Driving from Palm Springs to Phoenix means you get to experience the joy of passing 3 separate Tesla Supercharger stations while hoping you can do the 220+ freeway miles between the two closest L2 charging stations.
I started off fully charged and with the advantage of living only 7 miles west of the easternmost L2 charging station in the Coachella Valley (which is a dual J1772 at 82-995 Hwy 111, Indio, CA 92201). 220 miles away is the next available L2 charging station at the Verrado Coffee Company in Buckeye, AZ. In between, there are 3 Tesla Supercharger stations and a scattering of RV parks. I made up a 14-50 adapter for my garage mounted 20A Clipper Creek EVSE and packed them along just in case. The Cove RV Park in Blythe, from reports, is EV friendly and if my range wasn't looking good I was planning on spending an hour or so there getting some extra juice.
As a side note, there are 3 DCFC stations that have been supposedly funded for quite some time between Indio and Arizona. One in Chiraco Summit and two locations in Blythe. I stopped by all three locations to see if any progress was being made and there was no sign that anything had been done. In 2014 there had also been an L2 charger funded for the Lake Tamarisk library in Desert Center, that had never been built either.
Back to the trip, off we started, up the big hill out of the Coachella Valley to Chiraco Summit and then the long barren stretch between there and Blythe. I kept my speed down to 60mph with the goal of exceeding 4 miles/kWh to make it to Verrado with some range to spare. There are plenty of slower trucks on I-10 so I was able to manage the slower speed without impeding traffic but it made for a long trip. Any Tesla owners would have been able to take advantage of the charging station in Indio before heading east, everyone else has to settle for spending some time at an L2 station to get topped up.
Other than the big climb to start we quickly got over my 4 mile/kWh goal and by the time we got to Blythe I had enough margin to take a bathroom break and check for signs of a DCFC under construction at the Red Roof Inn and and newer hotel further east where the two DCFC stations were supposedly funded to be built. No signs of anything charging station related at either location. We zipped past the Cove RV park which is on the south side of I-10 just as you get to the Colorado river.
Once on the Arizona side the speed limit goes up to 75mph but I stuck with the right lane, 60 mph and the slower truck traffic. Quartzite was next up, home to another Tesla Supercharger station but other than some mostly vacant (in the summer) RV parks that may or may not be interested in charging EV owners $$$ for the pleasure of spending an hour or two charging at 6kW or so there is nothing for non-Tesla owners.
After spending nearly 4 hours driving at 60mph instead of closer to 3 hours at 75 we pulled into the Verrado Coffee parking lot with about 35 miles of range showing. Enough to maybe make it to a DCFC station in the Phoenix area but a good place to stop and get a bit of margin. Great place to stop BTW, two Chargepoint chargers (free) that charged at 6kw. Nice grassy dog park adjacent to the parking lot and a roomy coffee shop with outlets for laptops, WiFI and comfortable places to sit.
If you are a Tesla owner you could have pulled into the Buckeye Superchargers a few miles away and charged at 100kW+ instead of 6kW, assuming you didn't charge up in Quartzite instead.
After about 45 minutes we continued on to a DCFC station at the Arizona Mills mall. An evGO station that wouldn't read our RFID card so we had to spend 10 minutes in the blazing sun getting a rep to start the charge remotely. We went in the mall to stay cool and set a timer for 30 minutes, of course you can't get more than a 30 minute charge in one shot at evgo and we really needed an hour. Not wanting to bother calling again to get the charging station remotely started again we settled for the 30 minutes and continued on to Chandler Fashion Square where we hooked up to a free L2 for about an hour while we had lunch. There is a DCFC station there as well but with that same 30 minute limit I didn't want to have to cut my lunch short to go move my car. evGo are the devils for their 30 minute limit.
We'll be heading back to the Palm Springs area in a few days, it will involve spending a couple of hours at some combination of evGO fast charge stations and L2 stations and a final hour or two sitting at a coffee shop in Buckeye getting topped off before crossing our fingers and hoping we can make it back to Palm Springs.
It's not a trip I am likely to want to repeat in a Bolt, looking forward to getting my Model 3 and making the same trip in hours less time and zero hassle. At this point it wouldn't even matter if they put the 2 DCFC ports at Chiraco Summit and 2 more in Blythe. More than a handful of EV's trying to make the trip and relying on them would saturate them.
Long distance travel in a Bolt is certainly possible but it requires a lot more planning and attention that 95% of drivers care for.
Oh, I had to stick a pillow behind my back to keep the seatback "wings" from painfully poking me in the back. Simply too narrow for my skeletal structure. The seat fits my wife fine but GM needs to fire whoever signed off on the dimensions of the seat.
