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This is a bit of a delayed write-up: we've been back a week and a half, but I had to dive straight into some heavy work (which actually started while we were traveling, yay) so haven't had a chance to get on the forum until now.
Four of us (me, wife, and two boys, 8 and 3) drove in our ID.4 1st Edition from Alexandria, VA to visit family in Florida and then North Carolina. The inside was pretty well packed with beach gear, games for the beach, and books etc. for the drive.
Preparation/gear:
I had already ordered a TeslaTap Mini 60 Amp, which arrived long before the ID.4 did; shortly before the trip, the portable L2 charger I hoped to get, the Grizzl-E Mini, finally became available and arrived in time for the trip. I supplemented it with a set of adapters off of eBay: I knew I'd want a 120V option, but didn't know if I'd have the chance to try it at 240V on this trip. The adapters fit into the Grizzl-E's travel bag, and came labeled with bright orange stickers indicating the appropriate current level for the different plug types. I had also already loaded up the trunk "basement" with supplemental tools like a lug wrench, 2 ton scissor jack, tire plug kit, flashlight, etc. - none of which we ended up using (well, I used the flashlight a few times for other things).
Planning:
With the kids in play there's not really any chance of doing the drive to Florida in one (sane) day anyway, so we knew we would need a hotel. I used Plugshare to look for one with a charger that would cut the trip roughly in half, and we ended up booking at the Tru By Hilton in Florence, SC, which has two Tesla destination chargers in the parking lot, and an EA charger at the next exit as a backup. With that waypoint in mind I mapped the rest of the trip in ABRP. It told us to expect two 30-40 minute charges each day, with 1h30m-2h30m drives in between, which is about the right rhythm anyway for traveling with kids.
Driving:
Our previous car was a Honda Fit, so the ID.4 is a significant step up in terms of space and comfort features. For all of us it's a much more comfortable car, physically: more space, better and more adjustable seats (and massage!), much better AC, a much smoother ride, quieter, and less vibration. The extra sense of spaciousness provided by the glass roof helps a great deal, too, though we ended up keeping the shade closed in the daytime to ward off the summer sun. Despite all the negativity out there about the ID.4 being underpowered, we feel it has plenty of zip for highway ramps, passing, mountains, etc. - again, maybe we're just coming from a smaller, cheaper ICE car, but it's enough for us.
I had been trying out the various driver assist features over the preceding weeks, and found that ACC/Lane Keep work well for me to reduce my mental load in "steady-state" highway driving, now that I know what sort of limits to expect in its behavior. My wife likes almost none of the driver assist features, with the exception of the blind spot warning lights on the side mirrors. I guess at least the default is that I'm turning things on, instead of her having to turn everything off each time - though she doesn't like the lane departure warning "tug" on the steering wheel when she gets close to a line, which does start turned on by default. Once on the trip we got the plethora of yellow warnings and "ACC/assist features not available" message when I turned the car on, but after an overnight power cycle it was fine again.
Navigation/infotainment:
I had planned to use ABRP on CarPlay to manage navigation and charging as we drove, but unfortunately that didn't work out so well. The phone (also playing music) got very hot, and during the very first leg of the drive (Alexandria, VA - Richmond, VA) I realized the mapping had gotten extremely laggy: it always showed us moving along the highway, but when it was time to start thinking about how to get to the charger I realized the displayed map was roughly 20-30 miles behind our actual position. Fortunately I had a good enough sense of where we were headed to provide general guidance while I switched to Apple Maps for specifics. For the rest of the trip we checked in with the saved plan in ABRP at each stop to confirm our target charge, and then used Apple Maps on Carplay to get to the next stop. That setup worked fine in terms of accuracy and phone load. Now that we're back, I intend to experiment a little more with ABRP as the main mapping app, though I don't know if I'll be able to tell if it was an issue with slow data connection, ABRP's servers, or what. We also had a problem connecting to Carplay wirelessly on the last driving day, which I also need to look into some more.
