Wife getting I7 I am nervous

[Enzo Montana]

My wife is getting an I7 this week I am a bit nervous about on long trips if she needs to recharge during the trip is it a pain to find a charging station? I am scared she will not pay attention and run out of juice What happens if the hotel we go to doesn't have a charging station.

She is coming for an X6

[seans]

Originally Posted by Enzo Montana

My wife is getting an I7 this week I am a bit nervous about on long trips if she needs to recharge during the trip is it a pain to find a charging station? I am scared she will not pay attention and run out of juice What happens if the hotel we go to doesn't have a charging station.

She is coming for an X6

With all due respect, these sorts of questions should have been asked and answered during the pre-purchase process of deciding if a battery electric vehicle suits an interested buyer’s specific life style.

My wife is getting an I7 this week I am a bit nervous about on long trips if she needs to recharge during the trip is it a pain to find a charging station?

The overly short answer is “yes”, it is still indeed a pain for us non-Tesla owners.
The long answer is that your experience will vary from day to day and will depend on many factors including time of travel, traveling during a holiday, needing to charge in a large city where chargers get congested, the routes you take, etc.

I live in San Jose, California and there are DC chargers littered everywhere.
There’s an array of 8 literally at the bottom of my hill in a grocery store’s parking lot, and I absolutely cannot find a charger there during the day 9 out of 10 times.
Waiting in “line” in an option, but that relies on people being reasonably ethical, and that’s just not going to happen here in CA.

As for road trips, I have range anxiety in my i7 because I cannot guarantee that a DC charger—for example the ones on the route after Sacramento to Tahoe—will be available during the day. In my past 2 experiences driving to Tahoe, 2 / 4 DC chargers were broken and the other 2 were taken with several individuals waiting in line to charge.

As a result, I lower my speed to approx 65mph instead of driving my standard 80-85mph to Tahoe, so that I can get there with approx 10-15% charge remaining, and I can charge slowly on a friend’s AC charger once I arrive.

What happens if the hotel we go to doesn't have a charging station.

Charging at hotels is mostly considered a lucky convenience especially as more and more BEV and PHEVs enter our roadways, and I would strongly recommend against relying on such chargers.
Even if you do manage to book a stay at a hotel with a functioning charger that’s available upon your arrival, that charger will almost guaranteed output no more than 6.5kWh of electricity (likely less, in my experience).

At this rate of energy delivery, you can expect the i7 to charge anywhere between 15 and 16 hours from 0 - 100% state of charge.
If you arrive late in the night at the hotel and expect to leave early morning (for example, on a roadtrip), the vehicle may only have received enough energy to charge 50 - 70% of the battery. Better than nothing for sure.

I am scared she will not pay attention and run out of juice.

My sincere advice would be to always use the i7s built-in navigation or the myBMW app to plan not only long but short roadtrips. Both services will (in my experience) accurately predict state of charge upon arrival at a destination, and will recommend an efficient charging route well before departure.
After your wife becomes used to her vehicle, she’ll likely only need to rely on navigation for planning long road trips. I quickly established an intuition for how far I can drive given my vehicle’s state of charge.

The vehicle will do what it can to alert the driver during a trip that the vehicle’s reaching concerningly low state of charge (I believe between 10 - 15%), and will recommend the fastest nearby charger should this happen, right on the head unit.

She’s a big girl; I’m sure she’ll be fine in the long run.
It will require establishing a new intuition when driving a BEV, especially if it’s someone’s first one, and if they’re coming from an ICE whose ranges typically are significantly longer than what the i7 can offer on a single charge.

[evanevery]

Never attempt long XC trips without planning the stops IN ADVANCE of departure. I'm going on my 6th EV and have done my share of long XC trips (inc from PDC delivery). Planning is everything!

I can go into many details (and I'll share a few), but it is not in your interest to rely on the onboard Nav to get the trip done. You will have a much better experience if you pre-plan the trip ahead of time. (I was hoping my iXM60 had a better onboard EV Nav planner than my Taycan Turbo S but, alas, it appears BMW and Porsche are likely licensing the EV Nav Planner software from the same Nav source...) There is no shortage of journalists who hopped in an EV (fat, dumb, and happy) to do a road trip and found themselves on the side of the road and griping about EV's (for simple lack of planning) ...

