Haha... "cheaty-ass spec miata"

We should run yours! It can't be worth more than, what, tree fitty?

The end of the road...
 

Well, the FRS journey ends today, a month shy of when it started 12 years ago. The dealer gave me a close enough trade offer on it considering it had 231,456 miles on it, two major accident repairs, and the standard sucky paint.

I'm now the proud owner of a Cadillac LYRIQ AWD Sport 3.

I'll miss the FRS but it was time.

My new car is infinitely more quiet, seriously faster, and has no torque dip or crickets.

Now, if I can just find a charging station.....

Bummer, but glad that you enjoyed the car.

I've been putting off doing this, but given this is very close to the 12th anniversary of me joining this forum (2/1/2012!) I figured it is good time as any. Below are the stats I had been updating annually in this thread about my FRS journey.

I do regret falling just short of making it to the Moon (distance wise).

Ultimately, I have no doubt the FRS could have made it to 300,000 miles. Other than the one mechanical failure documented above involving the battery tie down failing and shorting out the car, it was never in the shop for a mechanical breakdown.

It did have the two body repairs (one front, one rear) from idiots trying to run me over. From that, the rear end job was causing some slight body issues. For example the rear lid had a gap issue that I needed to get addressed, and the rear end had started to squeak a little more than I would have liked in the last couple of months.

It also was at the point where it needed some maintenance work done on the suspension (all the parts were original to the car).

Overall, I loved this car and was sad to see it go. If I'd had a place to park it I would have considered keeping it, but it just didn't make sense to keep it, either physically or fiscally.

Roadtripping the LYRIQ
 

Not going to pollute this forum a lot with cross posts from the Cadillac forum I've been on, but there has been some expressed interest about my new car, so I thought I'd post some info from the first road trip here.

Took our first "gonna have to charge on the road" trip this weekend between NW Atlanta to Tallahassee, FL. Basic path was I-75 from Atlanta to Cordelle, GA than secondary roads to Tallahassee, FL.

Door to Door the trip is 288 miles, technically in the range of an AWD LYRIQ (but never thought that was realistic).

Trip 1: Left at 100% Charge (sort of) charged in Cordelle, GA at Electrify America from 29% to 86% in 54 minutes (62kWh total). No issues with chargers. Had planned to only charge to 80% but the chargers were in a shopping center with a shoe store. I was told by MomHawk we may be a little long, so set it to charge to 95%. Cost was $20.56 with no discounting. Battery was fully conditioned at start of charge.

Arrived at final destination at @40% SOC.

Trip 2: Charged the night before leaving from 32% to 86% (60.8 kWh @ $36.44) in 58 minutes, with a partially conditioned battery. This was at a Electrify America station colocated with Tesla. Tesla had 6 chargers, all full with 2 waiting. No wait at the Electrify America site, and no issues charging. A Lightning did join the fun at some point.

Trip 2 Halfway charge was at the new Ultium chargers in Cordelle, GA. Plug and play worked perfectly (similar to Tesla, you plug in, car and charger shake hands and charging begins), no issues through the MyCadillac app. Charged 46.75kWh in 47 minutes for $23.76.

End up back home with 38 miles to spare.

I measured both ways with the trip meter, and it was very consistent. It didn't vary much from 2.3m/kWh (vs EPA rating of 3.0m/kWh). Both legs of the two separate trips measured the same from start to charge stop to destination. The speeds for both legs were a relatively consistent 65mph to 75mph, and about 60% was Super Cruise.

With that, my 307 mile range vehicle has a practical range of more like 200 miles assuming you don't want to run it near "dry". This was matched by my longest leg which was Cordelle, GA to Home (168 miles) with 38 miles remaining in range. This is the full return trip, both legs. First leg was exactly the same.

On the 100% above I said "sort of" because I still don't trust the upper register of my car. It did charge to 100% for the start of the trip but dipped to 95% just backing out of the garage. Ultimately, we ended up within a percentage point or two SOC based on Google map's prediction on all four segments of the round trip.

I will say that both the Electrify America charging stations in Cordelle, GA and the one in Tallahassee showed no signs of the neglect and "brokeness" reported. The EVGo station, even though at a Pilot station wasn't quite as nice as some others we've seen (no cover for example) but it was convenient.

The legs were driven at 65-75 MPH and are about the right length for our normal travel pattern when driving. We enjoyed the extended fuel stops more than we thought, and the trip was actually much more relaxing.

