Ford to offer FREE NACS adapters

One of my biggest reservations in getting an EV was – not surprisingly or uncommon at all – range anxiety.

I live about 400km from Toronto, and have always considered that distance my general benchmark when going on road trips. In all previous vehicles – at least in recent memory – getting to Toronto on a full tank of gas was no-problem, and would enable a bit of driving around the city before needing to fill up for the return trip home. At least that was my general experience.

So when searching for an EV, I didn’t even look at any vehicles with a range less than 400km, and ultimately decided to go with the extended range Mach-E (468km estimated range).

Of course, after doing further research and reading review after review, it became clear to me that this whole ‘guess-o-meter’ thing was legit, and that range basically boils down to ‘well, it depends’. Regardless, having a rough number as to the ‘ideal’ range gave me a starting point to do my EV shopping.

While looking for vehicles, I had to really admit to myself that my typical ‘trip to Toronto’ benchmark was more like a ‘mythical’ trip. I rarely travel ‘up the 401’, and the overwhelming majority of my driving is less than 100km per day, often much, much less. Why was I so focused range and highway driving, when I rarely do it?

Anyway – as mentioned, I bought the extended range AWD Mach-E. and have been extremely happy. I’ve never seen anywhere near the quoted 468km range, but I also had never charged to 100% either.

That all changed (mostly) when I finally hit the road to go to Waterloo, Ontario for a hockey tournament for my stepson.

Leading up to the trip, I had been pretty busy with work, and it was sort of unclear if we’d need to go up Thursday night , or wait until Friday morning (the tournament schedule was incredibly late). As it turns out, we ended up leaving Thursday night, but I hadn’t really had time to charge up the car. We departed with about 82% battery in temperatures around 8º Celsius. The trip was roughly 300km, and as we left the house, I had an estimated 360km of range. I knew we’d likely make a stop to charge on the way, i just hadn’t really figured out where.

As we started to drive, it became very apparent that there was no way we were going to get the 360km out of charge, and the estimate almost immediately dropped about 30km as soon as I hit the highway. Travelling at about 120km/h give or take, I watched the range drop much faster than the km distance to go. As we passed London, Ontario (roughly 180km into the trip), I had about 35% battery left, with a range of about 120km. My range anxiety was building, so I decided to stop off in Dorchester, Ontario at a Petro-Canada Station, as it was an easy-off, easy-on exit from the highway, and they had a L3 charger. 17 minutes and $8.50 later, we added 30.5kWh, and about another 120km or so of range (if I remember correctly).

The rest of the trip was uneventful, but my roughly 250km of range from leaving Dorchester quickly evaporated. We arrived at our hotel somewhere around 40% battery and something like 125km of range estimated. The hotel had complimentary EV charging so I let it go to 100% (for the first time!) overnight as I knew we’d be doing a lot of driving all weekend back and forth to games.

Throughout the weekend, I think we used about 40% of the battery, and so I re-charged up overnight Saturday night before we headed home Sunday – back up to 100%, with an estimated range of around 440km.

Driving home, I felt much more confident leaving Waterloo with a full battery, and we drove the whole way home without a charge, pulling into the driveway with somewhere around 20% battery charge left.

So… what did I learn? Well, I still get a bit of range anxiety, even though we had zero issues making it to anywhere we needed to go and free charging at the hotel was awesome! Could you imagine getting a free tank of gas from a hotel as part of your room rate!?

I also learned that my mythical trip to Toronto seems highly unlikely to do on a full charge – maybe if I dropped my speed and/or it was much warmer out, it MIGHT be do-able, but not without me constantly looking at the guess-o-meter and sweating the entire time.

But I also learned that stopping to charge isn’t that big of a deal. In less than 20 minutes we were on our way. It gave me a chance to take a bio break and re-fuel on caffeine, and my wife really didn’t seem to mind the extra 10 minutes or so on this stop compared to any typical highway rest-stop trip we’d ever done in the past.

