PHX -> Vegas - Road Trip with ZDX Type S Thoughts
Recently returned from a road trip (finally) from Phoenix to Las Vegas. This route is a bit more challenging for EV drivers for a number of reasons:
Terrain (big elevation gains from 900ft to 5000ft)
Wind (often very windy along this route)
Minimal EV Charging options along US-93 (zero midway charging options)
The desert heat
Left with a 100% charge, stopped in Wickenburg at the Rivian Adventure Network charging station. Brought it back up to 95% because of uncertainty of the next leg. This is where the the first batch of elevation gains were encountered. It was 105F when I charged and I got a pretty steady charge close to 100kW out of the RAN station as I started at 73%.
Arrived in Kingman, AZ off I-40 at the next RAN charging station at about 40% - charged up to 80% to make the final leg. It was 108F here - and the charging quickly took a dive below 100kW on me - I had to turn the a/c off while charging to get the rate up high enough so that I wasn't there for an hour. 25 min charge to 80% - final leg into Vegas an hotel with 33% left. This last leg has a ton of climbs around the Hoover Dam approach and after before you descend into the Vegas Valley on I-11. Temp was 112F by the time I arrived.
While in Vegas I took the ZDX up to the 'top' of Mt Charleston (8600ft from the desert floor) to spend some time in the cool pines and take in the 'sky island'. Car handled this whole ride beautifully - in fact I gained about 20 miles of range on my way down the mountain. Most I've ever gained via recharge.
Heading back, I decided to use my EVGo credit since they actually had chargers in town. OMG - these chargers suck. They're supposed to be 350kW, but I got about 50kW avg - and finally gave up. The LCD screen was positioned so that the sun shone directly on it making it completely unreadable. At least it was 'free' and helped top me off (since the hotel EV spots were often taken by non-EV vehicles despite the threat to tow).
Ride back was cooler - at the Kingman RAN stop I got it up to 160kW charge at about 50-70%, then it settled back down to 100kW. That was the fastest charge rate I've ever seen on the vehicle so far. Ride was smooth, comfortable each time.
My thoughts are:
I like the Rivian Adventure Network chargers a lot. They have NACS and CCS - its nice to not have to use my adapter. They aren't all as busy as I expected - but maybe most people are using the Tesla stations?
In Vegas during the week, I used a Tesla supercharger. They aren't much faster than the RAN and they were setup so dumb that I needed to take two spots to connect the short cable (commonly reported here with Tesla stations). The other stations I pull up and everyone is cool - at Tesla you get the 'look' from Tesla owners. Not cool guys...
The forthcoming Tesla supercharger in Wikieup, AZ (the midway point on 93) will make this trip a one charge stop. The stalls are up - the transformer was being installed as I drove by.
Due to lack to a good mid-point charging stations and my first time on this route - not knowing what to expect on the very lonely stretches of 93 between I-40 and US-60 (construction, often times bad accidents that close the highway with no alternatives so you wait, brush fire potential, etc) I charged higher than I would if there were more EV infrastructure available. Would hate to run out of charge here because of some unforeseen incident - with a very long tow to the next charger.
ABRP helped me plan this - worked well and found the RAN chargers for me. But ABPR is NOT good to use during the trip.
Built-in Google was not as helpful. :( I would find the RAN chargers - by address - but did not recognize them as chargers compatible with the vehicle! So I could use it to get live traffic and routing with some sense of SoC at arrival - but it would not pre-condition the battery for me. The best I could do was press the button for 'Fast Charge' in the Charging app - but I am fairly convinced that does NOT do the same thing. So I did lose out on the battery preconditioning. It also did this with some - but not all - Tesla SuperChargers in the Vegas area during the week - quite annoying. Due to the extreme heat during the trip - I don't know that it would have helped much anyhow.
SuperCruise made the trip very easy. I love it so much - I had zero exceptions it would work on US-93 since it's not an interstate and is only a 2 lane highway for many miles - but it does work on non-interstates highways in rural areas I have learned.
So - had concerns heading out - but those are all non issues. I would make some slight adjustments on my next trip - especially once the new charging station is open.