EV road trip

EV charging has come a long, long way in the last couple of years, especially on the Tesla Supercharging network, where the chargers have not only multiplied, but also been upgraded in many cases to much faster charging.

Curiosity got the better of me and I decided to see what the amazing web site A Better Route Planner, which some folks argue is a much better trip planning tool for electric cars, planned for a drive from my home in Calgary to downtown Vancouver.

The planner does the best job when you tell it what car you're driving, so I went big and chose a Tesla Model Y dual motor AWD long range model. So what does that trip look like?

Well, it has me leaving home with 90% state of charge (SoC) and stopping first in Golden after 3 hours of driving and charging for 7 minutes to get my SoC from 27% to 50%. That costs $3.10

Then, after just over a 2.5 hour drive, we would stop to charge in Revelstoke for 16 minutes to get the SoC from 15% to 64% at a cost of $6.93. That's just enough to grab a Timmie's and respond to Mother Nature's call.

Next stop is Kamloops after 2.5 hours of driving, where we charge for 19 minutes to get the SoC from 11% to 68% at a cost of $8.26. By the way, the reason the planner doesn't have us charging up too much is because the fast chargers operate at their fastest rate between 10% and about 70% SoC. After 70%, the rate of charge tapers off due to the battery's needs. So we're really leveraging the sweet spot to take advantage of the fastest charging possible.

Last charging stop is at Hope after almost 2 hours, where we charge for 11 minutes to get the SoC from 11% to 47% ($4.88), which is enough to get us to downtown Vancouver with 10% SoC after the last 1.75 hour drive.

Total drive time is 12h 29m to go 982 km. Total energy cost is $23.17. I'm not joking. Total stop time for charging is 53 minutes. Not too bad. That trip would normally take me about 11 hours (but that's givin' 'er hell) and cost around $60 in gas.

So, as you can see, electric car trips are getting manageable.