SuperCruise (SC) is amazing. I drove from just south of Atlanta to Cordelle, GA on I-75 and touched the steering wheel twice. Once was to take an exit ramp to I-475 around Macon, GA and the second time was to exit to charge in Cordelle, GA. I had auto-passing turned on. SC is a little pass happy, there were times when I cancelled it's attempts (just hit the opposite turn signal). There was section of about 4 miles of touch and go traffic, SC handled it fine.

So far, the car is meeting expectations and I have to say is a much better cruiser. The ability to have a conversation at normal voice levels, was superb.

Still I miss the 86.

A couple of photos: Charging at the new Ultium charger (joint venture of EVGo/GM/Pilot Truck Stops, well eventually cover 50 mile increments of most interstates in the East), The charging curve from the car (32% to 86%) and the full return leg of the trips' charge usage.

This right here is my third biggest complaint about the current state of electric vehicles and the infrastructure (#1 touch screens instead of buttons/switches, #2 battery weight).

$80.76 for 288 miles or 3.57 miles/$

At 25 miles/gallon(low) the BRZ would use 11.52 gallons. At $5.00/gallon (high) that’s $57.60 in fuel or 5 miles/$. With higher mpg and lower fuel cost, the delta between pumping and charging is even worse for charging.

I couldn’t care less about the charging time, I already require long stops for physical reasons, that doesn’t bother me. But, the price gouging on charging is ridiculous needs to stop.

I don't disagree, when travelling, but a couple of caveats as it is not the full picture:

I don't belong to any of the customer programs for these systems. If I did, the prices would have been reduced by as much as 30%. I'm evaluating that part.

When charging at home I pay $0.05/kWh. That is only if I charge outside Midnight to 6:00am where I get 400kWh per month for $0.00 cost through my EMC charge plan. In my commuting (90% of my driving) I get between 2.7m and 3.0m/kWh.

I also charge for free at work during the week. This reduces most of my commuting miles to $0.00.

So, over the 3,800 miles I've put on my vehicle, the price you quote is nearly my entire electricity cost for those miles.

How much does using cabin climate control affect "mileage"?

The LYRIQ has a heat pump that is very efficient. There are also a couple of other things that assist. Both front and rear seats are heated. Fronts seats are cooled. In addition it has an "ECO" mode that shuts off AC/Heat to the back seats if they are empty.

You can also have the car "precondition" to set temps while plugged in at home. When I'm by myself I have rarely used anything other than the seats in the cold, after preconditioning.

I can say that heat has only a small impact, maybe reducing travel by 0.1m/kWh when used heavily in my area. "Up North" where it gets colder it would have a bigger impact I suspect.

A/C I have seen no impact but it's not summer yet. That will be partially offset by the battery being more efficient in warm weather.

You can monitor the power being used for drive train and for "environment" but I haven't done it yet to any extent. Unfortunately the car nor it's associated app does a very good job of "long term" reporting. All you really can get is last drive.

Yeah, that's fair enough. Taking into account home/work charging electric vehicles definitely have the advantage over ICE. And, for most people in non-urban areas, charging costs will result in large decreases in annual transportation bills.

It's not that I'm against the transition to electric vehicles, I look forward to our next new car being one, I just see the charging station costs as being an impediment to widespread adoption.

I've had about 16months of living with a PHEV, pure electric range is about 42miles which kinda covers local drives (not that I drive much).. I only charge at home after midnight. Longer journeys, the engine kicks in with some regenration extending the range, say I did a 200mile trip, 80/90 miles can be had on electric..

I'm now thinking that I should have gone full electric, fancy making a trip my local Apline showroom, liking the sound of the a290.

@pope realized I never responded to a couple of your questions:

One of the primary reasons I bought the LYRIQ is it has #1 handled. All HVAC, cruise control and all infotainment stuff is handled by physical buttons either on the wheel or along the instrument dash. You can also create soft buttons along the bottom of the infotainment display of anything specific you want.

You can also control most things by voice (Hey Google, turn on the driver's side seat cooling)

The only odd thing is you can only open the glovebox from the screen, but it shows up in the tray when you are parked so no searching.

The garage opener is geofenced so as you pull up to any of the up to 8 locations, the proper one(s) will pop up in the tray. No searching required.

As far as the weight, well she's not light that's for sure. Even with weight decrease though I think it will be used for range wars, not weight reduction. That will top out somewhere between 800 and 1,000 mile ranges. Then you'll see it applied to weight reduction, except in the lower cost end where it will get applied sooner. (IMO).

Just passed 6,000 miles. Based on my calculations, those 6,000 miles (excluding the trip above) have cost me about $100. (thank you free work and destination charging).