Electric Car Road Trips - What You Need to Know

Electric cars can be intimidating.

For about as long as anyone alive remembers, we have had gas stations in every town. We all had to learn growing up that the gas gauge is something to keep an eye on and we just stop at a station to fill up when needed. We also know that all pumps will work with our car (diesel notwithstanding). We largely understand that octane rating is -something- our car needs and a value listed on the fuel door tells us which hose is ‘required’ or recommended. Additionally, we know about how long a fill-up will take.

Electrics have many similarities, but the industry is still working towards the same sort of ubiquitous supply of charging stations that we expect and need.

However, fewer available chargers with varying plugs and rates of charge lends a certain amount of uncertainty with regard to taking long road trips in an electric.

It is with that in mind that Unhealthy Obsession with Cars is going to try to break down the capabilities of any electric we review to help show what a road trip would entail.

We are based in the Denver area. Out west even gas stations can be far apart. So we picked a significant distance to drive from here that crosses rural America using mainly interstate travel. Increased infrastructure on an interstate should combine with the slowness to roll-out new tech away from population centers to give a nice average.

Our standard road-trip drive will take us from Denver to St Louis, crossing rural Eastern Colorado, Kansas, and northern Missouri.

To help plan the trip as well as to estimate appropriate stopping/recharging points, we will use the amazing route planning service for electric cars ‘A Better Route Planner’ (ABRP) which understands the gory details of individual electric car battery capacity (similar to fuel tank size), driving efficiency (similar to MPG), and the capabilities of charging stations (not exactly analogous to anything in the gas-powered car world - but close to how fast the pump can flow gas into the tank) in order to plan out a route. Their plan is based on how much charge is left after each leg of the journey and how fast and how much you need to add to easily make it to the next stop.

In our recent Ioniq 6 piece, we added this standard road trip to our review of the car. In this case, the high-speed of recharge that the Hyundai is capable of results in guidance of 100-170 miles between recharge stops. That keeps you in the sweet spot for DC fast charging where the Ioniq can charge from that 10% all the way to 80% at the fastest recharge rate. ABRP also directs you to the fast charging stations along the route to minimize the length of stops.

Ioniq 6 Road Trip

Combined the drive is estimated to be a series of 1.5-2.5 hour drives with 15-20 minute stops all the way from Denver to St. Louis. Total time at chargers adds up to 1.5 hours.

To show how using the ABRP service can help evaluate electrics…let’s take a look at the same drive in Ford’s F-150 Lightning with a standard battery pack.

F-150 Lightning Road Trip

Here you can see a similar number of stops along the way (7 instead of 6) but why are the stops a minimum of 32 minutes and as many much as 1 hour and 12 minutes? Also, why is that last leg of the trip yellow?

ABRP helps uncover the impact of details most buyers won’t want to understand. The F-150 has a bigger battery, by far than the Ioniq 5…but it’s consumption per mile is practically 3 times greater than the ultra slippery Hyundai.

This wouldn’t be so bad if you could recharge at the same rate as the Hyundai (which can gulp power at up to 221kW), but the Ford can’t take advantage of the fastest DC fast-charge stations (maxing at 150kW charging). A bigger battery, refilled slower means longer charging times. Total time at the charger for this trip in the Lightning is over 5.5 hours. Additionally, that last leg of the trip highlighted in yellow? To get from Boonville to St. Louis, the Lightning needs to go no faster than 60mph to preserve power and make it before the battery drops below 20% (a value we pick for all cars analyzed so you would have power to get around town once you reach the destination.

So, in this fairly random comparison, we uncover interesting differences to discuss - we will continue to do so in the future so we can all better understand our electric future and see what companies are making better decisions as they design their new products.

The dense details of electric car design are something that will make sense in years to come - but until then, we’ll help turn the facts into something the average driver can feel…time sitting around waiting - since that is what may tell you if a given electric could work for your travel needs.