#ironbutt

Rules impact on route

The Iron Butt Association rules state that you need a start and end fuel receipt to validate your time claim. I am pretty sure that they’d accept a written statement from the dealer that I left their establishment with a full charge, but I decided to play by the rules.That meant that instead of starting my route at the dealer, I’ll start at a charging station down the street. 

Now, having done enough reports on my trips, I know that not all charging networks report time the same way on the receipts. ChargePoint shows the start and end times for a session, while EVgo reports the session time as when you plugged into the station, and Electrify America reports the session time as the time you disconnected from the station. This lack of consistency has issues for people planning an electric iron butt: if you charge with Electrify America as your starting point, your receipt will start your clock after you have a full battery, where starting with EVgo you’ll be starting the competition with a time penalty for charging. With this in mind, I plan to end the Iron Butt at my house with the plug-in time from my ChargePoint home as the receipt (since it reports time connected and time disconnected).

With this in mind, my new route starts at the Electrify America station at the Pleasant Valley Promenade. 

Route Details

Saturday 3/13/2020 7:49p Start: Electrify America at Pleasant Valley Promenade in Raleigh 9:03p Charge 1: Electrify America Henderson 10:28p Charge 2: Electrify America Emporia 11:31p Charge 3: Electrify America Rocky Mount Sunday 3/14/2020 12:31a Charge 4: Electrify America Smithfield 2:01a Charge 5: Electrify America Lumberton 3:20a Charge 6: Electrify America Florence 4:58a Charge 7: Electrify America Columbia 6:37a Charge 8: ChargePoint Augusta 8:49a Charge 9: ChargePoint Athens 9:34a Charge 10: Electrify America Commerce 11:20a Charge 11: Electrify America Greenville 1:25p Charge 12: Electrify America Charlotte 2:52p Charge 13: ChargePoint Wadesboro 4:40p Charge 14: Electrify America Greensboro 5:59p End: Brentwood Solar House in Raleigh

Tales from the Road

Raleigh 7:49p I used station 6, and tap to start didn’t work. This charge is weird to account for, it’s a part of the money figure for the whole trip (as is the end of trip home charge), but the session time isn’t since technically the receipt starts the Iron Butt clock and thus we haven’t had our first actually charge on trip time yet. 

Henderson 9:03p A sign of the impact of the coronavirus, Henderson was basically a ghost town with no ICEing of the EV spaces (this is extremely rare for this location). I actually bought Toilet Paper at this location because they had some in stock. I noticed that the machine I’d plugged into -- #2 -- hadn’t gone above 50kW, so after I got my TP I went and stopped that session and connected to #1. It charged at 63kW, meaning Station 2 wasn’t working anywhere near its 350kW rated potential. Tap to start didn’t work on either of these machines as I recall.

Emporia 10:28p One of the machines was down, but the others worked. Tap to start worked.

Rocky Mount 11:31p Tap to start worked, picked up dinner at Sheetz.

Smithfield 12:31a Absolutely deserted at this time of day, nothing near by to pass time.

2:01a Charge 5: Electrify America Lumberton I ran into a Kona Electric from Toronto Canada at this location. We chatted the entire duration of my charge. Kona owner didn’t know about the new Electrify America program for Hyundai owners, and said that it was a significant savings over the 58-cents he’d been paying. We talked about how he could save money on the rest of the trip. Tap to start worked.

3:20a Charge 6: Electrify America Florence The Walmart was closed, and the stations were obscured by trucks. Tap to start worked.

4:58a Charge 7: Electrify America Columbia First time at this station. Tap to start worked.

6:37a Charge 8: ChargePoint Augusta This was in a shopping center with a Kroger. I let the car fully charge here because I wanted to avoid stopping in Thomson to charge. This station is run by Gerogia Power.

8:49a Charge 9: ChargePoint Athens This station was at a Georgia Power office and its network connection must be broken. I charged, it showed an amount to be billed, but I have no receipt in my ChargePoint app. I remember I put in 5kWh, and I was there less than 10 minutes. Using math from sessions surrounding this one, I’ve estimated the time for this stop.

9:34a Charge 10: Electrify America Commerce This location has screwy parking setup for the stations. Talked to a guy about these stations, cost, and upcoming electric trucks. Tap to Start worked

11:20a Charge 11: Electrify America Greenville Charged at the Sam’s, which was swarming. I had to fight the crowd to get to the bathroom, everyone had toilet paper in their carts... Tap to start worked, touch screens did not (had to use buttons to stop session). I missed the exit and spent 10 minutes in stop and go traffic to get to this location. I also took the wrong fork leaving for Charlotte and added 4 miles to the route.

