Day 7 - Final Day on the road. Twin Falls ID - Home (Kennewick WA)

 

Well welcome to the last day of Bucky’s trip across the US. It has been a epic journey filled with fun adventures, some great food, beautiful scenery and even some lessons learned.  For those who thought this could not be done, or that we were setting ourselves up for some really big problems attempting this, I hope these series of blogs has convinced you that long distance road trips in an EV is definitely possible and for the most part even low stress. I’m sure the Tesla crowd and their supercharging networks agree with me. Tesla’s supercharging network is their greatest asset in my option. I look forward to the day they open it up for all EV’s. 

The day began early (6:00am) in Twin Falls Idaho. After a quick shower, a quicker breakfast and packing up we headed out of town towards Boise Idaho and our first charging stop of the day, at you guessed it - Wally World! We met some very nice people in a Kia EV6 who were tracking back to Vancouver Washington. In fact we met nice people for the most part at every EV charging stop we were at. We exchanged info on charging stops along the route, talked about our cars (lots of interest in the IX), and just had generally really nice conversations. I can’t remember when I had a conversation with someone at a gas station. If I had one thing I would suggest to the Electrified American corporation it would be to put some benches and covering at that charging stops. The SUN was HOT HOT HOT this summer. I bet it is even worse when it is raining and cold out. Oh, and how about a windshield washing station, mad props to the charging station at Green River Coffee Company in Utah. Windshield washing station, and even BETTER coffee.😎

From Boise we headed another 2hrs to our final charging stop of the trip at Island City OR. It turns out this was going to be the longest we stopped for a charge the whole trip. No matter was we tried we could not squeeze more than 56KW of electrons out of the chargers (sloooooooow going). No matter we we just about 127 miles from home and we just kicked back and did some emails and caught up on the news while we waited. 

It was then off on the final leg home to Kennewick WA via Dead Mans pass out side of Pendelton OR. Deadman’s pass is a fun drive and even though you burn a little extra power climbing the pass, you get it all back and more with that 6 miles 6% grade down hill drive down the other side. We started down that hill at 145miles of range and regenerative braking gave us another 40 miles of range at the bottom.

On the final leg home we had one scare, when a semi pulling a trailer home started to whip around violently between lanes, luckily we were a few cars lengths behind him (a lot more after he started whipping around). How that trailer did not flip is beyond me. 😱

We made it home to Kennewick at around 3:00pm and the first thing we did was give Bucky a really really good bath. Spent about 5 bucks with the wand wash getting 3000 miles of bugs off the front face of Bucky and out of his “teeth”.  Then it was time to head to the house and clean out the interior and basically collapse on the couch. 

So that ends our epic adventure from Baltimore MA/Dulles VA to Kennewick WA. I hope you enjoyed reading the blog. I had a lot of fun writing it. The BMW IX is a dream machine and a road trip monster. It eats up payment and miles with little to no stress at all. Charging for the most part was uneventful with the exception of Topeka Kansas, and our backup plans worked great. 

My advice for anyone considering a trip cross country in an EV - DO IT! Good planning is essential. Have a route, and check is twice, also check your route multiple times along the trip to see if anything has changed (weather, road construction, charging station issues, etc. Have accounts on multiple charging networks so you have multiple backups in case they are needed (see my story on a previous blog about Topeka Kansas). 

Use the tools available and double check them against each other. 

I used the following:

A Better Route Planner

Plugshare

Electrified America App

ChargePoint App

EV Go App

BMW App (on board routing)

Some final stats for the trip. 

Total Miles Driven - 3057

Total Charging Stops - (15), Averaging three per day with the last one at night so we were ready to go the next morning.

Average Charging Session “fill” 80% 

Average miles driven between charging stops - 250 miles

Average miles driven per day - 510 miles

Total cost to charge at EA stations along the way - $0. (Yep, I got my moneys worth out of my free 2 year EA plan that came with the IX.

Number of McDonald’s cokes and unsweetened Ice tees consumed - 14 

Number of Walmarts visited (for the EA charging) 12

Average amount of money spent by wife at Wally World - $25. (Now we know what Walmart let EA put all those charging stations in their parking lots.

Favorite Charging Stop(s) - (tie between the Evergreen Coffee company in Utah, and Caspers in Salina Kansas.

Favorite SiriusXM channel - The Garth Brooks channel - The Bowers and Wilkins Stereo is AMAZING!

Nicest new friends made along the way —all of them.

Best food along the way - (tie: Jack Stacks BBQ Kansas City, and The Red Iguana in Salt Lake City)

Worse road construction - Indianapolis. 

Favorite BMW IX feature (so far) the Professional Driving Assistant Pro (with congestion assist) SO MAGICALLY. Where has this been all my life. 

