Traveling - Ford App rates 2 out of 10

1494 Views 9 Replies 7 Participants Last post by lorraine.k.rhodes, 7 mo ago

lorraine.k.rhodes

Discussion Starter · 7 mo ago

I put 36,000 miles on per year and travel to 3 states for work. My challenge is charging. The ford app is barely working to find fast chargers. Also, once the app picks a charger as part of my trip I cannot say the charger is offline and to pick another. I actually reached critical charge and an EVGO fast charger appeared on my car screen that was within 1/2 mile that would not pull up any other time. I have tried Chargepoint, FordPass, Electrify America (works better than others) Shell recharge and ChargeHubEV. Is anyone else having any better luck? I got stuck at Electrify America 2 hours yesterday when they were "resetting the EV chargers" and found my laptop works better than my phone for finding chargers. Perhaps there is a Charging for Dummies book out there?

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lorraine.k.rhodes

Discussion Starter · #2 · 7 mo ago

One last note, the apps do not distinguish private chargers and chargers and parking garages. I have been routed to chargers that should not be listed as public and the owners have said they have tried many times to get the chargers off the maps and nothing has worked.

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Say Watt

· #3 · 7 mo ago

There are two "must have" apps.

PlugShare which shows all the available chargers on your route. All the commercial DCFC locations down to trailer park sockets for your L2. Each spot has user comments for operation and local conditions.

ABRP. A Better Route Planner. You put in your route and filter your charger requirements and it gives you a plan for traveling and charging times. It has some odd suggestions at times but it is a good place to start.

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TaxMan

· #4 · 7 mo ago

PlugShare works great. And you can filter out incompatible chargers and private (non-commercial) chargers. It's way better than the Ford app for chargers.

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BrWeirich

· #5 · 7 mo ago

lorraine.k.rhodes said:
One last note, the apps do not distinguish private chargers and chargers and parking garages. I have been routed to chargers that should not be listed as public and the owners have said they have tried many times to get the chargers off the maps and nothing has worked.

If you only use the navigation app that is what you get, a mess. Try setting your choices for chargers in the Ford app on your phone. On the opening page hit the view chargers button. This wil take you to a list of chargers around you. Once you get a list, look at the top for the descriptor headers. You will get charge speed. Availability, and network. If you pick each one it explodes into a set of choices, Ultra Fast Charge, fast, and regular, etc.. If you want to see it navigate you to only DC fast chargers select only that. Same for network. I use only Electrify America and none of the others, and most of the time that’s all it will navigate me toward. I never did find instructions in the owners manual explaining how to control the navigation, but I found this out by pure chance. What you set your Ford phone app to do is replicated when using the car navigation. My car has a bad main computer, so sometimes my navigation results are… shall we say, interesting. If yours is working correctly, once you set the parameters you want to use to charge on your Ford phone app, life should be much better for you.

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BrWeirich

· #6 · 7 mo ago

It long winded, but I hope it helps lower your stress level when navigating a long route.

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sijuki

· #7 · 7 mo ago

Anytime I go somewhere new I scout out where chargers are so I have an idea.

I don't use the Ford App because it just shows chargers all willy-nilly. Like one inside a dealership that you have to ability to access. Google is my key. In order of preference: Electrify America, chargepoint, blink, evgo

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gv932n

· #8 · 7 mo ago

lorraine.k.rhodes said:
I put 36,000 miles on per year and travel to 3 states for work. My challenge is charging. The ford app is barely working to find fast chargers. Also, once the app picks a charger as part of my trip I cannot say the charger is offline and to pick another. I actually reached critical charge and an EVGO fast charger appeared on my car screen that was within 1/2 mile that would not pull up any other time. I have tried Chargepoint, FordPass, Electrify America (works better than others) Shell recharge and ChargeHubEV. Is anyone else having any better luck? I got stuck at Electrify America 2 hours yesterday when they were "resetting the EV chargers" and found my laptop works better than my phone for finding chargers. Perhaps there is a Charging for Dummies book out there?

I made only one long trip of 350 miles one week of driving the MME.
I used the Ford GPS and found it directed me to charge locations accurately.
Have you ever tried this?

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BilLongua

· #9 · 7 mo ago

The network has a long way to go. I’ve only charged on the road a few times and I’ve only had it work clean for me on one trip. Every other time, I’ve had issues. And that was with the damn chargers, not finding them, which I typically just use the FordPass app and apply my filters to remove all the junk.

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lorraine.k.rhodes

Discussion Starter · #10 · 7 mo ago

Say Watt said:
There are two "must have" apps.

PlugShare which shows all the available chargers on your route. All the commercial DCFC locations down to trailer park sockets for your L2. Each spot has user comments for operation and local conditions.

ABRP. A Better Route Planner. You put in your route and filter your charger requirements and it gives you a plan for traveling and charging times. It has some odd suggestions at times but it is a good place to start.

Thankyou so much for the ABRP suggestion....it has made my life a dream!!!! Easy to use, detailed, clear and great for trip planning.

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