I did a 400 mile drive (one way) from San Diego, CA to Mesa, AZ and came back. I took I-10 via Palm Springs. Here is my experience.

Charging

(San Diego to Mesa)

-> Started with 90% charged in local Electrify America
-> Charged for around 20 mins in Palm Springs (back at 90%)
-> Charged in Quartzsite, AZ for 20 mins (back at 85%) => Problem 1
-> Charged in Buckeye, AZ for 15 mins (back at 85%)
-> Had a lot of local driving in Phoenix/Mesa/Tempe etc
-> Charged in Chandler, AZ before heading to Hotel (around 80%)


(Mesa to San Diego)

-> A lot of local driving in Phoenix/Mesa/Chandler etc
-> Charged in Buckeye, AZ for 20 mins (back at 85%)
-> Charged in Quartzite, AZ for 20 mins (back at 80%) => Problem 2
-> Charged in Indio, AZ for 25 mins (back at 80%) => Problem 3
-> Came home ending 30% charge left.


Problem 1: There is only one EA charging place between Indio, CA to Buckeye, AZ (around 200 miles). This is in Quartzsite, AZ which had 4 stations and 2 of them were not working.
Problem 2: On our way back, these same stations (only 2 working) wouldn't recognize my car so I had to make a call to EA to initiate charing. I didn't take the Mercedes Me card with me.
Problem 3: These stations were also not recognizing my car so again I had to call EA to initiative.

Overall, I was getting around 260 miles (Estimated) range, with better performance in CA with cooler weather than AZ hotter weather.

One more critical finding:

The cruise control and active steering control worked like a charm except that it surprised me many times by lowering my highway speed to lower speed by mistakenly reading the road speed sign (for instance, it thinks 55 mph while it was only meant for cars with towing). More on separate thread soon. I have disabled a feature in the setting which adjusts speed based on speed signs. But such a shame that this wasn't tested properly. One time, it even tried to lower it to 25 mph, mistakenly looking at a ramp exit sign.

 

Mine does that too. I'm not so sure it's because of road signs though as it seems to think parts of Interstate 64 are 45 MPH and there are no signs anywhere that would give it that impression. I think it's getting that data from the nav system.

I've disabled that and the automatic unnecessary lane change feature. The supposedly capacitive steering still nags me incessantly to keep my hands on the wheel. I'm afraid it's just not working out for me. Love my EQE SUV around town though.

 

That's working as intended though? There is expectation that you are still in control, ours don't have the level 3 driving capability yet and even when the new models have it, it will be limited to higways in CA with traffic (~40 mph last what I heard).

In my 580, at interstates I get a steering wheel warning every few minutes and just touching the bottom of the steering wheel works for me.

 

This is my problem when people recommend non-Tesla EVs for long road trips, infrastructure isn't there yet, hopefully the plans put in place with federal assistance, Tesla stations opening up this will only be a problem for another year and next summer things will be improved significantly.

 

I dunno, maybe there's something wrong with mine. I actually have one hand on the wheel when I get the message. Armrest in door is too far away from my elbow and useless so I typically have my elbow rested on the top part of panel where fake suede is and am gently holding the wheel at about 9 oclock. OR I'm holding it at 6 oclock with my other hand while arm is resting in my lap. Stupid warning just keeps coming on. I can torque it a little with one hand or put both hands on the wheel to make it stop so I guess the capacitance is working somewhat but it's just too much of a bother really and I prefer driving the car with it off most of the time. Even then I frequently get nagged to keep my hands on the wheel by the lane keep assist system when I go over a line, again, even though I actually have one hand gently resting on the wheel. It's just plain fookin' annoying.

 

So a roughly 6 hour trip becomes an over 7 hour trip with charging and having to call EA. Who truly wants that? 400 miles is roughly a trip to LA from here. I easily do that in one shot with one stop at a gas station for 5 minutes. Wouldn't wanna add a whole hour sitting around somewhere and dealing with chargers not working.

 

In an ideal world fast chargers would be at rest areas or at least somewhere with walkable restaurants around so you can eat while charging but form what I have seen even Tesla superchargers are not in locations like that most of the time. Our plan is usually to get McDonalds (which is there is always one close by) and eat while charging, this works for us because our agreement with our kid was that we get McDonalds on long trips even before getting an EV

For the plan here, ideally you would start at 100% from home and skip the charge at Palm Springs (80% - 90% charging is slow). Then it would have taken you maybe 5 minutes extra at the same stop to get to same percentage at next stop.

 

That would be a start, but yes it's junk food at best. Even so, I don't eat every 2 hours, so probably at most one stop could be combined with eating.

 

That sounds like something maybe wrong, in my case a touch at the 6'o clock position satisfies the warning. Also mine does a really good job at keeping the lane centered either after ~40mph or for slower speeds when following another car even at tight curves.

One thing I noticed that is warnings become sooner if the car notices you are not looking at the road since it has the sensors for it.

 

Unfortunately, for the capacitive sensors to work properly, your skin needs to be sufficiently conductive. I tend to have dry hands, so capacitive sensors don't always work for me. My C63 allows for up to 30 seconds of handsfree driving and then I get a subtle visual warning and all I have to do is to tap one of the two touchpads on my steering wheel to let it know I'm still paying attention, so I mostly keep my hands off the steering wheel on long, mostly straight highway cruises. I've said this before, the ergonomics in the newer cars is several steps backwards. They added fancy sensors to the steering wheel, but in the end it doesn't work as well as before.

 

I had the same problem with the EA chargers at Quartzite AZ during my road trip between the SF Bay Area and Phoenix last January. There are only a small number of working chargers, but a lot of demand (being on a busy freeway with a long distance to other EA chargers). On my return trip, I had to wait about 1/2 hour for a charger to free up. EA definitely needs to install more chargers here.

 

Just curious, what is the cost to charge for a 400 mile trip?

Also, the traffic sign speed limit works very well on my 23 GLC. Only once it read 55 as 75.

 

Free if you use Electrify America EQS SUV comes with 2 years of free charging through EA.