PS: Thanks to my brother in law Jake who had our new Wallbox Plus Level 2 charger installed for when we got home. Plugged in and in the morning - up to 100%. Total cost for that charging session $4 bucks. 😎

Day 6 - Grand Junction CO to Twin Falls ID.

 

Well kids, good evening from a long day of travel on day 6th. Its 10:02pm as I type this blog entry. We drove 525 miles from Grand Junction CO, to Twin Falls ID today, where we are now tucked into our hotel for the evening. Another long but very fun day!  We have all the intentions of stopping for the evening around 6:00pm each day - we just can’t seem to manage it. What is it they say about intentions, only good in horseshoes and hand-grenades 😂 Bucky is just so much fun to drive and frankly so easy to drive, we lose track of the time as we burn off another 500+ miles each day. Tomorrow we plan to be home in the afternoon. For those of you keeping score at home, that is almost 3000 miles traveled in 6 days by car, accords this amazing country of ours. Yep it was indeed faster to fly the 3000 miles out to Baltimore on day one, but a lot less interesting. 

Along the way today we saw some AMAZING sites, the southern part of Utah near Moab, and Arches National park (even though we did not make it there exactly) is simply breath taking. The amount of ever changing geology is truly something I encourage you to witness at least once in your life. 

We also had a little driving adventure today. Cheryl deciding to take the first leg of the trip from Grand Junction this morning. At one point I heard her giggle, I was looking down at my phone working on something and looked over to see she was doing 115MPH. Not much wind noise to speak off in Bucky, no cylinders groaning or transmissions winding up - just this soft gently breeze going by and the little girl giggle of my wife of 34 years from the drivers seat. I am starting to suspect I may not get this car back when we arrive home. I may have to call my BMW contacts and tell them to order me another one. Hmmm I hear the new I 7 series electrics are nice…… 

I also learned that my amazing wife does not do well on 2 lane hi-ways. This occurred on hi-way 16 up to Salt Lake City. Let’s just say that some colorful language was spoken (yelled?) at the drivers in front of Bucky who were in the left lane and refuse to move over quick enough to the right lane on those uphill climbs. You know - where the trucks were supposed to pull over to allow faster traffic to pass. But in this case it was minivans of family’s on a nice leisurely drives being hunted down buy a wild red-head coming up on them at Mach 1.3 with no mercy’s while yelling GET THE F*** OUT OF THE WAY. I was actually afraid for those pore souls life’s (and mine). I sheepishly said at one point, “you know honey, you have become one OF THOSE BMW drivers” and my usually mild mannered wife looked over at me with a look that I can only describe as one of humor and evil, all rolled up into one.  When we got into Provo and she pulled over at a McDonald’s to use the restroom, and get a drink, I slid over into the drivers seat. I figured it was safer that way for all the residents of Salt Lake that way. Whew…..😱😂

We pulled over a little while later at a Sam’s club to pour some electrons into Buck, and I realized this was going to be a cheap stop - I don’t have a Sam’s club card. YES! Hahahahha. After that we went into Salt Lake and ate at one of my favorite Mexican Restaurants - The Famous Red Iguana. We lucked out in a getting a table fast and the food as always was Nom Nom Nom. If you like Mole’s - THIS is the place for you. 

From there - we headed up to Antelope State park and got some incredible views of the Great Salt Lake and photos with Bucky. Of course we had to stop at the gift shop at the park. Gifts for the grand nuggets are on their way home. The great salt lake is absolutely starkly beautiful. Luckily I needed to get home, or I would have made a beeline over to the the Bonneville salt flats, where it is the first week of speed week on the Salt Flats. Next time and for another trip. 

The final leg of our journey this day towards home in Washington state took us on a not so scenic route home via Hi-way 15 and Hi-way 84 where we crossed over into Idaho. I think I gave Cheryl a mild case of range anxiety when I mentioned we had 145miles to go on the GPS to our next stop and only 190miles left on the guess-o-meter, we had some small hill climbs to go, but the battery charge looked good and for once on this trip, I just did the speed limit (80MPH - LOVE IDAHO speed limits) and we arrived at our final charging stop for the evening at a place called Stinkers fuel stop. The EA chargers seemed to have very tired hamsters at this stop and it seemed we could not get the hamsters to generate more than 56KW of power for Bucky. We tried all the stations, hoping it was just a station issue, but alas, Stinkers must not have made the appropriate sacrifices to the electron gods, and we just had a slower than normal charging session. I did try and whip the hamsters though, but to little avail. 

That brings a close to this blog entry tonight. I have planned our last seven hour jaunt home to southeastern WA via the Electrified America app and some google maps. Apparently ARBP (A better Route Planner) was not being “better” this evening and since our little incident in Topeka a couple days ago - I have come to double check everything on the suggested route and trip between charges, just to be sure.  That has worked brilliantly for me so far. 

