Recently I drove a Tesla Model 3 on an electric roadtrip from Southern California to Portland and back. The total distance was around 2,200 miles, with the bulk of the driving happening over the course of 5 days (3 up, 2 down), and I only “waited” for charging for about 25 minutes total over the whole trip.
There are many travelogues and youtube channels that go into deep analyses of efficiency and charging speed, with lots of detail on how exactly to plan an electric roadtrip. Though I typically do enjoy those sorts of details, I didn’t actually think to keep track of any of them during this trip, since they’re all sort of unnecessary at this point, because electric roadtrips are easy.
The roadtrip included a mixture of heavy driving days on interstates and lighter days on state routes with side routes and sightseeing. We had two drivers in the car, along with luggage for three, and didn’t bother to plan the route ahead of time, except for the goal of getting a little time on the Northern California/Oregon coast and seeing some coastal redwoods along the way. Both of us have plenty of experience driving and charging electric cars, though this is the longest electric roadtrip I personally have been on.
And that 25 minute number – that counts the amount of time spent waiting for charging and doing nothing else productive. If we were getting a meal, that was “free” charging time, since we need to eat anyway. In other words, time spent charging that would have otherwise been spent driving if we weren’t charging.
Side routes? Detours? No problem
It has been said many times that electric roadtrips are doable, as long as you stick to the plan and don’t deviate at all. Most chargers are along main routes which see the most traffic – smaller routes have fewer chargers, or slower ones, or don’t have any at all.
Well… we didn’t have a plan. We didn’t plan our route ahead around charger availability, merely left in the morning and charged where we wanted to, once we got hungry or needed to take a driving break. In the car’s navigation system, it’s easy to pull up a list of chargers, see what services exist at each stop, and search the map nearby for restaurants, hotels, bathrooms, and so on. And if you’re new to this whole thing, you can ask the car to route you to your destination and it will tell you where to charge and for how long (you can modify the plan, if you’d like, and we usually did).
Restaurants near the Tejon Ranch chargerSay “take me to Portland”and the car shows you this
Everything was straightforward until the second morning of the trip, where right before setting out towards the coast from Williams, CA, I sustained an injury which needed urgent care (I won’t bore you with the details of how badly my insurance company, Oscar, dealt with the situation, but they deserve mention for being unhelpful). Turns out there’s no urgent care in Williams, CA, so off we went on twisty roads towards the coast. After a couple hours through mountains and trees, we got to Fort Bragg, which along with urgent care facilities, also had a supercharger despite being quite far from anything that might be considered a main road.
The car’s ultrasonic sensors were not happy with me for this
We continued on and drove through the Avenue of the Giants, an area of coastal redwoods, the tallest trees in the world, which were breathtaking to behold and only made better by the silence of driving with electric propulsion. At one stop, a man in a truck remarked “you’re the first Tesla I’ve seen in four days,” presumably suggesting that Teslas mostly stick to the main roads and don’t get out to the more empty regions. We thought that was odd, since at no point on the trip did we feel restricted by charging concerns (and we did see other EVs – but maybe not as many as we saw on the main roads or near the cities).
Unfortunately we had to end our side-route adventure the next day, turning in through the mountains towards Grant’s Pass, due to the time loss associated with our medical adventure. The coastal route would have added about 2 hours (of driving, not charging), along with sightseeing time, and we had a dinner to get to – though charging in Bandon and Lincoln City on the coast would have been just about as easy as our charges in Grant’s Pass and Harrisburg were.
Charging is available, fast, and pleasant
Charging was never a problem during our electric roadtrip. We chose hotels with chargers (by checking PlugShare), but these hotels were in the towns we wanted to stop in, so we didn’t have to go out of our way to find these overnight charges.
Each overnight charge was “free,” insofar as it was included with the hotel, and it was nice to leave in the morning with a 100% charge (rather than ~80% which is the usual state of charge to leave a supercharger at). This provided more flexibility on where to charge during the day, and saved some money on supercharging fees.
