Oh boy. So, some or many of you may have seen the thread I started a year ago about brining my MYP to winter driving school, and optimizing track-mode settings for winter driving. If not, TL/DR: It was a huge success, at first the car was awful in the snow, but after a lot of analysis & testing, we figured out perfect settings and it ended up being fantastic.
Well I'm back here for another session. Only this time, I'm facing the worst charging economics situation in my 3.1 years of EV ownership. I admit I only did limited searching before starting this thread, so I apologize if this is a dup.
Last time, I stayed at an inn downtown in this "quaint" little town 20 mins from the track b/c it had an L2 charger just a block away. I believe it was $2/hr for ~6kW. After day 1 on the track, I was at around 30%. Got plugged in a bit late, and it was going to be 3am by the time I was back at 90%. The station charged you $2/hr after you were done charging, for "parking" - i.e. blocking the station. I guess that's fair, but annoying to have to deal with that when the charger is so slow that I hgave to getup at 3am to move the car. Well, I was too tired. so I sucked up $12 in "parking" fees to spare getting up and probably not being able to get back to sleep.
Well. Holy
did the situation ever change in the 11 months since I was here last.
Unfortunately, this little town isn't particularly close to any superchargers. Counting on that L2 charger, we got here with ~12% SOC. I plugged in, and we met up with some friends. My phone beeped and informed me that in 4hrs, the fee for the charger was going to go up by $10/hr.
I wasn't prepared to do the math - I didn't remember what my battery actual capacity was in kW. I couldn't compute in my head "when will it be done & how much extra will I have to pay vs sucking up the distance and driving to a supercharger & back."
So, when we left for dinner, I started a fresh charging session in hopes of resetting that 4h clock. That worked. But after dinner I was still only at 52%; it was around 10pm. Ugh. My car said "4hr to charge limit." Ugh. So I can start a fresh charging session to avoid that stupid $10/hr tax - but it's going to be f*ing 2am when it's done, and NOW if I don't get up in the middle of the night to disconnect my car, it's going to cost me $50 *on top* of the charge, for "blocking" a charger in the middle of the night when nobody is out hunting for a charger.
So, I looked up the nearest superchargers. Ugh. Nearest was "15 miles away" which sounds fine except that's "as the crow flies." It was actually 30 miles & 35 minutes by road. There was an alternate route that was only 20 miles, so I pulled a Robert Frost & figured "Ok, I'll just drive really fast & get there faster & in fewer miles.
Yeah... no. This route was extremely rural. 50% of it was totally snow-covered and quite slippery. You'd think that would be great since the whole reason I'm here is to do some winter driving. The trouble is, if you turn on track mode, you lose navigation, battery conditioning, and some other things. So I had to drive most of the 20 miles at <25 mph b/c w/out track mode it's not safe to push the limits of the car in winter conditions. To make matters worse, it's super-foggy, so even if I was willing to use track mode, wrestle with my phone to nav to the supercharger, etc, with such low visibility it would still be unsafe to push the limits. So, I f*'d myself and it took 45 mins to get the charger.
Now it's 11:12pm. I've upped the charge limit to 100% b/c it's going to take 14% just to get back to the inn. I hate doing a 100% charge, but my understanding thanks to this and other forums is that it's not charging to 100% that is bad for the battery, it's letting it sit at that SOC for any length of time (especially in cold weather.). Since I'll immediately be running it down to below 90% just getting back to the inn, might as well go all the way and maximize my morning SOC.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to get back there until 11:50pm. I didn't have the wherewithal to do the math in advance, but now that it's happening, I can see that this charge is going to cost me around $20. But at 80 mins of driving time and 45 minutes of charging time, did I really make things better for myself than setting an alarm and getting up at 2am - but maybe have knocked out an hour of sleep during that time?
I dunno. What I do know is that this is the worst economics I've ever had to face. I checked the whole town for L2 chargers, they all have the same "f*** you after 4hrs" pricing scheme, it's set by the town. The only non-insane solution available to me was to have stopped at the last supercharger along the route and charged up to 100% then. That options was 45 minutes behind me by the time I knew there was a decision to make.
And in case anyone is curious what the charge rate is for an MYP for the last 1% of SOC - it's 40mrph.
Next year I'm definitely staying at the Hampton Inn that is out of town. They have a NEMA 14-50 plug in their back yard, and they are next to a car dealership with a free L2 charger.
Well I'm back here for another session. Only this time, I'm facing the worst charging economics situation in my 3.1 years of EV ownership. I admit I only did limited searching before starting this thread, so I apologize if this is a dup.
Last time, I stayed at an inn downtown in this "quaint" little town 20 mins from the track b/c it had an L2 charger just a block away. I believe it was $2/hr for ~6kW. After day 1 on the track, I was at around 30%. Got plugged in a bit late, and it was going to be 3am by the time I was back at 90%. The station charged you $2/hr after you were done charging, for "parking" - i.e. blocking the station. I guess that's fair, but annoying to have to deal with that when the charger is so slow that I hgave to getup at 3am to move the car. Well, I was too tired. so I sucked up $12 in "parking" fees to spare getting up and probably not being able to get back to sleep.
Well. Holy
did the situation ever change in the 11 months since I was here last. Unfortunately, this little town isn't particularly close to any superchargers. Counting on that L2 charger, we got here with ~12% SOC. I plugged in, and we met up with some friends. My phone beeped and informed me that in 4hrs, the fee for the charger was going to go up by $10/hr.
I wasn't prepared to do the math - I didn't remember what my battery actual capacity was in kW. I couldn't compute in my head "when will it be done & how much extra will I have to pay vs sucking up the distance and driving to a supercharger & back." So, when we left for dinner, I started a fresh charging session in hopes of resetting that 4h clock. That worked. But after dinner I was still only at 52%; it was around 10pm. Ugh. My car said "4hr to charge limit." Ugh. So I can start a fresh charging session to avoid that stupid $10/hr tax - but it's going to be f*ing 2am when it's done, and NOW if I don't get up in the middle of the night to disconnect my car, it's going to cost me $50 *on top* of the charge, for "blocking" a charger in the middle of the night when nobody is out hunting for a charger.
So, I looked up the nearest superchargers. Ugh. Nearest was "15 miles away" which sounds fine except that's "as the crow flies." It was actually 30 miles & 35 minutes by road. There was an alternate route that was only 20 miles, so I pulled a Robert Frost & figured "Ok, I'll just drive really fast & get there faster & in fewer miles.
Yeah... no. This route was extremely rural. 50% of it was totally snow-covered and quite slippery. You'd think that would be great since the whole reason I'm here is to do some winter driving. The trouble is, if you turn on track mode, you lose navigation, battery conditioning, and some other things. So I had to drive most of the 20 miles at <25 mph b/c w/out track mode it's not safe to push the limits of the car in winter conditions. To make matters worse, it's super-foggy, so even if I was willing to use track mode, wrestle with my phone to nav to the supercharger, etc, with such low visibility it would still be unsafe to push the limits. So, I f*'d myself and it took 45 mins to get the charger.
Now it's 11:12pm. I've upped the charge limit to 100% b/c it's going to take 14% just to get back to the inn. I hate doing a 100% charge, but my understanding thanks to this and other forums is that it's not charging to 100% that is bad for the battery, it's letting it sit at that SOC for any length of time (especially in cold weather.). Since I'll immediately be running it down to below 90% just getting back to the inn, might as well go all the way and maximize my morning SOC.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to get back there until 11:50pm. I didn't have the wherewithal to do the math in advance, but now that it's happening, I can see that this charge is going to cost me around $20. But at 80 mins of driving time and 45 minutes of charging time, did I really make things better for myself than setting an alarm and getting up at 2am - but maybe have knocked out an hour of sleep during that time?
I dunno. What I do know is that this is the worst economics I've ever had to face. I checked the whole town for L2 chargers, they all have the same "f*** you after 4hrs" pricing scheme, it's set by the town. The only non-insane solution available to me was to have stopped at the last supercharger along the route and charged up to 100% then. That options was 45 minutes behind me by the time I knew there was a decision to make.
And in case anyone is curious what the charge rate is for an MYP for the last 1% of SOC - it's 40mrph.
Next year I'm definitely staying at the Hampton Inn that is out of town. They have a NEMA 14-50 plug in their back yard, and they are next to a car dealership with a free L2 charger.
Way to go Littleton, NH! Thank you Chief Smith!
