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.