EV's are not your best bet to do long trips UNLESS you enjoy the pre-planning needed to optimize your trip. (I do). IMHO: EV's are best suited as daily drivers to simply be charged at home overnight.

However, if you want to do an XC trip with your EV, I would recommend starting with this planner (NOT the one in your Nav system): https://abetterrouteplanner.com/

Here are a few of the major reasons why you really don't want to blindly start a road trip using your onboard nav:

1. Most of the EV manufacturers have obviously handled the EV route planning as simply an academic exercise. (Your "Ultimate Driving Machine" doesn't really consider the driver at all in this process). You say where you want to go and the Nav system chooses your stops. Done. (I'ld like a more interactive process which provides more details about each stop and then easily re-adjusts your trip accordingly). IOW: It won't be easy to modify your overall travel plan if you want to pick different charging stops...

2. It appears the charging locations are stored in your Nav system by Lat/Long (not street address). So if you want to try and force a stop at a different charger (maybe because it has a restaurant, bathroom, higher charging power, or limit your range exposure), you have to put in a chargers street address (which the car WILL NOT recognize as a charging stop) and then tell it to "find nearby chargers". (THEN you should save the actual charger location as a "favorite" in your Nav system). If you try to just enter the charger street address (without "converting" it) your Nav system won't precondition the battery for charging and you may very well find that it WON'T take advantage of the charger at your stop and actually plan for a charging stop another 5-10 miles further down the road... Completely brain dead... Who road tested this crap?

3. Once you fight with your Nav system (as it continually recalculates) to get all YOUR desired charging stops "converted" and entered, and have everything set the way YOU want it (maybe a 30-40 minute process)... You can't SAVE the completed route!!! So, when you go back out to the car at Zero-Dark-Thirty to start your trip in the morning you have to do this all over again...

4. I've seen entire charging stations (ALL OF THEIR CHARGERS!) completely offline during long trips. Twice, in fact, on a single leg of a 700 mile trip. You never want to rely on an "academic" solution as if an entire station is down you could be screwed and have to drive back, find a 50A connection at an RV park, or plug into some 115V outlet for an extended period just to make it to the next REAL charging station. (Did I mention always carry a portable charger with you?)

EV's are not (currently) like ICE vehicles. You can't just pull off at the next exit when your charge gets low. You need to plan your trip in advance. You will want to decide where YOU want to stop (near a restaurant rather than a farm field?) and make sure you have another backup station along your route if there is some problem at your originally planned stop.

I'm not trying to be an alarmist here, just a realist. Plan your trip BEFORE you leave and you will be far more comfortable. Use ABRP to pick the charging stops YOU want. Convert the addresses of YOUR desired charger stops and save them as "favorites". Get in your car when you are ready to leave, set the first charger "favorite" as your destination, and then knit the rest of your route together once you are waiting on your first charge. (You know, cause your "Ultimate Driving Machine" never considered YOU might want to save YOUR route planning...)

(You want to make sure your car knows a planned stop is actually a charger - not just a street address - as it will prepare/preheat your battery for optimum charging before you arrive).

I love my EV's. I actually enjoy the route planning in advance of a long trip. ...but I am also very sad about the state the current onboard EV planners. The very fact that you can't save a complete route once you have all your charging stops set is a glaring shortcoming. Someone in a white lab coat checked the "Route Planner" completed box on their clipboard and they never looked back. It sure appears they never road tested this stuff with actual drivers.

As a software developer, I have a vision of how I would like to see the interface designed but we are not there yet. Right now, the car will find a charger for you, but it's really not optimized for YOU the driver and whatever YOUR individual goals might be...

Here are a couple of related threads I posted on the Taycan Forum (again, it appears - to me - that Porsche and BMW are licensing their Nav software from the same source and have basically the same shortcomings):

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/th...vel-days.2580/

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/th...k-for-me.3522/

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/th...ng-stops.2499/

[DroMike]

I'm not the OP, but still, that's a wonderfully informative post Evan. Thank you for taking the time to educate us. I'm going to remember and take it all to heart for those rare occasions I take a trip of more than 100 miles (in my upcoming '24 xDrive60).

Happily, another reason I wanted an EV was because I ALSO enjoy planning and have no problem whatsoever mapping out where I might stop and a backup. I don't believe it's all dire logistically however, because the EV charging infrastructure will only get better as time inevitably marches on.

