[Flying Ace]

Recently, I took a 9-day road trip to SoCal, specifically Los Angeles and San Diego. The purpose of the trip was for my kids' spring break. On this trip, I decided to give it my best effort to keep the 45e topped off and to see how big of a pain it was to charge the 45e.

TLDR: There is no way I am anywhere close to buying an EV due to the difficulties of convenience and charging costs I've experienced. I estimated I saved about 1 tank of gas or about $85

Below is a log of my near daily efforts and a summary of each session's experience.

Night Zero Charging -
I left my home in SF, packed up the car with wife and 2 kids and headed down I-5 on a Friday night. Knowing the 45e is optimized on Eco Pro and a full battery, the car return 30 MPGs in a 230 mile drive including heavy traffic in the bay area though the I-5 drive was the EASIEST I've ever had with minimum traffic

Convenience: 3/3 - home Level 2 charger
Charging Cost: 3/3 - $0.19/kwh off peak


Night 1 Charging -
I stayed in Glendale, CA. While the hotel offered free charging, it came at a hefty rate of $50 a night for valet-only parking fees . Glendale is a modern mixed commercial and residential district with a dense charging infrastructure in commercial garages. While the availability was high, the cost was also very high as most places had fees for both charging (typically $/hr) AND overnight parking. I ended up parking at a public garage

Convenience: 1/3 - it was 0.75 miles away from my hotel
Charging Cost: 3/3 - $0.20/kwh with no idle fees. $6 overnight parking fee.

Interestingly this charger was previously a "Greenspots" unit, merged with and rebranded by Shell Recharge network and with payment services compatible to Chargepoint point-of-sale.

This charger unit was very interesting. It features a reel and a direct credit card point-of-sale payment process. I was actually unable to use NFC to activate it (i didn't try my CP app), and I simply used my credit card. IMO, this was the BEST public charger I've ever used. The reel ensures the cord is proper length and doesn't change and the unit is well maintained. All charging operators should strive for the direct POS without putting up with the fragmented App and payment BS.

[Flying Ace]

With a full battery, we explored northern areas of LA. We only drove about 25 some miles this day, all of which were city streets and used no gasoline. MPGs for the day - infinite. Probably saved about $25 of gas this day.

Night 2 Charging - This night, we stayed at the Conrad in the center of DTLA. Again, the hotel offered free charging, but it came at a hefty rate of $65 a night for valet-only parking fees.
DTLA has a ton of charging in commercial garages. However, cost was a major concern as a new common factor has been added for charging in DTLA: IDLE fees! This is the concept where after your car is done charging, the operator continues to bill you per min/hour until you've unplugged, this is on top of energy fees AND overnight parking fees.

I had two overnight options, both in garages, the one I selected is overall cheaper as it was free energy cost and cheaper parking fee.

Interestingly, on streets across the hotel, there was these units attached to charging poles. I've never seen this before in the US and I was intrigued. Cost was $2/hr + idle fees on the charging pole, yikes definitely not worth charging for 5.5 hours. I charged about 1 hr on this unit (no photos) before moving the car to a garage across the street with free energy.
There was a challenge getting the cord to reach to the charging port. I had to run the cord under my bumper and over my tires to ensure nothing was touching the paint.

Convenience: 3/3 - Garage and Pole were across the street. Charging pole is on the FLO network but bills through Chargepoint app.
Charging Cost: 2/3 - Free in the garage, but $30 overnight parking cost.

[Flying Ace]

The following day, we explored northern areas of LA and Santa Monica. We stopped at the Museum of Science in Inglewood and also Santa Monica. Through the the latter, we were on EV the entire time. After a stop in Fountain Valley for dinner, we drove down to Carlsbad.

There were chargers at Museum of Science but however, the most convenient units were all broken. I later found out, inside the garage, there were working chargers. This is acceptable to me, IMO, bc I elected not to move the car to a charging spot as I've have close to 80 capacity and I didn't plan to be at the museum for more than 2 hours (effectively only charging 10%), knowing that I will get charging in Santa Monica and that I have a long drive to Carlsbad diminishing the value of charging.

The Santa Monica charging was in the public garage.

Day 3 Charging:
Convenience: 3/3 - Charging on location at both Museum of Science and Santa Monica.
Charging Cost: 3/3 - Free at Museum; $0.30/kwh, and $6 for parking in Santa Monica public garage.

That night we arrived in Carlsbad with a depleted battery. Remaining battery was used in SoCal urban freeway drive, which amounted to a 50 mpg return. However, on an empty battery, the drive btw SoCal to Carlsbad returned 27 MPGs with regen boosting the mpgs over the EPA 24 MPG estimate.

