Sometimes it works out perfectly, with free charging right on a California beach
EVs are fantastic cars, zippy, fun, and super cheap to operate. Around town, if you charge at home, you never worry about charging them as it happens while you sleep. On a road trip, though, they still involve some compromises due to charging, but if you do it right, you can reduce those compromises to the point that you would rather have them than the compromises of using a gasoline car, like high cost, noise, pollution, breakdowns, limited electrical power and more.
Here’s a guide to avoiding most of those problems, and making your trip happen with minimal charging delays and less worry. You will have to compromise some of your food choices, and there are some more rural locations that will be much more difficult to travel with an EV than with gasoline, but you can still do a pretty good job. It does require a bit more thinking and planning, though you can make that part of the adventure of a good road trip.
You do have the option of renting a gasoline car for your road trip. Rental prices are way up, and your fuel costs can be a great deal more as well. If you find a good rental price, you might be able to roughly match the depreciation cost of your private car. It can also be worthwhile because many electric cars have low clearance and so won’t do well off-road, and few have the cargo space of SUVs and pickups. If you want to tow a trailer, it is much harder with an EV and range is quite reduced, but it can be OK for short-range towing trips. Some people sleep in their electric cars — the car an provide heating and air conditioning with no motor running, something you can’t do in a gasoline car.
How long will charging take? If you do it right, it will rarely take any time out of your day at all, because you will always do it while doing something else you were already going to do.
While most of the time you will be able to use public charging stations, if you want to extend your options, I recommend you bring a mobile EVSE with you, ideally with connectors to plug in to a 50A RV (14-50) socket and a 15A regular socket. If you want you can also add a 20a plug and an RV TT-30 adapter that says it is for EV charging only.
Such adapters came with Tesla cars until recently, but are not expensive. You need to order the plugs you don’t have. Non-Teslas often come with one, or you can easily get one online for around $250. Get one with 14-50 for sure, and try to get a regular 15a plug for it. Use of adapters can require manually setting current levels and you must know what you are doing.
Some other gear I will describe below can include an electric car fridge (See my full guide) , a camp chair and a folding camp table.
For Tesla drivers, I strongly recommend either the new CCS adapter (not yet shipping in the USA, and not for older cars yet) or old CHAdeMO adapter (discontinued but available in Korea.) While you will use them rarely, they open up many extra avenues where you can take side trips in confidence or act like you have a bigger battery. While there are more Tesla charging stalls than CCS, there are now more CCS stations in more places, which does open up those options.
Tesla's "Destination charger" map includes many areas with no fast charging
Non-Tesla owners might consider the Tesla to J1772 adapter for Level 2 charging ($150 from Lectron and others.) Tesla has a program of giving free Tesla charging stations to many hotels, known as “Destination Chargers” but you can’t use them unless you have a Tesla or have this adapter. Even hotels that have both kinds of plugs will now give you more options.
Sadly, the state of many CCS stations is dubious. Disrepair is common, so check on Plugshare before you decide to depend on a station.
Map of some of Northern California showing charging stations at or near hotels
When you can, try to book overnight hotels with EV charging. Hotels that do this usually do it for no extra charge, but few will yet reserve a station for you. When you get it, it’s fantastic — you charge up fully while asleep, taking no time. The slower charging is better for your car, too. You drive zero miles out of your way. With the high price of fast charging, you should consider the “free” charge as worth $25 or more when comparing hotels.
Your main tool for charging on a road trip is the Plugshare app, which has the most comprehensive list of stations, including reviews from other drivers. In this app, you can temporarily ask it to show you stations which are close to lodging. Sadly, you must use other apps to evaluate and price the lodging. Hotels.com now allows searching for hotels with charging, though its list is not as comprehensive. Sadly, Plugshare does not cache results when you have no data — a horrible flaw for any travel app since the best road trips always go off the cell network — and it’s been years since they were informed of that.
Another important app/website is “A Better Route Planner.” While most EVs come with systems for planning charging, ABRP is the most flexible and useful. It does not directly understand the idea of sleep charging, but it can be made to. Sadly, it also can’t work offline. (The planner in your Tesla can work offline but is much less flexible, though it recently improved a great deal by supporting intermediate waypoints.) Someday a tool will arise with all the power of Google Maps routing, hotel databases and more.
In some cases, you will find hotels with nearby (not the hotel parking lot) charging. You may need to pay for the nearby charging, but it’s still worth doing. Charging while you sleep is so handy that it’s worth taking extra effort on, like a 10 minute walk (or scooter ride if you bring one, or hotel lift if they will do it.) If you bring the right cord — and you should definitely get a mobile EVSE that plugs into 50 amp plugs — you can look out for things like RV parks with cabins, or motels next to RV parks, as you can often charge there. 50A RV plugs are best and will fill you up overnight. 30A RV plugs only work 1/3rd as fast — they need a special adapter not found at RV parks. It’s worth it if they are there, but not worth going out of your way for.
