CCS1 adapter

[MorryG]

Hello community
You have all been so helpful. We are still planning a trip from Chicago to California in the winter.

My brother just loaned us a CCS1 adapter for the trip. What do we need to know. Are there some networks with better coverage that we should join?

Is there an app as helpful as the Tesla app at monitoring your battery charge? I suspect not. Is there an easy way to link your Tesla trip planner to other network charging stations or must you add them as a separate destination?

Thank you as always for the community insights.

 

[avs007]

When I use CCS on roadtrips, the easiest way is to use ABRP to plan the trips to see where the CCS chargers are, as the built in Nav won't route you to CCS chargers. Since I was primarily using EA, I use the EA app to see where the EA chargers are along my entire route... Then I use the built in nav to plan the route, and see what SC it wants me to go to... Then I try to find a nearby EA charger to that SC, and manually navigate to it. (At least in the summer, as I didn't need to precondition the batteries in the summer. When it's colder, I let it navigate to SC so it can precondition, but I have my phone navigation set to the EA charger I'm actually going to).

A bit clunky, but when I road tripped from Seattle to San Jose last summer, I was able to save $40 each way by doing that... As I made the same road trip twice... First time I used mostly EA, and spent $54 in charging each way... Second time, I predominantly only used SC, and paid $92 for the same journey each way.

When driving, I just had the energy graph up, and was watching my consumption that way....

 

[wws]

Both major routes (I-80 and I-44/I-40/I-15) are pretty well covered by Superchargers. So consider CCS to be a backup, or perhaps some cost savings. Plugshare and ABRP are your friends for finding CCS sites and using them in route planning.

EA covers both routes fairly well - except for Wyoming. You'll be using Superchargers in Wyoming.

EVgo and Chargepoint locations are more clustered. EVgo has an advantage of Autocharge+. Once you get your EVgo account correctly paired up with your car, you can simply plug it and charging commences. Just like a Supercharger. Also SOME EVgos are already shown in the Tesla nav display. These tend to be the sites with the integrated Tesla CHAdeMO adapters.

Depending on where you go, there may be other charging networks to consider. Again, look at plugshare to figure all of it out.

A downside is that these CCS sites generally have a limited number of stalls compared to the Supercharger sites. Often times they are broken. And you are competing with non-Teslas for the stalls that are working. So unless desperate, it may not be worth it to save a couple bucks on the charge compared to a nearby Supercharger.