LA to SF

[kpritchard]

Hello, I was wanting to know what is the routes that people here take to get to Los Angeles to San Francisco. Also, has anyone gone up the 5 and taken the 99? How does the car do on the Grapevine? I want to take this route, but not sure about how the car will do and if there is enough quick chargers. Thanks for reading. Please move this if I posted this in the wrong place. I am not sure where to post this sort of thing.

 

[miimura]

I-5 is not really possible due to a lack of chargers. CA-99 and 101 are both doable. 99 is actually shorter at 414 miles compared to 445 for the 101 route. However, with 99 you have a leg over the Grapevine that is 72.4 miles and has no backup charging opportunities.

The maps below were made with the PlugShare Trip Planner with filters set to only show CCS chargers.

I was originally going to say that 101 is the recommended route, but the more I think about it, I would probably go on 99. It's actually shorter and all of the charging sites have redundant chargers. On the 101 route, the E and F locations on the map are single medium power chargers. They can only deliver 62 amps DC (24kW) to the car while the rest can deliver 100-125 amps (50kW). Several of the other stops on the 101 route also only have one CCS plug, so if it's broken you're out of luck and will have to find an L2 to get enough juice to reach the next CCS charger. Anyway, in the best case, it's a 10 hour drive - 6.5 hours driving and 3.5 hours charging.

One trick to doing this kind of driving is to enter the address of the next charging station in your navigation. That way, you can see the distance to go and the car's guess at the range at a glance. You should generally drive with a buffer of at least 10 miles. If the buffer gets lower than that, slow down. Going over the Grapevine is going to be stressful because the car is going to have a terrible guess at the range while you're climbing. Hopefully you have a SEL with cruise control because the best approach would be to set the cruise to 65mph and leave it there until you get to Wheeler Ridge and the I-5 / CA-99 split. Then you can really judge how much energy you have left and possibly drive faster the rest of the way to the chargers at the Bakersfield Wal-Mart.

If you're going to do this drive in hot weather, there's a good chance that the car will start limiting the power for driving and charging. The battery pack does not have any active cooling and freeway driving and fast charging both generate heat in the battery pack. You will want to keep an eye on the small power meter in the instrument cluster. For the southbound return trip, you may encounter power limiting when you're climbing out of the central valley and the car may not be able to hold 65mph uphill. I'm not saying it will happen and I've not seen an actual account of this trip in an e-Golf, but it could happen.

 

[miimura]

One more thing. If you don't already have the NRG EVgo On-the-Go plan, get it. With this number of charging sessions you will save money by paying the $15/month and the $29 ETF over paying the per session and higher per minute charges incurred on the Flex plan. If you already have a EVgo Flex plan account open, I would recommend opening a completely new account for the On-the-Go plan using a different credit card. NRG's billing is notoriously bad and one of the horror stories was a guy who asked them to convert his account but they kept billing him the higher usage charges anyway. It took hours on the phone over several months to get it straightened out.

 

[kpritchard]

I-5 is not really possible due to a lack of chargers. CA-99 and 101 are both doable. 99 is actually shorter at 414 miles compared to 445 for the 101 route. However, with 99 you have a leg over the Grapevine that is 72.4 miles and has no backup charging opportunities.

The maps below were made with the PlugShare Trip Planner with filters set to only show CCS chargers.

I was originally going to say that 101 is the recommended route, but the more I think about it, I would probably go on 99. It's actually shorter and all of the charging sites have redundant chargers. On the 101 route, the E and F locations on the map are single medium power chargers. They can only deliver 62 amps DC (24kW) to the car while the rest can deliver 100-125 amps (50kW). Several of the other stops on the 101 route also only have one CCS plug, so if it's broken you're out of luck and will have to find an L2 to get enough juice to reach the next CCS charger. Anyway, in the best case, it's a 10 hour drive - 6.5 hours driving and 3.5 hours charging.

One trick to doing this kind of driving is to enter the address of the next charging station in your navigation. That way, you can see the distance to go and the car's guess at the range at a glance. You should generally drive with a buffer of at least 10 miles. If the buffer gets lower than that, slow down. Going over the Grapevine is going to be stressful because the car is going to have a terrible guess at the range while you're climbing. Hopefully you have a SEL with cruise control because the best approach would be to set the cruise to 65mph and leave it there until you get to Wheeler Ridge and the I-5 / CA-99 split. Then you can really judge how much energy you have left and possibly drive faster the rest of the way to the chargers at the Bakersfield Wal-Mart.

