chargers were not busy, and I was getting good speeds. In terms of site availability, out of the three EA sites we stopped at, one site had one charger at reduced capacity, and another had one charger out of order. We arrived in Omaha with 22% SoC remaining with a total trip efficiency of 1.5 mi/kWh.
As mentioned in the pre-trip section, ABRP estimated 16 hours of total travel time. The actual total travel time was 17 hours and 15 minutes. Despite the wind and cold, charging speed and efficiency was not the major limiting factor here. I believe we would have been much closer to the estimated 16 hours if it wasn’t for the chick-fil-a side trip in Denton and the unplanned baby meltdown on day two. (We’ve asked him to schedule his meltdowns going forward) ABRP estimated 3 hour and 29 mins of charging. The actual time spent charging was 4 hour and 14 mins.
Omaha to Austin:
Day 1:
Burr…it was a chilly morning at 27F and it barely got above freezing by the end of the first day. We left our AirBnB where I had been L1 charging during our stay with 81% SoC but stopped at the Council Bluffs, IA EA station on our way out of town just to top up and warm the battery for the 160 mile stretch to Topeka, KS. Efficiency was decent for how cold it was, 1.6 mi/kWh. We made it to Topeka, starting with 84% and ending with 8%. 76% is by far the largest SoC discharge I’ve experienced. I had a slight amount of range anxiety about halfway through but as we got closer it was clear to see the truck was going to make it. South of Topeka the weather took a turn for the worst. At first there was a light snow. Over the next 30 minutes it started snowing much harder and quickly turned into a slush fest on the salty roads. At its worst, visibility got down to about 100m which in all wasn’t that bad. The slippery conditions were what concerned me as the stock AS tires clearly didn’t excel in winter conditions. Every time I switched lanes, I could feel them slightly loosing traction over the line of slush. Early on, BlueCruise continued to work great even when the snow got heavier. Unfortunately, all my sensors were eventually covered in ice, disabling adaptive cruise control. Pretty soon after, conditions got too icy for cruise control, so it didn’t matter anyways, and I opted to drive manually. While I am just a humble, fair weathered Texan, I have been driving up to Omaha for many years and this was far from my first time driving in adverse winter conditions. This was my first time taking an EV though and I made the huge mistake of leaving 1PD driving on. The feeling of letting off the throttle and skidding forward with no traction was not pleasant. 60 miles later and after passing 6 different accidents, we made it to the Wichita EA. The rest of the trip was smooth sailing. The snow quickly turned into rain and my sensors started working again. We made it to our AirBnB in Oklahoma City safe and sound. Charging on day 1 was rather uneventful. We made 4 charging stops, only one site had a broken charger, and I was getting good speeds. I was nervous about it due to being a post-holiday travel day, but I never had to wait to charge. With that said, the Topeka site did fill up with one ID.4 waiting while I was there but the Ionic 5 next to me left soon after allowing them to take the spot.
Day 2:
Our AirBnB for the night had a garage but naturally it was about 6” short of being able to fit my truck. Due to this, I was unable to charge the truck overnight, leaving us with an ice-cold battery the next morning. The day started off in the high 20s but eventually warmed up to about 50F as we drove further south. The plan was to charge at the Moore EA station on the way out of town which was a 20-minute drive from the AirBnB. Starting off, the battery temp gauge was slightly to the left of the center line. By the time we arrived, there was just a sliver of space between the bar and the center line. Preconditioning in route seemed to have some effect because the charging speed immediately jumped up to 133kW. Charging wise, this trip was very boring. As with the entire trip, all the EA sites were working beautifully. What was not boring was the heavy traffic. South of Dallas we hit a few patches of slow going, bumper to bumper traffic. BlueCruise worked beautifully here. I set the distance to three bars and let the truck do its thing, keeping me in the lane and maintaining a large gap between us and the car in front. We had a total of three charging stops on this trip. The first two we were able to pull right in and charge. The third and final charge in Waco was a different story. We pull up and every charger was occupied along with 4 EVs already there waiting. There were a group of people standing outside so I went and spoke with them to confirm the line order. Everyone was friendly and despite even more EVs rolling in as we waited, no one tried to cut the line as far as I could tell. We ended up waiting about 20 minutes until it was our turn. We only charged for 15 minutes to create a small buffer and got the heck out of dodge. Another 2 hours of heavy traffic and we were finally home.
ABRP’s estimate of the return trip was 16 hours and 15 minutes. Our actual trip time was 18 hours and 15 minutes. As with the trip to Omaha, charging wasn’t the issue. It was wholly due to the bad weather on day one and heavy traffic on day 2. ABRP estimated 3 hours and 33 minutes of charging time. Our actual charging time was 3 hours and 42 minutes.
Charging Report: Below is a detailed charging report for each segment of the trip for those who are into that kind of thing.
Opinions and Observations:
- Hands-free BlueCruise is amazing on the open interstate and no other EV outside of the Mach-E provides a true hands-free driving experience. Having to hold, wiggle, or in any way interact with the steering wheel on some regular cadence is not hands-free and I feel like some people don’t appreciate this distinction. Yes, AutoPilot may be more mature and competent, but no, it is not hands-free. I will die on this hill.
- The Lightning may be inefficient, but it has a big enough battery to easily reach the next charger. It has more cargo space than I know what to do with and is unrivaled when it comes to cabin space.
- The Lightning may also not be the fastest charging vehicle available, but I bought it not for the 5% of the year I spend traveling, but for the 95% of the year I’m at home.
- At many charging stops, I repeatedly noticed people struggle to initiate a charge. What this tells me is that the non-Tesla networks are too complicated for the average driver. A universal plug and charge experience is needed before mass adoption can occur.
- I’ve continued to not have issues with EA in my travels, either with charger uptime or speed. Much of my long-distance driving is along the I-35 corridor, so I am fortunate that the EA sites I use have been reliable. I do recognize that not everyone has this experience and it may be geographically dependent.
Great report! Nice work! Have also talked to many people having issues with non-Tesla chargers.