I've been contemplating on going EV next. I WFH and live in NJ where chargers are abundant. 95% of my driving would be ideal for an EV. However, 5% is going on long road trips in rural areas and that is why I'm a bit hesitant.
Spent a bit of time looking into how EVs are on long road trips and to my surprise most say it's not a big deal at all. A bit more planning and stopping time is all that is required. One guy even said there are plenty of superchargers in western Montana. I wasn't expecting that.
I wanted to share this trip breakdown from a guy that drove 8k miles on his ID4.
I guess the bottom line is it can be done. Is it a bit more hassle? Yes. Is it cost effective? Not always.
Driving DATA is below:
Spent a bit of time looking into how EVs are on long road trips and to my surprise most say it's not a big deal at all. A bit more planning and stopping time is all that is required. One guy even said there are plenty of superchargers in western Montana. I wasn't expecting that.
I wanted to share this trip breakdown from a guy that drove 8k miles on his ID4.
I guess the bottom line is it can be done. Is it a bit more hassle? Yes. Is it cost effective? Not always.
Driving DATA is below:
We just covered 8,222 miles/13,232 km circumnavigating the US over five weeks through 30 states. Our ID Buzz is named Otto von Buzzmarck, and yes we spent a night in Bismarck ND.
Our route started north of Seattle, angled down through Moab to Santa Fe, then across the south to Atlanta, up to Boston and New York, then back to the northwest through Chicago, Minneapolis, and beyond. In European terms think of a big loop starting in Glasgow through Seville, Istanbul, and Helsinki. For Asia this is a little bit more than a round trip between Beijing and Mumbai. It's a tad shorter than the Big Lap around Australia.
We mostly visited with friends and family, but we also got to two class reunions, two national parks, two state parks, a couple of museums, a handful of hikes, some boating, two parades, a few rounds of golf, and blasting cans with a shot gun.
This post is an answer to those who have whinged that vehicles with 230-250miles/370-400 km, like the Buzz, aren't road trip worthy. I thought sharing our experience from a very long journey would be a helpful way of defanging those criticisms.
Buckle up - this is a long post about a long drive.
TLDR
- Charging infrastructure is there for long distance EV travel across the US, even for vehicles with more modest range.
- Energy was hundreds of dollars cheaper than a comparable ICE vehicle.
- Advance planning helps enormously, but be flexible as you learn on the way.
- You need a mix of aps to make it work - there isn't one to rule them all (yet).
- The Buzz is a great road trip car. The ability to take a lot of gear and camp in the van gives you tons of options on a long trip. See the Buzz sub for more details or AMA in comments.
- Go out and have some adventures!
CHARGING
Its true, it takes longer to drive these distances in an EV. But that inefficiency also means you are less stressed at the end of the day. For us the pace felt like a gift not a chore.
In every state we visited charging isn't a problem any more, even for a vehicle with modest range like the Buzz. We only waited once for a spot (ironically the very first stop). A Better Route Planner (ABRP) did a pretty good job of routing us to less congested locations.
Out of 76 charges we only had two remote locations where there was not a redundant charging option, in northern Utah and northern New Mexico. In both cases it worked out fine. You pay a premium at these locations, $0.83/kWH which is double our average $0.41/kWH (avoid Francis Energy if you can).
In practice stopping was more about time than it was about range or distance - 2-2.5 hours a leg worked well for our bladders and the batteries. Our average charge stop was 23 minutes. Most days we had two to three stops. Some were ten minutes, some were 30. That is just enough for a stretch, bathroom break, snack acquisition, email check, and driver change. Several times the car was done charging and we were still eating.
For those who compare the Buzz to the original "ultimate road trip" Bus note that we stopped just about as frequently because the older car's range was only 200 miles. Don't even get me started on trying to drive over the mountains in that thing.
We usually used Tesla chargers - not only are they more common but they are also the cheapest option if you have a plan. Many EV’s at older Tesla chargers have to take two spaces (or if you are lucky park on the end). The cables are too short to reach the chargeport any other way. FWIW I'm NTAH, I made sure there were open spots when I did this. The newest generation have long cables.
Electrify America (EA) came in second, their plug and play is great but the prices were a usually few cents higher than Tesla. Three other honorable mentions are Rivian, Ionna, and Walmart. If there were more of them I'd use them, prices are competitive and the software is easy. Where we could we used L2 and L1 outlets but that accounted for only 8% of the energy we consumed.
We carried two NACs-CCS adapters, one for DC fast charging and one for L2 stations at friends homes. Tesla's Magic Dock is great if you don't have the adapter, but you can't count on it so get the adapter.
The charging rock stars are the Ohio and Indiana Turnpikes. For those who are not familiar these are toll roads with built in service areas so you don't have to leave the highway. Both states had charging in the service areas, often with multiple vendors to choose from. Someone else posted here about this recently. Felt like Norway.
Pro tip - if you stay at a campground with 50A RV service book one of those sites. You can get a full L2 charge overnight for "free." But ask when booking, some places don't like it. Note that 30A only works at L1 speeds.