If you're going to do this drive in hot weather, there's a good chance that the car will start limiting the power for driving and charging. The battery pack does not have any active cooling and freeway driving and fast charging both generate heat in the battery pack. You will want to keep an eye on the small power meter in the instrument cluster. For the southbound return trip, you may encounter power limiting when you're climbing out of the central valley and the car may not be able to hold 65mph uphill. I'm not saying it will happen and I've not seen an actual account of this trip in an e-Golf, but it could happen.

Wow, thank you! That was really great of you to figure out all that info for me. One last question. Would both routes be the 10 hours, or would you say just the 101?

 

[kpritchard]

One more thing. If you don't already have the NRG EVgo On-the-Go plan, get it. With this number of charging sessions you will save money by paying the $15/month and the $29 ETF over paying the per session and higher per minute charges incurred on the Flex plan. If you already have a EVgo Flex plan account open, I would recommend opening a completely new account for the On-the-Go plan using a different credit card. NRG's billing is notoriously bad and one of the horror stories was a guy who asked them to convert his account but they kept billing him the higher usage charges anyway. It took hours on the phone over several months to get it straightened out.

I did sign up for the EVgo monthly plan already. I figured it would be the best way to go anyways. And I will make of a note of the billing issues with them too. Thanks again!

 

[miimura]

Wow, thank you! That was really great of you to figure out all that info for me. One last question. Would both routes be the 10 hours, or would you say just the 101?

Taking the 101 route will take longer, but will not have the emotional stress of going over the Grapevine not knowing your real range buffer. Here's my estimate for the 101 route:

Driving 445 miles @ 65mph = 6:50
Charging 55 miles @ 75mph = 0:44 (medium chargers in Paso Robles & King City)
Charging 445 - 80 - 55 = 310 miles @ 130 mph = 2:23

So, that comes to about 10 hours in the absolute best case too. You will probably spend an hour charging in Paso Robles and King City combined and the other charging stops will probably add up to more like 3 hours. So, 11 hours total is much more likely.

However, like I said before, you are much more likely to encounter a problem that will prevent you from getting a fast charge on the 101 corridor. It's just the odds that every charging site with a single plug will be working is not that great. Each time that happens, a 30 minute charging stop could turn into like 3 hours to get enough juice on a L2 charger to make it to the next CCS charger.

 

[JoulesThief]

Also read your owners manual.

VW does not recommend back to back quick charging. They want you to recharge fully and balance recharge the batteries every other recharge cycle. VW's terminology is to use the Fast recharging feature "sparingly".

Again, read your owners manual.

Myself, I'd never use my e-Golf to go to San Francisco. I'd use one of my TDI's. 11 hours is wishful thinking in an e-golf. Someone will be in front of you recharging at at least one or two stations.

 

[miimura]

11 hours is wishful thinking in an e-golf. Someone will be in front of you recharging at at least one or two stations.

That is another reason to choose the 99 route. Every stop I called out on that route has more than one CCS charger.

 

[JoulesThief]

11 hours is wishful thinking in an e-golf. Someone will be in front of you recharging at at least one or two stations.

That is another reason to choose the 99 route. Every stop I called out on that route has more than one CCS charger.

What are your thoughts on DC quick charging back to back at those 30 minute recharge stations on a passively cooled battery pack like on an e-Golf? VW says it shortens the life and capacity of the battery, warns against it, and warns that it can void warranty.

 

[Jeremy1026]

11 hours is wishful thinking in an e-golf. Someone will be in front of you recharging at at least one or two stations.

That is another reason to choose the 99 route. Every stop I called out on that route has more than one CCS charger.

What are your thoughts on DC quick charging back to back at those 30 minute recharge stations on a passively cooled battery pack like on an e-Golf? VW says it shortens the life and capacity of the battery, warns against it, and warns that it can void warranty.

VW did an e-Golf road trip where there back to back DC Fast Charged a few times as a publicity stunt. While their legal team says don't do it, I feel like this is simply from a legal stand point so if something were to happen to your battery, they have an out.