So with that, I bid you ado. I will update you all tomorrow evening with the final day of adventures, I don’t anticipate much. It is mostly Idaho, Oregon and Washington deserts (boring compared to what I have seen this week).

See you all tomorrow.

Day 5 - Epic Travel day. Salina KS to Grand Junction CO.

 Well good morning on day 6 from Bucky and friends. I am a little late writing the blog for Day 5 because I just woke up after an epic day of driving 675miles from Saline KS to Grand Junction CO, The trip was so beautiful in so many different ways it is hard to count. 

We started our drive off in Salina and noticed we had a major head wind going I70 west. It definitely took the range down on Bucky, so much so that we readjusted our charging planning for it. The scenery along I70 with farms as far as the eye could see was peace to the soul. The two things that surprised me on this part of the trip were the hundreds and I am not exaggerating, HUNDREDS of wind mills along the route, I know why they were there too, because the head wind was brutal at times. More than a few times I eyed those wind mills wondering if there was a electric socket I could plug into the base of one of them. 😝

The other thing was the huge number of oil Derek’s and pumps. I had no idea that Kansas was such a oil state. A quick google search and it was pretty apparent how much oil and gas they produce. Good for Bucky, he loves them sweet sweet electrons produced by all that oil and natural gas. 

Our first stop for charging was - yep you guess it - Walmart. It was there I realized that the sprinklers at the previous nights hotel had left hard water spots all over Bucky’s shiny new paint. I went to work immediately getting those off while were were charging. I got some strange looks from folks as I stood there getting those spots off, but no way was I gonna let them bake on throughout the day. Mission accomplished. May I also say - Bucky is a Bug Murderer - LOL. Damn that poor boy had bugs up in his “grill” like some sort of weird Bug horror movie. A quick wipe of detail spray and they were off and Bucky could smile that stupid buck-tooth grin of his again down the road.

The second stop was at the I-70 dinner along I70. There are EA chargers there (even 350KW) and we gave Bucky a long drink of electrons while we went in and had a burger. Interesting experience while at the diner. Service wa slow and as we waited for our meal, we overheard the owner of the place had sold it the previous night, told everyone this was their last day and it was all over. Only one waitress had shown up and the poor girl was overwhelmed. You could tell she was really torn up inside and was doing her best to still help the customers. Cheryl went and gave her a really nice tip to help her out and she was so appreciative of that. Remember folks, waite staff are humans too. Sometimes we all have bad days, turn up the compassion filter when you find these situations, and add to the good karma points to the universe  as you can. 

Finally the wind was starting to die down as we were driving into Denver Colorado. I noted our range was still really sucking and I surmised it was that 1 mile climb into Denver. We stopped at a EA station at the Colorado Mills Mall (thankful some other scenery than Wally Word) and found a charger to use (another 350). There was a Nissan Leaf and a Polestar at the station as well. I pulled up, plugged in and started charging right away. I was getting looks from the other folks there and it turns out they had all been having issues getting there charging started. I don't know what magic BMW did to make charging so easy at these EA Electron dispensers, but I need to shake their hand. The connection period is literally less than 30 seconds (I started timing them) and the spin up to around 175-180KW takes another 30-45 seconds. Just easy peasy!  About 5 mins latter a band new hyundai Ionic 5 pulled up to charge. It took him almost 20 mins to get connected and started. We gave him a hand and got him going.  I love all the comments we get about Bucky, everyone wants to check him out. I have given several “sales pitches” on Bucky at chargers all over the place on this trip. Including fellow BMW drivers in ICE versions who pull up and want to know everything about him. Hmmmm, I wonder when my royalty commission checks will start coming in from BMW 🤣

We did a longer charge at the Colorado Mills mall because some good friends we had not seen in ages showed up to see us and Bucky. It was great catching up with them. Thanks for coming out Stuart! We are looking forward to seeing you in WA soon.

NOW THE EPICNESSS! 

After leaving the Colorado Mills Mall we started up long tall hill climb into the mountains along I-70 to begin the last leg of the journey that day, I believe it was 11,000 feet (I need to go back and check).  I was really worried about how much range Bucky was going to get climbing all these mountains, luckily there were charging stops along the way in several towns, like Vail and Aspen, so I was not too worried.  Bucky climbs hills like they are flat land. Amazing. No effort at all. What else is amazing if the amount of regeneration Bucky got going down those steep sloops on the way down into the valley. He regenerated so much, that I never had to charge once the entire section of I-70 from Denver at the Colorado Mills Mall until we reached our final stop of the day at Grand Junction Colorado with a 20% battery and still 80 miles of range on the old ‘guess-o-meter”.

