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33 Months of EV driving...

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I recently spent a month in the Los Angeles area and was getting between 4 and 8 miles/kWh in the Lighting---avoiding the freeways is both faster and more efficient (cheaper). At 4 miles/kWh, I can get 4 miles/kWh*131 kWh = 525 miles; at 8 miles/kWh, I can get >1,000 miles. Many times I returned "home" from a 40 mile round trip errand-run with less than 5% of the battery used. I did have an elderly family member in the vehicle, so I was especially careful about fast starts and stops. But it showed me what was possible even in an "inefficient" truck. No, I'm not saying everyone will get this. And this is obviously not road trip mileage. But it's certainly possible with careful driving.

I'm home now. We're finally getting snow in our mountain town (we're about 50+ inches below normal right now, so I haven't had much opportunity to test the Lightning in the snow). The Lightning shows itself to be fantastic in another way: its performance in snow and on ice is just incredible even with the low-quality OEM tires.
 
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SpaceEVDriver said:
I recently spent a month in the Los Angeles area and was getting between 4 and 8 miles/kWh in the Lighting---avoiding the freeways is both faster and more efficient (cheaper). At 4 miles/kWh, I can get 4 miles/kWh*131 kWh = 525 miles; at 8 miles/kWh, I can get >1,000 miles. Many times I returned "home" from a 40 mile round trip errand-run with less than 5% of the battery used. I did have an elderly family member in the vehicle, so I was especially careful about fast starts and stops. But it showed me what was possible even in an "inefficient" truck. No, I'm not saying everyone will get this. And this is obviously not road trip mileage. But it's certainly possible with careful driving.

I'm home now. We're finally getting snow in our mountain town (we're about 50+ inches below normal right now, so I haven't had much opportunity to test the Lightning in the snow). The Lightning shows itself to be fantastic in another way: its performance in snow and on ice is just incredible even with the low-quality OEM tires.
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That’s useful data. Speed has a much bigger effect on efficiency for an ev than for an ice car, and range estimates seem to be focused on freeway speeds. When you’re traveling 30-40mph it can make a big difference in your range.
 
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oldgeeksguide said:
That’s useful data. Speed has a much bigger effect on efficiency for an ev than for an ice car, and range estimates seem to be focused on freeway speeds. When you’re traveling 30-40mph it can make a big difference in your range.
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Yeah. The heat-waste energy losses by an ICE are so high that while it's the same physics for loss at speed, there's such a large base inefficiency that it's not as obvious to ICEs when driving at higher speeds.

The EPA "test cycle" weights the city 55% and highway 45%. But the "test" is more of an applied model. The manufacturers don't drive the vehicle in the real world, they run the test on a dynometer and then apply one of several reduction factors (usually a simple 70% multiplier) to account for wind resistance and "aggressive driving" at highway speeds.
 
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My wife has had a Tesla model Y for the past two years. It’s a great car and she doesn’t miss having a gas vehicle at all. We absolutely love taking it on road trips because it’s such an easy drive. With kids, the charge time on road trips isn’t a big deal at all. Like others have said, by the time we use the restroom, get a snack, walk the dog for a second, the charging is usually done. If not, we play some games in the car for a few minutes. As others have said, adapters are great. We hook up at my FIL’s house in the mountains on his RV hookup. We have the absolute lowest level charger that we use at our own home. My wife drives to work and is usually the one to take the kids to all their activities. She typically only has to charge a couple times a week. Charleston only has one super charger and it’s not close to our house. We assumed we may have to go and use it every once in a while, but that hasn’t been the case at all. Her work will pay for an upgraded wall charger, but with only one EV, we just keep putting off the install since we really don’t have a need and we wanted to see where the tech settled as the standard charging port in case we ever got a second vehicle. If any of you are worried about getting an EV, I can’t say enough about how easy it is has been for us.
 
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This week my partner decided to drive the Lightning instead of the Mustang. Our road is gravel and very dusty. She has an important business meeting later this week and, in an effort to avoid another car wash visit, she isn't driving the car until it's time to leave for the meeting. She's been parking the truck in the driveway instead of in the workshop where its charger lives. We haven't bothered charging the truck in a little over a week. The truck is currently at 65% and I think she has one more day of driving before taking the Mustang down the mountain. I'll charge up sometime Thursday night or Friday and meet her down there after work on Friday.

The non-worry is very similar to having a gassy vehicle, except when I do charge, it'll take all of 30 seconds to drive the truck to the workshop and plug in, instead of 15+ minutes to go to a gas station to refuel.
 