Every charge save one or two was associated with a meal or bathroom break, which meant we spent little actual time charging during the trip. Every stop, by the time we were done with what we needed to do on the stop, the car was already ready to go with 200+ added miles of range.
Whether it be walking to and eating fast food, waiting to be seen at urgent care (whoops), devouring the haul from a local fruit stand, or having free wine samples (only the passenger of course), there was plenty to do at each stop and only ever a few minutes, if at all, spent “waiting” for the car to charge enough to continue on.
On that wine tasting point, a special mention goes to the Olsen Run Winery at the Harrisburg, OR supercharger, which exists poetically on the property of an old gas station (though for some reason isn’t listed in the in-car search for nearby restaurants – don’t be fooled, stop there anyway).
Instead of serving up stinky, cancer-causing dino juice, it now pushes electrons and delicious burgers (with veggie option), fries, shakes, and free wine tastings, and even serves as an event space (in… the middle of nowhere). It was such a pleasant stop that even though we didn’t need a charge, we stopped again on the way back South from Portland just for the burgers and conversation. We hope to see more entrepreneurial innovation with properties like this, converting stinky old gas stations into something much more pleasant.
And we didn’t even take advantage of every charge opportunity – one of which was actually easier for non-Teslas. We stopped at a rest stop right after the CA border just to look around, and by chance happened to find a free CCS/CHAdeMO DC fast charger there. We didn’t have the necessary CHAdeMO or CCS adapter, but didn’t need a charge anyway – though we still got an emotional charge, standing by a pleasant river, breathing clean air unsullied by gas station fumes, and seeing some unnervingly bold deer crawling all over the place on the rest stop lawn which was clearly marked “no pets.”
All told, we probably only spent a total of about 25 minutes across the whole trip doing nothing but charging. This was primarily at the last charge on the last day, where we stopped at an outlet mall (Tejon Ranch East supercharger) after business hours and spent about 15 minutes watching a couple play with their dog in the parking lot while charging. The point is: the amount of extra time spent actively charging across the whole trip was no more than the amount of active time it takes to fill up at gas stations – and, perhaps, even less.
650 miles in one day
Typically on roadtrips, I don’t like to do more than around 300 miles in a day. After that point you start feeling like you’ve been in the car forever, like you haven’t gotten to see or do anything outside of the car, you feel cooped up and tired and stressed and so on.
But, sometimes you just want to get home and rest your broken toe, and don’t have any particular sights you want to see along the boring I-5 in California. So, you spend the morning tooling around Mount Shasta after an overnight charge, then set out to drive almost the entire length of California in one day.
And when driving in a car with one driver with a broken toe and the other with a bum knee, autopilot is nice to have. While the promise of full self-driving is not here (…yet?), autopilot does work well on highways and helps reduce fatigue on a long drive like this.
On this 650 mile day, we stopped for three charges – Woodland to get a pizza, Firebaugh for a taco, and Tejon Ranch. Again, we didn’t have to wait for the car until the very last charge, where we weren’t hungry and didn’t need a break, so waited about 15 minutes.
Even if people recognize that electric roadtrips are doable, they will often carve out an exception for these long driving days, suggesting that they would be hindered by charging when they really need to make a lot of ground quickly. Well, given that we only “spent” 15 minutes charging during this 650 mile day (again, not counting the two fast food meals + bathroom breaks which we needed anyway), that doesn’t really sound like much of a hindrance given that at least one 10-minute gas stop would be necessary if the roadtrip were done on gas (and don’t forget the ~5-7 other gas stops that would have been needed over the 2,200-mile trip).
Reminders why electric roadtrips are important
We did make a brief stop during our longest driving day to look at Shasta Lake, which put a bit of a point on why we spent 5 days doing an electric roadtrip instead of the more convenient option of burning fuel in a plane to get to where we were going:
California, like many parts of the world, is experiencing historic drought. Shasta Lake, the largest reservoir in the state, is at critically low levels. The lake feeds the Bay Area and the Central Valley, the most agriculturally productive land in the nation which provides more than half of the fruits, vegetables and nuts for the entire US.
