Sometimes You Need To Go To Plan C To Charge

[KBabione]

Yesterday we went to the Penn State - Ohio State game. It's 124 miles away from home so, with my 273 mile max range, charging is a requirement. We charged to 96% before heading out and arrived with 42%. When we parked I turned on the outlets and made good use of them to cook breakfast on my electric Blackstone and boiled water in an electric kettle for hot chocolate. After the game we tailgated for a couple of hours (including patty melts for 12 people) and my battery was down to 37% (91 miles) when we left. All good - After all...I had a plan!

• Plan A was to drive 45 miles to the Tesla chargers at the Sheetz in Mifflintown and charge what I needed there to do the 80 miles home. No matter what my wife did, she couldn't get the chargers there to come up as available to Rivians. Finally she got the dreaded "Tesla Only" notification so we knew it wasn't an option. The Rivian kept wanting to route us to a L2 charger where we'd only need to charge for 90 minutes...Not desirable. We did stop at the Sheetz anyway for a bio break and all of the chargers were full with Teslas and a Cybertruck was waiting - legitimately Tesla only. I was pretty sure I had seen that these chargers were open to folks with adapters...Perhaps I missed something.
• Plan B was to push it a bit and drive 90 miles to another Tesla station in Harrisburg, which also turned out to be Tesla only. Not good.
• Plan C (come on - who REALLY needs a Plan C?) was to drive 97 miles to a CCS charging station near the Harrisburg Airport

The first 15 miles after leaving the stadium are on a 2-lane (one lane in each direction) highway and by the time we got to the 4-lane I knew things were going to be tight, so I put it in conserve mode and set the cruise at the speed limit (I'm normally a 10-MPH over driver). We put the airport charger (the beloved Plan C) in as our destination and the Rivian calculated that we'd have 4 miles left on the battery when we arrived! My wife was decidedly uncomfortable and, had we been alone, I would have gotten it with both barrels, but there were six of us in the car so it was just quiet stress.

The good news is that we made it. In conserve mode the miles remaining at our destination slowly crept up to 13 by the time we got there. We quickly charged up to 23% and drove home without further stress. There are chargers in State College (EA and Tesla with Adapters) but they were 15 minutes in the wrong direction so I didn't want to do that. My wife, several times, reminded me that we could have.

The moral of this story is to always have a Plan C AND to do your homework to ensure Plans A & B are viable. Hopefully this may help someone who runs into a similar situation in the future.

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[Donald Stanfield]

Use plugshare to verify your charger before going. That's what I do, I want to know the chargers are working well before heading there.

 

[COdogman]

It was the stupid patty melts that screwed you. Rye bread should be illegal.

 

[bfilippo]

It was the stupid patty melts that screwed you. Rye bread should be illegal.

Whoa whoa, fighting words. I mean, I prefer a Reuben, but still…

Glad it worked out!

 

[lefkonj]

Just a question, did you specifically choose Tesla chargers instead of just going to whatever worked in your path?

 

[KBabione]

It was the stupid patty melts that screwed you. Rye bread should be illegal.

They were so good...I spent a full hour browning the onions the day before and it was just a brick of butter and onions that heated up and continued to caramelize.

 

[KBabione]

Just a question, did you specifically choose Tesla chargers instead of just going to whatever worked in your path?

Simple answer: There aren't any other options! This is a heavily-traveled highway from Harrisburg to State College and here's the PlugShare map with Tesla-only chargers hidden:

Literally - no options! I just screwed up. I thought I had confirmed that the Tesla chargers in Mifflintown were open to non-Teslas and I just missed that they were not. It was a good learning experience for us and I'll work hard to make sure that I have, but don't need, a Plan C in the future.

 

[Dave Cundiff]

Glad you made it, @KBabione!

PlugShare appears to conflate Magic Dock chargers with must-bring-your-own-adapter chargers, but PlugShare is clear that the Mifflintown Sheetz is for Teslas only -- adapters are not available and wouldn't help if you had one.

***

Consider setting your PlugShare filters to include whatever Level 2 chargers you can use; it's worth carrying a Level 2 AC NACS adapter for those and hotels. Even a 30-minute session on Level 2 can give you a chance to stretch your legs, add a few miles' charge, and relax your spouse and yourself.

The Shell Recharge chargers near the Giant store in Newport PA seem to charge at 9-10 kW, which is very good for J-1772 chargers. The Newport chargers have a poor PlugScore from before they fixed them, but their reliability since 2024-09-07 seems to be 5/5=100%.

Very best wishes!

 

[technerd]

Yea, central PA is a damn charging wasteland. 2 years ago it was most of PA, but we've gotten a lot of progress in the SE PA area. This is always my worry doing trips here.

Out of curiosity, did you use anything like A Better Route Planner? Or just scouted the maps on your own?

 

[KBabione]

Out of curiosity, did you use anything like A Better Route Planner? Or just scouted the maps on your own?

I've switched to using PlugShare to plan my trips requiring a charge (@Budman has an excellent tutorial here), but this was one of those routes where my ego overrode common sense. I've done this trip about 10 times in our Rivian, but we've always charged in State College - this was our first football game. Our last trip I noticed the Tesla chargers when we stopped in Mifflintown and I now think I know what happened...I didn't know at the time that there were "Tesla-Only" chargers and bookmarked the location in my head as an option now that we had our A2Z Typhoon Pro charger. I never (this is the "ego" part) bother to go back and confirm. Multiple lessons learned.