 

[f1geek]

I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me that VW undermines their legal case for voiding the warranty if they advertise that behavior as a feature of the car. VW currently owes $25 billion in fines for stupid behavior so I'd say their lawyers are pretty stupid, too. VW didn't end up saving any money by not developing a proper pollution control system for their polluting TDIs!

Air cooled or not, I have read anecdotes about e-Golf programming that limits charge rates based on environmental conditions, so it's possible that there are protections built into the car. I would like to know what happens to battery life under these conditions so if someone wants to perform the test, we can all benefit from the empirical data.

 

[miimura]

My personal opinion is that this trip is possible but not recommended in a 2015 or 2016 e-Golf. The main reason is that the battery is not big enough to drive a reasonable distance before stopping. It's basically 1 hour driving and 30 minutes charging. The 2017 with 35kWh battery pack would be much more tolerable at about 1.5 hours driving and probably 45 minutes charging. Going northbound, you would probably only need a 10-15 minute top-up before heading over the Grapevine, then only 3 more full charging stops, skipping two of the 5 charging stops on 99 and just getting a little more juice for the last leg from Livermore to SF.

I would only do this trip in one of my EVs if I had a business trip or vacation that would last more than a week or two. The convenience of driving my own EV instead of renting an ICE would outweigh the hassle of doing this long distance charging. However, in my case, I would take the RAV4 EV since it has a 40+kWh battery and the CHAdeMO fast charge mod. Of course, in a Tesla this trip is cake using the Supercharger network.

 

[daeofcal]

If all the chips fall in the right places, 15 hours may be possible. I drove my 2016 w/ DCFC from SF to SD over couple of days with extended stops. Well, technically 3 days since I got home at about 4 am.

1. If you want to use the DCFC networks, the only option is the 101, which is a longer route than the I-5.
2. To make the most of the energy input, drive between 60 and 65 mph instead of 85mph, and draft big rigs whenever possible. Less energy used = less time spent charging and possibly fewer stops.
3. All the DCFC stations are available and operational when you arrive. This is probably the biggest IF in the whole trip. There were a pretty good number of Chargepoint DCFC station along the way that were not working. And usually, there is just one station at these stops. I was fortunate in couple of times that there were EVGo DCFC stations within the guestimated range remaining.
4. The DCFC station does not deliver power at 6.6 kWh. This obviously adds to the charging times, and about half of the Chargepoint DCFC stations on the 101 deliver less power.
5. You're not tired.

 

[kpritchard]

I have done the 101 trip in my 2016 e-golf. And the stations along the way didn't output as much juice like others have said. I find the ChargePoint stations to be not as good as the EVGo ones. If I remember right, it took like 16-17 hours. Which is a bit longer than I would like. I am looking at trying the 99 next.

 

[JoulesThief]

I have done the 101 trip in my 2016 e-golf. And the stations along the way didn't output as much juice like others have said. I find the ChargePoint stations to be not as good as the EVGo ones. If I remember right, it took like 16-17 hours. Which is a bit longer than I would like. I am looking at trying the 99 next.

Those ones that don't put out as much juice as the EVGo ones also don't damage the life and capacity of your eGolf battery, because they have a 1C charging rate, something the battery needs to not be exceeded, so the battery doesn't generate too much heat , lose capacity, or shorten the life of the very expensive battery. Read your owners manual on Fast Charging... VW recommends you recharge as much as possible at home, not at fast chargers. VW and BMW paid to put those 50 minute chargers in, to protect your batteries.

Again read your owners manual, they do not recommend back to back fast charging. They recommend Level 2 recharges every other charge to balance charge all the batteries in the battery pack, something a DC quick charger circumvents, in the name of saving some time, at the expense of the battery pack and it's life and capacity.

Point being, this car was never designed to be used for long distance drives. It was designed to be an in city work commuter vehicle.

 

[f1geek]

Nice job on making the trip! You have proven that VW designed the e-Golf for long distance trips, albeit with a bit more stopping time than other cars. It's too bad BMW and VW went the cheap route with the 24 kW stations (which have been pretty unreliable, too), but in VW's new penance EV charging project, they will not be funding any more low power DCFC stations. I quick charge my car pretty routinely and have seen very minimal loss in battery capacity (due to errors in the capacity calculation, I'm not even sure there is any degradation) in over 17,000 miles of driving.