This drought is exacerbated by climate change, causing dry weather and high temperatures in the area. And climate change is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuel emissions from transportation are the largest contributor to climate change in the US (another major factor is animal agriculture – which not only produces methane emissions but uses large amounts of water).
The rest of the final day was spent driving through that valley, which also happens to be one of the more polluted places in the country. Air pollution from trucks and machinery gets trapped by the mountains, causing constant smog conditions. Despite being in a valley, you wouldn’t really know it, because much of the time you can’t see the mountains all around you due to the smog.
There’s supposed to be mountains in the background, but that thing in the foreground seems to obscure them…
So not only was an EV the right choice for the practical side of the roadtrip, but also for the greater picture – trying to avoid the environmental disasters caused by fossil fuel usage.
Your mileage may vary?
We encountered no charging reliability problems on the trip. There were a few supercharger connectors that weren’t working at some of the stops, but the car informed us ahead of time which ones were inactive and it never affected charge speed or the locations we chose to charge at.
Of course, this trip was on the West Coast of the US, mostly in California, the state with the most EVs. I have been assured that the trip would be more difficult elsewhere, or on a network other than Tesla’s superchargers (though, other cars will gain access to Tesla’s system soon™). Other networks probably wouldn’t be as easy, and other cars don’t have as elegant a routing and “nearby search” system as the Tesla system, or as simple of a “plug-and-charge” payment system like superchargers have.
But I have also been assured that this trip would be difficult, with so many people talking about how hard it is to take roadtrips in an electric car.
But it wasn’t hard, it was easy. So this suggests to me that those other trips, while perhaps not as easy as mine, may well be more possible than people think they are.
I will reiterate, again, that we did not plan a route ahead. We didn’t plug our trip into ABRP or other route planners. We didn’t stick to a specific speed so we could make our charging plan. We changed routes frequently by whim, we charged when or where we felt like doing so, or where there was a restaurant we were interested in. None of this was an issue. It was just a regular roadtrip, but less polluting, more pleasant, and cheaper.
And yet, there is a persistent myth that since EVs are supposedly incapable (they are not, as displayed above) of doing this one thing that most cars will never do, they are therefore not an acceptable source of transportation. Nevermind that they are superior in normal driving tasks – and, as displayed above, not even inferior in this one – somehow this myth still persists.
It should also be noted that trips like this are not a common occurrence. As a practical matter, most cars will rarely if ever do a roadtrip like this. But, particularly in America, cars are not sold for what they’ll be used for, but for every conceivable purpose the buyer could ever imagine using them for. You’re not being sold a tool, you’re being sold a dream – the dream of freedom, in the form of a $1,000/mo car payment.
This is the reason the “electric roadtrips are impossible!” myth has gained so much traction – Americans are buying the dream of the Great American Roadtrip, and think that an EV makes that dream impossible.
Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not impossible. In fact, it’s more than possible – it’s even better than the alternative.
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Over the next two years, homebuilder Lennar is outfitting more than 1,500 new Colorado homes with Dandelion Energy’s geothermal systems in one of the largest residential geothermal rollouts in the US.
The big draw for homeowners is lower energy bills and cleaner heating and cooling. Dandelion claims Lennar homeowners with geothermal systems will collectively save around $30 million over the next 20 years compared to using air-source heat pumps. Geothermal heat pumps don’t need outdoor AC units or conventional heating systems, either.
Geothermal systems use the sustained temperature of the ground to heat or cool a home. A ground loop system absorbs heat energy (BTUs) from the earth so that it can be transferred to a heat pump and efficiently converted into warmth for a home. Dandelion says its ground loop systems are built to last for over 50 years and should require no maintenance.