The average ending State of Charge (SOC) was around 28%. There are three reasons that is higher than I expected. First, many of the higher values were out West. In more populous areas I'm fine going to 10% (20 miles/32 km) but in the boondocks I prefer 15%-20% (30-50 miles/50-80 km). Second, we almost always charged over what ABRP recommended - i.e. if it called for 62% we went to 70%. That meant we ended the next leg at 24% not 18%. It was a few additional minutes for peace of mind. Third, most of our L2 and L1 charges were overnight top ups starting around 50%.
In return we saved a ton of money. I did a comparison to a Ford Transit which gets between 14-18mpg (I think the low roof model is the closest ICE vehicle to the Buzz's shape, size, and price). At current gas prices we saved between $700-$800. YMMV.
Environmentally a Transit would emit around five tons/ of CO2 over the miles we covered vs. one and half tons for our Buzz (US average CO2/kWh for grid fossil power). Thats a 70% CO2 reduction, assuming zero renewables on the grid.
PLANNING
When I retired earlier this year we planned the trip around high school and college reunions back on the East Coast that were a week apart.
Before we left I used ABRP to map every leg to make sure there were no impossible gaps and laid it all out on a color coded spreadsheet. I wanted to make sure we were going a reasonable distance each day with a viable charging plan while optimizing for seeing friends and sites. I hadn't seen anyone show this drive was possible in a Buzz so I did the work to make sure. You do not need to do this level of planning, but do put more intention into your route than you would with an ICE vehicle. It's useful to know where things might get tight so you can adapt.
Honestly, it was a fun puzzle to solve. We saw 36 friends during our travels and connected with another 40-50 at the reunions. It was a very social trip. I dubbed it Moochapalooza for the 60% of the nights spent at friend's places.
On the eastbound route we were time bound by the reunions and had some really long days of over 500 miles/800 kilometers. If we were rushing somewhere to relax for a few days it would have been OK. But on a journey where stays were only one or two nights it was too much. We recalibrated our trip home, adding three days, to give us a more relaxed pace. We could be wheels up at 9-9:30 and be circling for a landing around 4-4:30. From a range perspective that is about 330 miles/530 kilometers.
When planning the scariest looking leg was in eastern Montana between Miles City and Billings. It is a long leg with nothing in the middle (literally). It has a 1,000 foot/300 meters elevation gain and an 80 mph/130 kph speed limit. ABRP said it wasn't a viable plan with an 80% charge. After consulting with Taylor and Zervan, who covered that ground last year, we charged to 100% and drove 70mph (10mph below the speed limit) in Eco mode. We made it just fine with 14% SOC, in fact skipping over the first charger where it would have been closer to 20%. I knew the theory about charging up and driving a bit slower was strong, but it was great to see it in practice!
The truly scariest day was a day earlier between Glendive and Miles City. On paper it looked fine, but we had a 30mph/50kph direct headwind, sheets of rain, and it was in the 40's F (7 C). If you have those kinds of conditions on the open range take caution. We only got 1.8mi/kWH (vs. trip average of 2.6/kWH). We saw a Tesla Model S stranded roadside, likely because they cut it too close in the adverse conditions. This was a place where our more cautious charging approach paid off.
APPS
We used a mix of A Better Route Planner (ABRP) and Waze for onboard navigation, Plugshare for researching and reporting on chargers, and Apple Maps for in-flight research questions.
CarPlay was our main interface - running ABRP, Waze, Music, Audible, Maps, Podcasts, even our altitude app. It helps to use one phone as your hub to avoid awkward switching while driving (don't download audio books to a different phone).
ABRP was our primary navigation tool. For planning and day to day routing we used it 90% of the time.
Despite having pre-planned the whole route with ABRP I did a fresh plan every morning to calibrate to our SOC and the current weather. We often started the first leg with a 90%-100% charge which extended the first gap a bit.
I got pretty good at adding windage to ABRP's estimated arrival time. We usually ended up 30-60 minutes later due to lollygagging and eating. If you make this estimate at the start of the day it avoids frustration later in the afternoon when it becomes obvious.
That said, the app isn't perfect.
ABRP is slightly optimistic in the performance it projects - we'd routinely be 3-5% lower SOC at arrival than it projected at the start. The solution was jacking up the target arrival SOC from 15% to 18%.
Avoid using ABRP in urban environments because it doesn't have the best real-time routing and can go haywire. It freaked out when we came into Memphis thinking we were five miles from our actual location. In a strange city that is actively unhelpful. We got to drive by Banjo Car Repair which is as sketchy as it sounds. From then on we switched to Waze in cities.
In more remote areas it will give you unnecessary turn directions. On I-94 across North Dakota about every 30 miles it would tell us to take an exit and get right back on. Whut? I learned to ignore it but it wasn't confidence building.
We never did figure out how to zoom out to see the whole drive in ABRP (pretty sure it is there). But the passenger would just pull up Apple Maps on our phone to see what was ahead or what river we were crossing etc.
