Long Trips/Touring

[Shinysideup]

I'm planning a round trip of 732 miles from the SF Bay Area to Ventura near LA, and back. Why?, you may well ask... I'm considering letting Bill Mayer have a go at making me a more comfortable saddle. Has anyone here done such a (totally crazy) trip? Scuderia West said one of their customers did.

It occurred to me that a topic to collect issues around touring may be useful. 

Today, to gather some real data for my planning phase, I did a 33 mile loop, all but 4 miles on freeways, at a constant 60 mph. (About 5200 rpm in 3rd gear, normal mode). Air temp was 61F. Winds were 7-15 mph. I had 40 psi in both tires and a freshly lubed chain.

At the end of the 33 miles, I had 39% charge remaining (54 mile calculated range). At a public L2 Chargepoint station, it took 2h:33m to get me back to 100%.

So this means, at 60 mph, I'll need to charge 4.636 minutes for each mile of travel. For 366 miles, I'll need 28 hours of charging time. If I start very early and ride to just after dark, I can make the one-way trip in about 2 days.

I'm figuring on dividing the trip up into 30-mile segments (ranging from 24 to 51 miles). These will require 1.9 to 4 hour stops for charging. I'll drive for 10 hours and charge for 28 hours, giving me an average speed of about 10 mph, about like a bicycle. Hope all the stations work and are available!

Tesla's 90-second battery swap technology is starting to look very wise!

[protomech]

Big adventure!

Touring needs faster chargers and better aero, no mistake. Empulse has a charger that's ideally suited for charging in a couple of hours, but it's honestly not well-suited for touring over more than about 100 miles.

Terry Hershner's heavily modified Zero can do ~180 miles @ 60 mph, charges in about 45 minutes on 3 J1772 plugs. That's 0.25 minutes for each miles of travel, or 15 minutes of charging after an hour of riding. Total charge time for 360 miles is about 1.5 hours .. more realistically, two 30 minute stops (40 minute with 2 J1772 plugs) and then an overnight charge.

His bike is also hugely more expensive than the Empulse.

Battery swaps are logistical nightmares. I don't believe Tesla will ever roll the battery swap out more than along a very few corridors.

[skuzzle]

I've been planning a 600 mile round trip in September.  My plan is to average 45 MPH on back roads.  (I don't think I could tolerate going slower than 45 average  )  My Empulse can go about 75 miles at 45.  I plan to charge every 45 miles.  This will give me a buffer in case there's something wrong with a charger along the way.  The chargers are a bit sparse during the first half of the trip from Portland to Seattle.  I might also play around with charging to 90 to 95% instead of full charges to maximize the higher amp charging rates.

This plan will only happen if saddlebags and topcase are available by then.

[Shinysideup]

Yes, slowing down definitely helps the range. 60 mph is as slow as I feel safe on the 101 freeway. I just adjusted my software (Streets & Trips) to favor other highways over Interstates, and entered 45 mph as my speed. The mileage increased from 366 to 402, driving time form 10 hours to 12 hours. The roads look a lot more interesting, so I think I'll travel off the beaten path.

I think limiting the charge to 90% is a great idea. Yesterday the charger started by drawing 24 amps and when I came back at past 80% full, it was pulling 16 to 20 amps and around 10 amps during the last few percentages.

The cool thing about the Chargepoint app on my phone is that I can remotely monitor the power uptake (in kW) being delivered.

I forgot to include a statistic my first post: on yesterday's constant 60 mph loop of 33 miles, I used 180 Wh/mile.

[Shinysideup]

EDIT: As Flar has pointed out, my numbers below are flawed for the 90% SOC stats. See revised data on my post of 7/24/13.

I took advantage of a nice day to add some real-world numbers to the discussion:

I did another 33.4 mile drive, this time maintaining a constant 45 mph. Air temps varied from 58F to 72F, with the SF Bay Area's famous microclimates in play along Skyline Blvd.

I just happened to return to the same Chargepoint charger when my SOC was at 90%, enabling me to put some numbers to skuzzle's plan.

Energy used to 90%: 3.799 kWH
Time to 90%: 94 min.

