EV Long Drives (roadtrips)

Can you really get to the backcountry in an EV?  HECK YA. Some EBA Trips:

SF East Bay to J-Tree

SF East Bay to Mono Lake & June Lake - WINTER, Ice Climbing, down to -5 F

SF East Bay to Trinity Alps (Stoney Cr TH, 25 min down a dirt road).

SF East Bay to Owens River Gorge

SF East Bay to Carson Pass, Winter, with overnight camping in sub-freezing temps. 

---NONE OF THE ABOVE CHARGED LONGER THAN 17 MIN ---
(That's just a couple minutes longer than it takes to pee and stretch.)

SF to MOAB - That one was in 2021, when there were lots less chargers!

Many Cross-USA Trips have been reported by others; e.g. you can watch them on youtube if you want.

THE TRUTH ABOUT LONG DRIVES IN AN EV

EVs can roadtrip just the same as an ICEV (internal combustion engine vehicle)- you drive for a couple hours, you stop, repeat. What, stop in the middle of a 6 hour drive? YES, ADMIT IT: YOU'RE HUMAN, YOU HAVE TO PEE. EVERY COUPLE HOURS.  The EV Long Roadtrip plan is about the same:

Drive about 2 hours, stop and stretch, buy coffee, pee, whatever, repeat.  

EV ROADTRIP BASIC #1 In an EV, you do almost the same as in an ICEV, but note well: you plug into a charger first, then you pee, stretch, etc. while you're charging. Chargers are made to walk away during use; gas pumps require you to stand around while you pump!  Most people and their partner take about 10 minutes to pee, so if you do this while you're charging, it's very efficient. Worst case, you might also have to do 10 jumping jacks and a quick stretch...but then you're usually done charging by then!

EV ROADTRIP BASIC #2 You can charge many EVs enough to drive 2 hours at 70 mph in 8-15 minutes. Charging most EVs 0% to 100% battery takes approximately forever - that's just the truth. But why bother? EV batteries charge very fast at the fast chargers along highways when they are at less than 1/2 full; they charge slower and slower as they approach full.  So, almost no one that roadtrips charges them all the way! Instead, you "charger-surf" - you hit each charger at a low charge (aim for 15% so you'll have plenty of cushion anywhere from 10-20%) and then charge only enough to get to the next charger (plus a little extra just in case).  That way, you only do short, really efficient charges.  And back to Basic#1, you can charge while you enjoy a break.  It works great for most popular EVs!

A typical fast charger charge is 10-15 minutes on a long drive. You usually start with 90%, so you often go much longer than 2 hours until the first stop. Then you just stop every couple hours until destination. If you have a charger at your destination,  then you can shorten or eliminate your last stop; otherwise just stop, plug-in, pee, drive 2 hours, repeat. 

Not all EVs are great for road trips, but many are. You need a pretty efficient, fast-charging one with decent range - YOU DON'T NEED ONE OF THE $100,000 ONES or even one with the biggest range!  Five of the most popular EVs are great for road tripping: Tesla models Y and 3, and the Hyundai Ioniq 5, 6, and Kia EV6 - all of these are available in AWD and are great for snow!  They don't have fantastic clearance, so they are good for dirt and gravel roads, but you have to be really slow and careful on anything with rocks or big ruts. Most dirt roads to trailheads seem to work fine, but any 4WD only roads probably require an e-truck like an F150 Lightning, Rivian, or cybertruck.

A Real Life, Hard-Core Road Trip

In the summer you can drive from the San Francisco East Bay area to Mono Lake via 120 or Tioga Pass Road. THIS IS TOO EASY because you can make it in like 4 hours, and there is a convenient supercharger in Groveland and other public chargers both in Buck Meadows and in Groveland. In the Winter, however,  the Tioga Road is Closed, and you have to go way, way, way around through the beautiful, stunning, gorgeous empty and remote Carson Valley, 291 miles, just over 5 hours of driving. This is a great challenging drive because once you pass Lake Tahoe things are remote and charges are about as rare as can be in CA. We'll do this in the most popular EV in the US, the Tesla Model Y LR AWD. We assume you charge overnight at home and start with 90% charge.

On the East side of the sierras, even though one is in california, the average temperatures this time of year are well blow freezing in daytime, so you have to account for extra battery use. So, here you're going to see long charges, but I'll show you that's OK. 

• Berkeley to Pollack Pines Supercharger via US 50 2 hr 10 min drive, 16 minutes charging. 

