Winter EV Road Trip Thoughts From Long Time ICE Road-tripper

Your FSD-at-85 setup matches what I found on the interstate-type stretches. I did Vancouver to Calgary to Edmonton and back in my 2023 Model Y (about 3,000 km, in July), and roughly 90% of day one was on FSD. It was very accurate. The one place it fell apart was the run from Bassano out to the dinosaur park. The road had a lot of repair lines and it kept reading them as lane markings, so I took over. Highway legs are easy, but I'd watch it closely on patched-up secondary roads.

I saw the same thing with the Tesla planner being aggressive on stops. It had me stopping about 6 times from Tampa to Biloxi. I widened the range to roughly 10-85, which cut it to three stops for just a couple of extra minutes each. It's still the best overall trip planning I've used, but I do tweak it.

Good point on the hotel L2s. I've been looking at them near a park I'm camping in, since my EV9 has a NACS port but no CCS adapter yet and I'm stuck with Superchargers. On PlugShare I turned on "Hide restricted access" and the one marked "Guests only" disappeared, while the other stayed. So I'm guessing the other is open to non-guests, but after reading your idle fee and wallet top-up experience I'll check recent check-ins before counting on it.

Another reason to be wary of hotel L2s. I stayed at a hotel in Los Angeles that had a Noodoe station. I paid, ended the session, and the nozzle just wouldn't release from the car. Hotel engineer couldn't get it out either, and Noodoe support only said to send an email and then never called back. It was over 20 hours before hotel staff forced it out, and I had to pay for an extra night and miss my business the next day. Idle fees and wallet top-ups are annoying, but I'd also check who runs the hotel charger and whether anyone actually picks up the phone before I count on it.

Same result for me on EA. I did 3,288 miles in an EV9 with the family, through 10 states and a bit of Ontario, and every EA charger I pulled up to worked. I got a 350kW stall every time, which is great with an 800V car. The only wait was at a busy Sheetz in Ohio, where an older Niro EV sat at about 50kW for an hour. The stuff that actually gave me trouble was the hotel and Canadian chargers that each wanted their own app and a prepaid wallet. So I wouldn't call CCS a trip-ruiner either, at least on the major interstates.

Good to hear EA went that well for you. My experience was from around 2021 and was the opposite. Only once did the first charger I tried at an EA site actually work. Every other time it either wouldn't negotiate a connection or the card reader was dead, and I don't think the app could start a session back then. I was never fully stranded since there was always at least one working stall, but it left me with a strong anti-EA bias. Reading accounts like yours makes me think I should reevaluate.

My EA experience was similar, and I'd put it in the same bucket as OP's point. I've done about 80k miles in three EVs, mostly on EA and ChargePoint. About half the time the buttons or screen didn't respond and I had to wait for it to time out. A quarter of the time an error made me start the whole process over. Maybe 1 in 7 sessions needed a 15-20 minute support call just to get them to restart the stall. Even when it did start, the car often charged slower than it should. Now that I'm on a Tesla, I plug in and it's charging in under 10 seconds. That gap matters a lot when you're stacking stops on a multi-day push.

Interesting to hear the EA side went that well. I drive a Bolt EUV, so I'm the slow-charging non-Tesla case, and I've mostly been using Superchargers up and down the east coast. So far nearly every stop has been a mostly empty station, and a lot of them have the V4 dispensers with the longer cables. Even when it's busier, I can usually find a way to park without blocking a second stall. It's been a lot less stressful than I expected. Your point that the 3-days-each-way pace is a different game still holds, since my car would never keep up with that.

Same here on the non-Tesla side being hit or miss. I tried ChargePoint at BC Hydro and Flo stations in BC and it just wouldn't work for me. So the OP's worry about CCS reliability isn't crazy, though your 29 stops with zero failures is a better result than I got.

