My first, absolutely freezing, road trip

[Duke95]

Well, it is not done yet but I am halfway...traveled from Chicago to Des Moines, and been here a few days. Temps plummeted...12 F right now.

So how did the Macan do? As a first time ev owner, well, good and bad. Will share what I saw here and post again I hope at the end of the trip.

Driving here, about 5.5 hours, was at 38 F. Got 2.4 miles per kwh..a 230 mile range. Drove 80 mph gps (was 83 according to the car). So yeah, combo of speed and temps killed range by probably 35 percent.

On the way I hit up a shell recharge station 150 kw, saw 80 peak when going from about 18 to 65%. Both the car and plugshare said there were two available working chargers. When I got there there was only one and it was occupied. Luckily the guy left in about a minute but then it would not take my credit card. I called the 800 number and they hooked me up thru the phone but then halfway through charging it stopped with a charging error. I reconnected tried my card and somehow it worked that time. This happened three more times before I finally gave up as I realized I could make it to the next station. By the way, shell charged me $60 for the first session and $20 for each new session so I got banged up for $140! I'll be calling them on Monday to complain and try and get a reasonable refund.

Overall driving was great. Smooth, quiet, powerful, just great. My only complaint would be the inno drive. Kyle and others say is pretty spot on in tracking. I found that at least at over 80 mph with straight nicely painted roads, but some crosswind, it would fishtail a bit. Less than the Tesla I drove a couple of years ago on a rental, and certainly not annoying. It's there for sure. It seems to like to choose to lean onto one side of the lane or the other and it always seems to want to lean into the side of the lane that has another car! Getting too close for comfort! So I had to tug it back to center quite a bit.

My second stop was at a 350 electrify America. While my plug and charge does not work, and trust me, I have tried every trick in the book on these forums as did my dealer, with no luck. I found how on a forum to use EA through the my Porsche app and it worked perfectly. Got 230 peak.

Then the fun began. The weather plummeted down into the teens. The car got 2 mi per kilowatt on two half hour highway drives. That is a whopping 185 mile range folks. Again doing 80, and driving in perhaps 20° weather. I went to a local electrify America charging station 350. I charged for 20 to 60% with the battery at a starting temp of 30°. My 50% it had gotten up to 75°. But I never saw more than 100 kilowatts going in. The charging session had one error and I needed to replugnin.

With such terrible range, I had to charge again the next day. And that is where I am now. Staring at again 100 kilowatts going into the car which started a 20% and is now at 64% with an 81° battery. Pretty disappointing that I'm not getting more kilowatts right now. Had one charging error a long the way had to reconnect at a different charger.

So thoughts so far? Wow! Does cold weather and high-speed kill range! And wow charging is an adventure out here! Between not having accurate data on which chargers are working and which are not occupied to having charging errors at every single stop so far, And at this one electrify America station at least not being able to get over a hundred or so on a 350, well it's not what I expected it to be. Let's just leave it at that. But love the car!

 

[daveo4EV]

public charging is hit/miss with CCS1 vehicle's in North America - this is frustrating no doubt - I have been personally impacted by this many times - but it is getting better (cold comfort when you're the one at the bad site, trust me I know) - that doens't hlep you right now I know that- but having driven EV's since 2011 and a Taycan since 2020 - and a Macan 2675 miles just this month - all I can say is you would've had a worse experience 18-24 months ago - I think it will be all good in 3-4 years if they keep building it out…

I'm hoping access to the Tesla supercharger network will make things better - more stalls, more reliability - charging speeds should be the same - battery temperature is a key requirement for fast charging - so yeah cold temps…will affect it greatly…supercharger access should happen sometime in 2025…

here is great post from the Taycan community about charging speeds, battery SOC, and temp

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...my-taycan-charge-as-fast-as-i-want-it-to.779/

I can also report that once you get home and start using an at home charger your use of the public charging network will plummet and EV's are much easier to live with if you have your own home charging.

great write up - and I also experienced inno-drive with x-winds on my 2675 mile trip…it could do better.

speed is a huge range killer - if you can drive less than 80 mph you'll extend your range by quite a bit - even with the colder temps…come spring your range will be much much better - this is a common cycle for EV ownership - cold months less range, it all comes back once jack-frost leaves for a while…

 

[daveo4EV]

Well, it is not done yet but I am halfway...traveled from Chicago to Des Moines, and been here a few days. Temps plummeted...12 F right now.