I especially enjoyed that the entire weekend road trip cost me $8.50 (thanks to home charging and free charging at the hotel). Previously when I drove my Jeep, doing the same trip would have cost about $80 – $100 in gas. I’ll take the extra 10 minutes for charging to save $70+ any day!

Since we did that trip, we also did another trip to Hamilton, Ontario (just a little further than Waterloo), and it was much of the same – stopped to charge in Dorchester, and made it to Hamilton with about 30% charge. We probably could have made the trip without stopping as this time I left home at 100% charge. However, it was a much colder day, and we needed to stop for a bite to eat anyway, so I decided to stick to what I know and stop at the Petro-Canada. This time, we fuelled for about 27 minutes at a cost of $13.70 for 34.1kWh added.

Driving home on that trip was again done without stops, but I squeaked into the driveway with only 5% charge remaining. I might not do that again, but we were just eager to get home and didn’t feel like stopping anywhere. Again, colder temps meant running the heat the entire trip, plus the heated seats, so I guess that’s what ate up the additional battery.

All-in-all, I would obviously prefer more range to have more of a ‘safety-net’ in place for these types of trips, but as I currently have no plans for another such journey any time soon, I am good with my purchase and am still overall MUCH MUCH happier driving my EV day-to-day. When we do head back out on the road it will likely be the Spring or even next Summer and range should hopefully be better. It would absolutely be nice to be able to do a Toronto trip on one charge, but even in warmer conditions, I don’t think that’s likely to happen. Regardless, the ‘sacrifice’ of 10-20 minutes extra on one of these trips to save money and do whatever little I can to help reduce emissions is way more beneficial to me.

Since I got my Mach E, I’ve been using a standard 110v wall charger to charge the vehicle overnight.

Yes, it’s slow.

But really, for my average daily drives around the city, it’s been totally fine for my lifestyle. Having the car on the charger for 10-12 hours gave me about 30-45km on average, which is more than enough for what I needed. However, I realized this would not at all be practical for anything more, and certainly not as temperatures drop in the winter, or for any road trips.

All along, I had planned on having a 240v outlet installed in my garage, but had a bit of a hard time finding an affordable solution. The layout of my house is pretty much the worst-case scenario for running wire from the basement through the house and out into my garage. My electrical panel and garage are in complete opposite ends of the house.

Anyway, after a couple extremely bizarre estimates – one was $8000! – I found a highly-recommended electrician, who confidently explained how he would run a wire outside from my panel, up through my attic and down into my garage, for a price significantly cheaper than the other estimates I’d received.

And so, after a couple week delay to find a mutually convenient scheduled time, I now have a shiny 240v outlet in my garage. The overall installation process seemed relatively straightforward, although the electrician did need to get creative in a couple spots. He even noticed – and fixed – a couple other minor wiring issues that he noticed while he was there!

A quick-swap of ends on my Ford Mobile charger and I am now rapidly charging at around 7kwH. What previously took 14 hours is now taking about 90 minutes, and I’m less worried about range than I was before (which for the day-to-day was really not much).

All-in-all, I think it’s definitely do-able to live with just a standard 110v charger as long as your daily commute is short like mine. And the cost of installing a 240v plug can be outrageous, so I encourage you to shop around. That all being said, I am happy with my 240v plug and the Ford Mobile charger for now. I may look at getting a more ‘permanent’ charging station like a Grizzl-E or equivalent, but for now, what I have is working wonderfully!

Unless maybe it was the grand opening of a new station for an hour, or a random $10 gift card as part of a giveaway, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone giving away free gas or diesel.

And certainly never 24/7/365!

Yet in the EV world, apparently, it’s not at all uncommon to find free charging stations. Natrually, most of them are paid, but I’m learning (and happy to see) that many common locations – for example: municipally-owned parking lots or arenas, hotels, and car dealerships – offer free charging to anyone who drives an EV.

