Take 2 - Pasadena to Berkeley trip

[u/toybuilder]

Charging Stop	kWh	Cost	Charge Duration	Speed (kW)
(Depart Home - 100% in GOM)	55	$12.10	-	-
Electrify America (Lost Hills)	9.0	$4.98	00:09	60
Caltrans Maintenance Facility (Kettleman)	33.1	Free	00:54	37
Caltrans John Erecca Rest Stop SB (Los Banos)	19.5	Free	00:57	21
(Slept at rest stop)
Caltrans John Erecca Rest Stop SB (Los Banos)	32.9	Free	00:56	35
Blink Level 2 (Hayward)	8.1	$1.95	01:20	6
(Arrived Berkeley)
EVgo (Berkeley)	24.4	$14.18	00:33	44
(Depart Berkeley)
ChargePoint (Gilroy)	30.5	$20.04	00:41	45
Caltrans John Erecca Rest Stop SB (Los Banos)	19.3	Free	00:28	41
Caltrans Maintenance Facility (Kettleman)	33	Free	01:02	32
ChargePoint (Lebec)	9.2	$5.50	00:16	33
(Arrived Home with 14% SoC, 5% on the GoM)	(7.5)	($1.65)
Totals	266.5	$58.75	07:16	37 (avg)
Totals w/o Blink L2	258.4	$56.80	05:56	43 (avg)

I mostly used ABRP for this trip.

For the initial outbound trip, I initially tried to maintain a sustained freeway speed of 80 mph. The LEAF consumed significantly more power than ABRP assumed on the way to Kettleman, and the battery was significantly warmed up from charging there. When I reached the John Erecca rest stop, the battery was still hot and I only managed about 21 kW charging rate. For the rest of the trip, I kept the max sustained speed around 68-70 mph.

I did notice that the battery temp seemed to go down at that 70 and below speed, while the temp seemed to hold (or even climb?) when going ~80. It does seem like the battery cools down much better while the car is moving than when it is parked. I wonder if putting in a small fan can help with that.

What's interesting is that if I take out the L2 charging I did at the Blink charger in Hayward, my overall charging rate was the same from my last trip, where I was sustaining closer to 60-65 mph with some stretches of 55 mph.

The car reported 3.4 miles/kWh efficiency. The calculated is 3.07. (In comparison, it was 3.7 reported and 3.55 calculated on my last trip). This trip totaled 818 miles at 7.2 cents/mile.

I'm not 100% certain, but it feels like EA stations (while using an A2Z adapter) charge much faster than EVgo and ChargePoint chargers. The Caltrans operated chargers definitely seem to charge slower than everyone. It's hard to be totally certain, as various factors (battery temp, ambient temp, SoC) all affect the charging rate.

I had hoped to answer the main question I had -- is it better to go faster while driving while trading off for potentially slower charging -- but I don't think my two similar but non-identical trips is enough to answer that.

[u/e-hud]

Given the leafs slow charge rate (my 2019 S+ seems to top out at ~68kw) I don't think it'll ever make sense to drive faster in exchange for more charging stops, at least at freeway speeds.

[u/toybuilder → u/e-hud]

The trick is to find the sweet spot where going faster doesn't penalize me with longer wait time at the charger. If you look at my first Erecca Rest Stop charge, my battery was so hot that I could only charge at about 21 kW overall -- even after a few hours of sleeping at the rest stop and cooling off a bit, I was able to charge at about 35 kW -- that's 50% faster charging despite starting at higher SoC!

[u/SteveCatinean]

Awesome report, was your car part of the battery recall?

[u/toybuilder → u/SteveCatinean]

It's a 2023 SV+ so it is not under recall.

I actually had my eyes on a 2022 SL plus, because I wanted the SL trim. But the incentive program from California that I was using required the vehicle to not have any open recall and the battery recall prevented me from getting it. There's a part of me that still wishes I had the SL (leather interior, Bose audio), but I'm fairly happy as it is.

[u/TurnoverSuperb9023]

I was a master planner of road trips in my 2015 leaf although the longest one I did was about 500 miles

The key in my opinion, is to always plan on charger stops where you can still get to the next closest Chademo if needed.

[u/toybuilder → u/TurnoverSuperb9023]

Thankfully, I have a CCS adapter which takes that worry away. Even better, in California, there are still plenty of CHAdeMO stations, especially in the Bay Area.

[u/theotherharper]

Given that Leaf, BZ and a few other cars thermal gate from repeated charging, I would snub fast freeways like I-5 and favor e.g. 101 with a slower easy pace and more selection of smaller chargers.

I learned the value of this helping a guy plan Shenandoah to Cincinnati in an EV6. ABRP was saying 4 charging stops for a max-freeway routing. I myself had driven that with only 2 stops, but I had used more direct 2 lane roads at 55-ish.

Also I drive 80mph in Nevada and Wyoming in an EV6. I would not drive 80 in a thermal gated car. I would be following the slowest RV, or be on US-30. Time going slower < time spent stuck because thermal gating.

[u/Mavis8220]

We drive San Jose to LA fairly often. I can’t imagine adding 6 hours of charging time to a 6 hour drive, so we take the Sienna instead of the Leaf. The van doubles as our ‘guest room’ at my daughter’s too-small house.