 

[DeafPug]

For trips like this, I like creating an out-and-back trip plan in the vehicle to give it a chance to monitor energy levels along the way and plan for available chargers. The plan would be slightly off from reality with your tailgating consuming 5% of the battery at your mid-point destination, but it would be adjusted as needed.

Add your destination, select the up arrow to show the destination and add a stop at the end of the plan back to your current location (Home). Use the gear symbol to make sure the routing options are correct for charging networks and if you have one of the NACS adapters on hand. These are the route settings I use on my trip planner because I have a NACS to CCS adapter.

On the Map screen, if you select the Hide menu at the top and then select Incompatible, the map will hide these incompatible Tesla-only stations in the future to avoid confusion.

Having said that, Plugshare appears to be wrong in the case of Mifflintown, PA. This is the description of that site from https://tesla.com/findus, which clearly states it would work on a Rivian if you had the NACS to CCS Adapter. The same information is shown on supercharge.info as well as the "Charge Your Other EV" section of the Tesla app. I used the Report button on this Tesla site on PlugShare to hopefully correct that inaccuracy, but that will take a few days. For whatever reason, Plugshare doesn't let the user-community crowdsource the data on Tesla Supercharger sites.

In fact, there's a check-in from a Mach-E on Sep 28 at this site on Plugshare:

Other than the mislabeling on PlugShare as Mifflintown being Tesla-only, I'm not sure why you weren't able to see it. I did just check on the main map on my Rivian, and it showed this Tesla Supercharger on the map and had it listed as Adapter-Required, which looks correct.

I suspect it would have worked if you had a NACS to CCS adapter and did try to plug-in. When you run into those full sites, it can be a little problematic to find two stalls that are next to each other to charge a Rivian. I used the Overland Park, KS Tesla site on Thursday. It's a 12 stall site and when I pulled up, there were 3 stalls available, but none of them were adjacent to each other, so I wouldn't have been able to plug-in. I waited for a few minutes and a vehicle left, but it was again in the middle of a block of cars, so it didn't help me. After a few more minutes, a second vehicle left, adjacent to one of the 4 gaps in the line of charging stations, so I was able to park in one and use the cable from the adjacent stall to start charging. 20 minutes later when my charging session was done, there was only me and one other vehicle left at the site, so it was a transient burst of traffic.

 

[Zoidz]

There is a Sheetz on the north side of town, about 5 -7 minutes from the stadium, with CCS chargers. Been there, done that. Yes, it's the opposite direction from where you were headed, but only a few minutes.

 

[emoore]

Yeah lessons learned. Totally learned.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Could have done this without charging if you were at the speed limit.

 

[KBabione]

For trips like this, I like creating an out-and-back trip plan in the vehicle to give it a chance to monitor energy levels along the way and plan for available chargers. The plan would be slightly off from reality with your tailgating consuming 5% of the battery at your mid-point destination, but it would be adjusted as needed.

Add your destination, select the up arrow to show the destination and add a stop at the end of the plan back to your current location (Home). Use the gear symbol to make sure the routing options are correct for charging networks and if you have one of the NACS adapters on hand. These are the route settings I use on my trip planner because I have a NACS to CCS adapter.

On the Map screen, if you select the Hide menu at the top and then select Incompatible, the map will hide these incompatible Tesla-only stations in the future to avoid confusion.

Having said that, Plugshare appears to be wrong in the case of Mifflintown, PA. This is the description of that site from https://tesla.com/findus, which clearly states it would work on a Rivian if you had the NACS to CCS Adapter. The same information is shown on supercharge.info as well as the "Charge Your Other EV" section of the Tesla app. I used the Report button on this Tesla site on PlugShare to hopefully correct that inaccuracy, but that will take a few days. For whatever reason, Plugshare doesn't let the user-community crowdsource the data on Tesla Supercharger sites.

In fact, there's a check-in from a Mach-E on Sep 28 at this site on Plugshare:

Other than the mislabeling on PlugShare as Mifflintown being Tesla-only, I'm not sure why you weren't able to see it. I did just check on the main map on my Rivian, and it showed this Tesla Supercharger on the map and had it listed as Adapter-Required, which looks correct.

I suspect it would have worked if you had a NACS to CCS adapter and did try to plug-in. When you run into those full sites, it can be a little problematic to find two stalls that are next to each other to charge a Rivian. I used the Overland Park, KS Tesla site on Thursday. It's a 12 stall site and when I pulled up, there were 3 stalls available, but none of them were adjacent to each other, so I wouldn't have been able to plug-in. I waited for a few minutes and a vehicle left, but it was again in the middle of a block of cars, so it didn't help me. After a few more minutes, a second vehicle left, adjacent to one of the 4 gaps in the line of charging stations, so I was able to park in one and use the cable from the adjacent stall to start charging. 20 minutes later when my charging session was done, there was only me and one other vehicle left at the site, so it was a transient burst of traffic.

Thanks - I do have the A2Z adapter and will try it in Mifflintown the next trip up to check. I did see the Mach-E successfully charged there when I dug into it some more.

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