Hi there. Just wanted to type some thoughts out mostly for myself (this should really be a blog post for me). First getting into the fun stuff about the trip for me, then I'm happy to share my experience doing with with an electric car.

Solo trip

Anyhow, this is my first solo trip. I'm in my late 30s and felt a need to escape the SF Bay Area for a bit. Charted a course to some friends in the Midwest and just started driving at the end of May. Been still bouncing around the Midwest for the past few months. Planning to depart for the East Coast in about 2 weeks.

Driving solo for so long has been a bit of a mind trip, and I've done a lot of self reflection. Had a lot of realizations that much of my hesitation on driving through the middle of the US and also doing this solo was based around dealing with racism growing up, and avoiding other parts of the US I could potentially feel uncomfortable in was easier than taking it for what it is to not deny myself some of the splendors of nature. There has been plenty of racism along the way, the dirty looks I get rolling up with California plates and fully wearing a mask, but whatever that's been life for me.

More than 3 weeks

I've been on the road for about 3 months now, while only planning on returning within 20-30 days of departure. As much as I'm into cycling (and I did bring my bike), having a car to myself for the first time in places I've flown in to visit multiple times in the past has really changed the dynamics of this trip from being a vacation to basically living somewhere else for a while. I've pushed back the return time of this trip partially because I'm having too much of a positive time here with friends, partially because of the current spike of COVID, and partially because this does feel like normal living at this point. Also real summer is nicer than San Francisco's fake summer. The car gives me autonomy I didn't have before by just getting rides from friends after taking a plane here.

More than 2 states over

Not much to say here, just feels like I now understand how much there is to see in the US outside of the West Coast.

Electric car, how to route plan

I got a Tesla Model 3 in December after realizing there wasn't any point anymore for me to have a Prius hybrid plug in (living through climate change first hand will do funny things to your priorities in life). I did hit what's called "range anxiety" for the first bit of the trip, but have since then learned to just trust the "where to charge next and for how long" route planning the car does on its own, and also use tools like A Better Routeplanner and Plugshare to prepare before departing on whatever the next leg is on the trip.

Charging in general

For a round trip route from Chicago to the NY area, then up to Toronto, over through Michigan, and back to Chicago, I'm looking at a total of ~29 hours of driving, with ~4 hours of charging. Both the car's in dash map and A Better Routeplanner try to calculate the smartest route between chargers and charge times, as the first 80% of the battery charges the fastest before it drops down to a slow trickle charge for the last 20% (just like how charging cell phone batteries work). So leaving the last charging station with 80% charge and driving the battery down to around 10% before rolling into a charging station is fester than spending a more time at the previous charging "topping off" to 100% and pulling into the next charger with an extra 30% to spare.

Also if you plan a little about where you're spending the night, it's easy to fine motels/hotels with Level 2 slower chargers available in their lots to top off over night, or just a Level 2 charger within walking distance.

Charging edge cases

I've brought a plethora of adapters just in case I need to wall charge, but 3 months in I have yet to use the portable charger at all. Predominantly I've been using Tesla's Supercharger Level 3 network which has stations along every major route through the US. During two excursions I've had to plan out using Level 2 public chargers over night in more remote excursion (going to House on the Rock in Spring Green WI, while having enough charge in the morning to see a few more sights and sounds without needing to deviate to a Supercharger).

How long does charging take?

For reference, my car gets around 340 miles of range out of a 100% charge. A Level 3 Supercharger takes about 30-40 minutes to go from 10% to 80% (from 34 miles of range to about 200 miles), with how the Superchargers are distribute it's enough to get you to the next station. A slower public Level 2 charger depending on how much juice it offers (this varies) can spit out around 12% of charge for me (~40 miles of range) per hour. Level 1 chargers are what you plug into a standard 120V home wall outlet, and those offer about 3 miles of range for my car. My car came with a mobile charger that can do Level 1 and Level 2 (up to 24 miles of range per hour) charging, which is good if I'm staying at someone's house or charging over night at a motel that's ok with me running a cable outside my door.

