Should You Take a Road Trip in an Electric Car?

Hmmm? 🤔 Really think about that question. You might be thinking I don’t see why not considering the price of gas amongst other things. While others maybe saying no way, I would be afraid to drive a car like that long distance. Which ever side of the fence you are on, I’m going to share with you some things to think about before you take that road trip.

Finding Chargers Along The Way

Not too long ago I took a road trip in a Kia Niro heading towards Daytona Beach. That’s almost a 4 hour ride. Now when I first got this Kia Niro it was ranging about 264 miles per full charge, then it started climbing up a bit. It seems that if you charge the cars at different times throughout the day you may or may not get more miles per charge. Anyways, by the time we got to about Fort Pierce we needed to charge up because we were getting low on the charge.

Since we were on the I-95 there were no chargers at the rest stops and that is something important to note, the rest stops on the I-95 does not have chargers (at least not during the time I was traveling), so we had to pull up the app to locate where the closest chargers were, specifically the FPL evolution ones because at the time I took this trip they were offering the cheapest rates for charging.

We pulled up the app and could not find anything close by and to make matters worst we had to detour at exit 131 because the police had blocked off the road ahead. Eventually, when we found some it was in the parking lot of a hotel and was marked for hotel guests only. I still tried to use it but none of the two was working. We had to leave and try to find another one.

Eventually we found some that actually worked in the rear parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts in Melbourne. We were able to charge up and be on our way.

Thinking about Time

Apart from having to find locations where you can charge your car it’s also a good idea to think about the time it takes to charge. While we stopped to charge the car in Melbourne, we charged enough to get us to where we were going because things were very hectic already with the traffic and my brother and mom were with me and I didn’t want them to get impatient.

Every car is different, newer electric cars especially the premium ones like the Ford Mustang Mach-E are taking less time to charge, but still there are some like the Kia Niro or the Hyundai Kona that takes a lot longer. The one I was driving was a 2022 – 2023 and it would take a whole hour and more to reach a full charge. Do you have that kind of time?

The Upside

The advantage here is, say your on your way out of town and would like to stop in a city that you are driving through, maybe you want to visit a mall or just stop to get some lunch, you can do that all while charging up your car, as long as there are chargers nearby.

One good thing for us was that the hotel we stayed at in Dayton Beach had 2 chargers in their garage, one for Teslas and another for standard electric cars, so we were able to leave it charging while we did other things.

Also when we went out to explore the city we had no problem finding chargers. Chargers were everywhere we turned, in the parking lot across from P.F. Chang’s and at the Tanger Outlet Mall that I went to checkout and other places.

I hope that you have found this article helpful in deciding if you would like to take your electric car on a road trip. The intention is not to deter but to give you something to think about.

Electric cars are still fairly new but I do believe that as they continue to evolve charging times will be shorter and ranges will be longer.

If you have some experience you would like to share about road-tripping in an electric car, go a head and share it with us in the comments.