1:25p Charge 12: Electrify America Charlotte Used Station 6, tap to start worked

2:52p Charge 13: ChargePoint Wadesboro This is a new station, at the Pee Dee EMC office. Worked flawlessly, reasonably priced.

4:40p Charge 14: Electrify America Greensboro Ah, the home stretch. Tap to start worked. Was so excited to almost be home.

5:59p End: Brentwood Solar House in Raleigh I really rushed to get the cable plugged in before 6pm, even had hubby leave the cable at the end of the walkway so I could plug it in faster. I feel like 22 hours flat is my goal on the bike.

Expense Report

Electrify America just released a new billing plan for Hyundai owners right before I did this trip. It lowered the per minute rate to 35-cents from the 42-cents I’d been paying. The savings are noticeable: the last time I did a route like this I spent $89.87 with just Electrify America. This trip, total charging from both vendors rang in at a mere $89.36 -- $29.30 cheaper than the last route.

Electrify America: $78.45 ChargePoint: $10.91 Total Cost: $89.36 Total DC Charges: 16 Electrify America: 13 ChargePoint: 3 Total Miles: 1026.7 Total kWh: 258.79

Travel Time: 18h 02m Charging Time: 4h 11m Total time: 22h 13m

Cost per mile: $0.09 Cost per kWh: $0.35 Efficency: 4.0mi/kWh

Cost per kWh per Network Electrify America: $0.39 ChargePoint: $0.30

Praise for Hyundai Engineering

So I started this trip from my home in Raleigh at 7:50am and drove uneventfully to Greensboro, where my problems all began. I’ve always charged at station 7 here, but it was lit up red. So I tried 8, and it faulted. Moved to 5, and it didn’t recognize the car. 6 worked fine, but I was pretty frustrated and we’re not even 80 miles in. I charged for 23 minutes, adding 21.33kWh of energy to the car for $9.94. I called Electrify America to report the problems, and told them that I’d likely be calling them again (and I did).

An hour and a half later, I pulled into Charlotte and parked at my go-to station #10. It faulted 10 minutes, 9.59kWh, and $4.61 into the charge, I called customer service and restarted the session. They took down the issue and offered no free charge (they might have, had I not started it while the agent put me on hold and talked to their supervisor). 11 minutes, 7.99kWh, and $4.73 later… I was ready to head to Boiling Springs. The total duration of this stop was 21 minutes, 17.58kWh, and $9.34.

It’s an hour or so to Boiling Springs, which was the first of three EVgo stops I’d make on this trip. Cedric, the machine at Spinx in Boiling Springs, worked like a champ. Charged for 31 minutes, adding 18.2kWh, for a cost of $9.95. Next stop is the Asheville Outlet Mall.

This leg was the single highest in elevation change, going up some 2700-ft. I pulled up and parked at Cheyenne, again my go-to at this location. Cheyenne’s RFID reader was broken, so I couldn’t tap to pay for my charge with my EVgo card. I had to open the app on my new phone, log into my account (which was a pain because I couldn’t remember the password and auto-fill wasn’t cooperating with me), and finally got the charge going. I charged for 27 minutes, adding 16.22kWh for a cost of $7.80. (Have you noticed that the price you pay for the energy you get varies quite a bit not only between Networks but even among machines in the same network?)

The next stop was the Exxon in Dandridge, TN which is where Guadalupe lives. Guadalupe’s CCS latch was broken, but the machine still worked. I thought it was weird that there was no click when I plugged the car in, and it was after the charge that I realized the latch was broken. Had someone tried to pull the plug from the car, it could have been deadly as the current would have arced. I charged for 14 minutes, adding 8.06kWh for $4.76.

My next stop was East Knoxville, a McDonalds. Not because I was hungry, I met someone from Facebook Marketplate and bought this IKEA laptop table (I’m always down for a bargain, and these aren’t made anymore).

With the goods secured, I continued to West Knoxville’s Electrify America to charge. This charge lasted 21 minutes, adding 18.23kWh for $9.70. Now, I’ve been to all the stations that I’ve talked about here when I did the Louisville trip. The next round of stations in Tennessee and Georgia would be first time uses, which is always exciting to me. Those first time uses are the reason I do these route tests, so that I know where the machines are located to expedite gettin’ my charge on when the clock is a-tickin’ during the actual challenge. For example, I know not to follow the GPS to get to the stations at the Asheville Outlet Mall – it’s better to take the side road.

