What it’s like to take a non-Tesla electric car on a road trip
Electric cars are the future. Literally.
Whether you want to go green or not, most of us are going to be driving an EV in the next two decades. Automakers are spending billions retooling factories and revamping their fleets to go most or all-electric in the next ten to 15 years, plans fully endorsed by President Joe Biden who wants half of all U.S. auto sales to be electric vehicles by 2030. That’s a massive goal considering the market, including plug-in hybrids, currently stands at about 3%.
One of the biggest barriers to EV adoption is America’s charging network. There are roughly 136,400 gas stations in the U.S., but just 43,800 EV charging stations, according to the Department of Energy. And it takes about 10 minutes to fill your car with a tank of gas but about 45 minutes to fully charge an EV, sometimes longer.
While Biden has pledged to build out 500,000 charging stations across the U.S. by 2030 as part of his $2 trillion infrastructure plan, we are still a long way from there.
So my producer Harriet Taylor and I decided to put California’s charging infrastructure to the test on an 8-hour road trip from Southern California to San Francisco. California accounted for 9% of EV sales in the first quarter and has the largest charging network in America, so it made sense to start there.
We specifically wanted to test anything other than a Tesla, which has the single-largest charging network in the world with 25,000 global charging stations. You need an adapter to use it, but the benefits and wide availability of Tesla’s charging network are generally well known.
Charging on the road with any car brand other than Tesla is something you don’t hear much about.
I admit that even as a “car guy” I had a lot of questions about charging, the new terminology, the speed, potential costs and more.
We rented a brand new Polestar 2, Volvo’s recent entry into the electric car market, from Enterprise. Most EVs have a range, how far it can drive on a single full charge, of between 100 and 300 miles. The Polestar’s range was advertised at 265 miles, but that can change depending on a variety of things: cold weather, driving up or down hills or using the AC, for instance.
I had driven the Polestar 2 on a brief test a few months earlier so was familiar with it enough to feel comfortable on a long drive.
Road trip with Brian Sullivan
CNBC
We drove about 60 miles from Enterprise to our first stop at Mountain Pass, Calif., about 15 miles from the Nevada border in the “high desert” at around 5 p.m. on a Tuesday night at 105 degrees.
We had to remove a metal cover from a power outlet at the mine but then we were able to plug in and get to 100% before setting off.
Two initial takes after just a few miles: One, its easy to get anxious by staring at the giant “percent charged” screen (so we turned it off) and two, we had to download a bunch of apps as we learned to navigate the new “range world.”
Charging on road trip with Brian Sullivan
Source: CNBC
Our go-to became PlugShare, which shows you where charging stations are regardless of who owns them, which network it was on, how fast it took to charge, whether its currently available and, hopefully, a picture so you can see what you’re getting into.
PlugShare became a favorite because it was brand-agnostic and customers left reviews of their experience. Those reviews were valuable, because we found that many chargers weren’t nearly as fast as advertised and some just didn’t work or were in weird locations.
The Polestar also has Google map integration that shows charging stations along the route as well as your projected percent charge when you arrived. We found the charging forecast very accurate, but we think Google could improve the experience by filtering by types of chargers (we had Tesla envy as their stations popped up everywhere).
Stop 1: Electrify America at a Walmart
We rolled into our first stop at a Walmart in Barstow, Calif. It was an Electrify America location, and they had about eight chargers. Only one was occupied — by an Audi eTron — and so we plugged in, hitting the store for the facilities and, honestly, just to walk around in the air conditioning (did we mention it was hot, hot, hot?!).
Charging took 37 minutes and cost us $13.33.
Brian Sullivan using a charging station in Sunnyvale
Brian Sullivan using a charging station in Sunnyvale
CNBC
Now, off to Bakersfield.
The drive along Route 58 was fascinating. We passed one of the airplane storage fields along with the Alta Wind Energy Center, one of the biggest wind energy facilities in the world. It was a gorgeous drive at sunset coming down the mountain with lots of hills along this route.
Hills matter for the Polestar 2 in two ways: first, up hill seems to burn more charge as the car is under load pulling its own weight up hill, but going down is a win because the car has a system that generates power by slowing the car without braking. So once you get the hang of it, you almost never touch the brake pedal and produce some power while you do it.
Stop 2: The Hampton Inn
We rolled into Bakersfield at 18% charge after covering 135 miles and plugged into Chargepoint system at the Hampton Inn. It only had two plugs but we were the only car there and the night manager said he’s actually never seen anyone use it. It was slow, but free, and we left with an 89% charge about 10 hours later.
The long, boring and hot (did we mention it was hot?) drive straight up I-5 through the breadbasket of California was next. Harriet had a 4 p.m. flight out of San Francisco airport so we were on a bit of a tight schedule and had to leave time to charge.