I started off fully charged and with the advantage of living only 7 miles west of the easternmost L2 charging station in the Coachella Valley (which is a dual J1772 at 82-995 Hwy 111, Indio, CA 92201). 220 miles away is the next available L2 charging station at the Verrado Coffee Company in Buckeye, AZ. In between, there are 3 Tesla Supercharger stations and a scattering of RV parks. I made up a 14-50 adapter for my garage mounted 20A Clipper Creek EVSE and packed them along just in case. The Cove RV Park in Blythe, from reports, is EV friendly and if my range wasn't looking good I was planning on spending an hour or so there getting some extra juice.
As a side note, there are 3 DCFC stations that have been supposedly funded for quite some time between Indio and Arizona. One in Chiraco Summit and two locations in Blythe. I stopped by all three locations to see if any progress was being made and there was no sign that anything had been done. In 2014 there had also been an L2 charger funded for the Lake Tamarisk library in Desert Center, that had never been built either.
Back to the trip, off we started, up the big hill out of the Coachella Valley to Chiraco Summit and then the long barren stretch between there and Blythe. I kept my speed down to 60mph with the goal of exceeding 4 miles/kWh to make it to Verrado with some range to spare. There are plenty of slower trucks on I-10 so I was able to manage the slower speed without impeding traffic but it made for a long trip. Any Tesla owners would have been able to take advantage of the charging station in Indio before heading east, everyone else has to settle for spending some time at an L2 station to get topped up.
Other than the big climb to start we quickly got over my 4 mile/kWh goal and by the time we got to Blythe I had enough margin to take a bathroom break and check for signs of a DCFC under construction at the Red Roof Inn and and newer hotel further east where the two DCFC stations were supposedly funded to be built. No signs of anything charging station related at either location. We zipped past the Cove RV park which is on the south side of I-10 just as you get to the Colorado river.
Once on the Arizona side the speed limit goes up to 75mph but I stuck with the right lane, 60 mph and the slower truck traffic. Quartzite was next up, home to another Tesla Supercharger station but other than some mostly vacant (in the summer) RV parks that may or may not be interested in charging EV owners $$$ for the pleasure of spending an hour or two charging at 6kW or so there is nothing for non-Tesla owners.
After spending nearly 4 hours driving at 60mph instead of closer to 3 hours at 75 we pulled into the Verrado Coffee parking lot with about 35 miles of range showing. Enough to maybe make it to a DCFC station in the Phoenix area but a good place to stop and get a bit of margin. Great place to stop BTW, two Chargepoint chargers (free) that charged at 6kw. Nice grassy dog park adjacent to the parking lot and a roomy coffee shop with outlets for laptops, WiFI and comfortable places to sit.
If you are a Tesla owner you could have pulled into the Buckeye Superchargers a few miles away and charged at 100kW+ instead of 6kW, assuming you didn't charge up in Quartzite instead.
After about 45 minutes we continued on to a DCFC station at the Arizona Mills mall. An evGO station that wouldn't read our RFID card so we had to spend 10 minutes in the blazing sun getting a rep to start the charge remotely. We went in the mall to stay cool and set a timer for 30 minutes, of course you can't get more than a 30 minute charge in one shot at evgo and we really needed an hour. Not wanting to bother calling again to get the charging station remotely started again we settled for the 30 minutes and continued on to Chandler Fashion Square where we hooked up to a free L2 for about an hour while we had lunch. There is a DCFC station there as well but with that same 30 minute limit I didn't want to have to cut my lunch short to go move my car. evGo are the devils for their 30 minute limit.
We'll be heading back to the Palm Springs area in a few days, it will involve spending a couple of hours at some combination of evGO fast charge stations and L2 stations and a final hour or two sitting at a coffee shop in Buckeye getting topped off before crossing our fingers and hoping we can make it back to Palm Springs.
It's not a trip I am likely to want to repeat in a Bolt, looking forward to getting my Model 3 and making the same trip in hours less time and zero hassle. At this point it wouldn't even matter if they put the 2 DCFC ports at Chiraco Summit and 2 more in Blythe. More than a handful of EV's trying to make the trip and relying on them would saturate them.
Long distance travel in a Bolt is certainly possible but it requires a lot more planning and attention that 95% of drivers care for.
Oh, I had to stick a pillow behind my back to keep the seatback "wings" from painfully poking me in the back. Simply too narrow for my skeletal structure. The seat fits my wife fine but GM needs to fire whoever signed off on the dimensions of the seat.
