First mini road trip with Macan ev turbo

[fsabek]

I had my Macan ev turbo since October last year with the best 15k I ever had in my entire life driving history. However today was the first time I dared to take out of the borders of Chicago land where I had to drive my daughter to a summer camp and return same day. Approx four hour round trip with close to 270 miles. I charged my car to 100% it gave me estimated 346 miles so I assumed I won’t have to charge on the road. However cruising at 90mph must have increased my consumption and my range dropped and searched on the car navigation where I can find a 250+ kWh and found a place and charged it. 14 min from 20%-65% for $29.

I don’t know why however I was so afraid to ever road trip in my ev (had a Tesla for three years before my Macan ev and never charged out of my garage.) or charge on the road. However now I feel my best ever car Macan ev turbo could take me to the moon and back!!!!

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[Fun TC Driving]

Glad your trip worked well for you and especially your new attitude toward even road tripping. Congrats!

We understand, i.e., our first EV road trip was stressful, but not we look forward to them as fun adventures.

 

[PSPJames]

I remember my first road trip in my Tesla. The nav said I would get to my charging stop at 4%. I was stressing so bad the last 30 miles or so... but I rolled in right at 4%, just like the car said. I never worried after that. Yesterday I took the Macan up the mountain and back down. The nav said I would get back at 55%. When I started going down the mountain, I was at 61% and I thought "no way am I getting home with 55%." Imagine my surprise when I rolled in the garage... at 55%. Now I want to take it on a long road trip! The car is amazing on the highway.

 

[craz8]

The nav said I would get back at 55%. When I started going down the mountain, I was at 61% and I thought "no way am I getting home with 55%

The key is to use the Nav to give it a chance to see where you're going. Using the GOM top-line number will very rarely give you anything close to reality.

The Nav range calculation is really quite good though.

 

[Fun TC Driving]

We too have found the Porsche range estimates to be very good. We used ABRP and the Porsche nav together and have never had a road tripping range issue; in fact were able twice to cut out a pre-planned stop.

 

[strwbryfruitcake]

Glad your trip went well, I have a lot of anxiety about road tripping the Macan ev.
My goal is to be able to do the many national parks in the Macan. Charging points are still hard to come by at some less popular ones but lake tahoe and glacier national park might be getting a few soon. I know a new lake tahoe station is coming soon, not so sure about the others.

 

[jwatte]

> cruising at 90mph

The air and tire resistance at 90 mph is almost twice that of 65 mph, so it would be normal for efficiency to be lower. If you want to hyper-mile, never go above 65!
(And make sure to inflate your tires)

But who wants to live like that?

 

[ColdCase]

My anxiety is not so much range, its that finding all the chargers are broken at the stop. Happened to me locally last week. Then yesterday plug and charge would not connect and I spent 15 minutes on the phone with EA going through the check list before they authorizing the connection remotely (couldn't start via the Porsche app either). Then it blew right through the 80% set point and was at 85% when I noticed. I had to push the cancel button on the charger. So it didn't want to start charging nor did it want to stop charging ? . The EA rep suggested checking with Porsche to verify my account..

 

[RunningOnSolar]

I’ve been charging locally at EA (while it’s free) while primarily charging at home. I bought the Macan as a roadtrip car and successfully road tripped it after several EA charging experiences.

I would not recommend a first ever road trip charge to be under stressful conditions. It is not difficult to charge on the road, especially with EA. However, being in unfamiliar surroundings, you can run into almost any weird charging experience. As stated by others recently, having more than one charging app is a great idea though Porsche Navigation did a great job on my longest road trip.

Like others on this forum, I recommend ABRP and/or PlugShare because finding a charger even after you are routed to one can be a challenge. These apps will show you pictures of the charger. This is useful because there is still a significant lack of standardization You never know where a charger might be hidden and might (as we have) drive right past without recognizing it.

It is also possible to get routed to a level 2 charger on the road if you don’t filter chargers correctly. This won’t happen with the Porsche app, but can happen with apps like ChargePoint or Apple Maps if you don’t filter for or specify DC Fast Charging. This can seriously slow your trip down.

And always have a plan B and plan C. Mine involves carrying a mobile charger and always having enough reserve in case a charging stop fails for any reason.