BTW, I've perused ABRP on the web and found it a bit unwieldy. Have you not tried or care for the PlugShare app? I like it not only because it's clean, straightforward and flexible, but because it rates the charger locations, shows the number of stations, provides photos, and current reviews by real users.

[Caveno]

EV works for some, but not me. IMO a car is the ultimate expression of freedom. I make frequent 300 mile trips and sometimes last minute. Having to plan ahead means making compromises and that just doesn’t work for me. All EV owners I know either rarely drive or have multiple vehicles.

And I beg to ask, what’s the point?? Most Electricity comes from a power plant burning coal or gas, yes I understand it’s less emissions but the difference narrows quite a bit once you factor in emissions from battery production. My car serves me not the other way around.

[evanevery]

Originally Posted by DroMike

...Happily, another reason I wanted an EV was because I ALSO enjoy planning and have no problem whatsoever mapping out where I might stop and a backup. I don't believe it's all dire logistically however, because the EV charging infrastructure will only get better as time inevitably marches on....

I don't believe the issue is the charging infrastructure. The issue is the poor state of onboard nav planning. It doesn't matter how many chargers are available if the nav system only wants to take you where it thinks is best - and doesn't offer a usable method of altering (and saving) that plan. The overriding consideration here is that EV charging can take 30-60 minutes so the selection of where to stop (and what is there) is so much more important than with an ICE vehicle where its pretty much stop-n-go. The folks writing the Nav software clearly don't understand this (yet)...

Originally Posted by DroMike

...BTW, I've perused ABRP on the web and found it a bit unwieldy. Have you not tried or care for the PlugShare app? I like it not only because it's clean, straightforward and flexible, but because it rates the charger locations, shows the number of stations, provides photos, and current reviews by real users.

Yes, I also use Plugshare. It provides better real-time feedback of the current charger status (whats broken, etc) but its not nearly as configurable for planning purposes. ...but it is good to get feedback from other drivers to confirm my chosen stops are viable.

I use ABRP to plan and then once I've picked all my stops, I use PlugShare to confirm them. I may also use ChargePoint, ElectrifyAmerica, and whatever app is provided by the vehicle manufacturer.

[evanevery]

Originally Posted by Caveno

And I beg to ask, what’s the point?? Most Electricity comes from a power plant burning coal or gas, yes I understand it’s less emissions but the difference narrows quite a bit once you factor in emissions from battery production. My car serves me not the other way around.

The point is you have many more options as to WHAT is producing your energy then what you have in your car. You can't RUN a car directly on Solar, Wind, Geothermal, Hydro, Nuclear, etc But you can CHARGE from one of those sources. You have many more options in how your power gets generated. If you are unhappy with how power is being produced in your region, then work to get it changed. You simply don't have that option with an ICE...

Plus, power produced at larger scale (power plants) is typically MUCH more efficient than smaller scales (your cars engine). Even an EV charged from an Oil Fired power plant will be more ECO friendly (and efficient) than a similar oil powered vehicle (Gas, Diesel). Emissions from battery production doesn't even hold a candle to the increased emissions produced by an ICE vehicle over its lifetime. Folks talking about battery production emissions also conveniently ignore all the heavy industry emissions required in the production of things like combustion engines, transmissions, and all the consumable which are NOT required by an EV (Oil, Filters, etc)...

We have 32KW of solar on our roof and even with 3 EV's plugged in at any time, we pretty much break even every month. Some months the Electric company actually pays us!

BUT its not the efficiency, the ECO friendliness, or the outrageous performance that has led us to our 6th EV... ...Its the fact that we can plug in our car(s) when we get home and they are fully charged and ready to go in the morning. For us, EV's are simply so much more CONVENIENT than any ICE vehicle I have owned. I can go 6 months and never have stopped at a Gas station (or public charger)! (...until it comes time for my M4 Track Car, or the diesel truck which tows it, to visit the track).

I would NEVER own an EV if I had to use a public charger on a regular basis. The thing that makes EV's work, is the ability to charge at home (or maybe the office). If someone lives in an apartment without a dedicated charger, its probably going to be a PITA to keep your car charged. I would never do it. But if you have your own charger...

Additionally, if it's your only vehicle, and you make frequent long distance trips, then its also likely not going to be a great choice. However, if your family has multiple vehicles, one of them being an ICE for long trips, and you can charge your EV at home, then it can be a great choice!