My 70-something parents have decided to take another long distance road trip in their ID.4

Brons2

Brons2

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So to all you EV luddites, my elderly parents will be driving their EV from the Austin suburbs to San Jose, CA, yet again. This is a minimum 3,416 mile round trip using mostly Interstate highways, not counting driving around at the destination and so forth, plus getting to charging stations and hotels and so forth. Distince calculated using Google Maps from their actual home address to the nearest relative home address in the Bay Area, and using the I-5 route instead of the Coast route to get from the Los Angeles area. The whole trip will probably be closer to 4000 miles and that's assuming they don't head up into Oregon to visit friends, or take the coast route to visit their nephew/my cousin.

I, personally, would probably fly as there is direct service from AUS-SJC on multiple airlines, but hey they are retired and have the time, and they love road trips. Having school age children, that pretty much dictates when I can go, but my parents have no such constraints.

It will be colder this time as compared to when they drove out west in June, so that will be interesting how it effects their effective range. At home they charge to 80% but on the road they were charging to 100% every time last time, even though it wasn't strictly necessary to reach the next stop on many of their drive intervals. They were just more comfortable spending the extra time to charge to 100% every time.

They got 3 years free charging at Electrify America up front with the purchase of the vehicle, so I would expect they'd use that for the vast majority of their charging. Max DC fast charging rate on the ID.4 is 135kwh for all models, so it's a little slower than the Tesla max rate at superchargers.

They also have an adapter for the Tesla destination chargers at hotels and so forth.

Vehicle in question is a 2022 VW ID.4 Pro S RWD, battery capacity 82KWH, 201 HP, 229 lb ft. All specifications:
https://media.vw.com/assets/documents/original/15190-2022ID4TechSpecsFinalnoMPGe.pdf
 
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Brons2 said:
So to all you EV luddites, my elderly parents will be driving their EV from the Austin suburbs to San Jose, CA, yet again. This is a minimum 3,416 mile round trip using mostly Interstate highways, not counting driving around at the destination and so forth, plus getting to charging stations and hotels and so forth. Distince calculated using Google Maps from their actual home address to the nearest relative home address in the Bay Area, and using the I-5 route instead of the Coast route to get from the Los Angeles area. The whole trip will probably be closer to 4000 miles and that's assuming they don't head up into Oregon to visit friends, or take the coast route to visit their nephew/ny cousin.

I, personally, would probably fly as there is direct service from AUS-SJC on multiple airlines, but hey they are retired and have the time, and they love road trips. Having school age children, that pretty much dictates when I can go, but my parents have no such constraints.

It will be colder this time as compared to when they drove out west in June, so that will be interesting how it effects their effective range. At home they charge to 80% but on the road they were charging to 100% every time last time, even though it wasn't strictly necessary to reach the next stop on many of their drive intervals. They were just more comfortable spending the extra time to charge to 100% every time.

They got 3 years free charging at Electrify America up front with the purchase of the vehicle, so I would expect they'd use that for the vast majority of their charging. Max DC fast charging rate on the ID.4 is 135kwh for all models, so it's a little slower than the Tesla max rate at superchargers.

They also have an adapter for the Tesla destination chargers at hotels and so forth.

Vehicle in question is a 2022 VW ID.4 Pro S RWD, battery capacity 82KWH, 201 HP, 229 lb ft. All specifications:
https://media.vw.com/assets/documents/original/15190-2022ID4TechSpecsFinalnoMPGe.pdf
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Different strokes. Rent an ICE for the trip.
 
Oro_O said:
There are actual horror movies that start out less risky than this…
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The exact point of this thread is to refute viewpoints like this. They did an even longer road trip to LA, SJ, Oregon and Washington in June for the US Open in LA, then visiting relatives and friends up and down the left coast. So this is not new for them or their vehicle
 
Brons2 said:
The exact point of this thread is to refute viewpoints like this. They did an even longer road trip to LA, SJ, Oregon and Washington in June for the US Open in LA, then visiting relatives and friends up and down the left coast. So this is not new for them or their vehicle
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Then you aren’t doing well, because we all can read newspapers and those of us who live on the west coast know it’s sketchy. The neighbors two doors down had an elderly parent killed in San Jose about 18 months ago.
 
JeffKeryk said:
I am not familiar with non-Tesla charging. I understand charger uptime can challenging.
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135KWH, 82KWH battery, as stated. It's not as fast as Tesla but can charge from 10 to 100 in about 45 minutes. They usually don't take it as low as other people might so stops are a bit faster. They averaged about 190-200 miles per charge at 80mph in June. More range in the PNW where the speed limits are lower.