 

[JoulesThief]

Nice job on making the trip! You have proven that VW designed the e-Golf for long distance trips, albeit with a bit more stopping time than other cars. It's too bad BMW and VW went the cheap route with the 24 kW stations (which have been pretty unreliable, too), but in VW's new penance EV charging project, they will not be funding any more low power DCFC stations. I quick charge my car pretty routinely and have seen very minimal loss in battery capacity (due to errors in the capacity calculation, I'm not even sure there is any degradation) in over 17,000 miles of driving.

He's proven that it's possible, not that VW designed it for long distance trips. It might be feasible, but my time is worth too much money to be sitting at chargers half my time to make a 400 mile trip over 15 hours. If Tesla thought it was a good idea, they installed a facility to change out your depleted charge battery with a fully charged battery at Harris Ranch on I-5 in 15 minute tims. That program was soon scrapped.

I'll pay the price of diesel fuel and take a TDI every time, every day I need to make more than 100 miles in a day of driving. Driving from Los Angeles to San Ysidro and back in a day once, as an experiment, convinced me it's a huge waste of time waiting to recharge, when you'd rather be down the road. Now, I recharge almost exclusively in my garage, no need to be bothered with public chargers that get grossly abused.

 

[kpritchard]

I have done the 101 trip in my 2016 e-golf. And the stations along the way didn't output as much juice like others have said. I find the ChargePoint stations to be not as good as the EVGo ones. If I remember right, it took like 16-17 hours. Which is a bit longer than I would like. I am looking at trying the 99 next.

Those ones that don't put out as much juice as the EVGo ones also don't damage the life and capacity of your eGolf battery, because they have a 1C charging rate, something the battery needs to not be exceeded, so the battery doesn't generate too much heat , lose capacity, or shorten the life of the very expensive battery. Read your owners manual on Fast Charging... VW recommends you recharge as much as possible at home, not at fast chargers. VW and BMW paid to put those 50 minute chargers in, to protect your batteries.

Again read your owners manual, they do not recommend back to back fast charging. They recommend Level 2 recharges every other charge to balance charge all the batteries in the battery pack, something a DC quick charger circumvents, in the name of saving some time, at the expense of the battery pack and it's life and capacity.

Point being, this car was never designed to be used for long distance drives. It was designed to be an in city work commuter vehicle.

I totally get that. I have read about it prior to you saying anything about it a few times. But I still want to try. For science! This is something I have done in other electric cars as well. I once went on a trip from Van Nuys in LA to Milford in the state of Utah in a Rav4EV. Just to see what the car can do. Also, I mostly do charge on my home charger.

 

[JoulesThief]

I have done the 101 trip in my 2016 e-golf. And the stations along the way didn't output as much juice like others have said. I find the ChargePoint stations to be not as good as the EVGo ones. If I remember right, it took like 16-17 hours. Which is a bit longer than I would like. I am looking at trying the 99 next.

Those ones that don't put out as much juice as the EVGo ones also don't damage the life and capacity of your eGolf battery, because they have a 1C charging rate, something the battery needs to not be exceeded, so the battery doesn't generate too much heat , lose capacity, or shorten the life of the very expensive battery. Read your owners manual on Fast Charging... VW recommends you recharge as much as possible at home, not at fast chargers. VW and BMW paid to put those 50 minute chargers in, to protect your batteries.

Again read your owners manual, they do not recommend back to back fast charging. They recommend Level 2 recharges every other charge to balance charge all the batteries in the battery pack, something a DC quick charger circumvents, in the name of saving some time, at the expense of the battery pack and it's life and capacity.

Point being, this car was never designed to be used for long distance drives. It was designed to be an in city work commuter vehicle.

I totally get that. I have read about it prior to you saying anything about it a few times. But I still want to try. For science! This is something I have done in other electric cars as well. I once went on a trip from Van Nuys in LA to Milford in the state of Utah in a Rav4EV. Just to see what the car can do. Also, I mostly do charge on my home charger.

I understand in the name of science. Just note that VW sells a majority of e-Golfs in SE configuration with no quick charger and the 3.6kwh charger on board. So those batteries, hopefully should last a long time from not being quickly recharged. Quick discharging of them, however, is not good either, both processes generate heat within the battery.

Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should. Ego and bragging rights sometimes get in the way of science.