Energy used to 100%:  4.816 kWH
Time to 100%:  120 min

Consumption rate at 60 mph:  181wH/mile
Consumption rate at 45 mph:   144 wH/mile

Min. charge/mile of travel      4.636   Constant 60 mph to 100%
Min. charge/mile of travel      3.593   Constant 45 mph to 100%
Min. charge/mile of travel      2.814   Constant 45 mph to 90%

Extrapolating to my planned trip between South SF and Ventura, CA...

Driving time @ 60 mph:  10 hours
Driving time @ 45 mph:  14 hours

100% Charge time @ 60 mph: 28 hours
100% Charge time @ 45 mph: 22 hours
90%   Charge time @ 45 mph: 15 hours


TOTAL TRIP TIME 100% Charge time @ 60 mph: 38 hours
TOTAL TRIP TIME 100% Charge time @ 45 mph: 36 hours
TOTAL TRIP TIME 90%   Charge time @ 45 mph: 29 hours

Someone with proper math skills (protomech?) should be able to construct some sort of plot to find the optimal combination of speed and charging times. I'm forced to use trial and error and, at this point, skuzzle's proposal of 45 mph and 90% charge seems like a winner. Two segments are pushing 50 miles, so I'll use 100% charge for those. I think reducing time sitting around a charger is a Very Good Thing. Also, the inevitably hotter temps of central California will surely increase the batteries' efficiency, as Gavin proved in New Mexico.

Also of note: 45 mph off the freeway seems like a way more pleasant way to move across the planet than 60 mph on the slab, making my trip more enjoyable to my spirit, and probably no more grueling to my body.

[protomech]

At 60 mph it takes 1.00 minutes to ride 1 mile.
At 45 mph it takes 1.33 minutes to ride 1 mile.

Charging to 90% uses an average of 3.799 kWh * (60 min / 94 min) = 2.42 kW.

Charging to 100% uses an average of 4.816 kWh * (60 min / 120 min) = 2.41 kW.

Oddly, that doesn't point to a lower charge rate. Even the energy delta (4.816 kWh - 3.799 kWh) = 1.017 kWh used to charge 0.93 kWh isn't unusual. Perhaps it's not quite charging to 100%.

At any rate, at 2.4 kW wall charge rate, it takes 181 Wh/mile / 2.4 kW = 4.5 minutes to charge 1 mile @ 60 mph, or 144 Wh/mile / 2.4 kWh = 3.6 minutes to charge 1 mile @ 45 mph.

So total ride + charge time for 1 mile @ 45 mph is 4.93 minutes, @ 60 mph is 5.5 minutes.

A very rough guideline for minimizing full-cycle trip time is to balance ride and charge power.

Limiting the Empulse to 2.4 kW discharge means it will take 3.9 hours to fully discharge the bike; likely this means riding around 30 mph (80 Wh/mile) for a total of ~116 miles. Riding 1 mile @ 30 mph takes 2 minutes to ride, 2 minutes to charge = 4 minutes total.

[flar]

Energy used to 90%: 3.799 kWH
Time to 90%: 94 min.

Energy used to 100%:  4.816 kWH
Time to 100%:  120 min

Min. charge/mile of travel      4.636   Constant 60 mph to 100%
Min. charge/mile of travel      3.593   Constant 45 mph to 100%
Min. charge/mile of travel      2.814   Constant 45 mph to 90%

I see what you did there.  You took the 94 minutes it took to charge to 90% and divided by the number of miles you had already ridden.  That doesn't work because you didn't replace all of those miles.  What you needed to do is take the 94 minutes and divide it by the number of miles you "got back", which you didn't test.  The gain in time you were seeing in your calculations came from pretending that the missing miles didn't exist. 

Proto did the math better.

One thing that would be useful to know was the charge level that you started charging at.  You charged from NN% to 90% in 94 minutes and from NN% to 100% in 120 minutes - where NN% is the starting charge level when you hooked up to the charger.  If NN was 0%, then it got only 10% more charge for 30% more time which would be horrible.  If NN was 80%, then it got twice the charge for only 30% more time which is a great deal.  But I'm guessing that NN was closer to 49% because 4.8/9.3 is 51% charge used.  So you gained 41% in 94 minutes or 51% in 120 minutes which means you got 24% more charge (51/41) in 28% more time (120/94) - mostly a wash.