What a day of driving and charging looks like

On average I'm stopping for a charge every 1.5 to 3 hours, to charge for anywhere between 5 minutes to 30 minutes depending on what the next leg looks like and speed limits, etc. Tesla Superchargers (and pretty much any public charger not part of the Tesla network) is more often placed right next to fast food, convenience stores, super markets. So you basically get a pit stop every 1.5 to 3 hours of driving, for 5 to 30 minutes. This has been a great thing for me as I have gotten drowsy behind the wheel before in my younger life and haven't been good about stopping to rest. I plug in, stretch my legs, use the bathroom, grab some snacks or lunch, set a timer to nap for 15 minutes, munch on some food, unplug, and go. This has been awesome and forces me to take care of myself instead of speeding off until it's clear I need to refill my gas tank.

Electric car planning fail (or almost a disaster)

The only point on this trip where I hit some issues was installing a new bike rack on the roof and giving friends of mine traveling from SF a lift down to Iowa for a 7 day bike ride call RAGBRAI. In my planning through A Better Routeplanner I didn't take into account the extra wind resistance from having two full sized bike on the roof, which equated to more power consumption, and the car didn't have enough information to know of that extra consumption would happen when it initially did its route calculations. We needed to make a pit stop at a slower Level 2 charger for about an hour (sent friends into some terrible outdoor recreations store) while I did some math and looked up info (shout outs to this person for doing the research and posting a table). I figured out a better route to accommodate getting some extra juice along the way, but it ended up costing us about 2 extra hours from my original estimation (an hour at the recreational store, and another our going slightly out of the way to a closer Supercharger). When I went to pick them up a week later, I already had enough information for the car plugged into A Better Routeplanner to make sure we could make back without issue, which we did.

How much does it cost to charge up?

Each charger in each county has a different pricing model. Most charge per the kW hour, which is the correct way to do it since depending on different circumstances you may get more or less kW (ie other people charging at the station, how much juice the station gets, are you slow charging or fast charging, temp of batteries). Some stations due to local regulation requirements and laws forced out by the gas and oil industry lobby will charge your money per minute spent at the charger, which is terrible but that's life.

The cost on average for me during this trip has been about 1/3 to 1/4 cheaper than gas for about the same amount of distance.

For Tesla chargers, the moment you plugging in the charging station knows about your car and the credit card you've already attached to the account the car is tied to, there's no need to manually give the charger a credit card in order to start charging (this makes stopping to charge a little bit faster).

For all other electric car manufacturers using the ~15 other public charging networks, you will either need to pre-create an account with each company and pre-charging the account with money from your credit card and then either tap your phone to the charger or an RFID card the company mails out to you to start the card, OR most of them you can do tap to pay with their a credit card or Google/Apple Pay (some chargers to allow manual magstrip swipe to pay), then there's a wait while the charger calls in to make the transaction happen before it initiates charge. This will change in the future as more as more car companies work with the charging networks to bring the senselessness of how Tesla's charging transactions work.

What's been great on a road trip with taking a Tesla

The car rides quite other than wind, but has plenty of room for me, my things, and even a spot to sleep in if I don't want to deal with a motel for the night or hammock camping. If I end up camping in the car over night, I can turn on "camping mode" with the climate control to keep the AC or heat on over night (and dim the screen). This eats up around 10% of the battery, but you're not having to ear plug away in order to not have the gas engine sound ruining your sleep. A lot of people really like the built in 15" dash screen to play Netflix over night (or while charging), I'd much rather read a book.

Driving assist

I don't want to gush too much about full self driving (which really should just be called assistive driving) but it sure as hell made Kansas a lot less mind numbing. People ask me how comfortable I feel using it and I tell them I try to use it as often as possible. Currently you're only allowed to use it on the freeway (the design right now doesn't have logic to handle normal road intersections, so it'll come to a full stop and alert you to take over), and I don't like using it when I get into more elaborate freeway situations closer into metro areas. And very importantly, you must keep a hand on the wheel at all times, the car is smart enough to know when you've removed your hand or when the driver all of a sudden isn't in the drivers seat (if you've read news stories on people crashing while in the back seat of a Tesla, keep in mind they had to defeat no less than 4 safety checks in order to fool the car into thinking the driver is in a position to be attentive and take over as needed).

The best way to describe it is like I'm sitting in one of those older driving school cars where there's a double set of steering wheel and pedals on both the driver and passenger side, with me in the driver seat having my two eyes pointed forward and the FSD in the other seat with a total of 8 eyes all around the car and various other sensors sensors, and we're both looking out for each other in both FSD mode and when I'm fully driving manually (i.e. the car will alert me and pull the wheel back slightly if I start veering into a yellow line without a turn indicator on). When FSD is enabled the car will will maintain cruise control, slow down and keep a set distance away from the car in front of it, or gradually speed up to the set speed limit if it's free ahead, and keep track of the lane lines so it can turn the wheel to follow the road as needed. If navigation is enabled along with a route on the map, it'll also change lanes (with a confirmation from you) on it's own (using all of those cameras) and take on and off ramps as needed to transition to other freeways.

