{"id":419,"date":"2025-01-25T17:19:50","date_gmt":"2025-01-25T17:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cleantechnica.com\/?p=243941"},"modified":"2025-01-25T17:19:50","modified_gmt":"2025-01-25T17:19:50","slug":"11-ev-models-test-the-state-of-highway-charging-in-long-distance-race-guess-which-brand-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo4.dedicatedhost247.com\/green\/green-news\/11-ev-models-test-the-state-of-highway-charging-in-long-distance-race-guess-which-brand-wins\/","title":{"rendered":"11 EV Models Test the State of Highway Charging in Long-Distance Race \u2014 Guess Which Brand Wins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally posted on EVANNEX<\/a>.
by Charles Morris<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

When did the first EV race take place? Shortly after the second EV was built, says conventional wisdom. Since the dawn of modern EVs, a few groups have staged Cannonball Run\u2013style events<\/a>, and many more individuals have documented long-distance road trips, often with a goal of demonstrating the prevailing state of charging infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The aim of Car and Driver<\/em>\u2019s EV 1000<\/a> was to highlight the state of EV technology and the US\u2019s charging infrastructure with a 1,000-mile round trip through four states. A wide variety of EV models took part: all 11 vehicles that the magazine evaluated in its recent EV of the Year test<\/a>. Each vehicle had a team of two drivers, and the course ran from Ann Arbor, Michigan, through Cincinnati, Ohio; Morgantown, West Virginia; Erie, Pennsylvania; and back to Ann Arbor.<\/p>\n

As C&D<\/em>\u2019s Eric Tingwall writes, this was about an Everyman driving experience, not about competition racing: \u201cNo taped-over panel gaps, no stripped interiors to shave weight, no rented U-Hauls to break the wind. The point, we said over and over, was to capture the experience of driving an EV on a long road trip.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, that didn\u2019t stop some of the drivers from coming up with quirky ideas that they thought might help eke out a few more miles of range \u2014 one wore no pants, so he wouldn\u2019t have to run the AC. Others disabled automatic headlights and sacrificed cruise control. In a rather unusual twist for a race, drivers followed speed limits more often than not.<\/p>\n

The teams used various apps to scout out charging locations, including A Better Routeplanner<\/a> (ABRP) and PlugShare<\/a>, as well as the native navigation apps in the various EVs. One of the first lessons learned was to take recommendations from any app with a grain of lithium salt \u2014 the drivers in the Nissan Leaf, insisting that the app made them do, made their first pit stop just 23 miles into the race, a mistake that cost them a big chunk of time right out of the gate.<\/p>\n

Another lesson familiar to any frequent user of public charging: you can\u2019t count on any particular charging station being available. Several of the teams pulled up to chargers only to find them out of order, and some found that chargers didn\u2019t deliver the advertised power. A couple had truly maddening experiences trying to get a charge and get back on the road.<\/p>\n

Tingwall tells us that \u201cthe teams in the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y had it comparatively easy.\u201d Tesla\u2019s built-in nav directed them to fast and reliable Superchargers as necessary, and problems were few. \u201cWhile Superchargers could be finicky in their early days, the current equipment is more dependable than a gas-pump credit-card reader,\u201d writes Tingwall. Coverage is pretty comprehensive \u2014 at one point, the team driving the Model S passed four Supercharger stations without having to stop.<\/p>\n