We took our first road trip in the ZDX. It required a single stop, both directions, if we charged to 100% before leaving. Which we did. Leaving home with 100% we easily made it to my planned stop, which was a Tesla Supercharger on I-20 and 281. There are 12 or 16 here. I've seen them used and they've never been close to full. We arrived late, they were empty, and we ate at the Sonic while charging. This reminded me how short the V3 cables are, and I had to adjust parking twice to get the alignment close enough to reach. If I ever have to do this often I will get a NACS DC extension cable. Expensive, but would be worth it.

We stayed two nights at a hotel with the ChargePoint 6.6 kWh chargers. First night we got ICE'd and could not charge. I did a 50 kW fast-charge twice at a local Cadillac dealer with 24/7 access. That saved my life. Lesson learned, an Air BNB with onsite charging is much better than a hotel. Second night I had myself at 75% from the Cadillac dealer as a safe-guard for leaving, but was able to get a charging spot. I got to 100% by 1am.

On way back we let the nav system choose the route and went from Wichita Falls, to Fort Worth, then down I-35. It told us to stop north of Waco at an Electrify America bank at a Wal-Mart. This had 6 charges with a 10.0 PlugShare score. Well... they were full with a small line. Honestly I'm surprised we got that far in the first place. In my planning I thought that would be a stretch, right at 200 miles, with cold weather, high average speeds, and wind. But we got there with 25% battery left. But I was upset to have to wait for what would likely be 30 minutes just to charge. So I made a gamble, the Buc-ees in Temple was 33 miles away. The ZDX told me I still had 75 miles of range. So we went. Got there with 14% battery still. 237 total miles on that charge, at high speeds and cold weather. I'm shocked.

Buc-ees overbuilds everything. They had 68 V4 Superchargers, and 6 Mercedes-Benz chargers. I use the MB's because they are CCS, and frankly they are not Elon. Billing was through ChargePoint. Cables were long, changing was fast and painless. We hit the rest rooms, grabbed some food, went back to the car and ate. I left at 65% battery and used 21% getting home.

 

Thanks for sharing. My own experience kind of echoes your positive one. I feel EV reviews are getting out of touch with reality. EV roadtrip does not need blazingly-fast charging speed and incredible range, average 300-ish EV like ZDX gets the job done just fine. All it takes is a bit of planning.

Speaking of planning, I learned to rule out EA stations because of how congested they are in the afternoon-early evening peak hours, especially for stations close to highways. The free-charging perk really ruins the network.

 

One thing I did learn was how expensive electricity on the road is. We paid just under $114 total for all the charging we did for 641 total miles of driving. That did not count the full battery cost from charging at home. My calculations, if I had bought gas with that money for that distance, would be about 16mpg. Charging at home, at least in Texas, is cheap!

The most expensive was the Hotel L2 ChargePoint charger, at $0.60 per kWh. Wowzers. Tesla, late at night, was $0.43. Mercedes-Benze / Chargepoint at Buc-ees, Saturday around lunch, was $0.51. I am really shocked at the price of hotel electricity, and at only L2 speeds!

 

Update: The Cadillac 50 kWh charger was $0.70 per kWh!!! So it was more expensive than the hotel.

In the future we'll try to stay at an Air BNB with a 14-50 plug. There are two (at least) in Wichita Falls for clients to use to charge their EV, with no extra charge. Would have saved over half our total electric bill for the trip.

 

Excellent overview of your trip and charging experience billjay - thanks for sharing! If you haven't already, check out the YouTube channel "Out of Spec Reviews." Lots of good info for someone like me as a first time EV owner!

John