First EV Road Trip

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!).