Cabbage
Registered Member
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2025
- Messages
- 82
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- Location
- Puyallup, WA
- Genesis Model Year
- 2025
- Genesis Model Type
- Genesis GV60
Just a few tips after our 2500 mile trip from the Seattle area to Boulder and back.
Travel on a weekday if practical. For a couple months before our trip I kept checking our planned chargers mostly to see if any of them had regular reliability issues. I noticed that most of them were much busier on weekends than weekdays. That makes sense since most people will work through Friday, then travel on the weekend, and come home on the weekend. During our trip we drove to Boulder on a Monday and Tuesday, and came home on a Monday and Tuesday. We made 17 DC fast charging stops and in that entire time we only saw 5 other cars charging.
Use ABRP Premium and use an OBD reader. Even if you only do so for the time you are on your trip. Subscribe, take your trip, and unsubscribe if you wish. Having live accurate updates for estimated SOC on arrival that takes elevation changes, winds, and temperatures into account is very reassuring. I use a OBDLink CX reader. With this setup, if you have your next stop set in ABRP, while you are charging, there will be a "Range" bar that shows you how far you can go before the battery dies. Once that bar reaches your destination, it will start showing SOC on arrival. Simply wait until it reaches your desired SOC, unplug, and be on your way. The OBD reader is not that expensive and is a one time expense. The subscription is only about $5/month.
Even ABRP isn't perfect. I've used ABRP on many short trips (no charging required) just so it can learn my car. Even so, it is usually conservative and I usually arrive with an extra 1-2% SOC. However, ABRP cannot take into account the energy used to precondition the battery. If the temperature is cold and you plan to use preconditioning, I'd recommend you allow an extra 5% SOC.
Charging to an SOC of 70-80% is optimum. This of course, assumes there is a charger you can reach with your desired reserve when you start with 70-80% SOC. Out here in the west, that's not always possible (Wyoming for example) unless you live in California or operate up and down i5. I had assumed there would be about 7 minutes of overhead for each charge. That is, time to get from the highway to the charger, start charging, stop the charge, and then get back to the highway. My wife and I tracked that time and for us it turned out to be more like 9 or 10 minutes. When you add the overhead time to the actual charging time, and consider the number of miles of range you add by charging to a given SOC, 70-80% SOC gives you the most miles added for each minute off the highway.
You'll probably get more charge than you need. For the majority of our stops, by the time we took care of other issues like eating, using the restroom, walking and watering the dog, cleaning the windshield, buying a beverage, etc.; the car had more charge on it than we needed. Only a few times were we waiting for the car to charge before we continued.
Bring a wash mitt. Most charging stops don't have anything you can use to clean your windshield. We took a car wash mitt, put it in a Ziploc bag, and saturated it with water. I also bought a squeegee that was collapsible. That is, it had the head, and multiple handle extensions that screw together. That allowed me to reach the entire windshield from one side of the car so I didn't leave a streak up and down the middle of the glass. I would use the mitt to wash the bugs off, the squeegee to remove the water, and a rag to dry the rubber blade between strokes. At the end of the day we used the mitt to wipe bugs off the front of the car and the mirrors.
Others probably have other tips so please add them to this thread.
Travel on a weekday if practical. For a couple months before our trip I kept checking our planned chargers mostly to see if any of them had regular reliability issues. I noticed that most of them were much busier on weekends than weekdays. That makes sense since most people will work through Friday, then travel on the weekend, and come home on the weekend. During our trip we drove to Boulder on a Monday and Tuesday, and came home on a Monday and Tuesday. We made 17 DC fast charging stops and in that entire time we only saw 5 other cars charging.
Use ABRP Premium and use an OBD reader. Even if you only do so for the time you are on your trip. Subscribe, take your trip, and unsubscribe if you wish. Having live accurate updates for estimated SOC on arrival that takes elevation changes, winds, and temperatures into account is very reassuring. I use a OBDLink CX reader. With this setup, if you have your next stop set in ABRP, while you are charging, there will be a "Range" bar that shows you how far you can go before the battery dies. Once that bar reaches your destination, it will start showing SOC on arrival. Simply wait until it reaches your desired SOC, unplug, and be on your way. The OBD reader is not that expensive and is a one time expense. The subscription is only about $5/month.
Even ABRP isn't perfect. I've used ABRP on many short trips (no charging required) just so it can learn my car. Even so, it is usually conservative and I usually arrive with an extra 1-2% SOC. However, ABRP cannot take into account the energy used to precondition the battery. If the temperature is cold and you plan to use preconditioning, I'd recommend you allow an extra 5% SOC.
Charging to an SOC of 70-80% is optimum. This of course, assumes there is a charger you can reach with your desired reserve when you start with 70-80% SOC. Out here in the west, that's not always possible (Wyoming for example) unless you live in California or operate up and down i5. I had assumed there would be about 7 minutes of overhead for each charge. That is, time to get from the highway to the charger, start charging, stop the charge, and then get back to the highway. My wife and I tracked that time and for us it turned out to be more like 9 or 10 minutes. When you add the overhead time to the actual charging time, and consider the number of miles of range you add by charging to a given SOC, 70-80% SOC gives you the most miles added for each minute off the highway.
You'll probably get more charge than you need. For the majority of our stops, by the time we took care of other issues like eating, using the restroom, walking and watering the dog, cleaning the windshield, buying a beverage, etc.; the car had more charge on it than we needed. Only a few times were we waiting for the car to charge before we continued.
Bring a wash mitt. Most charging stops don't have anything you can use to clean your windshield. We took a car wash mitt, put it in a Ziploc bag, and saturated it with water. I also bought a squeegee that was collapsible. That is, it had the head, and multiple handle extensions that screw together. That allowed me to reach the entire windshield from one side of the car so I didn't leave a streak up and down the middle of the glass. I would use the mitt to wash the bugs off, the squeegee to remove the water, and a rag to dry the rubber blade between strokes. At the end of the day we used the mitt to wipe bugs off the front of the car and the mirrors.
Others probably have other tips so please add them to this thread.