ChargePoint not working for me too, though in my case it was the reader. I drive a Leaf with no home charger, so ChargePoint is basically my only option. For a while, every station I tried threw a "multiple cards detected" error, even with a single card held up. It happened at four different stations, with the phone wallet and with separate cards. I spent 40 minutes on the phone with support and still couldn't start a session. What finally worked was ordering the ChargePoint RFID card (the first one is free). If you're relying on them on a trip, I'd bring that card as a backup.

Same here with a smaller network. I only needed about 10 more miles to get home, so I tried a quick top-up at a Loop DC charger, the only non-Tesla fast charger for about 30 miles. Both Tritium units showed offline and I still got the activation fee for the failed session. EA and EVGo have always credited me after a failed session, so they're not all the same, but I'd never count on a lone site like that mid-trip.

Had something similar with a small network. I found a charger where the NACS plug was horribly melted, and then I couldn't get the CCS plug to work either. I wasted way more time than I should have on the operator's website trying to get it going. I get the feeling NXU is defunct. Lone sites like that aren't worth planning a stop around.

Same experience here. I drove my 2024 ID.4 from Boston to Seattle, mostly on Electrify America, and never saw a station fully down. A few had one dispenser out, and I only waited for a stall once. So I wouldn't say you need a Tesla for this either. The one place I'd agree with OP is the thin stretches. Gillette to Billings on I-90 is 233 miles with one 44 kW ChargePoint halfway, and I hit a big headwind there. That's where a Supercharger network would have made it a non-event.

Glad EA worked out that well for you. The de-rating part of OP's point is what I've run into, though. With our 900V car, a couple of charger combos in other locations have maxed out at 48 kW at 25% SOC. We only use those when nothing else is available, so I wouldn't want to build a 3-day push around them.

Glad EA treated you well, but I'd still call it a gamble in the emptier stretches. My Bolt EUV stop at the EA in Wagon Mound, NM, at midnight wouldn't take credit cards. It turned out to be a systemwide card-processing outage. I only got out of it because I'd planned the stop after that one and limped into Santa Fe at 60 mph. Then I had to hunt down a ChargePoint at 2am. So I stop every 120 miles and charge to 80%, which means a dead stop still leaves me enough range to reach the next one. With the Supercharger network that margin matters a lot less.

That Wagon Mound story is why I wouldn't call it a gamble only in the empty stretches. I got stuck at a charger where I tried my ChargePoint card, several credit cards, and Apple Pay and nothing worked. That's the fourth broken charger I've run into in the last week, so I'm pretty sour on public charging right now. A working Supercharger network with a fallback is worth a lot when a stop fails like that.

That margin thing is what saved me too. I rented an Ioniq 5 for a trip north of Minneapolis to a lake Airbnb, and fast chargers near the lakes were basically nonexistent. I'd only routed the highway legs in ABRP, so the local driving plus a headwind on the way back put me at a 10% warning. The car's built-in nav didn't even list the nearby Supercharger. A 50kW charger in Crosby bailed me out. Highway corridors are fine, but the thin spots off the interstate are where a tight plan falls apart.

Same lesson for me on my first big trip in a Countryman. The Tesla charger at my second stop was out of service, and luckily there was another one a few miles down the road. If there hadn't been, I'd have had to turn back and would've barely made it to the last one. It scared me a bit. After that I started arriving at stops with more buffer and checking what was nearby while I charged.

The thin stretches are my problem too. I did Midland to Austin in my BMW, about 7 hours, and both stops I had to make only had Tesla chargers. I like EA since BMW gives me the free charging, but out there it doesn't help if there isn't one on the route. OP's Tesla point holds up in West Texas.

The thin stretches get me too, in my Bolt. My trips are only 4-8 hours, but when there's no Supercharger in a good spot between cities I either end up charging in the 60-90% range where it crawls, or I drive 15-30 miles out of my way to find a CCS site. The stop placement ends up mattering more to me than the charger brand.

Ionna worked great for me on a three day, 600+ mile trip. The UI is excellent and the pricing is fair. My one blip was around 5am at the Wally's in Fenton, MO, where every stall was in standby or rebooting. It came back up in about five minutes, and there was a big thunderstorm going, so that might have caused it. I just waited it out in the gas station.

Mine was a little rougher on Ionna. I used one in Oklahoma City yesterday and the screen wasn't working. It was my first time on Ionna too, so I hope the next one goes better.

Mixed experience for me on the CCS side. I drive a Prologue and have used the Apple Green chargers a few times. They're consistent at delivering energy, but I max out around 150 kW, and my last visit only got me 35 kWh. Nothing broke, so it's not a trip-ruiner, but I wouldn't plan a tight day around it at 85mph. I'm glad your EA run went so smoothly.

Similar for me with a non-Tesla. I did about 2,200 miles round trip in the EV9, mostly Superchargers plus a few EA stops, and it went smoothly both ways. The EA stops were fine, but I still pick a Supercharger when I can since EA sites often only have a handful of stalls. Wouldn't call CCS a trip-ruiner either, though OP's V2-only stretches in the West is a different story.

Same experience on a much smaller scale. I drove to Pullman for my son's commencement, got there about an hour and a half early, and pulled right up to an open fast charger at the WSU Visitor's Center. All four were in use at one point, with a few Teslas on CCS adapters mixed in with the non-Teslas, but nobody was ever queued. It's not 85mph over 3 days, but it didn't feel like a trip-ruiner.

Chargers working isn't the only issue, though. The car's charging curve matters just as much for OP's leapfrog approach. I rented a Niro EV for a Boston trip and got about 50 kW on almost every charger in the NE. It tops out at 80 but I rarely saw it, and the curve is stupid. Zero failures, but the stops were still way longer than they'd be in an Ioniq 5 or a Tesla.

Fair point on the curve. I ran 20 fast-charge stops through 11 states in my Lucid, mostly EA with some Superchargers, Applegreen, Hyundai and GM sites mixed in. The slow stops weren't from the car for me, they were from two chargers that just weren't giving full power. Moving to the next bay fixed it in about a minute both times. Outside of that I only waited for a stall once, maybe 20 minutes. I'm planning around 200 miles between stops, though, so nothing like OP's pace.

Same thing with my Silverado on the Flo side. Because of the pack voltage I only see about 35 kW from the "50 kW" units and 62 kW from the "100 kW" ones, so nothing is broken but the stops drag. I picked up an A2Z Typhoon a couple months ago mostly because non-Tesla Supercharger prices have nearly halved since last year. Flo and BC Hydro are still my backups.

Glad EA went well for you. My problem was one charger that showed as online but barely gave me anything. I gave up on it and backtracked to a Tesla station, and of course it didn't support non-Teslas, so I ended up going back to the first one. Nothing was technically down, which made it worse. Having a backup nearby is what would have saved me.

Same kind of thing here. One V2 site capped every stall I tried at 73kW, with the occasional 43 or 47, in my Model X. Nothing showed as down, and the car was conditioned and under 20% when I got there. I just left and went to the next site an hour away, which was fine.

That Tesla-only thing is why I don't fully trust ABRP. I've put my car details in and it recognised the car, but it still tries to send me to Tesla-only chargers. So I check every stop on the map before I set off. I also change the arrival charge from 10% to 20%, so there's some margin if I have to backtrack like you did.

Same with ABRP here. I have a CCS car with a NACS adapter, and when it planned Vegas to Reno it sent me to a ChargePoint in Beatty that had been offline so long PlugShare had removed it. Now I check every stop on PlugShare before I leave.

Same kind of thing here. I've had trouble getting my non-Tesla to work at a Supercharger that was supposedly open to non-Teslas, and the chargers themselves weren't even labeled, so I couldn't tell if it was me, the app, or the site. That's the part that would worry me about OP's 3-day push, since the plan only works if every stop works the first time.

Had the opposite problem with non-Tesla units. Contactors close, fans ramp up, then it just quits partway and never delivers. Happened on 6 of my 8 paid sessions at third-party chargers over a year. Calling the toll-free number on the charger got a real person every time, and they remote-activated it while I stood there. Worth looking for that sticker before you drive off.

