A missed reservation and long charging times: A woman's 4-day road trip shows the difficulty of taking an electric car cross-country
- Reporter Rachel Wolfe's 2,000 mile EV road trip turned into a stressful experience.
- She said in a story for The Wall Street Journal the car spent more time charging than she did sleeping.
Electric cars may not be the best option for a road trip quite yet — unless you want to risk spending hours on end stuck at a charging station.
Rachel Wolfe, a reporter from The Wall Street Journal, took a Kia EV6 on a four-day road trip and said the car spent more time charging than she did sleeping. During the 2,000 mile trip from New Orleans to Chicago and back, Wolfe said she struggled to find chargers with fast speeds and spent much of the trip waiting for the car to recharge.
She said that while there appeared to be a multitude of chargers along the route, she quickly discovered that not all chargers are created equally. The trip to Chicago, which was supposed to take about seven and a half hours, ended up taking 12 hours, according to Wolfe. She detailed instances when she waited for as long as 3 hours for a 30-mile charge and moments when her car's battery ticked down at an alarming rate.
On her way home, Wolfe said her car wasn't able to make it more than 200 miles on a single charge amid a tornado warning, despite an advertised range of up to 310 miles.
"To save power, we turn off the car's cooling system and the radio, unplug our phones and lower the windshield wipers to the lowest possible setting while still being able to see," Wolfe wrote. "Three miles away from the station, we have one mile of estimated range."
Insider's Tim Levin previously reported a similar experience during a road trip to Vermont last year when the battery of his Mustang Mach-E plunged rapidly in an environment where he had little access to charging infrastructure. Though, Levin ultimately said the experience did little to dampen his interest in buying an EV.
In contrast, Wolfe said the experience made her thankful for her gas-powered 2008 Volkswagen Jetta. She said a lack of efficient charging infrastructure caused her and a passenger to miss a dinner reservation and led to a nail-biting return trip that left them with only four hours of sleep in their haste to return home on time.
Skyrocketing gas prices have made electric cars even more attractive, but Wolfe said the $100 she saved by avoiding the gas pump was paid for in wasted time lingering at charging stations.
Driving-range anxiety has been identified as one of the main issues the US faces when it comes to the electrification of transportation, and Wolfe's story highlights an advantage Tesla owners have over other EV drivers. In a tweet on Sunday, Wolfe noted she believes her experience would have been "easier" in a Tesla.
While increasing charging infrastructure is a top priority for the Biden Administration, Tesla has a jump on the market, especially when it comes to fast-charging stations.
Tesla Superchargers account for about 58% of all available fast-charging stations in the US, according to February data from the Department of Energy. Regular Tesla stations can be used with non-Tesla EVs through a special adapter, but not all supercharging stations are compatible with other electric cars. Tesla has only opened the option in select markets in Europe.