Danny's Epic id.4 Drive

Portland to Minneapolis and back. 3,508 Miles. Epic.

We just completed our longest road trip ever: 3,508 miles round trip from Portland, Oregon to Minneapolis and back.

Our journey started from the Upper Willamette Valley in Oregon. From there we headed northeast up the Columbia River Gorge, crossed over and climbed through the high plains desert of eastern Washington, leveling off at about 2,000 feet in Spokane. Next we conquered the Bitterroots (4,700 ft) and the Great Continental Divide (6,700 ft) before crossing the high plateaus of Montana and North Dakota. Eventually we began the long drop down to Fargo and into Minneapolis. A week later, we did it again in the other direction.

In other words, we traversed I-90 and I-94 across eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota and western Minnesota.

Our ride: The Volkswagen ID.4 Pro S RWD. Model year 2022. Software version 3.2.1.

Charging Experience

No big deal. We charged when we needed to and never once felt desperate to find a station.

Total energy purchased: 1,157 kilowatt-hours. Nearly two thirds of this we bought from Electrify America (EA), using twelve EA stations. Except for an overnight charge at a hotel in Spokane, we used EA stations all the way across Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Not until North Dakota did we have to switch to other brands or non-networked stations (e.g., Chevrolet dealers in North Dakota).

Another twelve percent came from overnight charging using Level 2 machines at some of our hotels. Since we benefit from the Diesel-gate settlement, our out-of-pocket cost totaled a whopping $100, or 3 cents a mile. Can’t complain.

We never had to wait for an open bay and saw just two ICE-ing incidents. Both happened at the same Starbucks (that has four DCFCs operated by ChargePoint), with one of the perpetrators being a Tesla driver that didn't plug in. At our hotels, we experienced no ICE-ing problems.

Charger availability we found to be high. While we certainly did not test every machine, we always did a quick scan of the screens, counting just three obviously offline ones. Only once did we need to move our car to a different machine to get started.

The only real charging complaint we had is with the state of North Dakota. While we had no problems charging up, our options were limited to single 62 kW machines across the western two-thirds of the state. Clearly they have some catching up to do.

Peak charging rates were as expected for our 2022 ID.4: ~125 kW (the car's maximum) when we arrived at a low SOC; down to ~60-65 kW at an SOC of 30 to 40 percent.

Driving Experience

For the entire drive, we averaged 3.0 miles per kWh, while maintaining a fixed speed of either 65 or 70 mph using Travel Assist in Eco mode. That’s about right for the conditions. Temperatures ranged from the low 40s to mid 70s. On two afternoons for a couple of hours each we hit heavy rain. The wind? Oh my. One morning we drove into 40 mph gusts for well over 100 miles. Bit scary how even our 4,800 pound car could be knocked around.

Travel Assist is the bomb!  Impressive how well it finds and keeps the lanes. Easily we had it on for 95 percent of the drive. Kicked it off only on one segment in Idaho. There, crossing the Bitterroots on I-90, the lane markings were faint to nonexistent in both directions. Clearly outside the car’s parameters so we had to take over steering.

Perhaps more importantly, Travel Assist is your wingman. Case in point: Buzzing along I-94 at 70 mph in nowhere land we crested still another knoll. At that moment I looked to my right to turn off the steering wheel heater. Suddenly I felt the car brake forcefully. Dead ahead and half way in our lane was a huge front loader slowly crawling down the highway. Because the car reacted so quickly I had time to steer around the beast - calmly.  If not, yikes!

Planning Process and Tools

We mapped the entire trip in advance, plotting the best charging opportunities by following these steps.

1. Mapped hotel stops, looking for hotels with four or more Level 2 chargers. For this, we used PlugShare’s “hotel with charging” web page. 

2. Used ABRP to scope DCFCs, plus get familiar with elevation changes. 

3. Used the check-in history on PlugShare to confirm ABRP’s recommended charging stations, plus fill-in missing stations.  

(Anticipating the trip months earlier, we also had turned on notifications for all the "opening soon" stations along I-90 and I-94.)

Conclusions

The world needs “a better route planner” app because the existing ones are not to be blindly relied upon. We found it less frustrating to manually manage our charging stops.

For one reason, the ID.4’s built-in app has a two month update cycle, so it can be slow to pick up new charging locations. Perhaps worse, ABRP will recommend stations that have been inoperative for months and others that have not yet opened. Plus it also misses some DCFCs.

Also, both apps have no problem with recommending illogical charging stops. 

Example #1: Charge to 76 percent at a DCFC; drive 122 miles; stop at a 4.8 kW station and charge for 30 minutes; drive 10 miles to a DCFC and charge 13 minutes. Why?

Example #2: Charge at a 50 kW station for 5 minutes; drive four miles to an Electrify America station and charge for 13 minutes more.  Why?

Road trips with our 2022 ID.4 would really benefit from an extra 30 or 40 miles of range. Several segments of 150 or so miles had large elevation and temperature changes plus strong headwinds. On these, we didn’t feel comfortable following the usual 15-80 percent rule of thumb, causing us to either make an extra stop to “top off” or charge to 90+ percent. On the other hand, the build out of the charging network to a station every 50 miles would reduce the necessity for more range. Fingers crossed.

Be nice to Chevrolet. Their dealer network provides a reliable alternative to the major brands and fills in gaps, albeit with 62 kW machines. We used two of them in North Dakota. (Neither were listed in ABRP.)

Tesla Superchargers with Magic Docks? Meh. Used one in Minnesota but could have easily charged at a nearby Circle K. Perhaps if Magic Docks had wider availability I would consider them more.

The GM/EvGo/Flying J partnership?  No where in site, at least on this route. Maybe next year.

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