I cannot begin to describe the sites we saw on that trip. The geology of those mountains were ever changing and amazing. In fact I found myself setting Bucky cruise control to slower speed so I could just revel in the scenery. I am sorely tempted to go back to Denver and turn around just to see it again. Alas I am on a time schedule and need to get home to southeastern WA by Tuesday.  If you have never done this drive, it has been the highlight of this trip and one of my top 5 best drives EVER! 

One other note: I used Bucky Professional Lane Assist feature the entire time. Only once did I feel like it was not in control, but I had my hand on the wheel all the time anyway so it was an easy correction. Again - Bravo BMW engineering!!!! It made the drive a complete no stress experience. I am going to include a short 1 minute video on on this blog of the drive, but trust me, it does not do this road justice.

Well its almost 8:00am, need to go get some coffee (must control fist of death you know) a little breakfast, and then saddle Bucky up for another 500-600 miles today. 

Stay well out there my friends!

Until the next blog…..

Day 4 - St Charles Mo - to Salina KS. (First snafu with charging)

 Well Day 4 was fun, interesting, delicious, frustrating and tiring all wrapped up into one neat package. I am reminding myself as of this writing now that we are tucked into our nice little room in Salina KS, Dave (thats what I call myself…usually) this evening I am leaning more towards dummy. Dave you wanted to do this. Repeat after me. 😂

Its experiences in life that makes it worth living it. If you sit in a room and not experience the world, then why are you on this 17,000MPH big blue ball in space for? I am really loving the adventure so far and it will make for some great stories in my repertoire when I get home and indulge in some very nice bottles of wine. 

Today started out in St Charles MO. We had a quick breakfast and then went and got Bucky ready to accept it’s new driver  - Cheryl. We got the rig all setup for her in about 20 mins, and then she played around testing how it accelerated and drove. Our plan was for her to drive while I got on a Microsoft teams meeting for my new job, that I wanted to listen into, but alas, the cell service was having none of that fancy communication stuff. So I just played the dutiful co-pilot for Cheryl the whole day. I must admit, I suck as a co-pilot. For example the first time I tried to open a bottle of water, I for some unknown reason squeezed the bottle and gave myself a second shower for the day. DOH!. 

We made our first stop in Ozarkland MO, which is just off the hiway on I-70. It is basically one of those stores that has all of the kitchy souvenirs your heart could desire. Thankfully nothing screamed out TAKE ME HOME. Now I have to admit the 6 year old road trip kid in me want to buy every damn thing in the store. But I am now 56, not 6, so I resisted. Good Boy Dave. 

The first fun thing happened after Ozarkland as Cheryl was getting on the hiway. We were on the on-ramp stuck behind one of the 4.2 million trucks currently in Kansas and Cheryl wanted to get onto I-70 to beat the traffic. She is urging the truck along in front us, when she decided to floor it to make haste and get around him before the end of the on-ramp. Make haste is EXACTLY what Bucky did. As our heads slammed into the headrests, Bucky jumped from 30Mph to 110mph, which seemed like it was an instant! Cheryl yells out. HOLY SHIT!!!  I’m giggling like a school boy at his first middle school dance as Bucky lept from the on-amp at about 2 miles down the road at Mach 2.2. The look on the truckers fave as we past, was priceless. I am sure the truckers on I-70 are still chatting on the CB about the crazy lady jumping on I-70 like she was trying to launch an SR71 into the Sky. After we got down to a respectable speed of say 85MPH, Cheryl looks over at me and says “ Whoah!! - I LIKE IT! Hahahahahhahh, Priceless. My thoughts turned to - am I gonna get this car back when we get home. Sheesh. 

Next up was a charging session in Boonville Mo. Yes it was at another Wally World. I swear these “ free charging sessions” at Electrified America, are costing me about $30 a shot since Cheryl inevitably finds some new things she needs at Walmart.

We charged up to about 86% at Boonville and then headed to the Church or Meat at Jack Stacks in Kansas City MO for lunch , Oh Nom Nom Nom, Oh more please, Nom Nom Nom. I ordered way to much, but Sweet Jesus, pass me more of those Burnt ends and Cheesy corn please! Cheryl rolled me out of Jack Stacks and then we headed off to Topeka Kansas where we learn two valuable lessons. 

Lesson 1) check your iPhone when using Apple Maps in settings and make sure you do not have AVOID TOLL ROADs selected. I could not figure out why Apple Maps had us jumping off I-70 onto state route 1012. The road and route BTW - was absolutely beautiful. While it was not a 4 lane hiway, the scenery more than made up for it. Nice rolling hills, beautiful farms and scenery. Just a beautiful drive. I was playing around in my phone when I discovered this setting and realized why we were on this road. It really did not take us to far of the way to get to Topeka, but just look longer in time to drive since it was not an interstate and just two lanes. I think it was probably one of the best parts of the trips so far. It was during this part of the trip that we learned the next lesson. 

