[Trip Report] - Seattle to Pacific City Oregon and the beach!

[craz8]

Similar to Dave's report , we visited the Oregon coast part of the 101 on the West coast. It's much closer to our home outside of Seattle!

The drive from home to Pacific City - population 1,800 - is about 280 miles depending on which route you take, and about 5 1/2 hours with a rest stop along the way. All of the route in Washington is on freeways, up to 70mph speed limit. Most of the route in Oregon is on local roads, some faster than others, and all packed with traffic at the wrong time of the week! We drove down on Thursday and back on Saturday for a quick visit to the beach and the Tillamook cheese factory.

We left home at 10am with 80% charge, and made it to a new location in Ridgefield WA that just wasn't there 2 years ago - the whole area was fields! Now it's a mall area with a Costco and the first WA state In-n-Out burger. Costco here has charging next to the gas station, but we stopped at the Mercedes Benz/Starbucks partnership chargers. https://www.plugshare.com/location/1317867 Somehow, the Starbucks is actually a 10 minute walk away, and the Costco is closer. We got hotdogs and used the restroom!

The MB Alpatronic units have both CCS and NACS cables. Plugshare lists this location as 3 chargers. The Porsche in-navigation display shows 12. There are actually 6, and each has 2 cables. Now, the outer cable has the management system, so the odd numbers have CCS with the longer cable, and the even numbered charger has the NACS cable longer. This makes a difference when parking. These chargers can be started using the Chargepoint and Porsche apps, but also take car payments (although this didn't work on unit 5/6 on our return). Priced at 40c/kwh, cheaper than the Costco chargers.

We arrived with 20% SOC and 90F battery temp. Session details follow from the status screens! I've still never seen 270kw charging with this car, but this was good enough. It should have held 244 for longer too.

Drive Time: 5:08
Average: 56mph
Miles: 285
Consumption: 3.0kwh/mile

This charge got us into Pacific City with 45% SOC, where the hotel's Tesla Destination chargers topped us up for free (this one is 8kw, the Mach-e is plugged into the 3.7kw charger).

We stayed at the Headlands Coastal Lodge on the beach, a hotel that's part of the American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts program, so we got a credit and free breakfast!

The location doesn't suck, and the weather was good, but a bit breezy and spring-like.

We did some sight-seeing on the Friday, including doing a tour of the Tillamook cheese factory. They have free charging too - I got 12kwh in the 2 hours we were there. They also have v3 superchargers in their overflow lot across the street.

We had 2 driving sessions this day, first on backroads and some 101 at 55-60mph

Drive Time: 0:39
Average: 39mph
Miles: 25
Consumption: 3.7kwh/mile

and this one mostly on 101, including a climb to 800ft and down to sea level, twice.

Drive Time: 1:35
Average: 40mph
Miles: 63
Consumption: 3.5kwh/mile

Our return journey took a different route back to Portland, but the total stats were almost the same. We stopped at the same location for a 12 minute charge to 75%, getting us home with 15% remaining. The card payment didn't work this time, so it took longer to get started as I needed to use the Porsche app after a few failed card attempts.

Some notes:

The 101 and other Oregon roads are mostly 2 lane with passing lanes at various points. The Lane Keep Assist really doesn't like lanes appearing and disappearing. Wrestling the wheel to keep on track helps pass the time.

Satelite Radio does not like driving in the forest, so it becomes useless on many of the nicer driving roads in the Pacific Northwest

The door armrest of the Macan is about 1" too low for my driving position. The only Cayenne I've driven was enough higher to be more comfy for me. This is important for keeping contact with the wheel for innodrive purposes.

The Porsche navigation system put me on a detour in Portland due to traffic. I'll never know if this was faster. I still don't understand the info in the big bar on the full right side of the navigation display when it comes to charging stops and other things there. It's also too far off of center to read easily for the driver, and the text is too small.

3 hours is as long as I can sit in the driver seat before needing to get out. It needs to be a bit softer.

Innodrive got confused twice with sudden slow downs. I think both were due to being on a curve and the system detecting objects off the driving line, but directly ahead due to the curve.

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