 

[Shirls]

I had my Macan ev turbo since October last year with the best 15k I ever had in my entire life driving history. However today was the first time I dared to take out of the borders of Chicago land where I had to drive my daughter to a summer camp and return same day. Approx four hour round trip with close to 270 miles. I charged my car to 100% it gave me estimated 346 miles so I assumed I won’t have to charge on the road. However cruising at 90mph must have increased my consumption and my range dropped and searched on the car navigation where I can find a 250+ kWh and found a place and charged it. 14 min from 20%-65% for $29.

I don’t know why however I was so afraid to ever road trip in my ev (had a Tesla for three years before my Macan ev and never charged out of my garage.) or charge on the road. However now I feel my best ever car Macan ev turbo could take me to the moon and back!!!!

Hi! We recently did a road trip from Vancouver BC to Banff in our new Macan EV 4S and it was a blast! We had our bikes on the back hitch and stuffed the trunk with our golf clubs and the car still handled great! We did have to plan strategically as there are not as many Electrify Canada chargers out there and only had one glitch at one of the stations where it just would not work! Otherwise, it cost us only $19 CDN for the entire trip! Great experience and will do another road trip again. Question: did you experience the charger taking a long time to connect with your car or having it cut off once it started? We experienced this quite a few times with the Electrify stations, so I'm not sure if its the stations or the car, but the car is only 5 months old!!

 

[strwbryfruitcake]

Hi! We recently did a road trip from Vancouver BC to Banff in our new Macan EV 4S and it was a blast! We had our bikes on the back hitch and stuffed the trunk with our golf clubs and the car still handled great! We did have to plan strategically as there are not as many Electrify Canada chargers out there and only had one glitch at one of the stations where it just would not work! Otherwise, it cost us only $19 CDN for the entire trip! Great experience and will do another road trip again. Question: did you experience the charger taking a long time to connect with your car or having it cut off once it started? We experienced this quite a few times with the Electrify stations, so I'm not sure if its the stations or the car, but the car is only 5 months old!!

Thats so awesome! I visit family in Vancouver often and have done the drive to Banff but never in an ev. I thought about it but didnt dive into the research, didn't think it was possible yet. Mind if you share your charging stops? Did you log your planned eta milage remaining vs actual etc? What was the glitch at the one station? Was it resovled by chainging to a different charging stall?

 

[Petzi]

My anxiety is not so much range, its that finding all the chargers are broken at the stop. Happened to me locally last week. Then yesterday plug and charge would not connect and I spent 15 minutes on the phone with EA going through the check list before they authorizing the connection remotely (couldn't start via the Porsche app either). Then it blew right through the 80% set point and was at 85% when I noticed. I had to push the cancel button on the charger. So it didn't want to start charging nor did it want to stop charging ? . The EA rep suggested checking with Porsche to verify my account..

in europe i get the informations: how many chargers, how fast, how many chargers are in use. is this not the case in the us?

 

[USMA81]

in europe i get the informations: how many chargers, how fast, how many chargers are in use. is this not the case in the us?

Yes, we get that information too, for EA chargers.

My first EV purchase a few years ago (Audi Etron) was out of state, and so my first ever EV drive and first roadtrip was 1,100 miles to get home. It went great. EA stations were available every 100 miles on the highway. No drama.

 

[PrudentOcean]

One interesting caveat at a Electrify America station that I use is that two if the ten chargers are stalls that are reserved for vehicles with handicap plates or placards, and according to checkins on Plugshare people have received expensive tickets there when using those stalls without being entitled to do so. It’s treated the same as parking in a handicap spot.

I don’t have a problem with that, but it’s slightly annoying to see one or two chargers being available in the app and then still having to wait for someone to unplug.

 

[craz8]

I recently wrote about my trip from Hope to Kelowna, part of which is the route to Banff.

Blasting up the Coquihalla out of Hope I used 30% of battery in under 30 minutes! And then another 30% over the next 90 minutes to get to my destination.

Hope to Merrit is the key leg on this trip as there is likely good charging in both towns and nothing between. The Active Lane Keep doesn’t like many parts of this road though, as it’s too twisty. (I say likely here because there have been some charger outages that can mess this all up significantly, which is still a risk with a smaller battery, less so with ours)

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