Charging/range:
I got us charged up to 80% on 120V (our L2 had arrived, but we couldn't get the installation scheduled before we left) and topped up a little more in the morning as we packed the car. For the most part, EA charging on the trip worked beautifully. Max speed on the trip was 175kW. The chargers were mostly empty - we only ever had one other car charging at the same time as us: a brand new e-tron in Richmond (he was on the phone asking how to charge for free), another white ID.4 in Jacksonville, a Mach-E outside Savannah (I think?). Once or twice we had a bad charger/car handshake; one charger seemed to be having trouble understanding that charging was free for everyone for the July 4 weekend; and once the charger didn't even try to handshake. Those occasions only cost us a minute or two to relocate to another charger and plug in again. The EA support reps were appreciative when I called in the problem chargers.
View media item 157
Walmart bathrooms were acceptable, though the EA chargers are always about halfway back in the lot, which also isolates you from restaurants where you might walk to get a meal while charging; best were the Sheetz in Rocky Mount, NC and Brughs Mill Country Store off I-81. On all of our travel days we hit pockets of rain, but with one exception managed to avoid reaching an EA station during a rainstorm. It would be great if EA could start providing shelter over their chargers, as is typical at gas stations, though I understand that their focus at the moment is on getting lots of stations in the ground quickly. Trash cans and windshield squeegees would be great to have, too.
Overnight L2 charging at the hotel went pretty smoothly. The Tesla destination chargers are directly outside the front door: we parked, I plugged in using the TeslaTap, and we took our bags inside to check in. A thunderstorm rolled in just after we arrived, which seemed to reset something in the charger; I went back out to grab something from the trunk and saw the light was flashing red. I unplugged and replugged and it was happy again and fully charged in the morning. At some point in the night we were joined by a Tesla (Model 3?).
View media item 148
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View media item 156
Once we reached the beach house where we were staying, things got a little more interesting. I hoped I might get lucky and find a 240V outlet in the utility room off the garage, but no luck. I plugged into the 120V outlet outside the garage, which seemed to work fine the first night. After a short outing the next day, the charger and/or car didn't like it anymore. I could hear relays clicking in the charger and car as they completed their handshake, tried to start charging, hit some problem and started flashing red lights, then reset themselves to try again - over and over. Another outlet inside the garage worked fine, so I assume it must have something to do with GFCI protection on the outdoor circuit. (Sorry, it looks like I didn't take a picture of this setup).
For our two nights in NC, charging wasn't essential - we had enough to get around town and then to an EA charger on our way out - but I gave it a shot the first night at an outside outlet. I got the same behavior as before, stuck in a loop with clicking relays and red lights. My dad and his brother were intrigued by the new car and determined to get it charging, so I grudgingly climbed through/around a bush to hook up the Grizzl-E Mini to the 10-30 dryer outlet in the basement. We needed all of the 24' cable to get out the basement window and through the bush to the edge of the driveway, but it worked perfectly after that - and saved us maybe a whole 15 minutes at our first EA stop the next morning. I guess it was worth it to try out the Grizzl-E, though.
View media item 154
We were concerned about bad conditions on I-95 thanks to Elsa, so we chose to go North out of Charlotte and up I-81 to get home instead. ABRP said that even with 100% charge in the morning, it would be prudent to top up after less than an hour's drive at the EA in Statesville, NC before hitting the mountains on 81 - this was the only EA stop that didn't really fit our usual road trip rhythm and we felt like we were stopping (and waiting) just to charge. On the whole we were finding that ABRP was being very conservative with its charging estimates - maybe I changed a setting somehow - so there's a chance we could have made it, but given the sparser coverage on 81 compared to 95 we did as we were told. Brughs Mill Country Store was a good lunch stop - decent food and a porch to eat on, with a still-working pay phone for the boys to puzzle over!
Final thoughts:
It doesn't feel like there's too much more to say here except that for us, the ID.4 is a great road trip vehicle: it's got the room we need, handles well, and provides some nice creature comforts as a bonus. The few snags we hit were minor enough to count as "learning experiences". We're looking forward to getting back in the ID.4 to complete its inaugural East Coast tour with a trip to Maine next month.