We should have used Plugshare more - in a couple of places we could have made better choices about which charger option to use. ABRP is getting better about this, but PS has the most data. We signed up for monthly Tesla and EA plans which saved us some real money. They are easy to turn on and off, we'll continue to activate them for long trips.
CONFIGURATION & PACKING
You don't need anything special to car camp in a Buzz but Otto is set up with the Peace Vans kitchen box and bed. This is a mid-way option between an air mattress over the seats and the full camper conversion with pop-top. The Kitchen Box includes a Dometic fridge wired into the 12v system, water, and lots of storage for kitchen and camping kit. The biggest boon was the fridge, we always had cold drinks and food kept for weeks without ice.
A simple hack was getting soft sided bags for all the loose stuff (like pillows). It was much easier to grab the whole bag than toss a bunch of small stuff around. I really love the REI gear bag system - we used all the sizes plus a couple of laundry bags we snagged along the way. I could reconfigure the load in 10 minutes to put whatever we needed the most on top.
Because we covered a wide range of climates and events we each needed more clothes than we would normally pack (cold, hot, formal, casual, sport). The system my wife came up with was a very large bag for each of us paired with a smaller gym bag that was good for two to three nights. At most stops we only needed to grab the small bags.
DATA
For non-nerds ABRP and the onboard data are all you really need. I went a little bit overboard because I enjoy that sort of thing, which should be obvious if you have gotten this far.
I used a combination of CarScanner with a Veepeak OBD dongle and VW's on board app to track data at every charge stop. I created a couple of custom screens on CarScanner for the data points I was most interested in. I mounted the phone charger on the wing window Tesla Bjorn style so I could see it in real time.
It was much easier to keep up with it when I realized that just before charging I could just grab a screen shot of the CarScanner dashboard on my phone and a snap of the "Since Charge" screen on the VW console and enter the data at my leisure.
I have a detailed database of performance data over the 76 charge sessions and the drives in between. Data points include distance, kWh consumed, SOC at departure and arrival, temperature, battery temp, altitude changes, weather conditions, road type, charging costs, times, and more. I'm still making sense of it all but some of the key metrics are below.
Notably, all that DC charging does not appear to have impacted battery capacity.
We crossed the Rockies in each direction, if your travels are only back east your performance metrics should be a bit better.
Out west, with the big distances and altitude, this would be a very different trip in the dead of winter. Probably still doable, but in MT you'd be driving at 60-65 max and only using the heated seats to stay warm.
DRIVING DATA
- Miles Driven - 8,222 m/13,232 km
- kWH Consumed - 3,123
- Miles/kWH - 2.62
- Cost of Charges - $1,389
- Cost/kWH - $0.41 ($.044 on L3 only)
- Number of Charge Sessions - 76 (66 L3, 10 L2 and L1)
- L3 Charging - 92% of kWH
- Avg Miles/Driving Day - 329 m/530 km
- Avg Charge Sessions/Driving Day - 3
- Most Charge Sessions/Day 5 (3x)
- Vehicle - North American First Edition ID. Buzz (LWB/AWD)
- Avg Start SOC - 82%
- Avg End SOC - 28%
- Avg Temp - 67 F/19 C
- Low Temp - 44 F/ 7 C Pittsburgh PA
- High Temp - 85 F/ 30 C Fargo ND
- Avg Leg - 108 miles/175 km
- Avg Speed - 55mph/88kph (we mostly drove speed limit or +5 on freeways, city streets and traffic lower the average)
- Avg Leg Time - 2 hours
- Avg L3 Charge Time - 23 minutes
- Avg L3 Max Charge Speed - 165 (Max 197)
- Number of Combo Driving/Activity Days - 11
- Number of Activity Days - 10
- Number of Driving Days - 14
- Lowest End SOC - 8% in OKC
- Longest Leg - 171 miles/275 km - Northern Utah
- Longest Day - 529 miles/851 km - Sun Valley to Moab
- Highest Avg Speed - 77 mph/124 kph - Western Montana
- Highest Altitude Charger 7,198 ft (2,200 meters) Santa Fe New Mexico
- Lowest Altitude Charger - 15 ft (4.5 meters) - Southold New York
- Biggest One Day Altitude Increase - +4010 ft/+1222 meters - Pendleton OR to Hailey ID (going into the Rockies) 2.25 miles/kWh
- Biggest One Day Altitude Decrease - -5,621 ft/-1,713 meters Santa Fe NM to Foss OK (leaving the Rockies) 2.75 miles/kWh
- States passed through - 30 (6 twice)
- Cities and Towns stayed in - 24
- License plate game
- US States 50
- Canadian Provinces 8
- Tribal Plates 8
- EU Plates 2
- Best Coffee - Clarity Coffee in Oklahoma City. Honorable mentions to Coffee Lab in Tarrytown NY and Park Place Park Avenue Bakery in Helena MT.
This post was about our experience in the vehicle, meant to encourage others to make the leap. But the real joy was the people we saw and the adventures we had. From Arches National Park to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice to the Long Island Ferry and Teddy Roosevelt National Park it was a blast.