I'm guessing that if you tried charging from a much lower state of charge, around 10% remaining on the gauge, and charged to 90% vs. charging to 100% you'd see a larger differential of time because you'd spend more time in the higher current, but it may not be huge given that its maximum charging capacity is around 2.6kw.  It would be a better experiment to drain the battery to a low charge and then time it to various % levels and see where the knee in the curve of the graph is.  Then make that your charging target, and make sure it is enough energy to make your longest trip leg with a margin of error.

Extrapolating to my planned trip between South SF and Ventura, CA...

Driving time @ 60 mph:  10 hours
Driving time @ 45 mph:  14 hours

You earlier said that your 60mph trip was 366 miles, which would be more like 12 hours round trip, and your 45mph trip was 402 miles which would be 17.9 hours round trip...?

Using Protos numbers for "travel+charge time/mile" we get:

366 miles * 2 at 60mph and 5.5 minutes per mile = 4026 minutes = 67.1 hours total trip+charge time
402 miles * 2 at 45mph and 4.93 minutes per mile = 3963 minutes = 66.062 hours total

Also of note: 45 mph off the freeway seems like a way more pleasant way to move across the planet than 60 mph on the slab, making my trip more enjoyable to my spirit, and probably no more grueling to my body.

This is worth several minutes per mile of charge, at least! 

[flar]

I made a spreadsheet of my charging on the company Chargepoint chargers today.  Every 15 minutes I checked the Chargepoint app to see how many kWh it claimed it had supplied to the bike.  The figure may not be 100% precise due to losses in the system, but it should probably scale well with respect to the charge going in to the batteries.  The Google Doc is at the following link (everyone here should be able to view it):

Click link here.

The curve is very linear with a curve off just at the very end.  The charge starts tapering off just at the 3 hour mark which equates to about 95% SoC according to the display on the bike.  Note that I wrote down the starting 24% and then didn't go back and look at the bike until it got mostly charged so there is a big gap in the SoC numbers before I started tracking that statistic again, but the kWh numbers were recorded continuously at 15 minute intervals from the app.  At 3:00 when it was reading 94% I stayed out with the bike and chatted with some interested bystanders while it got to 100% and then took took a reading every 5 minutes while the current ramped down after hitting 100% on the SoC gauge.  It looks like the bike will report 100% but still draw power for about 15 minutes, so you probably don't want to rely on the "vehicle is no longer drawing a charge" notification from Chargepoint.  Even more to the point, I still didn't get the notice when the bike was at 100% drawing 0 amps with the Chargepoint charger saying "Charger ready", and I waited about 4 minutes to see if the notification would come, but it didn't.  The Chargepoint web site says that they will report "vehicle no longer drawing a charge" status "within 15 minutes", so that's another reason not to wait for it.  All told, it will likely be half an hour from the point the gauge hits 100% until you get a notification from Chargepoint.

From this test, it looks like you can expect fairly linear return on charging time investment right up to about 95% SoC and after that you can expect the charging rate to slow, along with a mysterious 100% but still drawing power stage, followed by a 15 minute wait to receive a notification.

[Edited to clear up the text talking about how/when I took the SoC readings vs. the kWh readings...]

[Jeff]

I'm planning a round trip of 732 miles from the SF Bay Area to Ventura near LA, and back. Why?, you may well ask... I'm considering letting Bill Mayer have a go at making me a more comfortable saddle. Has anyone here done such a (totally crazy) trip? Scuderia West said one of their customers did.

Awesome!  My only contribution is: be aware of temperature.  Dunno what time of year you are planning on doing the trip, but riding up to Thunderhill (~300 miles round trip), my plan/scheduling was somewhat foiled by the fact that the Sacramento area was broiling hot.  Thermal cutback on the batteries was throttling back charging to 16-18 amps or so -- what was supposed to be a 2-3hr stop in Davis to charge ended up being significantly longer.

[Shinysideup]

Good tip. With this trip, I always have the option of getting on or near the coast.

[skuzzle]

From this test, it looks like you can expect fairly linear return on charging time investment right up to about 95% SoC and after that you can expect the charging rate to slow, along with a mysterious 100% but still drawing power stage, followed by a 15 minute wait to receive a notification.