At my hotel, there was no charging! Not even a socket in the garage (I was told, though I didn't look) to plug my handy dandy BMW branded Level 1 16a Turbocord that I packed. I knew about this prior to booking the hotel. About 0.5 miles away was a shopping strip with a free Volta charger. HOWEVER, checking the Volta app, it indicates heavy midday usage (duh, it's free!). Further the operator turns off the charger between 12am - 6am, and has a 2 hour charging limit. I decided to test both limits. I plugged in around 9:30p when slots opened up and kept it plugged overnight, picking it up at 8a-9a the following morning. This includes idling for 1-2 hours prior to pick up.

This Volta charger is IMO the worst concept. Offering it for free allows abuse. I suspect that the Volvo and know for a fact the white Model 3 (see pic) that occupied the other charger at the EXACT same hours daily are local residents who do not wish to charge at home simply bc this is free. Bc I was a visitor, I would have gladly paid to charge at this location. Again, this location has 100% occupancy between 8a - 9p bc of locals literally bumming a free charge for hours.

The next morning, when I unplugged, a lady in a XC90 T8 PHEV double parked in the "no parking" spot next to the charger, gave me a dirty look as I unplugged. I'm very aware that I likely interrupted this community's "scheduled" charging plans! I used this Volta for two straight nights. On one night, I also waited for the charger for about 10 mins. When I arrived, a Prius Prime with its owner conspicuously seated on front of the closed Starbucks patio watching his car charge. I knew he couldn't have lasted long and he vacated at 9p sharp. I didn't mind the wait.

I found out this Volta indeed turns off at midnight, and resumes at 6a. The 2 hr limit is not enforced, so I plugged in during the low occupancy period of 9p - 9a and charged for full 5.5 hours + idling with no cost impact.

Night 3/4 Charging:
Convenience: 1/3 - it's 0.5 miles away, and always occupied in the middle of the day.
Charging Cost: 3/3 - free energy free parking

[Flying Ace]

We spent 1 day at the hotel for pool day and another day visiting the SD Zoo. For the pool day, as I knew I did not need the car until the evening time, and with no chance I can get the Volta slot, I scoped a public park with a Chargepoint. While it was 1.5 miles away, my hotel offered a free shuttle service to pick me up and drop me off at the car. These slots were reporting lots of ICE'ing by Teslas as it's at pickleball courts and locals with Teslas often ICE them bc they too lazy to park elsewhere in the same lot. Luckily I found a large van accessible spot but you can see a Tesla ICE'ing the next slot. This location had 6 stations typically with 3 always ICE'd.

The Zoo had charging but at a hefty $0.60/kwh on the Blink network, which I elected not to join or charge. Further, I was content on driving in hybrid mode that day and returned 50 MPGs for the day between Carlsbad and San Diego.

Day Charging -
Convenience: 1/3 - 1.5 miles away, though hotel gave me a shuttle.
Charging Cost: 3/3 - $0.35/kwh, no idle fees, free parking

Night 5 Charging - Did not charge as my next day's Legoland parking offered free charging.

[Flying Ace]

Day Charging - Legoland offered free charging. There are 20 slots at premium parking locations at the door of the park. Non-hotel guests pay for parking, but energy is free. Legoland has invested into Aerovironment and Chargepoint chargers and they are well maintained. There are ample slots when the park opens, but are full and tons of idling (guilty as charged), in the middle of the day. (2nd pic is from last year's Legoland trip where I had a 45e charging buddy)

Day Charging -
Convenience: 3/3 - Onsite and premium parking location in the Legoland lot.
Charging Cost: 3/3 - Free energy, but pay to park for non-hotel visitors.


Night 6/7 Charging- Did not charge, full charge from Legoland which was 2 miles from hotel.

[Flying Ace]

We checked out of Carlsbad and day-tripped it to Escondido to SD Zoo Safari. There was a pricy charger ($0.50 kwh). Despite knowing I will be on empty electric for most of the day, it was still more cost effective to drive on the ICE on the highway than pay $0.50/kwh. Math is here: https://g05.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1866591
Car returned 40 MPGs for the day and we arrived at the Waldorf Astoria at Monarch Beach for the night.

Day Charging: Didn't happen. $0.50/kwh was over the breakeven analysis.

Night 8 Charging: Didn't happen. Waldorf charged $75 valet only parking with charging. There's free street parking overnight, and we have a 3 hr drive to Santa Barbara the next day diminishing the value of charging, no thanks.

[Flying Ace]

Final day we drove from OC to Santa Barbara. Bc of a depleted battery, LA traffic, and distance, MPG returned 25. We spent the night at the Ritz Carlton Bacara in Santa Barbara. This location offered free charging with valet-only parking. I had literally no options to park/charge the car elsewhere as the resort is located in a rural area. Due to other convenience factors I elected for valet parking and their charging.

