So … have you done any EV road trips?
We hired a model Y for a trip Brisbane-Sydney return recently. Let’s call it a longer term test drive.
Anyway … here’s the deal … picked up car from hire … plugged in destination for night stop and navigation sorted out which chargers to stop and for how long to charge at each one (note - no need to fully recharge at each stop). Then along the way we decided to stop for lunch at the hotel right next to the first charge spot so rather than have the car only recharge to what it wanted on its navigation, we let it charge fully while we ate a great meal. When we got back in the navigation had sorted itself for next necessary charge spot (rerouting from what it first wanted us to do). Of course if we were in an ICE we’d likely have stopped at a highway service centre and “enjoyed” the fast food available inside while watching the passing motorists outside. In our case we enjoyed the river view from the hotel verandah.
At next stop we only needed a short charge (about 30% top-off) to get to the night’s accomodation.
That accomodation had charging onsite so we just plugged in for the night (paid the $30 surcharge to the accomodation) and left in the morning fully charged.
Anyway you get the picture … absolutely no need to hang around at some inconvenient location with nothing to do while the car trickle charged. All charging was at 50-150kW rates.
On the way back we decided to stay at one stop again for a meal. This time however we got the meal, jumped back into the car and fired up Netflix to continue something we had started watching the night before, in air conditioned comfy seat comfort - how amazing!
In terms of convenience - well if you’ve driven one you know what the self-driving on highways means to driver comfort and cognitive relaxation levels. I did all the driving bar one small stint and arrived more refreshed than I’ve ever after 1,000km trips. Oh - we drove down on the Friday-Saturday and back on the Sunday-Monday. Totally refreshed and ready to go for the week on Monday afternoon when we got home.
Re cost … total price of charging was $284 using Superchargers.
In terms of access to charge bays … well we did wait 5 minutes at one stop, but the car navigation system was able to tell us when the next bay would likely become free and which one it was. Here’s some photos of a couple of the supercharge stations we visited .. busy? You tell me.
I’d be more than happy to share my story with the “Car-Experts” - could you pass on their details, or just refer them to this post perhaps?
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(20min delay)