Electify America is owned by VW and that is what they use. The EPA allowed VW to put their penalty from Dieselgate into building out their EV network, so that's where Electrify America came from. I'm not sure if EA is optimized for VW but they didn't have any issues with EA stations.
 
Oro_O said:
Then you aren’t doing well, because we all can read newspapers and those of us who live on the west coast know it’s sketchy. The neighbors two doors down had an elderly parent killed in San Jose about 18 months ago.
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Your newspaper is more relevant than real world experience of the same people having had done this before in the same vehicle?

Killed - by what?

Maybe then you should reconsider your media sources. Seriously. Just goes to show the anti-EV media bias, and every incident of chargers being broken is highly trumped up. I already know the automotive media is biased.

The one caveat I would state is perhaps Electrify America is optimized for VW since it's their network.
 
Brons2 said:
Your newspaper is more relevant than real world experience of the same people having had done this before in the same vehicle?

Killed - by what?

Maybe then you should reconsider your media sources. Seriously. Just goes to show the anti-EV media bias, and every incident of chargers being broken is highly trumped up. I already know the automotive media is biased.

The one caveat I would state is perhaps Electrify America is optimized for VW since it's their network.
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Your word-salad response does not change the facts. Google them.
 
Wow to some of the replies in this thread.

Seems perfectly sane since there is no tight timetable and given the FREE charging both using EA DCFC and L2 charging at hotels it will cost almost nothing beyond tire wear and depreciation on the car which is minimal. Cheaper than flying or renting a car.
 
Oro_O said:
Your word-salad response does not change the facts. Google them.
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What world salad? These same two individuals drove this same vehicle from Central Texas to LA and then up and down the West Coast in June. What is so difficult to understand about that? Are you lacking in reading comprension?

Whatever happened to that other person is unfortunate but has no bearing on my parents trip, and I have less than zero interest in Googling whatever happened to that other person. People are killed in cars every day no matter what the propulsion method is.

It's almost like you have an agenda here.

[edit[Well ok, I couldn't help it, but the first thing that came up on a DuckDuckGo search on the search term "elderly killed ca ev" was this article: https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/person-killed-in-crash-near-rancho-palos-verdes/

Well my parents don't have a Tesla and their car doesn't have an auto driving function, if that is the implication.
 
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Brons2 said:
So to all you EV luddites, my elderly parents will be driving their EV from the Austin suburbs to San Jose, CA, yet again. This is a minimum 3,416 mile round trip using mostly Interstate highways, not counting driving around at the destination and so forth, plus getting to charging stations and hotels and so forth. Distince calculated using Google Maps from their actual home address to the nearest relative home address in the Bay Area, and using the I-5 route instead of the Coast route to get from the Los Angeles area. The whole trip will probably be closer to 4000 miles and that's assuming they don't head up into Oregon to visit friends, or take the coast route to visit their nephew/my cousin.
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Good for them.

And as I recall they're in their 70s which isn't elderly in my opinion.

Too bad they don't buy into the concept of doing the minimum charge (plus 10 or 15% to spare) to get to their next charger. That would save a lot of time. But they're retired and have time. One thing we noticed on our long trip in western Canada is that older men charging their Teslas usually got out and talked to one another while their cars were charging. So charging is actually a half-ways social activity. For the record, the other two big groups at the Superchargers, young people and new immigrants almost always sat in their cars and studied their cellphones.

Happy trails.
 
Just because they can, doesn't mean they should. I think an EV is a great choice for retirees who just drive to and fro in the city and can charge at home. For a road trip? Not so much.

It's an adventure for them, and I'm sure they like the idea of driving for free. As long as they have the time and have planned their stops with a large margin of error, why not; go for it.

For me, the novelty would wear thin pretty quickly and range anxiety would add unnecessary stress. But, to each his own.

Maybe you should suggest they carry a gas powered generator... just in case ;)
 
Brons2 said:
What world salad? These same two individuals drove this same vehicle from Central Texas to LA and then up and down the West Coast in June. What is so difficult to understand about that? Are you lacking in reading comprension?

Whatever happened to that other person is unfortunate but has no bearing on my parents trip, and I have less than zero interest in Googling whatever happened to that other person. People are killed in cars every day no matter what the propulsion method is.

It's almost like you have an agenda here.
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Besides the ad-hominem attack you made, I still see you have not done the research suggested. Rant on, MacDuff.

(and I am able to not only reference Shakespeare contextually, but also spell “comprehension.”) /done
 
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