The next stop was in Ooltewah, TN - which is outside of Chattanooga. This site was unique in that it has a Tesla PowerPack installed to mitigate the demand charges that DC fast operators have to pay when the machines spin up. My friends and I had been talking about these deployments, and it’s funny that I stumbled across one on happenstance. I charged here for 26 minutes, adding 21.62kWh for $12.17.

Now, in ideal conditions I should be able to go from Ooltewah to Kennesaw without stopping, but the night has turned the air cold and I was running the heater. As I approached Cartersville, which I’d put on the route as a fail safe, it was evident I was not going to be able to make it to Kennesaw without stopping. I’m glad I did, as I got lost looking for the Cartersville ChargePoint DC Fast machine (this is why I scout routes). When I finally found it I had 1 mile of buffer range to make it Kennesaw. This station was owned by Georgia Power and billed you by the kilowatt-hour instead of the time you’re connected to the machine (which is what EVgo and Electrify America do). I charged for 7 minutes, adding 4.34kWh for a mere $1.64. This was the most cost effective charge on the entire trip!

Now, I had the buffer to make it the last 15 miles to the Kennesaw Electrify America, which is a really unique site of 10-chargers lining the back of a parking lot in a big shopping center that was home to Best Buy, Michaels, and more. I got there as everything was closing, so I had to sit in the car (bummer). This stop was  21 minutes, adding 20.20kWh for $10.62.

Now, I had to drive down to and around the outskirts of Atlanta, and up 85-North to Commerce to charge at Electrify America. It was late at night, in the 10-11pm hour, and traffic was flowing smoothly. I arrived in Commerce and spent 24 minutes adding 21.42kWh for a cost of $12.37.

My final “new” stop would be Greenville, SC. I made the 82-mile drive to Greenville in good time and charged for 20 minutes, adding 20.65kWh for $9.26. It was at this stop that I began to question if I could make the rest of this trip without stopping. As I headed to Boiling Springs, knowing I could not make the 101 mile drive to Charlotte in 30F weather, I had a wake up call that made me abort the trip. Instead of going to the Spinx, I went to the Econolodge and got a room. I slept for 6 hours (the most continuous sleep I’d had in three days) and then got in the car and headed over to the Spinx.

I started this charge at 8:20am and unplugged at 8:34 - a quick 14 minute charge adding 8.39kWh for $4.64. My next stop was Bojangles for breakfast, then off to Charlotte.

Back at Charlotte, I plugged into machine #6. It worked fine, and it started my charge by tapping my phone to the RFID reader while the app was open – no more open app, tap, tap tap, then charge! yay! I charged, uninterrupted, for 20 minutes adding 19.03kWh for $8.76. I’m in the home stretch now! just one more stop….

This time, I knew which machine to use when I got to Greensboro. I plugged into #6 and charged for 18 minutes, adding 18.05kWh for $7.71 and then headed home.

Conclusion

After all was said and done, I realized that this was not an ideal Iron Butt route for a few reasons: I-40 West is one lane construction with uneven lane for 20+ miles in NC to the TN border, people in GA run 15 over like it’s nothing, which means keeping up with traffic will eat into my range, all of South Carolina is one giant construction zone if you’re using 85. With this in mind, I think I’m going to look for another route. However, I did set a time to beat: 22h 29m. Let’s see how I do the next time, and I’ll be sure to get a lot of sleep beforehand.

One last thing I want to talk about. I regret not pulling this data when I pulled off to sleep, but I decided to see how hot the battery was at the end of this crazy trip. Turns out, the hottest cell was only 95F - color me impressed with the air-cooled battery of my Hyundai. It took 15 rapid charges in stride.

Trip Stats

Electrify America: $89.87 EVgo: $27.15 ChargePoint: $1.64 Total Cost: $118.66 Total DC Charges: 15 Total Miles: 1025 Total kWh: 288.48

Travel Time: 17h 42m Charging Time: 4h 46m Total Travel + Charge time: 22h 29m

Sleep time: 6h 30m Total trip time: 29h

Cost per mile: $0.15 Cost per kWh: $0.51 Efficency: 4.4mi/kWh