Leaving the car to the valet, you'd think I can finally not think about charging, but you're wrong! Charging issues still occurred:
1. Valet said there were not enough chargers to support charging everyone. And I was added to the waitlist. No big deal right?
2. I had to remind the hotel around midnight to plug me in no later than 5am to get a full charge by 10a. Utilizing the BMW App, I saw they finally plugged me in at 6a.
3. Thanks to the My BMW App, the charger they plugged me into reported defective and did not charge between 6a - 9a! I informed them of that and was only able to get a 2 hr charge prior to departure.
So the single time, I trusted someone else to charge my car, it didn't work out correctly! The 5 hr drive back to SF returned 27 MPGs.


Night 9 Charging:
Convenience: 3/3 - Valet only
Charging Cost: 1/3 - free energy, $65 valet only parking but defective charger.



Here's a picture of a parking buddy, a 2019 M Sport (unknown if 40i or 50i)

[Flying Ace]

Final Thoughts:

1. paying $/hr to charge is not cost effective for the 45e which only charges at 16amps. Paying for the amount of energy consumed is the fairest measure.

HOWEVER, I do understand that billing it per hour does ensure the purpose of the charger (quick drop ins) are necessary to ensure minimum idling.

2. I do not support free charging at all. It's a basic principle of mismatch of supply and demand and cause resources to be scarce and to create lines for demand. A lose-lose situation.

3. The payment networks are way too fragmented, FLO, Blink, Shell, Chargepoint ,etc. It appears everyone is starting to combine onto the Chargepoint's payment network. There is also some payment network through Plugshare.

4. San Diego has a TON of DC chargers operated by Electrify America and ChargePoint and placed off highway locations. Very forward thinking SD!

5. Hotel valet charging is a big unknown. Issue is they have limited slots, different departures, different charge speeds (45e vs a Tesla) and cars with different battery capacities. Plus not each customer "needs a full charge", myself included admittedly. So how do they prioritize people other than first come first serve? This is something that will be challenging in the future that can only be solved with charging a variable fee.

6. Street parking charging pole is an awesome concept that up to this trip I thought only existed in Europe. However, there are major issues with cord length as our car's port is on the driver side and to ensure the cord doesn't rub on paint.

[AloneAlien]

Thank you for the detailed review!

[LOFT]

Great report...thank you for the detail.

[JMD]

I will not be charging my 45e when using it for travel,...as there is no cost benefit, etc. Being that a full charge provides 30-40 miles of range,,...which is essentially about 1.5 gallons of gas on the high end. Therefore, I won't be chasing a charge when away from home. If my travel destination was at a relative's house, perhaps maybe,...and where I can get close to the electrical outlet.

[FastRN]

Originally Posted by Flying Ace

Final Thoughts:

1. paying $/hr to charge is not cost effective for the 45e which only charges at 16amps. Paying for the amount of energy consumed is the fairest measure.

HOWEVER, I do understand that billing it per hour does ensure the purpose of the charger (quick drop ins) are necessary to ensure minimum idling.

2. I do not support free charging at all. It's a basic principle of mismatch of supply and demand and cause resources to be scarce and to create lines.

3. The payment networks are way too fragmented, FLO, Blink, Shell, Chargepoint ,etc. It appears everyone is starting to combine onto the Chargepoint's payment network. There is also some payment network through Plugshare.

4. San Diego has a TON of DC chargers operated by Electrify America and ChargePoint and placed off highway locations. Very forward thinking SD!

5. Hotel valet charging is a big unknown. Issue is they have limited slots, different departures, different charge speeds (45e vs a Tesla) and different capacities. Plus not each customer "needs a full charge", myself included. So how do they prioritize people other than first come first serve? This is something that will be challenging in the future that can only be solved with charging a variable fee.

Thanks for the detailed review. Ordering a 50e, and this information will be very useful.

[11001X101]

Originally Posted by JMD

I will not be charging my 45e when using it for travel,...as there is no cost benefit, etc. Being that a full charge provides 30-40 miles of range,,...which is essentially about 1.5 gallons of gas on the high end. Therefore, I won't be chasing a charge when away from home. If my travel destination was at a relative's house, perhaps maybe,...and where I can get close to the electrical outlet.

Wow I never knew this is how far it can run on electric. That sure is a hassle chasing a charge station for 1.5 gallons. Why do people buy this model then? Is it merely the tax credit?

