Our road trip philosophy has always been to enjoy the journey with fun rest stops on the way. When the fun is over at one place we get back in the car and drive to the next place. If we were in that big of a hurry to get somewhere, then we would fly.
For us even in a gas car, the stop for gas was specific and almost never five minutes. As I recall we were often paying first inside sometimes waiting in line. Then I would have to hold the handle while the gas was pumping. Then I could wash the windows. Then I could go to the bathroom and again sometimes wait in line. Maybe I or somebody else would buy a snack or a drink. Then separately we would stop at a rest area or a shopping center to stretch our legs and take a break from driving. Then there would be another separate stop for lunch and dinner.
With that, prior to going all-electric in 2018, driving our then Ford Edge, on road trips we would drive maybe 500 miles per day. That included eight or at most nine hours of driving, with three to four total hours of stops in between.
Our first EV were Smart fortwo and had L2 32A charging. At home we plug in a few seconds and do other things like is shown in the video. For road trips we would drive two hours (at slower than freeway speeds) and charge for two hours. That effectively limited how far we could go in a twelve hour travel day to 200 miles or so, and admittedly we would often run out of fun dwell time activities before the two hours were up. Beyond that distance our trips were almost always over 1,000 miles and we were flying. In 2019 we bought a Ford Focus Electric with 50 kW (really about 150A) peak charging speed that we did take on a few road trips. With the Focus our rhythm was to drive for an hour-ish (depending on charger location) and charge for 30-40 minutes (40 minutes if we were on a 100A charger). For us in that twelve hour travel time we could go maybe 400-450 miles, if the charging infrastructure was there, which it still had significant gaps.
In fall 2022/spring 2023 we bought two Mach E's. One has 305 miles range EPA and 150 kW peak charging speed, on 230 miles range and 110 kW peak charging speed. We have taken each Mach E on multiple 1,000 plus mile road trips. While my wife has flown with friends since, I have not been on a plane for four years and I have driven over 20,000 miles (with most of them being 500 mile plus driving days) on eight 1,000 mile plus road trips, where I would have previously flown.
We pick our charging stops where we are not waiting (or as in the title of the video wasting time). We are doing what we would do on the trip anyway while the car is charging. Whether that is going to the bathroom, stretch our legs and take a break from sitting in the car, shopping, eating a meal, or even resting or sleeping in a motel room. We almost always need to stop to meet our human needs long before the Mach E needs to charge. With our road trip style the car is ready to go before we are.
