We definitely had issues with gas on long road trips in the gas crisis era. Our station wagon got 10-12 mpg with a 2bbl 350 with points ignition and a 3 speed auto, lugging around 5000 lbs or whatever a 1970 Chevelle station wagon weighed. We took 1250 mile road trips (round trip) through the rural West at that time to visit relatives, 2-3x per year. The SOP around the late 70s/early 80s was that Dad started looking to fill up around half a tank which was around every 100-120 miles.
And then breakdowns. Definitely had a few. And the carb jetting would be off at the higher elevations and the thing didn't want to start. I'm sure partially due to my dad's not so great mechanic ability, he thought he was better than he actually was with his Chilton book. When I started getting a little older I started to argue with him that he needed to put more dwell into the points, after I picked up a book at my school about tuning for high performance. But no, he insisted that he was going to use whatever was in the Chiltons book. I said well at least if you're not going to listen to me, get a feeler gauge, and a vaccum gauge to set the idle mixture, like it says in my book. Dad wasn't impressed. But anyway.
Point of all this being is that we have been spoiled by the more recent cars. People that should probably remember, have forgotten.
EVs are very convenient compared to all that....