One of the many comments I hear about charging our car on a road trip is the assumption that it takes a lot of extra time and prolongs the trip. It is true that a fill up at a gas station may take only 5 or 10 minutes and charging an EV could take up to an hour. But, keep in mind that the 98% of the time we’re not road tripping and are in town, we charge at home, which SAVES us time because we don’t have to go to a gas station at all. Those weekly 5 or 10 minutes aren’t used at all.
With a little planning, however, and a couple of realizations about charging, it can most often not take any more time than filling up at a gas station.
Really. Here’s my logic. Part One Planning.
PLAN YOUR STOPS
Tesla Superchargers are located about every 100-150 miles along most major roads. It’s true that if you want to take back roads in the middle of nowhere, you’ll REALLY have to plan your route. But for the more common road trips, you can usually find a Supercharger every couple of hours along your route. As an example, on the first leg of our recent 2,000 mile road trip, we went from Eugene to Eureka the first day and Eureka to Sacramento the second day.
On the first leg, we had lunch in Coos Bay at a great BBQ sandwich place. No charging there. The charger is in Bandon. So we went a little farther and stopped at Bandon. It’s right by a supermarket and we bought some snacks for the afternoon leg of the trip. Then we continued on to Eureka where our motel was located.
We booked a motel close to the Eureka Supercharger partly for convenience and partly because it was a last-minute booking since we had to leave a day early due to the fire that closed Interstate 5. We decided to plug in and charge that evening and did a little shopping in the adjacent mall. Not much to see and we did just kill a half hour or so. Fortunately, it was a fast charger. But we got bored and decided to top it off in the morning.
The next morning, we plugged in and it was decidedly slower. We should have just done more the night before. But there was a good coffee shop in the mall for us to get a mocha for the trip out. So we walked over, got our coffee, then walked back to the car. We weren’t full, but had plenty of charge to continue on, so we did.
Our next stop was Ukiah, which hit right at lunch time. So we plugged in, walked to a nearby brew pub and had a very good lunch. When we returned to the car, we were almost completely charged this time, so we continued on to Sacramento.
In all of these stops, we spent extra time only in Bandon (partly because it’s a wasteland for much of anything near the Supercharger) and in Eureka (mostly because we didn’t take advantage of our stop better).
Total “extra time” in four “fill-ups” (which should have only been three): probably about 30 minutes. This is 45 minutes total less the 15 minutes we would have spent for two gas fill ups. Had we planned it better, we could have reduced that to about 10 or 15 minutes extra. Not too bad for 11 1/2 hours of driving.
Next: Part Two – You Don’t Need to “Fill Up”