It's not range anxiety...

...it's infrastructure anxiety, specifically available and working charger anxiety we have.

credit to Matt Farah and his YT video traveling with his Mach-E for coining the phrase.

TLR While ChargePoint and Electrify America apps seem good at identifying charging stations and their status, what happens if you show up and none are available? Especially if it's L2 ChargePoint. Relying on the current, modest charging infrastructure for beyond out and back range (~35-45 miles out on our SEs) does cause some anxiety!

The stories.
I had a trip to Portsmouth, NH planned, about 77miles from my home (quaint NE town, still with an original vibe you you want to visit). So take the ICE car or the SE?, with the SE unlikely to do the round trip without a charge. Checked ChargePoint and there seemed to be a few L2 chargers available, some at the city's parking lots, but it wasn't clear if they were open on a Sunday. Took the SE and found 2 chargers at a commercial parking place, neither occupied so all good, plugged in. I think we arrived with about 25 miles left on the GOM. 22.6948kWh and $4.95 later moved the car to prevent a "occupier" pricing that ChargePoint kindly notified me about. We were there about 6 hours total so plenty of time to top up. Anyway, not concerned about getting home and neither was my wife who was driving, err, seeing the number 95 at one point while overtaking, maybe it was I-95, maybe not!

Story 2
Being emboldened, yesterday decided to take the SE to North Hampton, MA, an 85 mile trip each way for a visit to Smith College with daughter. Found some Electrify America charging spots on the route, which could have worked, but at least 1/4 was noted as being down on the app and all others were occupied when I checked. The EA chargers were also quoted at 56c/kWh - ouch. But I found several L2 chargers at Smith so was able to use one of those. Arrived with about 30 miles left, which was better than I had initially thought watching the range drop as we motored along I-90.

Car wasn't quite fully charged when we left Smith and went over to Mt Holyoke in South Hadley. Amusingly, while about an 11 mile drive on country roads the GOM showed no loss of range on the drive. Found 4 ChargePoints right behind the Mt Holyoke admission office with a Tesla MY in one spot - perfect. This was another one of those chargers that upped the occupying price to $5/hr after 5 hours along with whatever juice goes in the car. We were only there for about 90 minutes and put only 6.0541kWh (love all those decimal places from ChargePoint) for $1.51 while Smith charged me $3.39 for 20.8751kWh, pretty good rate for MA. These 2 journeys were the first time I've paid for juice!

Bonus. I hadn't driven Eddie the SE at highway speeds before and took over halfway home from daughter. Eddie has some real pickup in the 75-90mph range when deciding to move past some slower traffic - joy! Got home with 43 miles showing.

Overall, I decided to take the chance with the SE and hope chargers were available. There are no L3 at Portsmouth and having to sit and wait for a L2 would have been painful. But it all worked out and both journeys were fun and emission free (or emissions transferred to the power plant).

One travesty is the the MA turnpike (toll road) has multiple service centers along the route and NO EV charging at present, although plans are in the works, but come on MA DOT!

Hope you enjoyed the burble
MacMini34

 

Who did that video? I must have watched every YT video I could find on the SE before pulling the trigger. I think it was "Harry's Garage" that finally tipped the point 'cos he chirped the tires a few times, giggled and confirmed the SE still had great driving dynamics. Too many other YT videos were just repeats of specs with little input on the driving.

Around where I live I'd have to go out at 5am on a Sunday morning to get some fun driving, but I have also discovered some of the worst drivers that exist are about early in the morning

cheers
MacMini34