This is my second time renting an EV. First time wasn’t too bad. We stayed local and only had to charge once.
This Thanksgiving we had to drive from Chicago to Omaha to Minneapolis and back to Chicago. It was approximately 1400 miles total. $289 in electric charges. (that feels a lot more expensive than gas). We had to stop every 2 hours to charge for an hour so it extended our trips by 50%. This was quite challenging when we were in a caravan of cars and the ICE ones beat us by several hours. A 6 hour drive turned into 10 hours. I shaved off a few hours by always running the car down to the last couple miles and charging it to 100%. One time was not by choice as we almost ran out due to a dead zone. We were then charged $50 to fill up 3/4 tank at an EA in the middle of Minnesota. That was kind of our breaking point.
Some positives are it was a smooth ride and felt great in the snow.
We wanted to buy an EV but wanted to see how they fair on road trips in the midwest. This experience may scare us away for a while as it was exhausting stressful and expensive. Wondering what we did wrong since so many enjoy EV.
Sorry to pile on but charging to 100% on DCFC is far from ideal.
EQB’s charging speed drops a bit around 50% and then significantly at 85%: https://insideevs.com/news/492300/mercedes-eqv-dc-fast-charging-analysis/ So you’re wasting a lot of time to get that last little bit of charge.
You really wouldn’t add many more stops if you charged only to 80% or so. And then when you’re staying somewhere for the night – hotel, house, etc. – that’s when you go fully to 100%, because you’ve got the time and Level 2 charging (well, Level 1 too) doesn’t slow down at the top of the battery.
EQB also isn’t great at fast charging but you can make it work. I have a Kona and it’s even worse at fast charging, but it doesn’t bother me. We’ve never needed more than one DCFC per direction on a trip anyway.
Unfortunately at the hotel we stayed, cars were parked near the only outlets available. We had to use public chargers the entire trip. We now know about not charging to full.
Unfortunately at the hotel we stayed, cars were parked near the only outlets available. We had to use public chargers the entire trip. We now know about not charging to full.
I shaved off a few hours by always running the car down to the last couple miles and charging it to 100%
You may have made your trip longer. Most recommend not running battery to below 10% and not charging above 80% as your charges will be faster. Last 20% can take as long as first 80%.
With just 232 in range, figure 150 in winter cold so you are going to charge frequently on a long trip in that vehicle.
Did you try and use https://abetterrouteplanner.com/ It says your charging should have bee about two hours total and Chicago to Omaha a 10 your trip with no stop longer than 20 minutes.
The EQB is a short-range car with slow charging compared to something like a Tesla or the new Kia.
Chargers for the Mercedes are half as available as they are for a Tesla Model S and the range is barely half and it charges at half the speed. Overall, you’d have had a much more pleasant experience in a Tesla.
Then you chose to charge to 100% (which means almost 1 hour charging stops, yikes).
The “cannonball run” across the US is won by a Model S, which drives down to 5% and then charges up to about 60%. Above that, it slows down a lot.
That makes for 15-20 minute charging stops.
At least you didn’t end up in a Mazda or a Chevy Bolt, they’re far worse for road trips than the Mercedes, but the Mercedes is a decidedly bad road trip EV.
We wanted to buy an EV but wanted to see how they fair on road trips in the midwest.
You rented one of the worst road-tripping EVs made; don’t allow that to turn you off from EVs in general. The EQB 300 is a low-efficiency first-generation EV from a company that is only recently getting into EV production. And it uses a charging network renowned for its poor reliability. And the icing on the cake is doing 0-to-100% charging, which is hurting your overall driving time tremendously. But I am sure the on-board route planner wasn’t really helping matters since Mercedes’ software is so poor.