To be honest the car drives safer than I typically do, and with our powers combined we make a good team. The benefit I've see to this is the car will generally have a quicker reaction to avoid danger than I will (cars in my blind spots, or cars getting too close), but I'll also keep a look out for things it can't (had a dead bush roll off the back of a pickup truck in front of me in Kansas and I quickly took over as I didn't feel like the car could see the bush in time).

Anyhow, it's made driving long distance pretty tolerable, which is good because that was the biggest aspect of road tripping I hated.

Tesla Bro-ism

Much of the stigma due to younger white men being at forefront of owning Teslas is long gone at this point since the cars have become mainstream. At least in CA Teslas are the new Toyota Priuses with car owners on the roads.

What about other electric cars?

I have friends with a Chevy Bolt and they've done family trips with it (which I think right now is the right choice if you want to get into electric cars but don't want to spend the money on a mid tier sedan like the Tesla Model 3). Compared to the Tesla, it's a little bit of a game trying to find Level 3 chargers along the way as there are far fewer than the charging network Tesla is offer, there's the occasional wait for a charger to become available as each station has far fewer chargers available than Tesla, the charge rate for the car is slow (55kW versus the ~250kW my car can do), and it's a little more hassle needing to feed each charger or credit card or account info (there are something like 15 different charging networks now and each one has a different account system you'll need to add a credit card to), but it's all doable if Tesla isn't your thing. To note Tesla has had their Supercharger network open to other car manufacturers to utilize for a few years now, but none of the car companies have want to play ball with them. I've heard one of them has signed up to connect with it sometime late this year (with an adapter), so that's really good news good. I'm all for more electric cars, not just Teslas.

That being said, when you're shopping for an electric car and want to drive more than just a commute (charging at home generally is plenty to cover that), 50% of your decision is in the car and the other 50% goes into what supported charging networks the car can work with. Sadly for now Tesla's winning the second part of that equation, but that's slowly changing as car manufacturers are pouring money into charging infrastructure.

For most of you reading this, I can tell you the next car you buy will most likely be electric, and the future of public charging keeps on getting brighter and brighter (pun intended). Just being able to top off at home vs needing to think about when to fill up with gas next and adding that time into your plans for a day out of the week is a bit of a game changer for anyone with a longer daily commute, rarely needing to use a public charger.

Also I can tell you that your need to go to a auto repair shop over the life of the car drops down drastically. There are barely any fluids in the car. The only maintenance you need is break pads and tire rotation. And if you don't believe me, go to a Tesla service center and realize how clean the place looks compared to a traditional auto shop.

Don't electric cars pollute more through building batteries, having to eventually dispose of the batteries, and power going to the chargers?

In the past yes, in the present no.

Battery technology keeps on getting greener, and recycling has gotten much better because of the materials being used. Additionally battery degradation has dropped quite a bit with recenter cars (other Tesla owners I've known with older cars say the might have seen a 1% drop in battery capacity over the last ~3 years, no drop in efficiency/performance). There are battery replacement programs for most of the manufacturers if you do see a drastic drop over the years, but also electric cars generally have maintain a decent resell value compared to gas engine cars.

Many of the charging networks generally pull their power from renewable sources if that's typically dependent on the county they're sitting in and the electricity company delivering the power. Electrify America has been going out of its way to install solar overhangs at many of its locations. Best effort to be green at this point.

Useful things I've brought with me

Canon Selfy CP1300 photo printer - this thing is ~$100 and lets you print 4x6 lab quality photos from your phone. Take a selfie in front of the world's largest watermelon, slap a $0.32 stamp on the back and you can mail it out as a postcard. I've at this point have sent around 200 self made postcards on this trip.

Electric cooler - Not that big of an impact on my car battery, no melted water to deal with.

Spare pool towel kept in the car at all times

A bicycle

Googly eyes

Fold up squeegee

Boox Onyx Poke 3 - Android tablet with an eink display, way more useful than a Kindle.

Anyhow, hope all that info is helpful to someone now or in the future. Happy to answer questions. Thanks for reading.