Help w/ planning day trip: how to interpret Blink/Plugshare status?

[Colasec]

A few San Diego owners are planning an impromptu meetup in Julian tomorrow (TM post). I'd love to meet them, but Julian is 120 miles from my home. I have a 60 kWh, so I need to charge to get home.

Both Plugshare and Blink show a set of Blink chargers in nearby Santa Ysabel.

A comment on Plugshare says

"blink plugs all not operable 7/29/13. Called Blink and reported entire Santa Ysabel system down. We did not continue to Julian due to this. Returned to Ramona and charged then headed home."

The BlinkMap shows:

Is the BlinkMap info accurate? If it says the DC Fast Chargers are working, does that mean they're actually working? Is it possible that the Plugshare commenter is talking about only the Level 2 chargers? Or are the DC Fast Chargers associated with the Level 2 chargers and the Level 2 chargers need to be working for the Fast Chargers to work? I don't have any experience yet with planning road trips that require charging. If I call Blink, will I get an accurate, up-to-date answer?


Can I charge my Model S on the Blink DC Fast Chargers as a guest with the J1772 adapter? Or do I need a membership? Or a special adapter?

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Do I have any other good options for making this trip? I just got my Model S last week and haven't planned any road trips yet. It's unfortunate that my first one seems to fall in that narrow band of "coulda made it with an 85 ".

 

[dsm363]

You need a Blink card but it is free (one plan is) meaning no annual fee.
The DC Quick charger is likely a CHAdeMO station meaning you can't use it yet. It looks like none of the J1772 stations at that location are working.

 

[Cattledog]

You could try to call the place you're going to have lunch and see if they have any form of 220/240 for you to use. Also, the Tesla store in La Jolla is about 50 miles from Julian, right on I-5. if that was on your route home, or could be, you could do that - it;'s in a nice shopping area. 4,000 feet downhill from Julian to La Jolla.

 

[Colasec]

Thanks for the clarification and advice.

I confirmed on the Blink site that the "DC Fast Chargers" are CHAdeMOs.

I signed up for Blink, downloaded the mobile app, and confirmed that I'll be able to generate a Blink code and have my account properly charged even without the RFID card (which I'll receive in a few days in the mail). It also seems like I'd be able to use the Blink J1772 chargers as a guest with a guest code without signing up, but the membership fine print didn't reveal any reason to not signup (other than the requisite sharing of PII).

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So the Santa Ysabel chargers are out. Here's how I'm approaching planning - let me know if this is a good technique.

Can I get to my primary destination without charging?

Analysis: It's 118 miles with a net elevation gain of 4K feet. Ideally I'd be able to drive the freeway portions at 70mph running the AC. The later portions will be up-and-down, curvy foothills driving. Can I make that on a ~205-mile range charge? Presumably so, but how much range will I have left?

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Can I then make it to a charger?

Analysis: I'd love to be able to charge in Old Town Temecula. Then I'd have some things to do while the car is charging. It's 60 miles from Julian. Even though that direction would be downhill, I feel like that's going to be cutting it close. What's the minimum remaining range I need to have when I leave Julian to make it to these chargers?

Otherwise, the next best option appears to be the Macy's in Escondido. Even though it's not on the way home, it's 38 miles from Julian and appears to be next to a nice park.

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So mileage-wise, it seems doable: 118 + 38 + ~5 for driving around = 161. Hopefully that'll give us enough room for elevation gain, A/C, and driving faster than 55.

How long will I need to charge?

Analysis: Let's assume worst-case - I arrive at the Escondido charger with 0 rated miles. I need ~90 miles to get home. Tesla's calculator says that's 4:49 at 240V/24A, so presumably a little less with 240V/32A. That's a long time to kill at the mall and at a park. The park seems nice though. Assuming we'd eat dinner there and that we want to be home by 8, we'd want to get there around 3, which means leaving Julian at 2. The planned meetup time is ~10:30.

Is that reasonable? Does that all even make sense? I don't know. This sort of uncertainty is what I had hoped to avoid by simply deciding that I'd take my ICE whenever I had to go on a road trip, but I can't exactly bring my F150 to a Tesla meetup... nor would I want to.

 

[Colasec]

I made it! Sort of.

Home to Julian
- Actual distance: 123 miles with 4500' net elevation gain
- Left with: 208 miles rated range (range charge)
- Drove at ~65mph with A/C
- Arrived with: 56 miles rated range (averaged 348 Wh/mi)
- Rated range delta: 152 miles (1.24 range miles per actual mile)

Julian to Escondido
- Actual distance: 40 miles
- Left with: 56 miles rated range
- Drove at ~65mph with A/C
- Arrived with: 32 miles rated range (averaged 112 Wh/mi)
- Rated range delta: 24 miles (0.6 range miles per actual mile)

Charged for 60 minutes in Escondido, added 34 miles rated range.

Escondido to Oceanside
- Actual distance: 24 miles
- Left with: 58 miles rated range
- Drove at ~70mph with A/C
- Arrived with: 29 miles rated range (averaged 320 Wh/mi)
- Rated range delta: 29 miles (1.21 range miles per actual mile)

Charged for 3 hours 30 minutes in Oceanside, added 48 miles rated range.

Oceanside to Home
- Actual distance: 57 miles
- Left with: 77 miles rated range
- Drove at ~72mph
- Arrived with: 6 miles rated range (averaged 331 Wh/mi)
- Rated range delta: 71 miles (1.25 range miles per actual mile)

(for a discussion of why the range-mile-per-actual-mile does not vary linearly with the Wh/mi, please see this excellent TM thread)

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So we made it, but taking a 200-mile range EV on this trip meant that we had to kill an hour at the mall in Escondido, then had to kill 3.5 hours in Oceanside (we went to a movie), and then didn't get home at 10pm. If we had been able to drive straight home from Julian, we would have been home around 5pm.

Pics, of course, to justify my too-long and too-detailed posts: