Driving across the U.S. in an E.V. - the challenges, the successes, the reality
/My experience driving an EV cross country
Can you drive an electric vehicle across the country? That was the question I pondered recently and the only way to actually do it is to, well, just do it. Makes me think of the shoe adverts. But why would I want to drive an EV across five states - especially an EV with only about a 200 mile range?
Yes. I’m nuts. And I wanted to see what it was like. After all, I’ll drive anything from a rat rod to a gasser to a resto mod to a Corvair (okay I love those) to an EV. In fact, when the current administration canceled the subsidies for EVs I figured that used ones were going to be cheap. They are. So I bought one as a runaround car.
I quality myself as a certified gearhead - which is why I started this site. I love the smell of gasoline in the morning but vehicles of all sorts intrigue me. So, with a writing assignment in Alabama on the horizon, I figured what the hell. I’ll take the EV.
My starting point is near Albuquerque, New Mexico where my wife and I store our junk. We do travel in our RV much of the year (you can follow those adventures at StressLess Camping) but our junk needs a place to rest and, after Covid, I want a physical home base.
Alone at A series of Tesla and other chargers
Range Anxiety aplenty
For about a week before the trip I was having range anxiety aplenty and, more than once, considered just loading up our Ram 2500 for the trip. That thing is big and beefy with a 36 gallon fuel tank and I know there are a ton of filling stations between the Land of Enchantment and Alabama.
But gas is also temporarily very expensive and that Ram can pass anything but a gas station. With the present average price of fuel I figured it would be about $900 in fuel alone to feed the Ram round trip but I also needed to do an oil change and change the gear oil in the 4WD system before embarking on a journey of almost 2800 miles round trip. That officially also qualifies as a pain in the butt.
Also, you hear lots of great things about Alabama and the South in general but plentiful support for electric vehicles isn’t one of those things. Cue further range anxiety.
A Better Route Planner
I used an app called A Better Route Planner (ABRP) which works on my Apple devices - I’m sure there’s a version for you Android folks too. You can also sign in on a computer which is particularly helpful if you have a larger screen.
That app is pretty slick because you tell it what kind of car you have and it uses its own database to figure out the range and other details. It also then is aware of what type of charging your car can accept - more on that in a bit.
When you calculate a route it also purports to figure weather and terrain and, who knows, whether martians have visited in the past number of decades. The point is the app is really detailed and does a lot of things I like and a few that I don’t. Welcome to the real world.
Then you tell it when you’re leaving and it figures the whole thing out. It knows how many stops, how much distance between stops, how long you’re going to be at a charging station, how many spots at the charging station are available and more.
In fact twice I tried to circumvent the app’s decision making and, both times, it was a bad decision. The app is really, really well done and proved to be remarkably accurate.
There is a free version of the app but for $5/month you get a paid version that interacts its own smarts with your car’s smarts making it even more accurate. This also help automate any changes or updates to the route along the way. Quite honestly it’s a pretty remarkable route planner.
This hotel's Tesla chargers didn't work but they let me plug into a household outlet at no charge
What kind of charging
Ah, the various chargers out there. Essentially there seems to be three different kinds of chargers. My car, a 2015 Volkswagen ID.4, has a CCS charger.
I typically only plug it into a 120 vac household outlet at home and, for the piddling around town we do with it when we’re home, that’s more than sufficient. Yeah, it takes a couple of days to go from a very low battery to one that’s at 80%, which is where the car likes to be, but I also only drive the car every few days anyway so that’s just fine.
Somewhat recently the folks at Volkswagen and the folks at Tesla must have sat down to a doobie together because, now, my car is officially recognized for use by the Tesla chargers. That’s another connector.
Yup, I bought an adapter and the folks on more than one ID.4 forum recommended the A2ZEV company’s products as being top notch. The adapter I bought for Tesla chargers, which was about $165, seems to be well made and worked every time it worked. Except those two times it didn’t. But that wasn’t the adapter’s fault, it was the nutty space man’s doing.
Those two times happened to also be the times I ignored A Better Route Planner and sought-out a hotel very close to a charging station.