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A typical day in the life of using my EVs for travel:

Sitting in my office, I remembered that I have a trip coming up this afternoon. I'll be driving about 400 miles round trip, starting at 7000 feet elevation, going down to about 1000 feet elevation, and then climbing back up.

The truck is plugged in, as it usually is.
I opened up my phone, opened the Ford app, and told it to charge the truck to 100%.
I won't be leaving for several more hours. By the time I'm ready to go, the truck will be fully charged (it'll be fully charged in about 20 minutes).

There's no need to take time out of my day before the trip to go fill up. The nearest gas station is 15 minutes from my home, so that would be a minimum of 35 minutes taken out of my day to run to the station to fill up and then come home before I leave. There are no gas stations between my home and the freeway, so it would also be 30-ish minutes, minimum, to stop at the gas station to fill up "on the way out."

Sometime during the trip I will need to get a recharge. But I'm staying overnight at a hotel and will likely charge there. If not, the event I'm going to tomorrow will be near several banks of chargers and I wouldn't be surprised if the event itself has portable chargers. If none of those work, I can stop at my usual charging stop on the way back up the mountain while I'm grabbing dinner.

Mostly, I'm happy I don't have to run to get gas before I leave. Having access to a home charger is one of the biggest benefits of driving an EV. It'll cost about $0.45 to charge from the truck's 90% usual charge level to 100%, but more importantly, it'll cost 0 minutes.
 
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SpaceEVDriver said:
A typical day in the life of using my EVs for travel:

Sitting in my office, I remembered that I have a trip coming up this afternoon. I'll be driving about 400 miles round trip, starting at 7000 feet elevation, going down to about 1000 feet elevation, and then climbing back up.

The truck is plugged in, as it usually is.
I opened up my phone, opened the Ford app, and told it to charge the truck to 100%.
I won't be leaving for several more hours. By the time I'm ready to go, the truck will be fully charged (it'll be fully charged in about 20 minutes).

There's no need to take time out of my day before the trip to go fill up. The nearest gas station is 15 minutes from my home, so that would be a minimum of 35 minutes taken out of my day to run to the station to fill up and then come home before I leave. There are no gas stations between my home and the freeway, so it would also be 30-ish minutes, minimum, to stop at the gas station to fill up "on the way out."

Sometime during the trip I will need to get a recharge. But I'm staying overnight at a hotel and will likely charge there. If not, the event I'm going to tomorrow will be near several banks of chargers and I wouldn't be surprised if the event itself has portable chargers. If none of those work, I can stop at my usual charging stop on the way back up the mountain while I'm grabbing dinner.

Mostly, I'm happy I don't have to run to get gas before I leave. Having access to a home charger is one of the biggest benefits of driving an EV. It'll cost about $0.45 to charge from the truck's 90% usual charge level to 100%, but more importantly, it'll cost 0 minutes.
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Your updates have been great for the forum and I genuinely believe you are a big reason people are considering BEV. Appreciate the time you spend typing for all of us
 
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I'm such a nerd about this stuff, it's fun to just think about and then write about it.

We're going to the Electrify Expo tomorrow, where I hope to drive the Lucid Gravity. I was hoping Scout Motors would be here, but I know they have a limited number of mules they can ship around.
 
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SpaceEVDriver said:
Inside the event are a bunch of other EVs, including bikes, motorcycles, ATVs, scooters, and other EV cars. Lucid, Jeep, Dodge, etc.
Some are offering test drives.
Pretty neat.
Click to expand...
Now we're at Trader Joe's. Have a fridge plugged into the truck, so we can get our favorite cold and frozen foods without worrying about the 2.5 hour drive back up the mountain.
 
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Just got home.
After TJ's, I plugged in my home address and asked Google to route me home. Google was very worried that I would arrive home with -20% charge so it very helpfully routed me to a charger. I didn't think I'd need it, but I decided to try stopping at a new-to-me charger five minutes away from TJ's. That charger was full, so I happily hopped back on the freeway and asked Google again what it thought. It was still very worried that I would arrive with -20%, so offered up another stop (actually, it offered two stops, which makes zero sense. Google has worse range anxiety than a real person). So, I let it route me to a V4 brand-T charger. Those have nice, long charging cables, so I was able to use only one charging stall. I put in 25% charge so I could convince Google that I would arrive home with 5%. Google was still worried, but stopped nagging me.

I arrived home with 21% charge. Sigh.

Even the robots are trying to give us anxiety.
 
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