April 2024 Road Trip, Day 1

2 April 2024

It’s an exciting day as this was the first day of my first road trip in the EV. The weather is far from ideal — temps are in the upper 40s and I drove half the afternoon in rain — but the car performed as well as I could expect in these conditions.

I opted for a conservative approach to charging and stopped twice on the 238-mile drive from Springfield MA to Syracuse NY. Stop #1 was in Rensselaer NY, next to Albany, at a Walmart. Charging back up to 80% gave me enough time to use the bathroom and chat for a couple of minutes with a Hyundai IONIQ 5 owner who was just starting to charge when I got back to my car. Stop #2 was at a Denny’s in Herkimer NY where the car charged while I waited for a takeout order (as the brewery I was visiting in Syracuse was BYOF). The car was done before the food was!

Both stops were at Electrify America chargers so these were at no cost to me. The first was a 350kW charger that delivered a max of 105kW to the car; the second was a 50kW charger that delivered a max of 108kW! How strange these things are. Currently, I’m plugged in at my hotel, slow-charging overnight to be at 100% for the morning when I’ll pre-heat the car on the charger’s dime before heading out on the highway.

Here is the summary for this point in the trip. Based on the car’s EPA range estimates, I would expect 2.8m/kWh on the highway, so I’m very happy with 3.0m/kWh at mostly 71mph in this temperature!

Finally, this is the view out my window at the hotel showing the state of the weather along with my car plugged in: