My 2019 M3 is a great car but short legs. Its a standard plus so the very best range is 215 miles at 100%. My road trip in AZ was uneventful even with that but two times I got a bit nervous with charging due to some distance and broken stalls at a supercharger. I've taken measures to combat this and it's been a fun experiment so far. I got two used adapters which are CHAdeMO and a SETEC CCS. Both do no better than 45Kw on my M3.. typically its between 30 and 40Kw. But, it beats my level 2 at home and it beats walking. In some cases, it is cheaper to use the adapter vs the Supercharger. We have a local mall here with the SC on one side and EVgo on the other side of the parking lot. The SC is .39Kw.. and the EVgo is .22Kw. Same mall, same lot. With in 200 yards of each other. When I'm out road tripping, I've learned that almost every city hall has a charger somewhere near and the prices are better than most other sites including the SCs. Baumont was that way last weekend on a trip to Palm Springs. .22 per KW vs .39 per Kw at the SC a few miles down the road. And both are about the same speed since I've used both and kept notes. In this case, I used the Chad adapter.
With that all said, the SCs are better laid out, better marked and generally in a better location. Most of the time. Take Riverside for example, 12 stalls on the 3rd floor of a parking structure. Easy access.. and plenty of room to maneuver around. The Walmart just a few miles away that I stopped at for curiosity was CCS, in the middle of a busy parking lot and it was a herringbone row so there was not any easy way to back or get out. They had really short cables and they assumed every car had ports in front or on the right side. Stupid design. BofA had nice drive through stalls for CCS
Since I have three ways to charge now, the road trips are less stressful if I want to get off the main highways for any length of time. I still live on PlugShare which seems to be the most reliable app but thats being kind since it's crowd sourced data and can be substantially out of date.
With that all said, the SCs are better laid out, better marked and generally in a better location. Most of the time. Take Riverside for example, 12 stalls on the 3rd floor of a parking structure. Easy access.. and plenty of room to maneuver around. The Walmart just a few miles away that I stopped at for curiosity was CCS, in the middle of a busy parking lot and it was a herringbone row so there was not any easy way to back or get out. They had really short cables and they assumed every car had ports in front or on the right side. Stupid design. BofA had nice drive through stalls for CCS
Since I have three ways to charge now, the road trips are less stressful if I want to get off the main highways for any length of time. I still live on PlugShare which seems to be the most reliable app but thats being kind since it's crowd sourced data and can be substantially out of date.