The first night talk about anxiety - I thought I’d just use the hotel’s Tesla chargers to fill up the car and be ready for the road in the morning. These were both older chargers and one didn’t work at all and the second one just didn’t like my car. I chose this hotel for the charger and the charger wouldn’t charge. Fortunately the hotel let me plug into a standard wall outlet which is a bit of a goose in range but not much.
Charging at a Ram dealer - they were gracious but the charger was challenging
Funny - it wasn’t on A Better Route Planner either. At all. That app is smart.
I did find a local charger and did so by hopping in my car, firing up the app and it knew the car was hungry for power and directed me to a nearby Sam’s Club parking lot where there were a bunch of chargers available.
That was almost the exact same experience as on my last night on the road - a dozen chargers in the hotel’s parking lot but they only played nice with Teslas. Fooey. The Tesla app, which you need to use a Tesla charging station, didn’t even recognize these Tesla chargers.
If I had simply followed instructions of ABRP all would have been trouble-free.
Well, I did have another stop at a Ram dealer (the universe was telling me something) where they had two chargers there. After the very nice dealership folks moved the gas-powered vehicles out of the EV charging spots and after I fought with this dumb charger’s lousy user interface I did get it to work properly. But I had grumpy thoughts and that range anxiety was back.
The rest of the charge stops were totally uneventful. The chargers were clean and worked perfectly.
Even in Alabama.
Do know that newer cars than mine can take faster charges than I can so to top up the tank, er, battery from about 25% to full is about an hour more or less with my car but can be faster with newer cars. Most of the chargers I found were in places where there was at least a public restroom although some were at truck stops like Pilot or Love’s. A few were in parking lots of malls and grocery stores but I wish they all were near places where there might be a coffee place. But maybe I should cut back.
I also found myself at the same stops coming and going and, the fact that one of those was at a Burger King, didn’t make me sad.
Finding friends along the road
One of the things I hadn’t expected was others making the same journey using the same software as I was. On the route home I stopped in Oklahoma at a GM-branded charging station and struck up a conversation with a gent who had a Hyundai Ioniq - I think those things are nice looking.
Funny thing, the same gent was at the next stop the next morning as was another gent also charging a Polestar. And the three of us were at the next stop, too. This reinforces my wish that these charging stations were at a place with something like a Starbucks where you could loiter inside.
One of several GM-branded charging stations at Pilot-Flying J along the journey
Cost of the trip
I had mentioned that I anticipated the cost of the gasoline alone with the Ram to be close to $750 - that beast gets about 13-15 miles per gallon and the trip was about 2,800 miles back to forth and forth to back. So, about 186 gallons at the present price of about $4/gallon.
The actual cost of the charging round trip with the EV was $396. Also, when there were charge stops that featured both Tesla and other chargers I leaned toward the other chargers but they were up to half again more money than the Tesla chargers. The Tesla chargers tended to be about 42¢ KWh and the others were about 64¢. Even my EV buddies that I ran into remarked how pricey the chargers were at a couple of our common stops.
My thoughts
Would I do another long-range drive with an EV again? Without a doubt. While the gray matter between my ears was anxious about the trip right down to the last stop, the car didn’t mind it at all. A Better Route Planner proved to be completely accurate right down to the percentage of battery predictions and length of the charging stops.
As for the car itself it was a smoking deal at four years old with only 32,000 miles on it but it’s pretty lavishly equipped. There are even seats that can massage you along the way so the drive itself was really comfortable. VW even included a three year 36,000 mile warranty on the car.
During one of the stops with the other EV drivers one of those drivers told me that, after a while, you just learn to trust the technology. The range predictions and caliber of chargers are very accurate.
These cars are also marvelous cruisers - while I love the symphony an internal combustion engine makes, on a long trip, the smooth silent power of an EV is pretty pleasant.
The funny thing is talking to others at stops. There are definitely people who are EV-curious, especially when they see our New Mexico plates showing we’ve come quite a ways.
But there are also plenty of people who just have a distrust for EVs and the number of charging stations out there and the infrastructure. Yet those are the same people who likely have discovered just how good battery-powered tools have become. The technology is changing, quickly, and the experience is only getting better.
I do like the fact that EVs with a gasoline “range extender” are on the horizon and I’m a likely buyer for one of the new Ram REV trucks for a lot of reasons. But, if you’re in the market for a reliable, affordable used car an EV can make a lot of sense - even for longer drives.