Same thing happened to me with my old Kia Niro. PlugShare said Tesla only for the station, and it didn't show up as compatible with my Kia in the Tesla app either. The photos on PlugShare were the old V2 stalls, so I assumed it had been upgraded. Only 2 of the 12 stalls were in use around 5 pm, so it wasn't a crowd problem. I'd double check in the Tesla app before building a day around any stop like that.

I'm on the Tesla side of that. I bought the GM NACS to CCS adapter plus the $12.99 monthly plan. If I plug in between 11pm and 8am it's about 21 cents, or 38 cents at some sites. Without the plan it's roughly 40% more. Elsewhere I've found other networks cost more than Tesla or about the same as Tesla without the plan. So the plan only pays off if you'll actually use Superchargers that month. I'd test it for the month EA is down, since it's easy to cancel.

That's why I don't lean on Tesla as the backup, it's more of an emergency option for me. I've started using Rivian chargers since they opened up in my area. Very very nice setup, and they max out my EGMP 800V car. Not everywhere yet, but where they exist they're my first pick.

Not me, Tesla is my main one. I already use them with my car set as Prologue, and luckily the two by me have Magic Docks. Haven't tried it on a real trip yet though, so I'd still check for a Magic Dock before counting on a stop.

Same approach here. I have the adapter for my Equinox, but I always look for a regular DCFC first and only use a Supercharger if it's the only viable option. Usually I've had a choice, so it's more of a backup than a plan for me too.

For anyone doing this in a non-Tesla, cable length was my main worry on a 2400 mile trip. I used a filter method while planning to weed out the Tesla sites with short cables, and that took care of nearly all of them. The one exception was the only option in that area. I got lucky and was the only person there while I charged, so I didn't have to block a second stall. I'd still plan a backup around any stop like that.

Cable length is the thing I check on my Bolt EUV too. At the Dwight, Illinois Supercharger there's a single pedestal on the side of the leftmost space. I either use that one, or I use the cameras to pull absolutely as far forward as I can, offset one space to the right, and the cord reaches. Google Maps street view is good enough to spot that kind of layout before you go. If someone else is already charging there, I park next to them so between us we only tie up one charger.

Tracking per-stop cost is what made the road trip math click for me too. My Huntsville to Vicksburg run is about 8 hrs with two Superchargers and came to $22. The leg on to Tunica was 5 hrs with two Superchargers plus a 95% free charge, and that was $16. With numbers like that, an idle fee or an app wallet top-up would wipe out most of the savings. I pick casino stays with free L2s partly for that reason.

Funny, my numbers went the other way. Wife and I did one trip a day apart, me in the BEV and her in the PHEV. At the same stop I paid $27 for 36% to 80% (about 50 kWh) at a Supercharger, and her ~5 gallons of premium was around $25. So gas won that one. Home charging is still way cheaper, but I'd take your free casino L2s over a paid DCFC stop any day.

Heat can do something similar. Had a similar issue road tripping the equinox ev, when the ac was on (100 degree weather) we were limited to 39kw, turned off the ac and it shot up fast. Other evs I've driven haven't been that drastic with the ac.

Might be worth setting ABRP to only use Tesla chargers instead of leaving every network on. I did that on a 500 km one-way trip, 3 stops going and 3 coming home, and never had a problem at any of them. That doesn't help if the app's compatibility info is wrong for a specific site, but it kept me away from the Tesla-only ones.

Setting ABRP to Tesla-only is a good tip, I wish I'd thought of it. On my 3,288 mile trip I kept bouncing between the car nav, ABRP, the Tesla app and PlugShare to pick each next stop, and every one of them seemed to suggest something different. Cutting the network list down would have saved me a lot of that back and forth.

Tesla-only in ABRP keeps you off the wrong sites, but it doesn't tell you if the stop itself is healthy. On a trip with two stops, the first one showed two open stalls on the screen. I pulled in and 3 of the 10 were dead. It was a shopping center lot, so cars were everywhere until some guy started organizing a line. It was about 10 deep by my turn. I only charged enough to reach the next stop so I wasn't holding everyone up. Now I check the next site while I'm still plugged in.

