Took a quick weekend trip to Chattanooga to visit some of the sights and get out of Atlanta for a minute. This was my first "optimal" weather trip to see what I can expect for road tripping during non-winter months.
Longest leg was our outbound where we went Atlanta->South Pittsburg, TN to pay a visit to the Lodge Museum of Cast Iron and to pickup some factory direct Lodge pieces (5qt Dutch oven for mom and 3qt Dutch oven for home). 145 miles this leg and went from 98% SOC starting and ended at 25% SOC at arrival. Travel assist at 75MPH pretty much the entire trip and we didn't really hit too much traffic so it was pretty constant.
From there we went back to Chattanooga area and did a bit of local driving. Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum (definitely worth visiting for a quick steam locomotive ride), cruise around the VW Chattanooga factory, down to Chattanooga Choo Choo to grab dinner then back to the hotel. The hotel we chose has an EVGo station which is convenient but slow and expensive (I'll get to that later). I only charged to 80% that evening because there are L2 chargers at Ruby Falls (Blink) and at Incline Railway (Chargepoint) and I figured the two stops would get me to 100% for the trip home.
Return we moseyed our way back towards Atlanta from the hotel hitting the sights in order to make our way towards Atlanta instead of bouncing back and forth. Pulled an always be charging at Ruby Falls (Blink) and Incline Railway (Chargepoint) to get to 100%. Due to time limitations we were not able to go to Rock City which was unfortunately because the Incline Railway was a serious letdown and took much longer than anticipated.
2nd longest leg was our return from Chattanooga->Atlanta . 117 miles this leg and went from 100% SOC starting and ended at 42% SOC on arrival. Same as outbound with Travel assist at 75MPH pretty much the whole way, hit a couple 5-10 minute slowdowns.
Efficiency & charging stats:
Total trip miles - 341
KWH consumed - 115.9
mi/kwh - 2.94
MPGe - 99.18 (~12.7% above EPA HWY estimate)
Cost - $39.68 ($.1164/mile) - thank you EVGo for inflating the crap out of this.
Theoretical max range - 214 miles. (5.45% degradation - 72.8 max battery capacity)
EVGo & Chattanooga charging situation:
EVGo gets their own section because of their slowpoke 50KW chargers. The one at the hotel apparently is throttled (or has some sort of issue) to 35-37KW which is reported widely on recent Plugshare check ins. At .35/minute this resulted in in outrageous cost of ~$.66/KWH, I was not too terribly pleased with the station I used and will most likely avoid their 50KW stations in the future unless in a pinch.
EA currently only has one station way east of town (Wal-Mart on Little Debbie Pkwy) and are building another one way east of town at the VW Chattanooga factory (looks like its going to be a nice one with small solar awnings/canopies over the chargers). This leaves you with two broken 50KW EVGo stations downtown and the 50KW unit throttled to 35-37KW at the Hampton Inn I stayed at. The stretch from the the closest Atlanta EA (Barrett Place in Kennesaw GA) to the Manchester TN EA (Wal-Mart) is ~170 miles but it leave little room for error (very cold temps, high speeds, mountain climb, etc.).
Overall:
Great trip overall. Because this was a mostly straight freeway route I used the VW Travel Assist pretty much the entire time and just sat back and supervised the drive and touched the wheel when needed. I used to be the freeway bomber in my ICE days, ya know the bunch of cars doing 80-90MPH. It's nice to just settle back at 75MPH which seems to get you mostly to wide open roads most of the time with the cluster of freeway bombers flowing through every 5-10 minutes. Kind of interesting to see the other side of that style of driving and I have to say it is far less stressful to just chill out at 75.
Couple pics of the adventures. Chattanooga has quite a bit fun bit to offer and highly recommend if you are passing through or are near enough to make a weekend trip.
Longest leg was our outbound where we went Atlanta->South Pittsburg, TN to pay a visit to the Lodge Museum of Cast Iron and to pickup some factory direct Lodge pieces (5qt Dutch oven for mom and 3qt Dutch oven for home). 145 miles this leg and went from 98% SOC starting and ended at 25% SOC at arrival. Travel assist at 75MPH pretty much the entire trip and we didn't really hit too much traffic so it was pretty constant.
From there we went back to Chattanooga area and did a bit of local driving. Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum (definitely worth visiting for a quick steam locomotive ride), cruise around the VW Chattanooga factory, down to Chattanooga Choo Choo to grab dinner then back to the hotel. The hotel we chose has an EVGo station which is convenient but slow and expensive (I'll get to that later). I only charged to 80% that evening because there are L2 chargers at Ruby Falls (Blink) and at Incline Railway (Chargepoint) and I figured the two stops would get me to 100% for the trip home.
Return we moseyed our way back towards Atlanta from the hotel hitting the sights in order to make our way towards Atlanta instead of bouncing back and forth. Pulled an always be charging at Ruby Falls (Blink) and Incline Railway (Chargepoint) to get to 100%. Due to time limitations we were not able to go to Rock City which was unfortunately because the Incline Railway was a serious letdown and took much longer than anticipated.
2nd longest leg was our return from Chattanooga->Atlanta . 117 miles this leg and went from 100% SOC starting and ended at 42% SOC on arrival. Same as outbound with Travel assist at 75MPH pretty much the whole way, hit a couple 5-10 minute slowdowns.
Efficiency & charging stats:
Total trip miles - 341
KWH consumed - 115.9
mi/kwh - 2.94
MPGe - 99.18 (~12.7% above EPA HWY estimate)
Cost - $39.68 ($.1164/mile) - thank you EVGo for inflating the crap out of this.
Theoretical max range - 214 miles. (5.45% degradation - 72.8 max battery capacity)
EVGo & Chattanooga charging situation:
EVGo gets their own section because of their slowpoke 50KW chargers. The one at the hotel apparently is throttled (or has some sort of issue) to 35-37KW which is reported widely on recent Plugshare check ins. At .35/minute this resulted in in outrageous cost of ~$.66/KWH, I was not too terribly pleased with the station I used and will most likely avoid their 50KW stations in the future unless in a pinch.
EA currently only has one station way east of town (Wal-Mart on Little Debbie Pkwy) and are building another one way east of town at the VW Chattanooga factory (looks like its going to be a nice one with small solar awnings/canopies over the chargers). This leaves you with two broken 50KW EVGo stations downtown and the 50KW unit throttled to 35-37KW at the Hampton Inn I stayed at. The stretch from the the closest Atlanta EA (Barrett Place in Kennesaw GA) to the Manchester TN EA (Wal-Mart) is ~170 miles but it leave little room for error (very cold temps, high speeds, mountain climb, etc.).
Overall:
Great trip overall. Because this was a mostly straight freeway route I used the VW Travel Assist pretty much the entire time and just sat back and supervised the drive and touched the wheel when needed. I used to be the freeway bomber in my ICE days, ya know the bunch of cars doing 80-90MPH. It's nice to just settle back at 75MPH which seems to get you mostly to wide open roads most of the time with the cluster of freeway bombers flowing through every 5-10 minutes. Kind of interesting to see the other side of that style of driving and I have to say it is far less stressful to just chill out at 75.
Couple pics of the adventures. Chattanooga has quite a bit fun bit to offer and highly recommend if you are passing through or are near enough to make a weekend trip.