Dandelion’s geothermal system uses a vertical ground closed-loop system that is installed using well-boring equipment and trenched back into the house to connect to a heat pump. The pipes circulate a mixture of water and propylene glycol, a food-grade antifreeze, that absorbs the ground’s temperature. A ground source heat pump circulates the liquid through the ground loops and it exchanges its heat energy in the heat pump with liquid refrigerant. The refrigerant is converted to vapor, compressed to increase its temperature, then passed through a heat exchanger to transfer heat to the air, which is circulated through a home’s HVAC ductwork.
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Daniel Yates, Dandelion Energy’s CEO, called the partnership with Lennar a “new benchmark for affordable, energy-efficient, and high-quality home heating and cooling.” By streamlining its installation process, Dandelion is making geothermal systems simpler and cheaper for homebuilders and homeowners to adopt.
This collaboration is happening at a time when Colorado is pushing hard to meet its clean energy targets. Governor Jared Polis is excited about the move, calling it a win for Coloradans’ wallets, air quality, and the state’s leadership on geothermal energy. Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, said that “ensuring affordable access to geothermal heating and cooling is essential to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and we’re excited to be part of such a huge effort to bring this technology to so many new Colorado homes.”
And it’s not just about cutting emissions – geothermal heat pumps help reduce peak electric demand. Analysis from the Department of Energy found that widespread adoption of these systems could save the US from needing 24,500 miles of new transmission lines. That’s like crossing the continental US eight times.
Colorado is making this transition a lot more attractive through state tax credits and Xcel Energy’s rebate programs. These incentives slash upfront costs for builders like Lennar, making geothermal installations more financially viable. The utility’s Clean Heat Plan and electrification strategy are working to keep energy bills low while meeting climate goals.
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Polestar has removed the Polestar 2 from its US website header in an early sign of how new tariffs will restrict choice and competition for American consumers, thus increasing prices.
The Polestar 2 is Polestar’s first full EV – the original Polestar 1 was a limited-edition plug-in hybrid.
It started production in 2020 in Luqiao, Zhejiang, China, where Polestar and Volvo’s parent corporation, Geely, was founded.
Unfortunately, that interacts with some news that has been getting a lot of play lately: tariffs.
The US has been gradually getting stupider and stupider on the issue of tariffs, apparently determined to increase prices for Americans and decrease the competitiveness of American manufacturing in a time of change for the auto industry.
It is widely acknowledged (by anyone who has given it a few seconds of thought) that tariffs increase prices and that trade barriers tend to reduce competition, leading to less innovation.
It started with 25% tariffs on various products from China, implemented in the 2018-2020 timeframe. Then, in 2024, President Biden implemented a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, effectively stopping their sale in the US. These tariffs included some exceptions and credits based on Volvo’s other US manufacturing, which Polestar had used to keep the most expensive versions of the 2 on sale in the US, while restricting the lower-priced versions from sale. Nevertheless, they were a bad idea.
Now, in yet another step to make America less competitive and inflate the prices of goods more for Americans, we got more tariff announcements today from a senile ex-reality TV host who wandered into the White House rose garden (which he does not belong in). These tariffs do not include the same exceptions as the previously-announced Biden tariffs.
Apparently this has all been enough for Polestar, as even in advance of today’s tariff announcements, the company suddenly removed its Polestar 2 from its website header today.
The change can be seen at polestar.com/us, where only the Polestar 3 and 4 are listed in the header area. On other sites, like the company’s Norwegian website or British website, the car is still there. The Polestar 2 page is still up on the US website, but it isn’t linked to elsewhere on the site (we’ll see how long it stays up).
We reached out to Polestar for comment, but didn’t hear anything back before publication. We’ll update if we do.
It makes sense that the Polestar 2 would still be for sale elsewhere, as it only started production in 2020. Most car models are available for at least 7 years, so this is an earlier exit than expected.
So it’s likely that all of the tariff news is what had an effect in killing the Polestar 2.