So how did the Macan do? As a first time ev owner, well, good and bad. Will share what I saw here and post again I hope at the end of the trip.

Driving here, about 5.5 hours, was at 38 F. Got 2.4 miles per kwh..a 230 mile range. Drove 80 mph gps (was 83 according to the car). So yeah, combo of speed and temps killed range by probably 35 percent.

On the way I hit up a shell recharge station 150 kw, saw 80 peak when going from about 18 to 65%. Both the car and plugshare said there were two available working chargers. When I got there there was only one and it was occupied. Luckily the guy left in about a minute but then it would not take my credit card. I called the 800 number and they hooked me up thru the phone but then halfway through charging it stopped with a charging error. I reconnected tried my card and somehow it worked that time. This happened three more times before I finally gave up as I realized I could make it to the next station. By the way, shell charged me $60 for the first session and $20 for each new session so I got banged up for $140! I'll be calling them on Monday to complain and try and get a reasonable refund.

Overall driving was great. Smooth, quiet, powerful, just great. My only complaint would be the inno drive. Kyle and others say is pretty spot on in tracking. I found that at least at over 80 mph with straight nicely painted roads, but some crosswind, it would fishtail a bit. Less than the Tesla I drove a couple of years ago on a rental, and certainly not annoying. It's there for sure. It seems to like to choose to lean onto one side of the lane or the other and it always seems to want to lean into the side of the lane that has another car! Getting too close for comfort! So I had to tug it back to center quite a bit.

My second stop was at a 350 electrify America. While my plug and charge does not work, and trust me, I have tried every trick in the book on these forums as did my dealer, with no luck. I found how on a forum to use EA through the my Porsche app and it worked perfectly. Got 230 peak.

Then the fun began. The weather plummeted down into the teens. The car got 2 mi per kilowatt on two half hour highway drives. That is a whopping 185 mile range folks. Again doing 80, and driving in perhaps 20° weather. I went to a local electrify America charging station 350. I charged for 20 to 60% with the battery at a starting temp of 30°. My 50% it had gotten up to 75°. But I never saw more than 100 kilowatts going in. The charging session had one error and I needed to replugnin.

With such terrible range, I had to charge again the next day. And that is where I am now. Staring at again 100 kilowatts going into the car which started a 20% and is now at 64% with an 81° battery. Pretty disappointing that I'm not getting more kilowatts right now. Had one charging error a long the way had to reconnect at a different charger.

So thoughts so far? Wow! Does cold weather and high-speed kill range! And wow charging is an adventure out here! Between not having accurate data on which chargers are working and which are not occupied to having charging errors at every single stop so far, And at this one electrify America station at least not being able to get over a hundred or so on a 350, well it's not what I expected it to be. Let's just leave it at that. But love the car!

also I've had better luck with these types of EA stations…single cord - newer - it's what they are replacing - their older stations with and they have been much better at least for me - can you comment on if you've been having problems with these types of stations…

the "two cord" stations shown below have been the worst for me personally - all sorts of problem and reliablilty issues…I think EA is working to replace them nationawide, but I'm not sure.

 

[PanameraFrank]

There is no (commercially available) EV in existence that's getting significant range at 80mph in sub 20 degree weather with wind. It's just not a combination that current battery tech can handle.

Just FWIW.

About the same with charging speed. At those temperatures most EVs are never seeing triple digits.

EA is always an adventure but, as Dave mentions, the new single cord chargers seem to be an improvement if you ever see one.

 

[Duke95]

These were single cord chargers. Yup I have had the car for about 6-7 weeks, don't have home (condo) charging but my company has dedicated level 2 stalls and they are free! That (chargers are by Zeal) has been working flawlessly.

 

[SergeyIndy]

Great trip report @Duke95. I wonder if you can expand on a few questions:

1. Did you set charging stations as destination to pre-heat the HV battery (range killer for sure)? I am wondering if you noticed at what HV temp your arrived at the charger, what the left tube showed as max charge rate possible vs. what you got from the charger.

2. Plug and Charge not working on the 2 demos at my dealer. My SA said they tried everything even with the Porsche rep and could not make it work.

3. InnovDrive and active lane was behaving similar to your experience on my test drive. Somehow, it kept leaning toward one side, too close to the vehicles in the next lanes. There may be a way to target it more to the center. Taycan has a protocol where you can change the centering in Active Lane keep mode.

