Travel from Northeast to WDW via Electric Car

[yaya74]

When I'm driving long distance, my goal is to keep stops to a minimum, both number of stops and duration of stops. Stop for gas just off interstate, many gas stations with either integrated fast food or "shops". I can usually average 65-70mph INCLUDING stops over a 12-13 hour trip by doing so. Stopping for sit down meals cuts that WAY down. A 20 minutes break every two hours would add almost two hours to the trip. No thank you. YMMV (literally).

I wish I have your stamina. I don't even drive the way you do with an ICE car. Besides, I have my two kids with me on the road trip. They are getting better now as they get older. Once I had to drive them from Denver CO to North NJ. That route took us 6 days because they were only 1 and 5 yo.

 

[Ms.Minnie]

I wish the focus would have been on more hybrid cars until a very robust charging network was established. I'm also concerned that we don't have a standard for these charging stations. We certainly don't need a repeat of the beta vs. VCR or cassette vs. 8-track. One standard that would be used for every kind of EV should be the goal for a charging network. I'm also not sure why the fast charging stations aren't the norm. Is there a downside to having these everywhere rather than the slow trickle chargers?

I agree that we should be focused on hybrids until our infrastructure is ready to handle so many electric cars and install all the needed charging stations. Charging stations need to be pretty much everywhere so all EVs can be charged as needed. I fully agree that the charging stations need to be standard so all EVs can charge at ALL charging stations. This is just so obvious, I sure hope those in charge don’t screw it up but unfortunately they probably will.

 

[LuvOrlando]

The family is really pulling for a Tesla next but reading through it still seems like a giant complicated nuisance, like the Orchid of cars where it's nice to admire if someone else has one. The logistics bull really needs to be taken by the horns, best guess at success would be to intertwine the charging stations with a new covid friendly franchise of rest stations along travel corridors ESPECIALLY in the big northeast cities. It would improve public health because bathrooms without windows are a terrible idea in a pandemic and shifting infrastructure is a reasonable goal. Two birds one stone.

 

[sam_gordon]

You sound a bit like my father....any road trip with him was so stressful for my mother (we didn't take many road trips when I was a kid)....because he was just a maniac about "beating the traffic", minimizing stops for bathroom breaks...etc, just so they could get wherever they were headed in as little time as possible. Usually, it was a trip from NJ to the house they had in the Florida Keys at that time. They leave right after the evening rush over, drive through the night...straight through....all to get to the Keys as fast as possible...to pretty much do nothing for the two weeks that they were there. He'd take "no doze"...drink lots of coffee....etc. It finally got to the point when there was a big fight between them...my mother threatened to not go unless they "stopped half way to stay in a hotel like normal human beings!!".....and he gave in. .

We've done the trip with stopping (usually around Macon or Valdosta) and straight through. I'm willing to stop when needed, but I'm also one who doesn't like to schedule my stops. If traffic & family cooperates, and I'm feeling good, I'll push for an extra hour or two. If there's some issue that slows us down, I can stop earlier. It's about a 13 hour drive (with stops) for us (from our house to Poincianna where my mom lives (WDW is ~45 minutes shorter).

We did drive when the kids were little. I remember pulling over at some exit in Georgia in order to get DS's diaper changed. I much prefer to fly.

 

[bcla]

We've done the trip with stopping (usually around Macon or Valdosta) and straight through. I'm willing to stop when needed, but I'm also one who doesn't like to schedule my stops. If traffic & family cooperates, and I'm feeling good, I'll push for an extra hour or two. If there's some issue that slows us down, I can stop earlier. It's about a 13 hour drive (with stops) for us (from our house to Poincianna where my mom lives (WDW is ~45 minutes shorter).

We did drive when the kids were little. I remember pulling over at some exit in Georgia in order to get DS's diaper changed. I much prefer to fly.

My main problem with that is the issue of finding a place to stay. I did a big trip with my parents before I got married, and my dad didn't want to be on the road for more than maybe 8-9 hours at a time. And he insisted on driving. He claims that he gets nauseous if anyone else drives. We needed reservations for the majority of the trip, but we arranged for the first night without a reservation (had a good idea of several towns where we could find a place to stay overnight) and the tail end started in Las Vegas where we figured we wouldn't need a reservation given the sheer number of available hotel rooms as well as looking in the surrounding areas if that didn't work out. We did skip staying a second night in Vegas because my dad thought that the hotel prices were too high and maybe we could just get a little closer to home. We ended up in a town where we arrived with almost no hotel rooms left because there was an event.

 

[dvcgirl67]

We've done the trip with stopping (usually around Macon or Valdosta) and straight through. I'm willing to stop when needed, but I'm also one who doesn't like to schedule my stops. If traffic & family cooperates, and I'm feeling good, I'll push for an extra hour or two. If there's some issue that slows us down, I can stop earlier. It's about a 13 hour drive (with stops) for us (from our house to Poincianna where my mom lives (WDW is ~45 minutes shorter).

We did drive when the kids were little. I remember pulling over at some exit in Georgia in order to get DS's diaper changed. I much prefer to fly.

I'm with you...I'd much rather fly. But we did that long drive from NJ to the Keys a couple of times...brutal. We'd drive because we'd stay at my parent's place and bring our dogs with us. Now, if it's more than four hours....we fly, and we leave the dogs at home. And for the record, you don't sound as cranky as my father was on long road trips .