More pictures (I can't figure out how to move them into chronological order, sorry folks):
View album 17
Four of us (me, wife, and two boys, 8 and 3) drove in our ID.4 1st Edition from Alexandria, VA to visit family in Florida and then North Carolina. The inside was pretty well packed with beach gear, games for the beach, and books etc. for the drive.
Preparation/gear:
I had already ordered a TeslaTap Mini 60 Amp, which arrived long before the ID.4 did; shortly before the trip, the portable L2 charger I hoped to get, the Grizzl-E Mini, finally became available and arrived in time for the trip. I supplemented it with a set of adapters off of eBay: I knew I'd want a 120V option, but didn't know if I'd have the chance to try it at 240V on this trip. The adapters fit into the Grizzl-E's travel bag, and came labeled with bright orange stickers indicating the appropriate current level for the different plug types. I had also already loaded up the trunk "basement" with supplemental tools like a lug wrench, 2 ton scissor jack, tire plug kit, flashlight, etc. - none of which we ended up using (well, I used the flashlight a few times for other things).
Planning:
With the kids in play there's not really any chance of doing the drive to Florida in one (sane) day anyway, so we knew we would need a hotel. I used Plugshare to look for one with a charger that would cut the trip roughly in half, and we ended up booking at the Tru By Hilton in Florence, SC, which has two Tesla destination chargers in the parking lot, and an EA charger at the next exit as a backup. With that waypoint in mind I mapped the rest of the trip in ABRP. It told us to expect two 30-40 minute charges each day, with 1h30m-2h30m drives in between, which is about the right rhythm anyway for traveling with kids.
Driving:
Our previous car was a Honda Fit, so the ID.4 is a significant step up in terms of space and comfort features. For all of us it's a much more comfortable car, physically: more space, better and more adjustable seats (and massage!), much better AC, a much smoother ride, quieter, and less vibration. The extra sense of spaciousness provided by the glass roof helps a great deal, too, though we ended up keeping the shade closed in the daytime to ward off the summer sun. Despite all the negativity out there about the ID.4 being underpowered, we feel it has plenty of zip for highway ramps, passing, mountains, etc. - again, maybe we're just coming from a smaller, cheaper ICE car, but it's enough for us.
I had been trying out the various driver assist features over the preceding weeks, and found that ACC/Lane Keep work well for me to reduce my mental load in "steady-state" highway driving, now that I know what sort of limits to expect in its behavior. My wife likes almost none of the driver assist features, with the exception of the blind spot warning lights on the side mirrors. I guess at least the default is that I'm turning things on, instead of her having to turn everything off each time - though she doesn't like the lane departure warning "tug" on the steering wheel when she gets close to a line, which does start turned on by default. Once on the trip we got the plethora of yellow warnings and "ACC/assist features not available" message when I turned the car on, but after an overnight power cycle it was fine again.
Navigation/infotainment:
I had planned to use ABRP on CarPlay to manage navigation and charging as we drove, but unfortunately that didn't work out so well. The phone (also playing music) got very hot, and during the very first leg of the drive (Alexandria, VA - Richmond, VA) I realized the mapping had gotten extremely laggy: it always showed us moving along the highway, but when it was time to start thinking about how to get to the charger I realized the displayed map was roughly 20-30 miles behind our actual position. Fortunately I had a good enough sense of where we were headed to provide general guidance while I switched to Apple Maps for specifics. For the rest of the trip we checked in with the saved plan in ABRP at each stop to confirm our target charge, and then used Apple Maps on Carplay to get to the next stop. That setup worked fine in terms of accuracy and phone load. Now that we're back, I intend to experiment a little more with ABRP as the main mapping app, though I don't know if I'll be able to tell if it was an issue with slow data connection, ABRP's servers, or what. We also had a problem connecting to Carplay wirelessly on the last driving day, which I also need to look into some more.