This is from Taycan manual, worth a try, although, this is not in the Macan EV manual.

4. As far as charging stations, have you looked at other brands along your route (using PlugShare) that have been adding them such as Circle K and Pilot EVgo managed chargers. I am looking up those for my upcoming trip as backups to EA.

 

[tmrqs]

Thanks for the report @Duke95!

Dropping your speed from 83 (car) to 75 or better yet 70 (car still) will be night and day range wise.
When it’s cold like that, definitely something to consider.

 

[Duke95]

Great trip report @Duke95. I wonder if you can expand on a few questions:

1. Did you set charging stations as destination to pre-heat the HV battery (range killer for sure)? I am wondering if you noticed at what HV temp your arrived at the charger, what the left tube showed as max charge rate possible vs. what you got from the charger.

2. Plug and Charge not working on the 2 demos at my dealer. My SA said they tried everything even with the Porsche rep and could not make it work.

3. InnovDrive and active lane was behaving similar to your experience on my test drive. Somehow, it kept leaning toward one side, too close to the vehicles in the next lanes. There may be a way to target it more to the center. Taycan has a protocol where you can change the centering in Active Lane keep mode.

This is from Taycan manual, worth a try, although, this is not in the Macan EV manual.

4. As far as charging stations, have you looked at other brands along your route (using PlugShare) that have been adding them such as Circle K and Pilot EVgo managed chargers. I am looking up those for my upcoming trip as backups to EA.

I have set the destination. This morning I sent the nav to the car, got to the car 3 minutes later. Car was nice and hot! But battery was 29 degrees, though only 14 outside so likely it helped. But with an additional 7ish minute drive, battery got only to 34. Was hoping preconditioning would heat the battery more and faster? Same thing happened yesterday and I browsed the Internet to see if maybe I was doing something wrong but I don't think so.

I'll paste the way to make plug and charge work at EA below (when in fact plug and charge is not actually working).

Do want to try and evgo if I can...not a lot of charging options between Des Moines and Chicago though!

Innodrive not as fishtaily at like 70-75 mph. Still there but significantly less severe.

Step 1 – When at the charging station:
Open your MyPorsche App
Click Map at the bottom
Click charging in the middle of the screen
Click the charging station on the map

Step 2: When the name and address of the Charging Station pops up click the address itself

Step 3: Click the Combo (CCS) type plug.

Step 4: Look at the Electrify America station you’re at and click whichever number matches the one on your station.

Step 5: Click Start Charging, then plug in the car.

 

[Duke95]

public charging is hit/miss with CCS1 vehicle's in North America - this is frustrating no doubt - I have been personally impacted by this many times - but it is getting better (cold comfort when you're the one at the bad site, trust me I know) - that doens't hlep you right now I know that- but having driven EV's since 2011 and a Taycan since 2020 - and a Macan 2675 miles just this month - all I can say is you would've had a worse experience 18-24 months ago - I think it will be all good in 3-4 years if they keep building it out…

I'm hoping access to the Tesla supercharger network will make things better - more stalls, more reliability - charging speeds should be the same - battery temperature is a key requirement for fast charging - so yeah cold temps…will affect it greatly…supercharger access should happen sometime in 2025…

here is great post from the Taycan community about charging speeds, battery SOC, and temp

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...my-taycan-charge-as-fast-as-i-want-it-to.779/

I can also report that once you get home and start using an at home charger your use of the public charging network will plummet and EV's are much easier to live with if you have your own home charging.

great write up - and I also experienced inno-drive with x-winds on my 2675 mile trip…it could do better.

speed is a huge range killer - if you can drive less than 80 mph you'll extend your range by quite a bit - even with the colder temps…come spring your range will be much much better - this is a common cycle for EV ownership - cold months less range, it all comes back once jack-frost leaves for a while…

Speed is a huge range killer: yup! But if u can drive fast and charge fast, overall the math clearly shows it's faster than driving slower and charging less. IF when u show up at a 350 you can get over 200, that is! Which, again I got 230 the first time, but only 100 these past two attempts (at the same place, notably).

 

[ColdCase]

Yes, my EV experience has been ~50% drop in range from 50 degrees F to 20, unless switched to the highest eco and regen modes, inflate the tires to more than recommended when measured cold (at 20), wearing a heavy jacket and turn the heat way down, and stay below 60 mph if you can. 50 mph better. There still is a big drop in range ~25% if I recall correctly. The drop off steepens about 35 or so.

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