Seattle to Dallas

[Feliks]

@Colorado MME GT
ABRP says the same thing.

Fastest

Least stops

It looks very doable… and depends on how many miles you want to cover per day? On our long trip we were doing about 700 to 750 comfortably. My 88 year old mother was with me, so I wasn’t pushing too hard. Comfortably it’s about 4 day trip. According to ABRP there is lots of DCFC coverage. And we got smarter with the road trip and were picking stations with good accommodations and were snaking and/or eating breakfast / lunch while charging. Should be great fun!!

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[AZBill]

I did a trip in my Rivian in 2023, Phoenix to Tahoe. That was 750 miles each way, with 12.5 hours of driving. My total charging for each way was just under 2 hours. I made 5 stops going to Tahoe because it was raining and windy, on the way home it was 4 stops in nice weather. I only charged to 80% at one of the nine stops I made, because I had a leg of over 220 miles to make. A couple of my charges were only to 50%, just enough to get to the next stop.

So for me it was 16% of the time charging, but I do not sit around charging to 80% at every stop like some people think they should do. I also have no problem going down to 10-15%.

 

[AZBill]

What do you all think the trip would be like if you just let Ford do all the planning in-car and you just did what it said at all times? That is, let it add all the charging stops on the fly, and go to them. After all, Ford doesn't have route pre-planning software. I get the message that Ford doesn't want you to pre-plan, but instead just let the car plan it for you as you go. So, what do you think would happen? I honestly don't know.

I do this all the time for trips between AZ and CA, it works just fine. What I usually find is that I will have lunch at a charging stop and end up charging more than I need to because of the time it takes to eat. The car tells you the minimum target you need to get to the next stop or destination, so adding a buffer is OK.

 

[TEVOT]

I am in the process of planning a trip from San Antonio to Atlanta about 1000 miles each way. This will be for the Thanksgiving week (next week). I am actually more excited for the journey than I am the destination. I am drinking in all of the advice I am getting here.

 

[AZBill]

2040 miles is simply 3 legs of about 700 miles. The percent added to the total trip will be the same. Personally I think a 2000 mile trip is 3 days minimum to avoid fatigue.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

2040 miles is simply 3 legs of about 700 miles. The percent added to the total trip will be the same. Personally I think a 2000 mile trip is 3 days minimum to avoid fatigue.

Yep.

We drive a specific 950 mile (one-way) road trip at least a couple times a year. And we have been for 25 years. When we did the trip with a gas vehicle, it required one or two overnight stops and a total of 16 hours of driving. And cost a small fortune in gas.

With our Mustang or Lightning, it requires one or two overnight stops and a total of 16 hours of driving, including charging. The overnight stops with L2 charging save us 20 minutes of having to find a gas station in whatever town we stay in. We can now just leave the hotel/campground and hit the highway.

We’ve done the trip a couple of times in a single day. It took 16 hours. And we were miserable for the last six hours.

On long road trips, we aren’t on the road any longer in our EVs than we were in our gas vehicles. We arrive much more relaxed and we spend less money getting there.

 

[Tampamike]

I am in the process of planning a trip from San Antonio to Atlanta about 1000 miles each way. This will be for the Thanksgiving week (next week). I am actually more excited for the journey than I am the destination. I am drinking in all of the advice I am getting here.

Thanksgiving weekend = busier chargers. You might have to wait somewhere.

 

[AnimalChin]

Dallas? Never heard of it. Sorry.

 

[TEVOT]

Thanksgiving weekend = busier chargers. You might have to wait somewhere.

Thank you. I did not take that into consideration. I will have to make some changes. I was planning on using only Tesla superchargers (I plan to sign up for the Tesla membership at the first charging point) keeping EA and EV GO as "just in case". I'd planned on an overnight stop at a hotel with an L2 charger anywhere between Baton Rouge and NOLA.

 

[YeOldeTraveller]

Thanksgiving weekend = busier chargers. You might have to wait somewhere.

I did Detroit to Grand Junction last Thanksgiving. The biggest issue was the total closure of I-70 just west of the Eisenhower Tunnel. Ended up with an extra night on the road, but that also meant driving through the canyons in the daytime.

700 miles a day is a good balance of time and tired.

For timing, my best comparison is 715 miles for Atlanta to Detroit in January in 10F conditions. This is a 12 hour trip for my wife and I in my ICE sedan. This was 13.5 hours in the Mach-E Rally, or 12.5% longer. I know I did not make the best choices on that trip, so I expect adding 10% is reasonable.

 

[RickMachE]

How much "extra" time it takes totally depends on the length of the trip. If you leave with 100%, that gains you about 45 minutes of driving over an 80% leg. Good trip planning has you maximizing each leg, if possible (sometimes spacing of chargers makes it not possible), so that you arrive at your destination with as little charge as possible (assuming you plan on hotel or other destination charging).

We find that 3 charging stops, with arriving at our destination (4th charging "stop), is ideal. Sometimes we'll add 1, but that's it. But, if I could get to my final destination that evening, I'm doing it. Mostly I'm talking multi-day trips, with each day being 500+ miles, and stopping just before dinner time for the night.

I take the total mileage and divide by 500 to start, then see how it lays out. On average, it's a 15 to 20% incremental time versus a gas car, assuming with a gas car you gas and pee. We almost never waste time eating dinner at a sit down restaurant during a trip day, we either end at dinner time, or in rare cases where there are no good choices end of day we eat and then drive another 2 hours or less.

Trail Life Brewery in Grand Junction is one of the best breweries we've been to. Emma, the head brewer, knows her stuff, and the food is very good. We stopped for lunch on one trip (after having dinner on another trip) and took close to 2 hours out of our day because of this.

 

[bbulkow]

I’m thinking of taking a short drive from Seattle WA to Dallas TX via Butte MT, Salt Lake City, Denver.

But I’m having second thoughts.
Change my mind.

The only reason to drive instead of flying is because you enjoy a drive.

If you enjoy a drive, how many miles per day do you find enjoyable?

What kind of lunch do you like?

A quick routing with ABRP for me says 40 hours total with 6 hrs charging, which is around the usual nominal 15% time increase on a random route. I have 16 charge stops listed. '23 RWD ER.

That's with today's weather, which won't be tomorrow's weather, but isn't summertime distances.

With Tesla included, there aren't any iffy segments. Just at a casual eyeball it appears there are 3 to 4 stops between every stop they recommended. I think this could be easily done with minimal planning.

This gets all very much better if you catch some hotel chargers, because with 40 hours of travel time, and making a point of going out of the way (butte etc) you're doing it for the fun of it....

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