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We do long road trips and get in lots of miles in a day. I am obsessed with not wasting time when we stop.
But in my vision of the future, when service areas and truck stops have 200 charging stations, they will have to come up with ways to keep people amused for an hour. More games? Sit down meals?

In the meantime, for people who made long road trips in ICE cars, how has your EV changed how you travel?

Crafty-Sundae6351
Faraday Future owner
Tesla owner. Have done numerous long road trips. Car has been to both coasts.

50-60% of the time the car is ready to go before we are.

We typically walk around, bio break, will get food at a grocery store if there is one in close walking distance (our pref is grocery store and eat in the car as opposed to sitting for a meal), talk to other EV owners who are charging. On both ICE and EV trips we typically have some sort of errand we want to do (e.g. "I need shaving cream.")....so we also look for opps to get those taken care of.

On one recent trip at charging stops I'd find a grassy area, lie down, and do my PT exercises for my back.

We FEEL much less rushed. With an ICE we were in hurryupandgasandgetbackontheroad mode.

I don't need any more food/shopping experiences than we have now. What I'd love is some sort of walking "park" / information about the local area. This isn't a result of charging but.....on one recent trip my wife needed to do a phone call. We pulled off I-70 in KS and into a very small town - Wilson, KS. It has the largest Czech egg in the world. We didn't realize this was the case until my wife was on her call and I needed to kill time....so I walked around.
All around this huge egg is information about the role of Czechs in this part of KS. It was fascinating....I had no idea. I learned a lot and wasn't just sitting around waiting for a charge or food.

chiefgoogler
Rivian owner
I just did a 2,000 mile road trip two weeks ago in my Model Y, so hopefully this helps give you an idea of the differences.
  1. The longest charging stop was 34 minutes, but that was at a Buc-ee's and we spent more time in the store than we needed to charge. The next longest was 27 minutes but we also spent more time than we needed getting McDonald's lunch across the parking lot.
  2. Most of the charging stops were under 20 minutes. By the time we made our plan for the next stop, did a bathroom break and got back to the car we were ready to go.
  3. Most legs between charging stops were in the 100-150 mile range.
  4. There were a few legs were we had to stop before our next charging stop to use the bathroom.
I'd say you spend a bit more time stopping to charge but I also feel more refreshed at the end of the day because of the more frequent stops.

phansen101
Polestar owner
I enjoy driving my model 3 on road trips. Autopilot takes a lot of the mental burden and stopping 20 to 30 mins is nice it lets me relax, stretch, go to rest room. My only complaint if there’s a wait at the charger but that hasn’t been the case so far. I end up feeling more energetic having to stop 20 mins every 2 to 3 hrs vs tired trying to push myself to get there as fast as possible and limiting stops to gassing up.
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