Supercharger Adventure

We’ve been planning our first long trip in our electric car with the children.   As of today, there needs to be a little more planning than we would have done with an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) car like our minivan.   Gas stations are far more prevalent than EV chargers.   But times are changing and charging stations continue to multiply across the nation.

There are tools online to make planning a trip with an electric car easier.   The most comprehensive site is evtripplanner.com which takes into account things such as your car make, model, tire size, how much over the speed limit you plan on driving, the outside temperature, what temperature you intend to keep the interior of the car and elevation.  

After entering in all the specifics of your car and trip destination the site creates a suggested route, including which charging stations to stop at and how many minutes you need to charge at each station.   For our upcoming trip to visit family in New Jersey, we’ll be taking a different route than we have in past years.   We’re also going to take a ferry, which the children are excited about.

The total trip time is a little longer from the plan we’ve mapped out, but the route avoids all the large cities and their traffic, which has extended our drive by multiple hours before.   The other thing we’ve had to factor in is our departure time.  The Tesla Superchargers are in specific locations, typically beside food and other retail.    We picked departure time so that we would arrive at a charging stop at or around lunch time.   My husband looked at the ferry times so we could coordinate with ferry departure times.

We can easily make the trip with three charge stops, two at fifteen minutes and one long charge at thirty-nine minutes (which we’ll use for our lunch stop).    We’ll know soon how it goes; the whole family is excited about taking a long trip in our “flying car”.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is very excited about going to visit his cousins.    Every morning they want it to be the day we leave.    This morning my son came to the edge of our bed at six-thirty and simply said, “I’m ready”.   I knew exactly what he was ready for.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Update on the nighttime underpants—success.   My daughter has been in underwear now for about two weeks.   Only one night did she have an accident and that was because we missed waking her up around midnight to go to the bathroom.   Soon I don’t think she’ll need to be woken up.   She’s made the transition easily.