 

[sam_gordon]

My main problem with that is the issue of finding a place to stay. I did a big trip with my parents before I got married, and my dad didn't want to be on the road for more than maybe 8-9 hours at a time. And he insisted on driving. He claims that he gets nauseous if anyone else drives. We needed reservations for the majority of the trip, but we arranged for the first night without a reservation (had a good idea of several towns where we could find a place to stay overnight) and the tail end started in Las Vegas where we figured we wouldn't need a reservation given the sheer number of available hotel rooms as well as looking in the surrounding areas if that didn't work out. We did skip staying a second night in Vegas because my dad thought that the hotel prices were too high and maybe we could just get a little closer to home. We ended up in a town where we arrived with almost no hotel rooms left because there was an event.

In this day and age, when most have full internet access in their pocket, I'm not too worried about being able to find some place to stop. ESPECIALLY if I'm driving with DW or some other adult who can look an hour or two ahead on the route. It's very easy anymore.

 

[bcla]

In this day and age, when most have full internet access in their pocket, I'm not too worried about being able to find some place to stop. ESPECIALLY if I'm driving with DW or some other adult who can look an hour or two ahead on the route. It's very easy anymore.

Sure. Back when I did that trip I certainly used the internet at home to research and reserve lodging and some activities for that trip. I even printed up maps from Yahoo Maps. But at the time we had flip phones with limited internet access. I think mostly they had data that was available for certain well-defined apps like for game scores or news that barely sucked up any data. I did have one night in the middle without a reservation, but I had planned for it with possible places to stay and eventually stopped somewhere and made a reservation by phone before arriving at a hotel.

Also - my plan has a cap on high-speed cellular data and I even maxed it out my last billing cycle. If I'm on the road I like to be able to find a public Wi-Fi source whenever possible. It gets really frustrating because a lot of websites aren't running lean like they used to when working with a mobile device.

Still - I like a little bit of predictability - especially with prices. Some hotels have lower prices if reserved early.

 

[VandVsmama]

We have friends who recently used their Tesla to go on a road trip from southern CA to Colorado and also stopped at national parks in southern Utah. They had to plan their route out carefully ahead of time so they knew that there would be an electric vehicle plug somewhere for them to charge up. On one or 2 occasions, they almost ran out of power before getting to a charging station.

 

[_19disnA]

As with all type of batteries, there can be issues about battery life if you use the fast charging method frequently.

Fast-charging can damage electric car batteries in just 25 cycles (imeche.org)

 

[DisLiss]

Ok so if that’s true I guess if you wanted to do long distance travel you would need a second car?

Or you could rent a car when you travel particularly long distances.

 

[bcla]

As with all type of batteries, there can be issues about battery life if you use the fast charging method frequently.

Fast-charging can damage electric car batteries in just 25 cycles (imeche.org)

That claim seems a bit odd given actual experience with Tesla Superchargers. And the biggest issue isn’t charging rate per se, but temperature. Tesla batteries are cooled to reduce that effect. They still might slow down their max charge rate due to wear, but it’s not that bad and there are batteries with hundreds of these charge cycles that aren’t at the 80% level where they’re considered depleted. One key in almost any current battery system is to slow down the charge current once it gets closer to full.

https://www.greencarfuture.com/elec...ry-life#3_The_Tesla_Manuals_Also_Mention_This​

Other researchers have gone into this topic and reminded us that other factors play a role in degradation, such as temperature. Professor Jeff Dahn of Dalhousie University in Canada found that lithium-ion batteries were not further degraded by DC fast charging when they were properly cooled before plugging in. You can hear this and further insights in a seminar led by Dahn back in 2013:​

​

Finally, you can’t escape the many facts shared openly by Tesla engineers themselves. Tesla batteries have built-in protections to protect against degradation when things reach a certain point. That may be accelerated when you use DC charging outside of the Supercharger network, too. Even the story of Naonak, in the end, showed that despite their strong complaints, their battery in reality had not degraded as much as anyone was led to believe.​

 

[ljcrochet]

It is so easy to road trip in a tesla. The built in nav will have you stop at superchargers.
As someone else said, you plug in at the supercharger then by the time walk to the restroom get a snack, car should be charged. It actually tells you how long to charge to continue on your trip.
I use an website called a better route planner to map out round trip routes before we travel. Just to confirm that there are good spots to charge at our destination.

 

[starry_solo]

Here's the thing, though. Everything runs on that battery. AC, radio, the electrical "TV" (well, it seems like a TV to me, but it's the control panel). So, even though you get 350 miles, you really don't get that much in driving miles unless you're not running anything else on that charge.

At least, that's how it was explained to me by a Tesla owner. She feels 10-20% of the "miles" go towards the other things you have running.

 

[_19disnA]

^^ Correct those figures are the MAXIMUM range usually under ideal conditions, real world driving conditions using other features will be less. Clearly you aren't going to wait until the car is down to 5 miles of charge left before looking for a charging station.

 

[kdonnel]

Here's the thing, though. Everything runs on that battery. AC, radio, the electrical "TV" (well, it seems like a TV to me, but it's the control panel). So, even though you get 350 miles, you really don't get that much in driving miles unless you're not running anything else on that charge.

At least, that's how it was explained to me by a Tesla owner. She feels 10-20% of the "miles" go towards the other things you have running.

Range anxiety goes away very quickly once you own an electric car and realize it is a non issue.

My car is rated for 259 miles. Driving at 80mph on the highway with the AC going I get about 205. Driving at 80mph on the highway with the heat going I get about 180. I did not buy the car for road trips though.

Driving my typical around town with the AC on I get an estimated 300 miles. Driving my typical around town with the heat on I get an estimated 230 miles.

But the 258, 300, and 230 don't matter at all for everyday driving because I start out EVERYDAY with a full battery. I never even think about range, never. At the end of the day I plug the car in at home and wake up to a full battery.