A number of motels will also have a regular 15a plug near a parking spot. This will only give you an extra 50 miles of range in an overnight stay, so again it’s not worth working extra hard to get, but if it’s there, use it. It can make sense to carry a 25 foot 12AWG extension cord to make it easier to reach these plugs. This is also useful if you stay at a friend’s house. You must make sure the plug is on a dedicated circuit — nothing else is on the circuit breaker with it.
Your car probably came with a mobile EVSE with either a 15A regular plug or a 50a RV plug on it. In some cases (like Tesla’s TSLA ) you can buy extra adapters. I recommend having a 15a, possibly the 20a, and the 50a, plus an RV TT-30 adapter (get one that says it is especially for EV charging, not for RVs, and you must learn how to limit the current if you use this.) If your car didn’t come with one, you can find a variety of mobile 32A EVSEs online for $200 to $300, usually with the 50a “14-50” RV plug.
One sometimes finds a fast charger which is close to a hotel. That’s less ideal for your battery, and you will have to go move your car after charging is done, but I’ve often stayed in hotels that were a short walk from such chargers without much burden. You are pretty assured of getting a spot, and in the very unlikely event of a wait, you can wait at your hotel and head over later, or even charge in the morning. This can also be of value with the 50kw “not very fast” chargers which take an hour or so to do a fairly empty car. Depending on your hotel, they may also have a shuttle that will run you to and from a charger that is not too far from them.
If you are on a “slow” road trip, you may only travel 200 miles a day, and thus be able to just charge at night. There are two kinds of road trips. One is the “hard slog” where you just have to get somewhere, and you will put in 500 or more miles per day. Nicer are the “journey is the reward” trips where you stop regularly and put in far fewer miles.
If you are putting in more miles than 80% of your range, you will need to use fast chargers. If you only go 170% of your range, you can get buy with just one fast charging stop per day if you can also charge at night. But you might need to do 2/day on a hard-slog trip.
When you need to fast charge, the key is to do it while doing something you already will stop for. The obvious stop is for a meal, though in some cases it can be shopping or activities.
Everybody has to eat on a road trip. The most likely option is to charge while eating. If you charged at a hotel, it may be lunchtime when it’s time for another charge. Here is where you will face a compromise — it is far simpler to eat somewhere a short walk from your charger.
Search for restaurants around a charger to find good food. This Santa Rosa, CA mall has several ... [+] good choices, plus a Tesla supercharger, and EVgo fast charger. Try the Thai and Vietnamese places.
Today, as you approach your mealtime charge, look in Plugshare or another map to pick the station you will use. You want to pick a station where you will be down to 10-20% charge, as this gives you the fastest charging and fewest stops. There may be multiple charges. Here’s where you need to bring up another app, with Google Maps being the likely choice. Find the charger on Google Maps (you can search for them on it) and then ask it to show restaurants in that area. Hopefully you will find one with a good rating score that you would like to eat at. Sadly, at a lot of charging stations, many of the choices will be meager chain fast food. Fortunately, most areas have at least one nice local restaurant you can choose instead.
Decent food (the Thai noodles) right next to charging
Your charging session will depend on how much you need, and how fast the station is and how fast your car can accept power. Charging sessions range from about 25 to 55 minutes. Many are too fast for a sit-down meal, but will match a counter-service meal if you eat quickly. If the charging finishes first, you may need to get up in the middle of your meal to move the car. That means you can’t walk too far to the restaurant. Sometimes if the station is nearly empty there will be no penalty for leaving the car blocking the stall, but sometimes you must move it or pay fines.
This is a situation where having a kick-scooter or bicycle can improve your options, but not everybody has the room for that.
While it may seem too American, you can also do things like call the restaurant to order in advance so it’s at your table when you sit down. Many people think EV charging is too slow. When you do it right, it’s actually too fast. You may prefer to relax, but somebody has to move the car. (At least they can drive the car to the restaurant if it was a far walk.)
Another option which widely opens your food options is to find a great take-out location on the way to the charger. Order ahead, and stop at the take-out location to pick it up, then drive to the charger. You may find a park or picnic table near the charger, but sadly this is not always common. That’s why you may consider having folding camp chairs and a table with you, so you can make your own picnic anywhere. While I have to admit this is hardly the most serene of picnics, it does open up more food choices. As a plus, you are assured outdoor dining in the days of Covid. While I carry this table and a small chair — using the passenger seat as the other chair — I don’t use it that often. As such I carry a pretty small table. If you are on the sort of road trip where table/chair comes in handy for other things, bring a better one you might sit at the beach with.
In the future, we might see charging stations come standard with picnic tables and other useful things for dining and parking — trashbins, windshield cleaner, etc. A very small number of charging stations feature a lounge which can be a great place to have that picnic.
Most people don’t need more than 2 charges/day if they also charge at night. That can be lunch and dinner, meaning your charging takes zero time from your trip.
You can also order delivered food, but you need to make sure the delivery driver knows you are in a car at a charger, and that they will arrive close to your arrival time at the station. If they are 15 minutes late it defeats the purpose.
Charging stations at a Taco Bell. I'm not quite ready to make that much compromise on my dining.
