The first road trip in the new Taycan was meant to be up to Gold Country (similar to the first longer road trip I took in the first car I bought here in the US). We had to make a small change in the plans though as we were also planning a visit as part of the trip, and that person was unavailable this weekend. So, as a replacement, we went to Bodega Bay, on the Pacific coast here in California.

Coffee & Lunch

Coffee stop was Roadhouse Coffee in Bodega Bay, a cute little cafe in the back of the parking lot it shares with a gift shop and a seafood restaurant (Terrapin Creek Café).

Lunch was at the Birds Cafe, a little back down the road from the coffee shop. Dining outside on the patio, this is only the second restaurant we have eaten at in the last 12 months. The kids played it safe with chicken strips & fries. We opted for tacos. My wife did one fish and one shrimp taco, I went for the vegetarian artichoke tacos.

Bodega Head

After lunch, we drove down to Bodega Head.

Petaluma

On the way home, we took a short stop in Petaluma to get some ice cream (from Lala’s Creamery), and some cheese from the Petaluma Market.

After walking around for a while, we jumped back in the car for the ride home, and the final test for the first road trip: a stop to charge at the Electrify America chargers at our local Target store.

At the Target store we were showing just under 160 miles on the trip and 15% charge remaining. The local chargers are only 150kW units, and the Taycan is equipped with a 150kW DC charger for 400V units like this (on an 800V charger it can charge at up to 270kW in theory).

Charging

The reality was a little different…

The peak I saw on the charger was just 90kW (it started off at 84kW). After 29 minutes though the battery had gone from 15% to 63%.

The Taycan includes unlimited free 30 minute charging sessions on Electrify America, and then this one said further energy would be charged at 25c/kWh (which is not much more than the rate we pay at home). Rather than spending any longer (I’d already picked up the items I needed from Target, and grabbed a much needed cup of coffee), I drove home and let my home charger finish the job, filling the battery to the recommended 85%.

I need to find out why, even at 15% remaining, the charger only reached 90kW, but it did stay at that level all the way to 63%. The preheat/cool option was for some reason unavailable, and we didn’t have the charge set up as part of the journey in the navigation (I dropped the kids at home before heading to Target, so we had a very brief stop there too).

Stats for the whole day looked like this:

Not the most efficient electric vehicle, but I don’t think 2.8 miles/kWh is too bad for the Taycan, especially since I wasn’t really trying to optimize the range at all (let’s just say some of the roads were more fun in Sport mode).