Lesson 2) One of the things Cheryl has been doing before each charging stop is to look up the charger location in the Electrify America App to see what chargers are available and which are of the 150KW and 350KW variety. She asked me to look that up (me being the co-pilot) and to my initial horror I see that the station is “OFFLINE” 😱 😡🥵🤬🤬🤬. A quick look at the state of charge on Bucky, and we were at State of charge of 23% and range of a little under 80 miles and we were still 12 miles outside of Topeka on our beautiful little road. A quick check of the app to see what other DC fast charging stations might be available close to Topeka showed the nearest in Salina KS - 110 miles down the road. Man I wish I had a lump of coal next to me at that point, because I could have put that between my butt cheeks and had a new diamond to give Cheryl at that very moment. 

Soooooo - yep our first charging snafu and first rookie mistake in doing long distance road-tripping in an EV was here.  I was hearing my buddy Rob at that moment asking me where I was putting the Honda Generator and the gallon of gas at for the trip. Very Very Funny Rob……

We went ahead to the Wally World EA stop in Topeka hoping beyond hope that it was an error in the app. Alas when we arrived, the entire parking lot around the chargers was all torn up and the chargers offline. DAMMIT!  What’s really frustrating is, this is where the ABRP (A Better Route Planner) sent us. WHY did they lead us astray? Did I read the route wrong, I mean what the hell! Now what???

Its 5:00pm in Topeka now and we are sitting in the parking lot next to the useless, offline EA chargers, when I started running scenarios on what do next to do in my brain. Come on Dave you planned for contingency’s. You read the nightmare stories like this. Do not become a statistic. I have 60 miles of range left and about 20% battery pack at this time. My first thought was to call a BMW dealership locally to see if they had a level 2 charger. I did that, and of course I got the only receptionist in the world who had never heard about Electric Cars in her life (FML). She could not even transfer me to someone who might know what they were talking about. That girl needs to quickly apply at Taco Bell - she ain’t gonna make it at BMW if you ask me. 

So the next thing I do is bring up the Plug share app and do a search for Level 2 chargers. Its gonna be slow, probably all night to get the electrons I need to get to Salina and find working (thankfully) EA DC fast charger. There was indeed a charger in Saline, I just needed to get there. I tripled checked BTW). Perhaps we could find a charger at a hotel. Then I see about 5 miles from my current location a Level2 ChargePoint charger available. Cool, I have a ChargePoint account, lets head there. We drive over to that location in Topeka and its in a parking lot between a Mexican restaurant and a store called Dillons, at least thats what Plug Share said. It took us like 10 mins to find it however, like a oasis in the desert we had found it. Not only that, but next to all the level 2 chargers (which I would have gladly used and hung out till I have enough coal-juice) was a brand new spanking ChargePoint DC Fast Charger. Hallelujah pass the hot sauce momma, we are in business! We got up to the charger, plugged in and low and behold it would not take the payment off my phone via NFC communication. There was not a credit card reader either. Uuuuugggggghhhh. So I called the 1-800 support number for ChargePoint and after two many menu selections to get to a real human (took 2 phone calls BTW) we got a very nice gentlemen who was trying to figure out what station we were at. No markings on the station whatsoever to help him identify it. ChargePoint, if your reading this, please fixed this ASAP on your chargers. With me explaining what zip code I was in, and info from plugshare, the nice gentlemen on the phone found the charger and reset it remotely so we could use it. Thanks bud - I owe you a beer!

As we were sitting there charging at between 35KW and 40KW, a nice couple with the cutest newborn showed up in a Ford Mach-E. ARBP did him bad as well and directed him to the EA chargers at the aforementioned Wally World. He plugged into the Level 2 chargers, while we continued to sucked in those sweet DC (not so fast charge) electrons. He came over and introduced himself. He was trying to get to Kansas City for the evening, he was in the Army and transferring to St Louis, he had just came from the Fast charger in Salina and confirmed it was working. We talked about Bucky and his Mach-E. He was amazed at the tech in the Beemer, told us he had a new life goal. 

We decide to only stay as long as we needed to on that Fast charger to get us to Salina and Caseys General store where the EA chargers were plus a tiny amount of buffer so we could get this young service man and his little family on their way. It only took about 10 more mins and we had enough range to get to Salina. A quick unplug  of the charger, some goodbyes to our new friends, and we were off to Salina. 

We made it to Salina around 8:30PM and charged Bucky up for an hour to get him to 100%, I know I probably did not need to - but I wanted every electron I could get at that point. Caseys general store has a nice selection of one off cans of beer, and since I was the Co-pilot I had a cold one while charging away. 

