Okay folks,

I leave this Friday at 5pm. Abrp says 5 stops. I've made up my own trip plan as well. ABRP uses 3 of my 5 stops. I'm only using tesla chargers, I find them to be more reliable on trips, and honestly just in general in my experience. I've made a log essentially with detailed information such as starting % stoping % how ling are we charging for, how much did it cost, that kind of stuff. Basically all of the information I've been searching for while planning this trip but couldn't find any real info. I'm going to post my form when I get back. Any last minute tips for 1k+ trips if any of you have don't them yet?

I've already made this trip in my traverse probably 15 times.

I'm planning on mostly maintaining a speed of 70 mph

 

Okay folks,

I leave this Friday at 5pm. Abrp says 5 stops. I've made up my own trip plan as well. ABRP uses 3 of my 5 stops. I'm only using tesla chargers, I find them to be more reliable on trips, and honestly just in general in my experience. I've made a log essentially with detailed information such as starting % stoping % how ling are we charging for, how much did it cost, that kind of stuff. Basically all of the information I've been searching for while planning this trip but couldn't find any real info. I'm going to post my form when I get back. Any last minute tips for 1k+ trips if any of you have don't them yet?

I've already made this trip in my traverse probably 15 times.

when people say Tesla is more reliable it depends on who you are comparing them to. Newer non tesla competitors using modern charging equipment such as IONNA and MB are very reliable. Even current gen EA is reliable as are the pilot/FJ stations generally. Tesla is a lot mroe reliable vs low end competitors and vs old EA stuff- not really much different compared to top tier competitors in 2025.

 

And with PlugShare you often get real world observations of the charger status that are just hours old. I always plan using ABRP or Google maps and then verify each recommended charger using PlugShare the day before or day of my trip.

 

Personally I’m sold on EA. Good prices and generally good location

 

they get a bad rap from EV veterans who have dealt with them in the past when they were struggling with hardware but they are solid now. Not only have they replaced a lot of older stuff, most of their current builds are 6 or 8 stalls.

 

I have had problems with two different EA locations this year, by which I mean extremely slow, like tens of KW. Maybe they were older ones that weren't updated, but that doesn't help much when they were where you needed them. And if you look at the Plugshare checkins, they have been that way for some time. OTOH, I have had perfect experiences with Pilot and Chargepoint, and all of the above were accurately represented on Plugshare. I only tried the poorly rated EA locations because if they did work, they would have been faster than the alternative Chargepoint.

I think this gets to the point that a key reason many people just default to Tesla is that they don't want to hassle looking up ratings and hoping that the EA they want is newer. And while others may work well if they are newer, Tesla - from what I have heard (I don't have an adapter) - isn't so variable. Others reliability is improving, but Tesla was already there.

 

They key with Tesla locations is really the number of stalls. Ive seen EV road trip videos where SC units are out of service or poor performing BUT you an usually go to the next one because there are so many. I was trying to do a test on my car and the tesla stall I went to (others weren't accessible because of how other cars were parked so I couldn't reach my port) had a broken handle.

If an EA has all 350kw units, its got newer stuff and that is the easy way to skip any older potentially less reliable locations. If I'm going on a trip with 5 stops maybe I don't feel like checking anything and I throw up my hands and go all Tesla- but for me such a long drive isn't common- maybe not even likely so spending a minute to look for a modern EA, IONNA, PFJ or anything else isn't a big deal.

I plan to drive to ME next summer and from what Im seeing you will almost be forced to use tesla depending on how far from Portland you go. But beyond a situation like that, it's not that hard to find decent non tesla charging in much of the country.