• Pollack Pines to Gardnerville, NV charger via hwy 89 and 395, 1 hr 43min driving then a monster 25 min charge because you're a backcountry person, you won't stop at any destination chargers (Virginia Cr Resort, where you can eat or stay, Lee Vining). The thing is, you have nice views of Topaz Lake, so this is a perfect time to get food and take a walk, so the 25 min is no big deal. 

• Gardenerville to Lee Vining is 1 hr 12min (a bit less for Mono Lake).  BUT you arrive with 40% SOC, enough to get you back to Gardenerville again. 

So, in 5 hours of driving you have just two charging stops, one long enough for a meal. That's really not bad and that's the most extreme scenario in the most remote parts of California (doing a brief section in Nevada on 395).

This is about the worst you can do in CA because the destination is about the maximum distance between superchargers in CA (because it is so remote), forcing us to go far between superchargers and then back again.   If you go further South, you hit superchargers in Mammoth Lakes or Bishop.  If you went North, there are more as well. We didn't do that to avoid backtracking. 

Nostalgic and Goofy Adventures

A father-son journey: From Cincinnati, OH to Fairbanks, AK in a Bolt.  A Chevy Bolt is a relatively slow-charging EV, not one that I would pick for a long road trip.  But these guys did one of the mothers of all road trips, mid-west to AK, in 2022! I bet they learned patience!

Ewan McGregor (AKA young Obi-wan) and Charlie Boorman made a movie about their adventures driving Electric Harley motorcycles  and a Rivian from the tip of South America to LA, CA, USA.  It's called "Long Way Up" and it's really positive, friendly vibe is an antidote all by itself. This was done in 2019 when EVs were barely a thing, to say nothing of E-motorcycles, and certainly not in South America! 

A Practical Guide to Challenging Destinations

Most of the time on long drives in an EV, you drive for about 2 hours, take a break and pee while you charge, then repeat ad infinitum.

In really remote areas near the maximum distance betwen chargers, this can be a little challenging.  If its well below freezing, this can be even more challenging. Abetterrouteplanner.com (ABPR) is helpful, but not smart in helping you plan.  This tool knows about temperatures, wind, the details of your car's characteristics, but it's just not smart.  

DO THIS: 1) either on google maps, ABPR, or your car's route planner, find the nearest fast charger to your destination.  If it's a non-Tesla charger, check on plugshare.com to make sure it's working well and available around the time you would use it. 

2) On ABPR, enter the nearest fast charger as your destination.

3) Add your real destination as a waypoint before that nearest fast charger. 

4) Check the plan and make sure it emphasized the faster chargers and stopped at nice places to charge.

Now you have a plan that gets you to your destination AND BACK to the nearest fast charger.  You do this because the default is to get you to your destination with like 10% charge, because it assumes you are somehow charging at the destination - but that's not true for backcountry parking lots, it's not true unless your destination has a charger. 

ANOTHER WAY: You can also plot a route to your destination, and then after find a button somewhere to re-calculate this a round trip.  (Available with various degrees of trickery on different planners and routes.) This probably also finds a good solution, but it includes information about the return that is not what you want to concentrate on. 

Fastcharger Deserts - USA/Canada

The last serious supercharger desert in CA was CA SR108 over Sonora Pass. This was effectively a solved problem as of 2024 June, when the supercharger in Sonora opened. In addition, a user on an online forum said they used the Electrify America chargers in Bridgeport with no problems and full power.  When the Rivian charger opens in Lee Vining, supposedly in late 2024, this will make a whole lot of the Eastern Side of the Sierras more convenient. 

There are various intercity charger deserts, that are just a bit tricky as of internet reports in late 2023.  This seems to be changing very fast. As for recreation and tourist areas, the biggest problem in North America seems to be the Alaska-Canada Highway between, e.g. Banff and Denali.  This is still an adventure of L2 charging, and using campsites as L2 chargers.  Sensible people going to AK, however, take the ferry (the "marine highway system") from Washington or around Vancouver, where there are fast chargers to get your from your landing point (Valdez or Whittier) to  e.g. Denali (though I could only find a 50kW charger near Denali Park itself). 

...but wait, the government of BC, Canada has just committed to putting DCFCs all over all their highways: https://www.squamishreporter.com/2024/09/06/bc-will-complete-electric-highway-linking-sea-to-sky-and-beyond-for-ev-travel/