On my trip I'll probably end up using some Blink chargers at $1.50 and hour.  I'm too cheap to pay for four hours of charging, so I'll probably cut it off at 2 hours and fifty-nine minutes.

[protomech]

Thanks for collecting that data, flar.

[Shinysideup]

Having my fuzzy numbers clarified by Flar, I offer up a corrected set, which now includes a TRUE charge to 90% (having started at 90% and ended at 90% SOC), this time done at a more or less constant 35 mph. Lots of stops an starts on this route, but that's likely to be the case on any long trip done involving urban streets.

           Run             Miles   kWH used   wH/mile   MM to 90%    MM to 100%     MM charge/mile             

60 mph to 100%     33      5.982        181                              153                  4.636
45 mph to 100%     33       4.816        144                              120                  3.593          
35 mph to 90%       33       4.383        132           110                                     3.303   
         
Entering the new charge times into the latest version of Streets & Trips, based on aiming for a 35 mph speed, on back roads (except for one segment on the freeway at 60 mph), my trip now entails 11 hours of drive time, 23 hours of charging time, for a total of 34 hours. With staying in motels 2 nights, the total trip, one way, will be 415 miles in 2 days, 5 hours, 16 minutes.

In the real world, I'll use the Waze app, which yields much more accurate time estimates based on real-time traffic conditions.

Here's a spreadsheet I made to help corral all this data. The addresses are charging stations with a couple of hotels thrown in.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1KcXffl9-nzUzNKUGdTSW1zMms/edit?usp=sharing

 Thanks to everybody for suggestions, comments, corrections. I may actually do this trip!

[protomech]

Personally I would find it difficult to justify traveling electric even at 2:1 ride to charge ratios, unless I was looking for an adventure. I would be annoyed with the delay if I was just trying to get from point A to point B.

Case in point: I iron-manned the 600 mile trip to Daytona for the world final last year. I probably stopped all of once on each of the outbound and the return trips.

Now, I'd probably be overall happier with more breaks in the middle, provided that I planned for the longer trip. Something like the Tesla Model S (5:1 drive:charge .. 0:20 charging gets you approximately 1:40 driving @ 70 mph) or Terry's Zero (~2.5:1) would be just about right.

The stock bikes today - Zero S ZF11.4 CHAdeMO is 1:1 on highway, 2:1 on 55 mph roads .. Empulse is 0.25:1 highway, 0.5:1 backroads - just aren't good enough for me to want to ride them on a longer trip.

And it's possibly that's why Brammo doesn't offer a 7 kW "Touring" model .. because it would still stuck at the stated purpose.

Again speaking personally, I would not do this trip because I know myself well enough to know that I would be frustrated by the long waits. I think it'd be a neat adventure, and more power to you should you go through with it! Just plan realistically (as you're doing) and post back here with details : )

[Shinysideup]

Well, I DID find it difficult, and it WAS an adventure, but I did it and both the goal and the journey were worth it. Learned and recorded quite a few things about EV travel.

Round trip: South San Francisco to Ventura CA, 1000 miles  10/1 to 10/7/13.

30 page write-up, with photos, and locations of chargers here:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1KcXffl9-nzLWJra0NQcFd0X2s/edit?usp=sharing

Even if you don't want to wade through my scintillating prose, almost hilarious adventures, and stunning images, you may want to check the photos of the Bill Mayer Saddle at the very end.

Here's the opening subtitle:

Wherein, ShinySideUp, Our Intrepid and Aged Empulse Rider, Journeys from South San Francisco to Ventura California in search of One Bill Mayer Saddle in Order to Save His Perineum from Eternal Torture of Stock Seat Insanity, All the While Narrating His Triumphs of Mostly Self-Created & Absurd Challenges Along the Way, Replete with EV Charger Locations and Often Stunning Photographic Images of Things You Just Don’t See on the Interstate Highways Which Are Mainly the Bumper in Front of You

HINT: If you'd like to see the photos as they were intended, DOWNLOAD the file and then open it on your computer. Otherwise, if you choose to view the file online, Google with compress the photos horribly.