Then again, this is also just the second day of a new fiscal quarter. Perhaps the timing offers Polestar an opportunity to make a clean break – especially now that the lower-priced version of its Polestar 3 is available.
Despite the lower $67.5k base price of the new Polestar 3 variant, that represents a big increase in price for the brand, which had sold the base model Polestar 2 for around $50k originally, before all of these tariffs.
Update: Polestar got back to us with comment, but understandably, it doesn’t say much:
Polestar is a three-car company and Polestar 2 is available for customers now. There are a select number of Polestar 2s in stock at retailers that can be found on Polestar.com, but Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 will be the priority in the North American market.
Volvo decided to build the car in Belgium and export it to the US, but now that new tariffs apply to the EU as well, maybe that low-priced, awesome, fast, small EV will instead stay in Europe instead of being shipped overseas.
This shows how mercurial tariff fiats from an ignoramus are bad for manufacturing, as they mean that companies can’t make plans – and if they can’t make plans, eventually, they’ll probably just write the country making the random decisions out of their plans so they don’t have to deal with the nonsense.
And we’ve heard this from every businessperson or manufacturer representative we’ve talked to at any level of the automotive industry. Nobody thinks any of this is a good idea, because it objectively is not. All it does is make business harder, make the US less trustworthy, make things more expensive, and overall just harm America.
Yet another way that Americans are getting screwed by this stupid nonsense. 49% of you voted for inflation, and 100% of Americans are now getting it. Happy Inflation Day, everyone.
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Lucid Motors (LCID) has now had six straight quarters with higher deliveries. The delivery record comes just as Lucid prepares to begin delivering its first electric SUV, the Gravity, to customers by the end of this month.
Lucid sets sixth straight delivery record in Q1 2025
Lucid delivered 3,109 vehicles in the first quarter, up 58% from last year and topping its previous record of 3,099 set in Q4 2024.
The company also produced 2,213 vehicles at its Casa Grande, Arizona, plant in the first three months of 2025, an increase of 28% from last year. Another 600 vehicles were in transit to Saudi Arabia, where they will be assembled at its new AMP-2 plant, Lucid’s first international manufacturing facility.
At this pace, Lucid will easily top the roughly 10,200 vehicles it delivered last year in 2025 at around 12,500. Lucid will likely see even more growth this year, with customer deliveries of its first electric SUV starting soon.
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During the Gravity SUV’s “celestial arrival” last week in NYC, Lucid’s interim CEO Marc Winterhoff said the EV maker is “nearly finished building all the vehicles that we wanted to build to put them into our studio and for test drives.”
Q4 2022
Q1 2023
Q2 2023
Q3 2023
Q4 2023
Full-year 2023
Q1 2024
Q2 2024
Q3 2024
Q4 2024
Full-year 2024
Q1 2025
Lucid EV deliveries by quarter
1,932
1,406
1,404
1,457
1,734
6,001
1,967
2,394
2,781
3,099
10,241
3,109
Lucid (LCID) EV deliveries by quarter 2023 to Q1 2025
Winterhoff added, “by the end of April, we will resume customer deliveries of the Gravity.” Lucid delivered the first models in December, but they were for employees, friends, and family.
Lucid calls the Gravity a “no compromise” SUV with a range of up to 450 miles, 120 cubic feet of interior space, advanced technology, and sports car-like performance. The Gravity Grand Touring starts at $94,900, while the Touring model will arrive later this year at $79,900.
Lucid Gravity Grand Touring in Aurora Green (Source: Lucid)
The new delivery record comes after Winterhoff told Fox Business last week that Lucid has seen a “dramatic uptick over the past two months” in orders from former Tesla drivers.
Currently, “50% of all the orders we have are from former Tesla owners,” Lucid’s CEO said. Winterhoff added that many are “looking for an option to not continue having a Tesla.”
Will we see the trend continue? Tesla announced earlier today that it delivered 336,681 vehicles in the first quarter, far less than the 390,000 Wall Street analysts expected.
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