So that brings me to the close of our crazy day. Blog entry complete, time for some sleepy sleep. Tomorrow we are going to get Bucky the hell out of Kansas and into CO. This is going to be interesting with all the hill climbs and elevation changes coming up to see how it effects the range of the IX. 

Until the next entry - have a good one folks. Catch you later.

Day 3 - Heading West

 Day three had Bucky and us traveling from Cambridge OH all the way to St Charles MO. For those of you that are counting - thats 535 miles on I70 (including multiple reroutes through Indianapolis (what a nightmare) 😱 More detail on that to come. 

As I sit here this evening tucked into my little hotel room in St Charles, I am reflecting on just how many miles you can easily burn in a day with this incredible machine. However, we have discovered its one weak point - and that is it’s navigation system. Not to say it’s bad, it just needs to have some “refinements” included into its interface. For example, every turn on a highway is bear right, bear left and it’s ALWAYS at the last second before an exit. It does not call out exit numbers 2 miles ahead of time like other GPS systems like Apple Car Play/Maps or Waze, or others. my wife HATES this system. Thank god we have Apple Car play. So much nicer and more civilized in its directions. 

We learned this the hard-way today when encountering the most bizarre Freeway project I have ever seen, in the heart of Indianapolis on I70. For the love of god and all that is holy, their idea of a hiway construction project is to create the most lethal breed of radioactive mutant oversized mole-rats and turn them loose with one mission, destroy all concrete in a 10 mile radius of downtown Indy. What an absolute mess, bonus points, the “engineering department” in charge of the detours all were nearsighted, blind drunken idiots who literally created the detours by throwing random objects at a map and then calling it good. I have found it literally easier to navigate an IKEA, based inside a Super Walmart (my description of hell BTW).

We did however find the Indianapolis Speedway which was a bucket item on my list for this trip. I posted a couple of photos on some of the BMW IX Facebook groups this evening. I will get others onto this blog soon. Now that I have seen the track, I have moved all thoughts of visiting Indy again from my bucket list to my Fuckit list. BTW did I mention the BMW IX’s almost OCD VEER RIGHT over corrections. I finally just pulled over in a random gas station parking lot, turned it off and made Apple Maps my GPS of choice for the rest of this trip. Perhaps I am just missing some options I need to select, but my Wife wants nothing more to do with it. So when I get home, I will get on the horn with BMW and see what can be improved upon. I am in this for the species boys and girls. 😂

DC fast charging the IX continues to be an absolute joy. I was so nervous about this part of the trip, and it literally become a no-brainer. My wife is dutifully recording all these sessions and will put them together into a Youtube video when we get back. Please not: I am no professional videographer, these are just me talking to the the camera and around it while showing how easy this process is. From the notes I have been taking, the handshake process time between the EA dispensers for those Sweet Sweet Coal electrons is only taking on average about 20 seconds. I am charging from around 20% to 80 percent in 30 mins. From a lot of videos I have seen on this process with other manufactures, it can take up to 2 mins or more just for the handshake.  Bravo BMW, simply Bravo. 

I think I cautioned this yesterday, but the IX only has one speed I can find on the hiway and that is WIDE OPEN TILL YOU SEE GOD, THEN BRAAAAAAAKE!  I am averaging at least 85MPH and I cannot figure out a way to keep it under that. It LOVES to cruise at 85. I am will be seeing a plastic surgeon when I return home to get this stupid grin off my face. BTW - did I mention it was fast. Everyone talks about 0-60 in 4.x seconds. Here’s a secret…..sssshhhh… the real fun is 60 - 110! YEEEEHAAAA!!!

We have been seeing a lot of construction on this trip and today we got caught up in a nasty backup of about 6 miles. I remember seeing a video about congestion mode from a guy in Europe, Sorry I don’t remember his name yet, but I need to find it, cause I owe you a beer for creating at that video. After 1 mile in the backup doing about .5 MPH, I remember that video and also remembered I have the 5AU Active Driving Assistant Pro feature and turned it on. The IX then just proceeded to take care of the next 5 miles as if I was not even there. I could have possibly jumped in the back and made a sandwich, if I have sandwich making materials. Seriously though I just barely rested a finger on the wheel and watched it do its thing. Damn, where has this been all my life. The countless hours in I5 and I405 backups, the huge sums of $$$ money to massage therapist to remove the knots from my legs. THE BEST $1700 option I have ever purchased on a car. If you are in the process of ordering your first IX, RUN to, DONOT Walk to your dealer and make sure you have this feature selected. 

Tomorrows goal is to get to Kansas City and start eating as much BBQ as I can, until my wife has to put me into the IX with a Cherry picker. (You ICE guys will know what I am talking about there) 😂

I also think we are going to take it easy tomorrow and only do around 400 miles and find a hotel with a hot tub that I can sleep in it overnight. Coming out in the morning looking like a wrinkly zucchini will SO be worth it. 