Charging/range:
I got us charged up to 80% on 120V (our L2 had arrived, but we couldn't get the installation scheduled before we left) and topped up a little more in the morning as we packed the car. For the most part, EA charging on the trip worked beautifully. Max speed on the trip was 175kW. The chargers were mostly empty - we only ever had one other car charging at the same time as us: a brand new e-tron in Richmond (he was on the phone asking how to charge for free), another white ID.4 in Jacksonville, a Mach-E outside Savannah (I think?). Once or twice we had a bad charger/car handshake; one charger seemed to be having trouble understanding that charging was free for everyone for the July 4 weekend; and once the charger didn't even try to handshake. Those occasions only cost us a minute or two to relocate to another charger and plug in again. The EA support reps were appreciative when I called in the problem chargers.
View media item 157
Walmart bathrooms were acceptable, though the EA chargers are always about halfway back in the lot, which also isolates you from restaurants where you might walk to get a meal while charging; best were the Sheetz in Rocky Mount, NC and Brughs Mill Country Store off I-81. On all of our travel days we hit pockets of rain, but with one exception managed to avoid reaching an EA station during a rainstorm. It would be great if EA could start providing shelter over their chargers, as is typical at gas stations, though I understand that their focus at the moment is on getting lots of stations in the ground quickly. Trash cans and windshield squeegees would be great to have, too.
Overnight L2 charging at the hotel went pretty smoothly. The Tesla destination chargers are directly outside the front door: we parked, I plugged in using the TeslaTap, and we took our bags inside to check in. A thunderstorm rolled in just after we arrived, which seemed to reset something in the charger; I went back out to grab something from the trunk and saw the light was flashing red. I unplugged and replugged and it was happy again and fully charged in the morning. At some point in the night we were joined by a Tesla (Model 3?).
View media item 148
View media item 149
View media item 156
Once we reached the beach house where we were staying, things got a little more interesting. I hoped I might get lucky and find a 240V outlet in the utility room off the garage, but no luck. I plugged into the 120V outlet outside the garage, which seemed to work fine the first night. After a short outing the next day, the charger and/or car didn't like it anymore. I could hear relays clicking in the charger and car as they completed their handshake, tried to start charging, hit some problem and started flashing red lights, then reset themselves to try again - over and over. Another outlet inside the garage worked fine, so I assume it must have something to do with GFCI protection on the outdoor circuit. (Sorry, it looks like I didn't take a picture of this setup).
For our two nights in NC, charging wasn't essential - we had enough to get around town and then to an EA charger on our way out - but I gave it a shot the first night at an outside outlet. I got the same behavior as before, stuck in a loop with clicking relays and red lights. My dad and his brother were intrigued by the new car and determined to get it charging, so I grudgingly climbed through/around a bush to hook up the Grizzl-E Mini to the 10-30 dryer outlet in the basement. We needed all of the 24' cable to get out the basement window and through the bush to the edge of the driveway, but it worked perfectly after that - and saved us maybe a whole 15 minutes at our first EA stop the next morning. I guess it was worth it to try out the Grizzl-E, though.
View media item 154
We were concerned about bad conditions on I-95 thanks to Elsa, so we chose to go North out of Charlotte and up I-81 to get home instead. ABRP said that even with 100% charge in the morning, it would be prudent to top up after less than an hour's drive at the EA in Statesville, NC before hitting the mountains on 81 - this was the only EA stop that didn't really fit our usual road trip rhythm and we felt like we were stopping (and waiting) just to charge. On the whole we were finding that ABRP was being very conservative with its charging estimates - maybe I changed a setting somehow - so there's a chance we could have made it, but given the sparser coverage on 81 compared to 95 we did as we were told. Brughs Mill Country Store was a good lunch stop - decent food and a porch to eat on, with a still-working pay phone for the boys to puzzle over!
Final thoughts:
It doesn't feel like there's too much more to say here except that for us, the ID.4 is a great road trip vehicle: it's got the room we need, handles well, and provides some nice creature comforts as a bonus. The few snags we hit were minor enough to count as "learning experiences". We're looking forward to getting back in the ID.4 to complete its inaugural East Coast tour with a trip to Maine next month.
More pictures (I can't figure out how to move them into chronological order, sorry folks):
View album 17
