P.S.Mangelsdorf wrote: ↑Sat Jun 17, 2023 2:41 pm
Well, I did make it to Day 4 of Power Tour and back home again, but just barely. Forgive the long post, it's a long story.
The original plan was to leave my house around 8am, get to the track between noon and 1pm, and then head for home around 4:00pm.
Here's some background: The main highways in NC form an arc from Raleigh to Charlotte, via Greensboro and Winston-Salem. This arc is fairly well built up, and has plenty of charging infrastructure. There is a highway route that takes a direct line from Raleigh to Charlotte via Asheboro and is quite a pleasant drive. The last leg of the Power Tour route was on this highway, and since I wanted to drive part of the route, I chose to go this way for the trip down, then take the arc back.
There is some charging infrastructure on the direct route, and the first 2/3 of the drive was fairly easy. I was worried about the freshly installed, freshly balanced new rear wheel, and whether there was any unseen damage to the tire (which I had switched from the damaged wheel to the new wheel) but otherwise was enjoying the drive. I knew the last leg was going to be a challenge. My range estimates for the car ranged from 60-75 miles, depending on how I measured SOC, and I knew there were no chargers for the last 55-59 miles (depending on precise route). The thing I had on my check list but forgot, was to check what the elevation change was. Turns out, that last 55 mile stretch is almost entirely uphill.
About 5 miles from the charger I was targeting, and 2 miles from a backup location (at a dealership, always a crap shoot), I hit truly 0miles range, just before the crest of a hill. Fortunately, I was able to coax the car across the street and into a self serve car wash, where I found a 110V wall plug. At this point, I was 5-10 miles from the track, and already about 1.5hrs behind schedule, because I had slowed the charging rate at previous stops due to the heat. I managed to get just enough charge to get the car up the next 2 miles straight up hill, and coasted up to the charger at the dealer. Literally every single employee of the dealership came out to chat, and loved the car. I got some juice, before the charge failed. The employees mentioned that the station was iffy. I proceeded the next 3 miles down the road to the charger I had intended to get to, which absolutely refused to start charge, both via the card reader and the app. So back up the road to the iffy dealership charger. It again started then shortly after failed, and a wonderful employee offered to move some cars in their back lot and let me through the gate so I could get to the other station back there. I picked up a full charge and headed to the track.
I arrived around 5pm, 30 minutes after on-track time had ended, but 30 minutes before the event ended. After being sent on 3 wild goose chases, I finally found the check in, and then spent about 30-45 minutes wandering the vendors as they packed up. I got to see Chevrolet Performance's new EV conversion kit, and hear from their rep that while it's now on sale, you have to have their certified shop install it.
Then, it was time to head back to Raleigh. Because the nearby chargers were down or having issues, I planned to drive about 15-20 miles up the road to Salisbury, and plug into a Level 2 charger while I got dinner. Well, when I rolled into that charger, I discovered that yes, it was across the street from a brewery, but the park it was next to had a sizeable homeless population, and my car not only doesn't lock, but was full of my firesuit, helmet, GoPros, and other items easy to disappear. So, I chose to stay with the car and wait for it to charge. Here, a new problem reared its head: my PCS was only pulling 1.67kW from the 6.5kW station. SO after an hour or so, I decided to try an risk driving the next 20 miles up the road to a fast charger in Lexington. To make a long story short, I limped the car up the exit ramp, across a bridge, and coasted into the charging station in Lexington, and had to push the car to re-orient it when the cable wouldn't reach.
It was at this charging station that I learned some important information that made the math make so much more sense. From stone cold dead to fully charged took only 22.5kWh. It's supposed to be a 32kWh pack. That's some serious degradation I wasn't accounting for.
From hear, things got easier, but not easy. By the time I left the Lexington charging station, it was around 9pm. I headed 22 miles up the road to High Point, to a station at a Hyundai dealership, because the ones closer to I-85/40 were marked as down on PlugShare. Well, that station was ICEd. Fortunately, there was another station around 10 miles away that, while PlugShare showed as down, EVGo's own app said had been used 6 hrs prior. I headed there, and the station worked flawlessly.
From here, things got easy. I tried to keep driving legs to 25-30 miles, just to be careful. I hit a charger in Burlington, then one in Hillsboro, which was the same charger I had used for previous range tests. From there I topped off once more in Briar Creek, and then headed home. I arrived home just before 2am.
All in all, I traveled 318 miles, and the car was either moving or charging from 8:30am until 2am, with the exception of 30-45 minutes at the venue. Many lessons were learned about the car and the planning, and I'm very glad I did this very terrible idea before Drag Week, rather than waiting until then to attempt long back roads drives.
I've got a long list of things to fix. Some of that includes but is not limited to:
- The PCS needs to be fixed so that Level 2 is a feasible backup option
- The motor/inverter cooling needs further improvement
- I must add cooling to the battery pack
- I need to install the gauges I have on order
- Front suspension needs adjustment/replacement
Lastly, I'm considering a battery upgrade. Chevy Volt Gen2 would be the easiest, but the range improvement from new, healthy batteries would only be 40-50%,at best. Model S batteries would be the best option, but are very costly and would require a full rework of the battery box. The benefit of that might be getting to my original hope for a fully flat floor from cabin to trunk (as this is a business coupe), so I could easily sleep in the car on Drag Week.
