What's The BEST Way To Road-Trip Long-Distance In an Electric Car?

24 minutes of COMMON SENSE. Know your vehicle. Know your route. Know your limitations. If you want to guarantee an arrival time, keep a buffer on all the above throughout. Strange how that sounds just like driving an ICE car or flying a plane...

Thank you for the reminder about personal safety for yourself and others. I become complacent because I am privileged to be able to "fit in" almost anywhere, but it pains me to know others must be constantly alert and cautious. No one should have to fear for their safety.

"Ugly bags of mostly water" Hahahaha! I got that reference

I think an important point to make is that ICE cars have allowed us to make road-tripping extremely unpleasant. Forcing ourselves or our passengers to hold their bladders and to curb their hunger simply because we can keep driving further before stopping... and driving, frankly, an unsafe number of miles/hours in a single day. Modern BEVs actually make road-tripping more enjoyable. You stop every couple of hours to charge, take a walk, have a snack, use the restroom, take a nap, take in the local sights -- basically, you stop to recharge both the car and yourself. We travel between Maryland and Michigan once or twice a year to visit family. The first thing we did to make the trip more pleasant was to make it a two-day trip instead of driving all day. Bonus -- many hotels have FREE L2 charging! Second, we plan things to do at each charging stop. This might be a meal or a sightseeing adventure. Even in the "charging crippled" Chevy Bolt EV, most charging stops along the way are only 25-40 minutes. To some, this may sound like a long stop... but in an ICE car, you need to babysit the fueling process, and then handle the other necessities. In the Bolt, the other necessities happen while fueling. We often return to the car well beyond the charge level that we targeted. The lesson here is that EVs may be the thing that makes road-tripping enjoyable again.

Gold ⭐ sticker for obscure TNG ref

We've been taking road trips in EVs for almost 3 years now. We aren't in our 20s anymore so driving all night to get to our destination faster by doing all-nighter isn't an option.

We drove our Niro ev from DC to NY and we also drove it down to Florida. With our EV6 we've driven up and down the East coast, even went to TX twice during the heat wave.

We always break up our trip into multiple days if it's more than 8 hrs. We try to book hotels with working level 2 chargers to save us a stop or two along the way.

Road trips with the EV6 have been amazing. It charges so fast most times that we barely have time to use the facilities before the car is done charging.

You are correct on how we have to plan our charging to be safe, we are a mixed race couple, and even though it's the 21st century, we still get weird looks, and there are times that I'm nervous about our stops.

From personal experience, your bladder will require more stops than the car will :-) Leave capacity for detours and "disagreements" with the sat nav as you would with ICE, 5% is for nutters the same as those who drive with the needle past empty...

This was great and exactly the kind of content I love from TE. You've got yourself a new patron. Thank you!

I drive a Chevy Bolt EUV. Especially during the colder months, I've been making sure the "Min" number is above the distance to my destination as a very safe rule of thumb that lets me drive however and not think about it.

Here's ours for towing our tent trailer with our ID4 on a ~2,000km round trip camping trip with our elementary aged kids. 1) Pre plan charging stops on known/used networks and aim for 20% arrival state of charge so you're not panicking to get there, and 2) plan for each charge to involve a ~45-60 min break in whatever town (not all charging, but we tend to make the stops that long regardless for kids to run around and play outside for a while). For 2), this often means dropping partner and kids at a nearby playground, park, or beach, then the other party charging and doing the grocery shopping/whatever needed for the next days of camping.

Quite simply, stopping every ~200km when towing on a family camping trip is not a big deal....we can all use a 45-60 minute break from sitting and it makes the overall trip be at a more manageable pace. In my ICE vehicle road trip experience, we would often try to make it entire tanks of gas without stopping for anything more than a side-of-the-road pee. And doing ~6+ hours or 450-600kms in a vehicle at that pace sucks, and made the travel days something to dread.

I've just road tripped my Bolt for the fist time in the winter from Windsor to Montreal (900km), I did a quick shakedown test a week or so prior for a ~300km round trip for fun, noticed that beyond 60% it slows down tremendously, especially without pre-conditioning/warming up the battery,.. I was armed with my ODB2 reader, Torque Pro and ABRP with Live data and monitored battery temperatures carefully. Since it was winter and the spread of available Flo chargers available (GM credits were given to Flo networks that I wanted to use up) I was mostly doing ~100km's leg and keeping my SOC above 30%, just in case I needed to limp over to the next available charger. All and all, the trip went flawlessly, all charging worked the first time everytime, I might have over prepared/analyzed, but as mentioned, it was my first long trip and I planned for the worst, hoped for the best... now I have that trip under my belt,.. I'm trying to convince my wife to let us take the EV on more road trips rather than our ICE minivan, and as mentioned, focus on Quality of the trip rather than breaking records...

Also check local 511 and weather sources - the online maps often don't know about weather damage or detours!
The freeway locally was closed for tearing down a bridge, for instance. And just south a bit it's cut because of a massive slip out and have special, scheduled times to bypass it.
Always check your traffic sources!

Good video. This is the way I travel and it makes the journey delightful. Thank you for all you do.

Did my first real EV road trip going to FCL Vancouver. Ok it was a cheat code since SOMEONE hinted where there might be good charging stops on the way. The Ioniq 5 is a fantastic travel machine. Comfortable, quiet, and HDA2 makes traffic a lot less stressful.

Some good points! . I agree with your point about increasing the trip quality even if it means taking a bit longer to get to the destination. I actually learned that when I use to do multi week motorcycle trips across the country. I also like to mix in as much smaller, slower highways into the mix as much as possible because I consider Interstate Highways the most boring way to travel. ;-)

I loved the Out-of-Spec coast to coast experiment. Not my travel style, by far, but good to see others doing the border cases.

Our own road trips have been many thousands of miles, but over weeks at a retired-relaxed pace. Highly recommended.

Great video !!!!

When I was younger, in the late 1970’s , I would drive straight through from Los Angeles to Lake Charles, Louisiana. Being a Black Man, many places would not rent us a room for the night.

I appreciate this as a companion to the Out of Spec video.

Having road tripped from Maine to Atlanta both ways, plus several other long distance day trips, this is all solid advice!

If I would add anything, it's to familiarize yourself with the charging networks along the route, and get set up on their respective apps beforehand.

Also, don't take any one app's charger recommendation as gospel. The number of times I've encountered long lines at popular/incapacitated chargers when there's a viable alternative a few extra miles away always makes me shake my head.

Very sensible advice. Keep up the good work.