[Flying Ace]

Originally Posted by JMD

I will not be charging my 45e when using it for travel,...as there is no cost benefit, etc. Being that a full charge provides 30-40 miles of range,,...which is essentially about 1.5 gallons of gas on the high end. Therefore, I won't be chasing a charge when away from home. If my travel destination was at a relative's house, perhaps maybe,...and where I can get close to the electrical outlet.

I hear ya. The longer your distance of travel, the least important the 30 mile charge will impact your MPGs. However, if you do a ton of urban touring like I did, you can clearly see that it resulted in a mixed 40-50 mpg on days with a full charge, and in my cases, a day on all electric. I estimate, I saved about 1 full tank of gas across 9 days doing this or about $85.

Originally Posted by 10101X5

Wow I never knew this is how far it can run on electric. That sure is a hassle chasing a charge station for 1.5 gallons. Why do people buy this model then? Is it merely the tax credit?

Tax credit matter, but read each entry carefully. The days I got a full charge I got 40/50 mpgs, with 3 days being full electric. It comes down to usage and environment.

[Flying Ace]

Originally Posted by Stevew2024

Thanks for the detailed review. Ordering a 50e, and this information will be very useful.

IMO the 50e will have a different experience. The 50e has a higher capacity battery and a higher amperage charger.

So I had 3 day charging experiences, whereby the faster charge would have given me more energy in the same amount of charging time.

The car will also return a better MPG on mixed use which was most of my days.

On a longer drive like 230 miles, the difference between 45e and 50e will be minimal and will be more affected by road conditions (traffic) and driving behavior.

[E91toG05]

Last week I rented a Tesla Model Y from Hertz at LAX. Hotel valet automatically charged for me every night for free. This was by far the best and most convenient way to rent a car as I never needed to worry about gas. Suspect this is abnormally easy to do in So Cal and would not be same experience elsewhere.

[Jrc27]

Originally Posted by 10101X5

Wow I never knew this is how far it can run on electric. That sure is a hassle chasing a charge station for 1.5 gallons. Why do people buy this model then? Is it merely the tax credit?

My commute to work is 30 miles each way and they offer free level 2 charging....I fill up with gas about once a month. If most of your driving is within the range of the battery, this vehicle makes perfect sense.

[JMD]

Originally Posted by 10101X5

Wow I never knew this is how far it can run on electric. That sure is a hassle chasing a charge station for 1.5 gallons. Why do people buy this model then? Is it merely the tax credit?

They buy the 45e to offset their dependency on fossil fuel. Some,...make that many that have the ability to charge at home buy very little gas! I'm talking about a tank of gas lasting several weeks,...to several months! So, from a commuting standpoint, which would you rather do,...obtain a full charge where the range could be 30-40+ miles for $2.70 or pay $6.08 in fuel cost for the same range? The price of 1 gallon of Premium gas in my area is $4.05 (...x 1.5 = $6.08),...thus resulting in about a 56% savings to go the first 30-40 miles from point A to point B. That's the analysis! We're not left high and dry when we run out of 'Juice', yet we don't pay full price just to get around out Zip Code!

[B///MWGuy]

It appears that both next gen GLE and Cayanne can charge 0-80% in under an hour (may be less than 30)... BMW's decision to put these slow charger is really questioning... Even 50e LCI will still be much slower than the aforementioned

[Marty in NY]

Originally Posted by Flying Ace

Final Thoughts:

Thanks Flying Ace for taking the time to keep track of and then post your experience! It sure seems to be a lot of overhead both before you take the trip, ie: the planning phase as well as during the trip as you run into the unknowns. Your post supported my decision not to buy the 45e since my X5 is 90% for long trips.

[E91toG05]

For what it is worth, in my 45e I recently went from NYC area to Lake Placid area for ski trip. Both the hotel and the mountain had chargers. So we rode on gas for the long haul and then all electric once up there. This maybe an easier use case.

[mnx5er]

Originally Posted by JMD

They buy the 45e to offset their dependency on fossil fuel. Some,...make that many that have the ability to charge at home buy very little gas! I'm talking about a tank of gas lasting several weeks,...to several months! So, from a commuting standpoint, which would you rather do,...obtain a full charge where the range could be 30-40+ miles for $2.70 or pay $6.23 in fuel cost for the same range? The price of 1 gallon of Premium gas in my area is $4.05 (...x 1.5 = $6.23),...thus resulting in about a 47% savings to go the first 30-40 miles from point A to point B. That's the analysis! We're not left high and dry when we run out of 'Juice', yet we don't pay full price just to get around out Zip Code!

This. While I have been at my South Carolina home I am filing with gas once every 3 months. That is pretty amazing. In Minnesota I can do a commute on a charge except when it is really cold.

50e would be nicer for sure but BMW still stinks with their slow charge rates. I hate hogging a charger that long away from home.