Goodnight all

Bucky and I will see you tomorrow.

PS; Unfortunately we only got two days into the trip before the first fart (me) was released into that supple interior. I almost had to cry. Fortunately every EA stop for charging is at a Wally World (Walmart). Needless to say, New Car Smell Air freshener sticks were procured and all is well. 

Day 2 - Picked up Bucky and went oh our first adventure!

 

Well day 2 is in the books. I type this blog entry from our hotel room in Cambridge OH. What an epic day. We burned through 425 miles of road and 5 states today (Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and OH), before doing a final DC fast charge at Electrified America (at a Wally World of course) and then checked in for a much needed night of rest. Once again we are staying at a Holiday Inn Express. A few more of these and I get my certified Nuclear Engineering degree is my understanding. 🤣 - at least thats what the add says - right?!?

The day began at 7:00am where I discovered the hotel has a robotic pancake machine. If you have never seen one of these, seek them out! I understand it is one of the only reasons Aliens consider us still a sentient species. 

Our SA from BMW of Cantonsville picked us up around 9:00am and we headed the short distance to the dealership. A very VERY nice BMW dealership that it is. Once we signed the final, final paperwork (how many powers of a attorney does one car take anyway) we were then briefed on the IX, got our phones connected to allow us access to the car and sent off our our merry way. I did not take advantage of the Genius session, since I needed to meet up with a buddy of mine in Tysons Corner for lunch and that was at least and hour jaunt away. I have read the manual twice, watched every video on it three times, and I still need to spend time with it too get everything configured. 

We made it to Tysons corner for a great lunch with one of my best buddies in the area and then headed off to the Air & space museum at Dulles to see the SR71 Blackbird they have on display, but more importantly to see he actually Space Shuttle Discovery. Damn - that thing is HUGE!. It is hard to believe that thing flew in space 39 times with technology that is at least 10 times dumber than my Apple Watch. If you ever get to the the Dulles area, go see it. It is truly a site to behold. May I also say - Space Shuttle Crews had large attachments. Even the cute ones 😂

That reminds me, I am taking lots of photos during this trip - I need to figure out how to attach them to each post. Don’t worry I will make that happen. I even got an epic shot of Bucky outside of the museum I definitely want to share. 

After the museum it was time to turn and burn and get some pavement under us to get back home. Thats where the aforementioned 425miles and 5 states comes in above. 

Some observations on the road trip portion so far and more importantly on my initial day 1 impressions of Bucky.

1) SO GLAD I WAITED! It was a long wait for this car, but sooooo worth it. It drives like no other EV I have ever driven, and it completely justifies and wait and the cash outlay for said purchase. 

2) OMG - the value for money is unbelievable. Go look up and price out a Jeep Grand Wagoner or a Chevy Suburban. Then RUN do not walk to your nearest BMW dealership and plunk down your deposit money down. Trust me - you will Thanks Me Later.

3) Smoothest ride of ANY vehicle I have ever owned. I lost count over the years of the number of cars I have purchased - just ask my wife. I have never had a ride like this, or the luxury the IX simply exudes just getting into it for the first time. IT IS SO QUIET. Road noise is at a minimum. 

3a) I managed to get the Bowers and Wilkins stereo in my IX 50. Yep - lucky me (thanks Hans!) This is like being in a concert hall, while driving 90MpH.

4) Range is IMPRESSIVE! I noted the Edmunds testing article on their range tests and they are not kidding around when they say 350mile per charge. 

5) I was worried about DC fast charging, BIG TIME, especially after watching countless videos on youtube of the problems I have seen folks have at Electrified America with their Mustangs, Hyundais, Rivian, etc, etc. So far - knock on wood, not a single issue other than me being stupid and hitting the wrong button at the EA dispenser and stopping my first charge session after just 2 minutes. I swear the dispenser actually let out a Home Simpson - DOH sound when I did that. Hmmm maybe it was me. But EA, if your reading this. Bonus points for including sound effects on the charging dispenser stations. Your Welcome. 

6) A little off topic, but maybe not so much. The truck drivers in the 5 states I have driven through today DO NOT GIVE…. AF! We will just leave it at that. OMG - At one point I was passed by a trucker going at least 30MPH faster than me, going up hill and carrying a load that must have been secured to his trailer by a bunch of whacked out crack smoking gnomes.

7) Back to Bucky - I still need to spend more time with it, but the on board NAV system , while epically cool especially in the augmented reality mode when directions come up over live video, I find it overly cumbersome to use (so far) and needlessly complicated in its directions. For example the turns and mergers need to be announce much sooner as especially if you are going at Speed (which trust me - you will be. At this point I think I like the simplistically of Apple Maps and Car play. I have 2400 more miles to change my mind though.

