Best way to plan a long trip?

[Highpockets]

I am relatively new to the EV game and am planning my first long trip with my ER Lightning. I will be traveling from north east PA (through NY) to Northern MN. What is the best way to plan my charging stops? I have the Chargepoint app, the Tesla app (and adapter), and the Ford Nav. Are there better apps? I have read a post here that says the truck preconditions if I use Ford Nav and set the charger as a destination. Is this important? How about charging at hotels? Is this realistic/dependable? Lots of questions. Thanks for your help!

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[RickLightning]

Many threads on this. ABRP, and check every charger on Plugshare. Hotel charging is sometimes free, but you will need to decide how far you want to drive each day, and then pick an area to look for hotel charging (PlugShare). I use ABRP, and then force my overnight stop in it.

Do you have a Tesla Destination adapter? https://amzn.to/3VKCrgu

 

[JRT]

Plan on A Better Route Planner (ABRP) and have the app on your phone. Don't trust the Ford Nav for charging, it will route you to slow chargers and in general be a big pain. Look for 150kwh chargers 1st or better V3 and V4 Tesla. Not all Tesla are compatible.

 

[JRT]

I plan the route first, verify the chargers reviews in PlugShare, then have the list of chargers and navigate to them individually. Ford nav will recalculate if you load points and in general is just terrible compared to just running google navigation.

 

[Webbo85]

100% what Rick and JRT said. Best and most reliable way to do it.

 

[Highpockets]

Many threads on this. ABRP, and check every charger on Plugshare. Hotel charging is sometimes free, but you will need to decide how far you want to drive each day, and then pick an area to look for hotel charging (PlugShare). I use ABRP, and then force my overnight stop in it.

Do you have a Tesla Destination adapter? https://amzn.to/3VKCrgu

Thanks. Yes, I do have both types of Tesla adapters.

 

[bananaslug79]

We recently traveled from Central PA to NE Florida and back over 8 days (2200 miles). I planned both routes via a combination of FordPass and their web counterpart, then verified what I could through Google Maps. Depending on the location we were headed to, I would find an alternate two or three chargers just in case. Worked great!

 

[Bwanapete]

Or you could do it my way. (This works at least in northeastern US) Just start at 100% and charge when the truck says to. But sometimes the truck is too conservative.

 

[spadesaspade]

You have the Tesla adapter. That makes your life super easy. I have driven from Western PA to Chicago, NY city, Western MI and Delaware just looking for my next 2 stops on the Tesla app. It'll be cheapest and most convenient to use Tesla superchargers with the membership. It even shows you broken chargers ahead of time. Estimate not more than 2kW/mile of electricity consumption and plan your next stop accordingly and you should be fine.

I looked at hotel charging but most of the hotels in midwest with a charger are more expensive by at least 50$ more than what I want to pay for a sleepover and their competition. I just charge at a supercharger at the end of the day or early morning soon after leaving. Takes about 25 minutes to get to 80-85%. If you can find a hotel at a competitive price with free/cheap charging, go for it. I use plugshare for this information. Use the app filters for this information which lets you see only chargers with lodging.

 

[MyJoule]

I use Abetterrouteplanner to get an idea of what to expect, Use plug share to check on outages, use chargefinder.com for some real time status on the way

BTW- in the truck - last time I looked, you could filter chargers by level, Level 3 is all you want to use (except overnight) on road trips, and even then you want to use the ones that can deliver at least 100+KW to minimize charge time. One thing about the lightning's charge curve, you pretty much get full speed (if the charger can supply it) for a little while (10 min or something like that) when you start a charge- YMMV of course We're eagerly awaiting our adapter, which might be in the next batch to ship, for a trip in mid July- but as insurance to making the trip even tolerable, I ordered the A2Z adapter this week. The route we're taking we'll be using almost 100% Tesla superchargers because they just work- Last time with EA and EVgo, we got charges, but most of the time it was just barely working, either most stalls down or all stalls derated. With Tesla, we've had great experiences in our Model S- expecting similar with the Lightning once we have the adapter- Keep in mind we'll be using Superchargers where there are usually more than 12 stalls vs the others which might have 4 stalls- Quartzite AZ is a great example, EA has 4 stalls, Tesla has 120 stalls ( at least 84 of which are available to the Lightning) and even Rivian has more than 4 stalls there- although at last look Ford couldn't use the Rivian network (yet)

For most of the US- the Tesla Superchargers and the adapter will make road tripping the Lightning a breeze. Just be careful and do a little research before hand to make sure the route you want to use is covered with accessible DC fast charging

 

[Highpockets]

Thank you all for the helpful information.

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