Prior to buying my Mach-E, I had looked at PlugShare to check out charging stations near me, and saw that some were free, but I always kind of assumed it was either a mistake, or it referred to free parking, or that there was some sort of catch. After all, NOTHING is free.. right? Thankfully, I guess not!

Anyway, the other night, I took a short drive over to one of these alleged free chargers at a Chevy Dealership, and was impressed to see an L3 Charger just happily sitting there waiting for me to plug in. They didn’t care that I had a Ford – it’s just a nice little service they provide.

So, I plugged it in and quickly saw my range expand, thanks to the (nearly) 50kWh charger…. all for FREE! Both the speed and cost certainly beat my L1 home charger. And, considering it’s less than 5km from my house, this won’t be my last visit.

I know this is nothing shocking to anyone who’s owned an EV for longer than a day, but to me, it was just one more thing that validated my choice to jump into EV ownership, and I’m happy to be part of this growing community.

I am sure a day will come where it just won’t be economically feasible for Free charging to exist, but as long as it’s an option, I’ll take advantage of it where I can!

It’s been just over 72 hours since I’ve owned the Mach E, and I’m still really happy with my purchase.

Before I forget, I just wanted to take a pause and capture some of my initial thoughts regarding Charging and Range Anxiety.

One of my early and persistent concerns with buying an EV was range, and the logistics of charging: how does it even work? Will I need a charger at home? How much range is enough? Why don’t you charge to 100% every day? Do I even need to charge every day? So many questions, and so far, 3 days in, not many answers to the bigger questions.

However, one of my biggest worries about home charging has largely been much ado about nothing.

When I picked up the car from the dealer, it was charged to 91%, good for about 390km (give or take). My drive home was about 50km, but I was surprised to see about 360km remaining on the gauge. I had to take a slower road home as construction had clogged up the more direct – and obviously faster – highway route.

I am “limited” to standard 120v charging so far at my house with the Ford Mobile Charging Cord that I got as part of my order. I put limited in quotes, as the most basic of L1 chargers really hasn’t limited anything I’ve needed to do thus far. IF I go in to my office, my round-trip commute is only about 15km (and I don’t go in every day), so the 44km minimum that I’ve obtained overnight from my Charging Cord is more than enough to cover that. If my wife were to drive the Mach E to her job, the round-trip usage is about 60km, which still wouldn’t put too much of a dent into the battery.

Charging is easier than I thought – although I don’t know why I thought it would be difficult. Simply plug in one end to the wall, the other to the car, wait for the charging lights to spin around and that’s it. Status of everything you need to know is done through the FordPass app, and is simple enough for anyone to figure out. From the YouTube videos I’d watched, I knew I could set preferred charging times, in order to optimize charging times and costs due to ‘preferred time billing’ from your electric company. What I didn’t see in any video – and was very happy to see in the app – is that you can enter your postal code and it automatically detects your hydro/electricity provider. The app detected that my billing rate is lower weekdays from 7pm – 7am and 24-hours all weekend, so it suggested those as optimal charging times.

By having a full 12-hour window on weekdays to charge, I’ve been getting roughly 75km with the puny little 120v charge. Of course it would be nice to have a 240v outlet in my garage to give me 75km in about 2-3 hours, but so far, with the car sitting idle anyway, it’s no big deal to use the 120v. I did have someone come out to the house today to see if it’s possible to put in a 240 outlet, and I’m expecting an estimate next week.

If it’s too expensive or logistically too complicated, I think I can get by with the 120v charging for quite a while. We’ll see what winter brings, but even then, I have several L2 and L3 chargers within 10km of my house, and many of them are at local dealerships, meaning they are free. Or at least that’s what apps like ChargePoint and the BlueOval map is telling me. I still can’t believe that higher capacity chargers would be totally free, so I will have to check those out and see for myself.

Anyway, for anyone with a short commute thinking the logistics of charging are more complicated than they are, take it from me, you absolutely CAN get by with just the 120v charger (at least initially!).