The thing none of those apps show me is how busy a site will be when I get there. The EA I use is usually down to two of four stalls, and last time several of us were waiting while the two in use crept from 80% toward 100%. A stop that looks fine in the planner can still cost you a lot of time. When there's a line I unplug at 80%.

Same kind of thing here. I just got the "multiple cards" problem on all 3 charging stations next to each other. Having three side by side looked like a built-in backup, but it wasn't one because they all failed the same way. Since then I don't count a cluster of adjacent stalls as redundancy.

Backup nearby is what saved me on a much smaller scale. There are two stations a block from us, and one started throwing a "multiple cards detected" screen, so I just moved to the one next to it and charged fine. Now both show that error, and the support tickets I submitted keep getting marked "resolved" when nothing's fixed. A site can look online in the app and still be useless, so I wouldn't count on any single site, especially one where both units share the same problem.

I had the opposite problem. The stall was free but wouldn't start a session, it just threw a "multiple cards detected" error today. Nothing I did cleared it, so I gave up and used a different charger that worked. Looked fine on the app too, which is the same gap you're describing.

Same error here in Monroe NJ, in a Hertz rental. Support reset the machine 3x and nothing changed. I drove 5 miles to another charger and got the same "multiple cards detected" screen. The first one worked fine the day before, so the app showing it as online told me nothing. I ended up just swapping the car out.

Same error for me on a Pixel 9. It was a lone ChargePoint in Los Gatos, so there was no neighboring stall to switch to and I just gave up. Seeing it hit so many people makes me think it's a reader or firmware problem and not the phone.

faced something like this at my apartment charger today. gave up after 5 mins. i tried deleting the card and re-adding it to apple wallet, which didn't fix it either. makes me not want to depend on a single charger for anything.

Same error here, and it's gotten really frequent in my town lately. Holding my phone with the ChargePoint app up to the reader will work at a charger for a couple of sessions, then the "multiple cards detected" comes back. The only fix I've found is calling customer service and waiting 15-30 minutes for a human to reset it. I don't have home charging, so it's a real time hog. I've ordered the RFID card but it's supposed to take a few weeks to arrive.

Might not be your card or phone. I had to call ChargePoint support about this a while back and was told there's an ongoing issue with older stations not handling tap to pay (cards or phones), so they'd disabled it on all machines. Worth a call if it keeps happening.

Another one the apps don't show is a site that's online but quietly capped. There's one near me with the same chargers that used to give me 150 kW or more, and sometime last year they got limited to 75. Even as the only car there, on any stall, with a long range battery it takes quite a lot longer. Nothing is down, so the planners still list it as a fine stop. I just don't charge there anymore unless I absolutely have to.

Same here with a V2 site that's online but capped. The Mitchell SD Supercharger has been limited to about 90kW for the past 5 months, and it was slow for 7+ months before that. Nothing shows as down, so the planners still treat it as a normal stop. On a plan with tight margins I'd treat a site like that as a slow one and not count on the listed speed.

Slow Flo stalls are still worth it to me on price. I skip Electrify Canada entirely since the ones near me are $0.70/kWh, while the Tesla Supercharger next door is $0.49, Chevron is $0.45 and BC Hydro/Flo is $0.37. Even at 35 kW, I'd take the extra 15 minutes and the cheaper rate. Wouldn't do that on OP's 85mph push, though.

That backup point is what's pushing me to try something. We've used EA for the last year, but starting Monday the two closest ones go out for an "upgrade". I'm thinking of dropping the EA membership for the month they're down and using that time to test the Tesla membership. Does anyone know if it's worth keeping both, or is it easier to just cancel EA and re-up later?

The idle fee and wallet top-up stuff is why I like tracking kWh. My EVSE shows daily and monthly totals for what I used, and my car shows the same. So I know what my electrons actually cost at home, and I can compare that to whatever a hotel or public charger bills. Some of the 'EVs are cheap on a road trip' claims I read don't hold up once you add in idle fees and app top-ups.