As EV use grows, expect to see delivery restaurants catering to drivers, receiving live updates on your ETA to synchronize arrival, possibly bringing a table and chairs or other supplies and picking them up later. You might even be able to order in your car. You may also see picnic tables or lounges at more chargers. One charging company has formed a partnership with a restaurant, but unfortunately it’s Taco Bell chain fast food.
We’ll also see restaurants located near large charging stations eager for their business. Some establishments, like Starbucks, are installing charging right at the store.
There’s charging going in (thanks to government grants) at a mega-gasoline station in Texas called Buc-ee’s. Texans love these stations though it’s unclear if any gas station i where you want to spend 40 minutes, even this one. Ideally there is charging where there is food, rather than food where there is charging.
Some drivers, particularly on fast “get from A to B” road trips will follow a different strategy of charging. Most EVs charge the fastest when they are under 50% full, the charge rate declines after that and gets very slow about 80%. To spend the least amount of total time at the charger, they typically drain to 10% and charge up only to 50-60%, then immediately get on the road. At fast (150kw or above, particularly well above) stations, these charging stops will take as little as 15 minutes, but you must do them more often, every couple of hours of highway driving even in a long range car. Because most people certainly like a short break every 2 hours for the bathroom or a small snack or just to stretch the legs, these short stops can add only modest delay.
Modern drivers also like to get the chance to do 10-15 minutes of online activity (passengers were probably doing that on their phones.) As such, the greater duration of such charging stops compared to gasoline fill-ups is not a big burden. Many stops for gasoline including a bathroom break and getting a drink or coffee easily can run to 10 minutes or more, particularly for a group.
To make this work well, it’s important the charging be right on the route. Today, many fast chargers are a detour of a few minutes, sometimes longer, because that’s not a big addition to a 45 minute charge session, and there’s a more suitable location further away. Gas stations for road trippers tend to be right at highway exits, and are even built into the highway. Some EV chargers are going in such places. An 8 minute round-trip detour is a bigger deal with a 15 minute charging session.
Tools like A Better Route planner and others often default to the “many short stops” approach but can be tuned.
Level 2 charging (6-9 kW) is not normally used when you are in your hometown if you have charging at home. It can be useful on road trips, if it happens to be at a place you are stopping. While it only adds at best around 30 miles of range for an hour of stopping, that’s not necessarily something to sneeze at. Such a boost can give you more options on the other places you will charge. While you would never want to stop and wait at a Level 2 charger (unless there are no other options) the number of them is growing. On a recent trip, there was a free level 2 charger right at the beach — pictured at the top of this article — where we were going kayaking. After a 2 hour kayak trip, 60 extra miles opened up many options, particularly in the area of California highway 1 where there is no fast charging along the highway for 170 miles from Marin City to Fort Bragg. While most cars can do 170 miles, you want the option to backtrack and take side trips.
So while you don’t want to alter your plans too much to seek out this charging, when you are stopping, take a quick look at an app like Plugshare to see if there is something convenient. Many are not at all convenient, but there are also often ones that are free to promote tourism. They are sometimes even the best parking spots. Definitely make use of that. Perversely, free ones and those that are good parking spots are the least likely to be empty for you, sadly. Many tourist downtowns have one.
It’s definitely an adventure — but it can be a fun adventure — to go to more rural locations where there are few fast chargers available. It’s doable, but requires more detailed planning. Here you must try to find charging in almost all places you sleep. As noted above, RV parks sometimes have motel cabins and will let you get a charge while in the cabin. The more extreme folks sleep in their cars while plugged in at an RV park (enjoying climate control, but you must be very friendly with your campmate.) There are some gulfs, like the Alaska Highway, which can only be crossed in an EV by doing tricks like this. (The Yukon has fast charging, and southern BC has plenty, but Alaska has little and northern BC has almost no slow charging and no fast charging.)
Other areas in need of fast charging include the amazing national parks loop of southern Utah, and much of Mexico, including Baja. SW New Mexico, many sections of western states and many areas of Canada outside the populated areas can present a challenge.
In such areas, you will be a little more eager to use slow charging. A long lunch at a restaurant with Level 2 charging can make a difference. Many trips will have to be designed to travel no more than 90% of the car’s range in a day, with planned stops at hotels with charging. Even this pushes it, and you will need to convince the hotel you won’t stay if they won’t reserve the charger for you. (Sadly, even if they do reserve it, they may not hold the reservation, and chargers often get blocked by gasoline cars who think they are a handy parking space. If you arrive late, they may not be able to find the owner of that car.)
In my road trips I’ve managed to get quite far from any fast charging, visiting Crater Lake National Park, Anzo Borrego State Park and Jasper National Park before it got a supercharger. I’ve roamed the Sunshine Coast of BC and hidden passes of Oregon before it was easy — if you’re willing to take the effort it can be done. Others have trekked up the Alaska highway (very challenging) and around Alaska. This requires some waiting and staying at RV parks, so it’s not for everybody, but many enjoy the challenge. In a few years from now, either from market forces or a planned $5B government program to put in fast charging every 50 miles, you won’t have to worry at all.