The TRUTH About Tesla Road Trips! EV Myth Busting Series

Dan is 100% right, I was a little disappointed that Tesla didn't give the Cybertruck 500 miles of range. They claimed that people "don't need that range", yet they clearly didn't think about the fact that trucks need a lot of range when towing things.

People don’t calculate total time it takes you to have a gas car versus electric car. If you own your home, you just charging your garage overnight no more running to the store to get oil and filter and changing the oil the time it takes you to fix your car either take it into the dealer or fix it yourself, try adding up the total time of owning a EV compared to a gas car

I want to address the elephant in the room! Why aren't the Gas stations installing 1 or 2 Level 3 Chargers? They can make money and put the worry to rest.

As a model y owner, I can say I've driven over 800 miles (1300 km) in one day and that its definitely doable. However I will say it does take significantly longer than in a gas car. If you're doing a short distance road trip of maybe like 300 mi (500 km) (It's not that much of a difference). The problem is when you're wanting to go a long distance, as your more limited by charging and speed. In my truck I can easily maintain 80-85 (130-140 kmh) and go about 450 mi (720 km) before having to stop and fill up (I stop usually every 4-5 hours if I can) .While in my Y at that speed, I might be lucky to get 200 mi (320 km) of range. When you add the roughly 4-5 times I have to charge to make it 800+ miles (it can add 2 or more hours to the trip time). In comparison in my truck I can do a little over 1000 mi (1600 km) in the same amount of time. I'm very aware that most people aren't as crazy as me and like stopping every 200 miles to eat and go to the restroom, etc. In my opinion though, its definitely worth the slight inconvenience for the savings in gas though as its about 1/3 the cost. Also the model y is a great car to take road trips in!

I ran a calculation a while back which tried to look at the total personal time spend fuelling vehicles. For an EV you spent about 20 seconds per day plugging in your car. If you live in Canada you spend 20 minutes in line at Costco to buy gas for your ICE car about 1.2 times per week. Take a years worth of that time, subtract off the daily 20 seconds for an EV. You can do a lot of level 3 trip charges before you are behind on total time expended.

Naysayers project their own misconceptions about range. Anyone who has taken a roadtrip in an EV knows that it is actually rare to drive more than 3 hours or 200 miles at a stretch before you need a bathroom break. And by the time you do that… the EV has already recharged to 80%, ready to keep driving. Most EVs now on the market have more than enough range to do that. As for overnight charging at motels, what discourages me is that very few of them with Level 2 chargers also are pet friendly. I've only stayed at ONE that offers both. Somehow those two services need to get their act together.

I just finished a 10 day road trip from the Seattle area in Washington to San Antonio/Houston/Boca Chica in Texas, and then back. 5600+ miles. Generally we did 2-3 hour stretches between supercharging, doing an average of 15 minutes of charging at each stop (and usually staying at the stop longer to get a bite to eat, use the restroom, check out the locale). Cost for the supercharging was $600. I calculated that for our old minivan (2014 Dodge Grand Caravan) the cost for gas would have easily been double. I bought one gallon of washer fluid and that was it.

Thanks for the link to the EV Adept calculator. Very useful. I've always said that as long as the car's range is more than my bladder range, I'm good😂

Most people (me included) vastly overestimate how much EV range they generally need. For the last 2 months I've been driving a fairly old 150 mile range Nissan eNV200 van. My work takes me between 2-3 jobs per day and there's often 1h driving between each, over hilly and winding rural roads. I've never yet had to charge it on the road.. not once. I know where the chargers are on my patch if it comes up, but I've long stopped worrying about it. Sooner or later I'll go on a long journey, but even if it's a pissabout and a long wait charging it on the way, the £100s I've saved vs the diesel make that overwhelmingly worthwhile.

I have a 2022 Model 3 Standard Range with 38,000 miles that says I have 253 miles of range when fully charged. Recently, I tried to drive from Denton TX to Oklahoma City (173 miles) and it said I would arrive with -6% battery, so I ended up stopping about halfway to charge for 15 minutes so I’d arrive with at least 30% charge. Maybe my battery is a dud, but I’m not getting anywhere near my range at highway speeds. I love my EV for daily city driving, but even small road-trips can see a 10-20% increase in time from charging. I wouldn’t call that negligible.

At over 65, I usually have to stop and pee more often than is have to stop to charge my 2023 MYLR AWD. In February, I drove out to San Diego from Alabama, and back two weeks later, including a run from 0615 MST on 2/14 in Tucson to Bessemer, Alabama around 1600 CST on 2/15, with a few naps on the trip. I seldom felt I was being delayed by my vehicle.

The key is to be able to eat or do something else you have to do anyway while you are charging.

This is what I like about u videos. always been backing up with "Data" most informative. Thank you Ben 😊

Excellent information, thank you so much! I was already aware of some of these details, which is why I'm among the few who tow a RV TrailManor 2720QB with my Tesla Model Y Long Range Performance. We should definitely share this information.

I am not willing to go fully electric until there are some national regulations about charging stations: such as maintenance requirements (safety and reliability), and cost regulations to prevent price gouging being the most important to me.

NACS/J3400 is also a Level 1 charger (it can run any of the 3 levels).

@Ben, can you disclose if you are TSLA shareholder or not? If # of level 3 chargers less than 50% of gas stations, then 500miles range is needed for long distance travel.

Cybertruck runs on 4680 cells, and has room in the battery for 113mm tall cells, instead of 80. Rivian is using 4695 cells. Seems like Cybertruck could easily swap in 4695 and crank up the range by reducing the large gap offroad buffer in the battery. That puts range over 400.

I’d like to see a comparison of home vs not home charging.

Cheaper to charge at home, not sure on road trips