8) I LOVE the layout of the center console, especially the control panel. So glad I got the Walnut control panel instead of the Piano Black. The fingerprints would have driven me nuts. The panel was designed by genius's. After about 200miles I had everything down to my right hand on the center console controls, and my left hand on the steering wheel. IDrive 8 is a little cumbersome, but the center console and steering wheel controls help ALOT!

9) The drivers assistance pro is great. It helpedwith the Long drive,  but BMW needs to give you a little more slack time before you have to touch the wheel again before it goes all pouty. 

Those are initial impressions for now. I’m exhausted and need to get some sleep. More on the adventures of Bucky and it’s cross country adventure tomorrow. 

Night all!

Day one is here - Finally!

Well the day is finally here. After many years of research, and many many months of waiting for my new EV to be built and delivered, delivery day has come.

This morning my Sales Associate from BMW of Catonsville will be picking my wife and I up at our hotel and taking us to the dealership to pick up my first EV, a 2022 BMW IX xDrive50 Msport. Hmmm, maybe BMW could use some lessons in succinct naming practices 😜

This particular unit is optioned with every available feature I could squeeze into it. The color combination is Exterior: Storm Bay Metallic, and Interior: Oyster Sensatec. It even has the crystal controls on the door and center console.

Much has been said about the design of the IX, especially the front “grill” which can only be described as something a mother Beaver or a Naked Mole Rat mother could love. The IX does have some “big teeth”. Long time BMW fans really seem to hate it. I for one do not have a dog in this fight. This is my first BMW and first EV. I think it looks futuristic. I am also a certified “techy” and “geek” and when I first saw the IX is was a Nerdgasm at first site for me. 

What is amazing about me selecting this particular SUV is I am an old “gear head”. I have been building race cars, hot rods, and show cars with friends since I was able to turn a wrench. My dad gave me a 4-Barrel Holy carb to take about and rebuilt when I was 8 and made me do it over and over again until it ran beautifully on his old truck. My dad instilled a love of wrenching at a young age, but I installed the tech part when I became a teenager. I basically grew up in the dawn of the PC, the internet, and mobile devices. Also for the last 22 years I have been into Corvettes in a BIG WAY. I have had many examples of Corvettes in those 22 years, got heavily involved on the NW Corvette Show Circuit and still have one parked in what I call “the garagemahall” at my house. I totally stole that last term from my gear head brother in CA - Keith. Shout out to your buddy!

So that’s me. Hopefully it gives you a good understanding of who I am and why this is such a big decision to get a vehicle that basically does not have a single wrench I can turn on it, outside the occasional tire change.

 Backing up 24hrs, my amazing patient wife got up at 3:00am on Monday and got on a early morning flight to Seattle, where we caught a flight to Baltimore MD. Arrived safely in Baltimore (obviously) and then a quick trip to our hotel in a Tesla Model 3. Funny, Uber described this as a “comfortable car, with lots of leg room”. If your a hobbit, this is a limo, if your built to make NFL quarterbacks whimper at the mere site of you, then not so much. Thankfully it was a short ride.  

I did not sleep well, while visions of EV’s and our upcoming cross country trip danced in my head. As I said a Facebook post, I have not been this excited since being a 6 year old kid waiting for Christmas to arrive and wishing Santa to bring me a Big Jim Rescue Rig. I think I just dated myself there. 

The plan today is to pick up the new ride, go over how to run it, things like connecting my phone to it for access and control, and understanding all of the feature boxes I clicked off on it when ordering it. Then we are going to meet a friend for lunch, make a quick trip to the Air and Space museum in Dulles so I can see the Space Shuttle Endeavor exhibit, and then it will time to point this baby West along I-70 and make the 2800 mile trip home back to WA state. I maybe crazy, or stupid, but this is going to be an adventure and I am looking forward to every step of the way. 

The current route will take us along I70 via Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and then home to Southeastern WA. Trip plan is for 6-7 days doing about 500 miles a day. From all the calculations I have done with Route planners like ABRP it will require 12 hrs of charging time to get there. Edmonds.com in there recent testing say I should get up to 350miles between 100% charges. I am only going to go to 80% to help un battery cell longevity using DC fast charges, unless I am at a hotel and use a Level 2 charges and do a nice slow overnight charge to 100%.

The purpose of this blog is to document the trip (the good, bad, and ugly) to give anyone else crazy enough to want to take on this challenge what it was like. I will document each charging stops, how it worked, how long it took, range between stops, etc. I will also be documenting all the places we see along the way. I love exploring new places, so this should be fun. 

Finally - if all goes well, I will also be creating a youtube series on this little adventure I have chosen. It may take me a little bit to get the video all put together, so I figured I could at least keep notes and thoughts in this blog along the way. 

I hope you enjoy it and find this blog useful.

Unit the next update - keep the shiny side up all!