West of Mpls MN about 50 miles on Hwy 12 | Earlier this month we made a quick trip to Marco Island FL. We always use Budget for rental vehicles and choose the mystery vehicle option. This trip (much to what turned out to be our pleasant surprise) we found a Ford Mustang MachE parked in our assigned spot. We have Fastbreak so no waiting line and no instructions on how to operate anything...so away we went.
Loved the MachE. I thought it was pretty easy to figure out the controls. I love the whole dynamic braking deal...it's just like driving my Toolcat or my lawnmower. And the performance of the MachE makes my Mustang Cobra SVT seem like a paper weight. We made it from the Fort Meyers Airport to Marco and cruised around a little just for fun with no worries at all...the Mach E is sooo quiet in the cab. We left the airport with 74% battery and had 51% when we parked at the house for the day.
Did a little research online to find the nearest charging station and on YouTube to see exactly how to charge a MachE the while doing a little grilling for supper. Located several Tesla chargers on Marco Island but no other brands of fast/superchargers. I learned on the Ford website and YouTube that MachE has a cord and several plug adapters in the frunk that will adapt the cord to any style fast/supercharger plug and a mobile charger that will slow charge on 110V or 220V...no worries.
After supper I decide I'm going to plug our rental in overnight so no worries about running out of juice the next day. Open the frunk and no cords, adapters, charger. nothing...panic sets in. So back to the internet and YouTube. It turns out Budget does not supply the handy extension cord, adapters, and mobile charger...I guess I can't fault Budget for that. No doubt the entire bundle would eventually get stole from every MachE Budget owns.
So back to the internet to find the nearest CCS charger with a the standard J1772 plug...the closest non-Tesla charger is at a Walmart 14 miles from the house. That kind of sucked, but at least the location was on the way back to the airport, so we charged up on the way back to the airport...we were down to about 10% battery life when we pulled in. The charging process was painless, and it took about 30 minutes to charge to 90%. When we dropped the car off at the airport, we had about 76% battery life left, so I only gave Budget 2% of free battery life...which cost less than if I had brought the car back with less battery life than when it left.
Overall, our first EV experience went surprisingly well. There is a need for more chargers even in a populated area like SWFL...I've kind of got MachE fever. I sure hope my soybeans yield better than they look...and the price goes up.
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Exploding number of Tesla Superchargers.
