Last night I saw a hot damn show up in Sebastopol at a brewpub called the Hopmonk. The main act, Pokey LaFarge (and band), and the opener, Cicada Rhythm, were both a hoot. It felt like a walk through the 20th century, from hot jazz to jump blues to texas swing to jumping jive to lounge jazz to second line and back.
Over dinner we had been sharing stories of recharging EVs on long trips and whether a fast charger is needed at home and so on without me once reflecting on the fact that I hadn’t topped the battery off to 100% before this trip, that Sebastopol is more than 92 miles from Palo Alto (and for reasons I won’t go into here I overshot a bit), and that I probably didn’t have enough juice left in the bat to make it all the way home this morning.
The app in my dashboard told me I could turn back to Petaluma or plow on to the San Francisco and recharge there. I came down over the Golden Gate bridge and then got off at the Presidio and found my way to a set of Rivian chargers near Crissy Field.
It took me at least twenty minutes to set up an account on the Rivian app so I could activate the charger but eventually I got it going and went off for a bit of a walk to stretch my legs, take some pictures, and relax instead of watching a pot of water waiting for it to boil.
I had a fright when I came back and saw that the readout indicate 0.0 kW etc., but that appeared to be a bug because my car happily reported increasing charge, if not an especially fast rate. I kept my eye on the average range and the minimum range and kept charging until the minimum range was at least a few miles more than the actual distance.
But I cut it too close and while it looked like it was touch and go there 17, 16, 15 miles out, after that the Bolt just started reporting low power with a blinking warning light on the dash, and that the propulsion was capped. At first this cap was well above my speed (it seemed maybe it was around 72 when the usual cap is 92), but as the miles ticked away it kept lowering that cap and soon it was headed below freeway speed so I got off at an exit headed toward a charging station and then instead of going into some walking-speed turtle mode the car actually just stopped!’
Fortunately I was by the side of the road by then. I called AAA hoping they could bring a portable fast-charging unit as someone had told me can be done just the other night but apparently that is not something universally available and instead they towed me to a nearby charging setup in Redwood City that unfortunately turned out to have only broken chargers available.
Thank goodness Gustavo stuck around to be sure and then he towed me to an parking lot in an office park in Menlo Park nearby. Here the charger worked although it seemed slower than my own house, perhaps optimized for workers who have 8 hours to recharge their cars?
Anyhow it took so long I ordered a burrito taxi from door dash before barely making it home in time with just enough charge to fulfill a commitment to B to drop her off at a thing.
Man, I’m tired.
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