Hopefully this is allowed here, after all there are plenty of online stories about the horrors of taking trips in an electric car.
My husband, @[email protected] went to a convention in Olive Branch, MS in his Leaf from our house in Hazelwood, MO, a distance of 321 miles, not huge as far as trips go obviously.
So, how’d it go? Mostly good, though he ended it stupidly, and I have no idea what he’s going to do, though I’ve given him some suggestions, and that is he didn’t worry about getting to the hotel on a good charge, he figured he’d run down the road and charge the car after check in at the hotel. Unfortunately the charger he chose, prolly the nearest fast charger, is down, and there are no other chargers in that area so he returned to the hotel with 5%/10 miles of range. Yeah, he should’ve topped off along the way to insure he still had a decent amount of range at the end.
Outside of that, there’s not much to report, he stopped in Perryville for his first charge, 91 miles out, then in Hayti another 111 miles away with no problems. Another plus of sorts was road construction which kept him under highway speeds for a large chunk of the trip as did an accident, plus weather mild enough that he didn’t need to use the AC, had he needed it, there would’ve definitely needed to be more stops, and I’m not sure the trip would’ve been doable, at least not same day as fast chargers are sparse in southern MO and Memphis area.
Considering that he’s driving a Leaf, the trip went well, so anyone that tells you that electric cars can’t take trips, point them to this.
The length of his trip should be roughly the reasonable minimum range for a new EV in 2023. Plus add in a charge port that isn’t chademo, and this trip would probably be a lot easier on more modern tech.
I think range should start at 250 miles, while that wouldn’t’ve gotten him there, it certainly would’ve taken some of the pressure off, as he has the big battery, and that has 220 on a good day. I’m actually looking at getting a Bolt for work, a little smaller than I want, but the price is right, the room is enough, range is enough. I’d buy a van, but that market is being ignored for some reason.
VW is probably gonna have the first EV van with the retro styled one that looks like their old era 60s van.
I like the bolt a lot, but I don’t think I’m ready for an EV. The hybrid Bolt makes a lot more sense to me.
Yep, but the rumors are that the idBuzz will start at $60K, and there won’t be a cargo version. That last one I think is a bad idea, in Europe there’s a cargo version, but they won’t be bringing it over here, which is a shame because at the right price point, it’d prolly be a great alternative to the Transit Connect
Ford eTransit Connect
A few others are coming
https://topelectricsuv.com/featured/future-electric-van-models-usa/#Ram_ProMaster_Electric
Problem is those are all full sized, I need something more minivan sized. Canoo is supposedly bringing one out, but they’re two years behind schedule, and retail production looks far off if it even happens (they owe a ton of vans to corporations).
Glad to hear it can be done in non-teslas. I recently did a Seattle to salt lake back to Seattle trip, about 12 hours for each leg. All in all worked out pretty well. Every time I had to stop it was perfect for pee breaks or grabbing a snack, and we never had to wait much longer than however long that took. Definitely not as convenient as just getting gas but certainly doable.
Leaf’s are prolly the hardest to do it in, IIRC the battery tech is a bit outdated, plus it uses Japan’s ChaDEmo charging standard so there are far fewer fast chargers to use. It’ll get easier if’n one of the truck stop… sorry, travel stop centers adds chargers to all their stores, since they usually have a restaurant there. Might need a bit more range to make the timing perfect, but it should work out well for needing a charge about the time you should be taking a break.
Wow, in a Leaf? Impressive.
Yep. Good thing the car or the lease comes with road service, then sent a tow which hauled him to a Mercedes dealer that has a Chargepoint charger on the property with a ChaDeMO. Not sure why it had that, but that took care of charging it up, and aside from the wait, it went fairly well since he was dumb enough to full drain the battery.
