It’s one thing to write about a limitation; it’s quite another to have that limitation punch you in the face exactly seven days later. Just last week, I was posting about the 32-amp home charging ceiling of the Fisker Ocean, calling it a “manageable hurdle.” I never would have imagined that it would transform from a blog topic into a cold, hard reality quite so quickly. What seemed like an innocent little slip-up at the time turned into a range anxiety nightmare with a $7 inconvenience fee.
The culprit? A simple lapse in memory. We have the same Wednesday routine: Karaoke. Come home. Take out the trash. But tonight was different. Since I don’t get home until 7:30 or even later, my wife had an event earlier and drove her car. Somewhere between the drive home and the vodka, my brain shut down and went into stupid mode. For some reason I felt I had to wait for her to get home before charging, and in doing so, and I simply forgot to put the charger on the car as soon as I got home. By the time I realized my mistake and stumbled out to the garage, it was 11:00pm the clock had already eaten a chunk of my night.
As a result, the car only charged for seven and a half hours. And with the home charger 50-amp line producing only 6.8 kW and the 32-amp limit, by the time I climbed into the driver’s seat the next morning, the dashboard greeted me with a measly 182 miles of range.
No way was that going to work for a roundtrip. My daily drive to Irvine is 95 miles each way. Even with the most conservative drafting and hypermiling techniques, 184 miles would just barely get me back to the Palm Springs city limits. I was effectively starting the day in a “range deficit.” But whatever, I headed out to work, realizing that I’ll need to actually have lean on the workplace charging to get home. But as is the law of the universe, when you actually need a charger, the world conspires against you. When I rolled into the office, all six ChargePoint stalls were taken—a sea of Teslas and Hyundai’s soaking up the juice while I sat there with my battery percentage ticking down.
I knew I had to run out at lunchtime to pick up some dry cleaning, so I figured I’d give it one more shot when I returned. “Let’s see what happens,” I told myself, but I knew better than to rely on luck. As a backup plan, I started scouring Irvine for Electrify America stations.
The irony isn’t lost on me. Last week, I was praising the Ocean’s 150 kW DC fast-charging speed, and now, it looks like I’m going to have to rely on it just to get home. The 32-amp limit is a minor inconvenience—until you forget to plug in. Then, it’s a 37-mile-per-hour lesson in why every minute on the charger counts.
Fortunately, when I returned from the cleaners, a spot had finally opened. I figured if I could just get four hours of charging in, that would give me enough of a buffer to get home. My plan was to leave work by 5:00 PM, and everything should have been okay.
Of course, the workday had other plans, and I didn’t actually leave until almost 7:00 PM. After some 4 1/2 hours of charging, I was happy to see the range added, 103, and the minor cost, $7. And now with that extra charging buffer now sitting in the battery, I decided to totally enjoy the ride home! I felt like Captain Kirk telling Scotty, “Full warp speed.”
The drive home was a blast. I was scooting along in the fast lane, passing people left and right. Once I got past Banning, the I-10 and the road opened back up to a normal four-lane highway, I was tapping out at 80 miles an hour. The silver lining of leaving after 7:00 PM was the lack of traffic; I wound up making it home in just 1 hour and 40 minutes.
Lessons from the Road
That’s pretty damn good considering I didn’t use the Fast Track toll lane. I saved the $7.80 in toll charges—which basically paid for my charging earlier in the day. What’s amazing is that the toll charge usually only saves you about 10 minutes. I know time is money, but jeez!
The moral of the story is simple: charge fast and charge wherever you can. From now on, the second I get home, the car goes on the charger. If I need to make any late-night journeys after that, I’ll be using the wife’s car. The 32-amp limit is a stern teacher, but I think I’ve finally learned the lesson.