From April to October 2022, we journeyed nearly 27,000 miles on an electric road trip to all 51 National Parks in the Lower 48 states. We believe we are the first ones to do that circuit in an electric vehicle—perhaps the only ones.
The trip was an experience of a lifetime. The parks were magnificent.
And the trek proved that electric cars are ready for prime time, and that charging on road trips is easier than most people think.
Why did we make this trip? And where did the idea originate?
We have two electric cars—a 2014 Nissan Leaf and a 2020 Tesla Model Y, named Elliot. We promote the virtues of EVs every chance we get with family, friends, and colleagues from work—or pretty much anyone who asks us about EVs. In those discussions, we are continually amazed by the questions we get asked, especially about the purported difficulties of charging.
The trip was a chance to show that EVs are ready for prime time—not just to assert it.
We have loved National Parks our entire lives. Prior to our 2022 journey, we had visited about 20 of the parks—always loving the experience. Every year, we added another one or two parks to our list.
In 2016, the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, we noted newspaper stories about people who road-tripped to all the parks in the Lower 48 states. We filed the idea away: that trip would be fun to do sometime.
In 2019, we visited Zion and Bryce Canyon in Utah, with a side trip to the Grand Staircase of the Escalante, a National Monument. At the end of our excursion to Escalante, we stopped for lunch in Boulder, Utah. That’s Boulder, Utah—not Colorado–population 236. We were in one of the most remote locations in the country, and there before us in the parking lot stood four EV chargers. The idea for the electric road trip to all the National Parks was born in that moment. If there are chargers in Boulder, Utah, you can go anything in an EV.
Later, in 2022 as we began the electric road trip, our mantra—printed on the cards we handed out to people we met along the way—became:
If we can go to all the National Parks in an electric vehicle, you can go anywhere in an EV.
And indeed, we proved that was true. We didn’t just assert that you can go anywhere in an EV—we did it.
What did we learn from our electric road trip?
Electric vehicles are ready for prime time.
Advocates for transitioning to electric vehicles, electrifying our buildings and machines, and generating power from renewable energy sources face constant skepticism about feasibility. The best answer to those endless arguments is existence. Or to paraphrase Nike’s business slogan: Just Do It.
That became the animating principle of our electric road trip to the National Parks—many of which are in the most remote locations of the country.
To make a six-month story short, we did it. And without much difficulty.
So next time you hear claims that electric vehicles aren’t ready for prime time—that they’re unproven technology, that chargers are too hard to find and take too much time—tell them you know two electrekers who drove an EV to all the National Parks in the Lower 48 states to some of the most remote places in America.
The car was a joy to drive—with smooth, quiet acceleration and one-pedal driving enabled by regenerative braking. It had no mechanical issues or maintenance in almost 27,000 miles of driving.
There are fast chargers and hotel overnight chargers all over America. Electricity is ubiquitous and charging spots can be found even in the most remote locations. Most of our charging was done while we slept or ate lunch, with little time spent waiting for the car to charge.
In 2022, when we embarked on our trek, Tesla’s Superchargers provided the leading fast charging network, and we could only have completed our electric road trip in a Tesla. But the other fast charging networks are being expanded rapidly, and adaptors to allow any EV to use any fast charger are becoming available, making a trip like ours feasible for any long-range electric vehicle in the coming years.
In many places during the journey, the car was charged with clean renewable electricity from solar, wind, and water power—sources that will become a larger and larger share of the electric grid with each passing year.
And the cost to “fuel” our 27,000-mile road trip? About half what we would have paid for gasoline.
The car was a joy to drive, providing an outstanding driving experience.
The inherent advantages of vehicles powered by electric motors—quick, quiet, smooth acceleration—made the car a joy to drive during 27,000 miles of travel over six months. One-pedal driving enabled by regenerative braking proved its value during many miles of traveling on mountain roads. And the car’s responsive handling made for an outstanding driving experience along roads like the Pacific Coast Highway.
Our Tesla Model Y was comfortable during many hours on the road, and it offered plenty of space for six-months of equipment and supplies. The extra compartments under the rear cargo area allowed us to bring camping equipment in case we ever needed it.
And the frunk—a front trunk made possible in most EVs because electric motors take less space than an internal combustion engine—provided a convenient space for storing backpacks and hiking poles, as well as the snorkeling gear needed at two of the parks.
We even had a week of traveling with four people and all our gear in the car when one of our sons and his friend joined us at one of the parks.
The car was totally reliable, with no maintenance or mechanical issues in nearly 27,000 miles of driving.
In conversations with friends who have recently purchased new gasoline-powered cars, we have asked them why they didn’t get an electric car.
The answer? Electric cars are unproven technology—too new, different from the cars they’re used to.
Never mind that electric motors have been around for more than a century. And never mind that we are surrounded in our homes by machines powered by electric motors—machines that run year after year with no need for maintenance or repair.
The same was true of our electric car. Not a single mechanical issue in nearly 27,000 miles of driving—some of it over roads of gravel, dirt, and even gypsum sand. No need for oil changes or tune-ups in almost 27,000 miles. How many oil changes would a gasoline-powered car have needed during a trip that long? Probably three or four.
Range of 300 miles was enough, but more would have been nice to have.
Our first EV, a 2014 Nissan Leaf, has a range of about 80-85 miles. Today, there are a number of EVs that offer range of 300 miles, including our Tesla Model Y.
Is 300 miles of range enough for long-distance road tripping?
Our experience traveling to some of the most remote places in America proved 300 miles is enough. We completed the trip, and we never were lower than 40-50 miles of remaining range in the battery. And our trip was the most challenging case, with some long distances to remote places.
The car’s range supported not only the travel from one park to the next, but also driving within the parks. Some of the National Parks are vast in size, making travel within them to see the sights a long-distance undertaking. Yellowstone, Olympic, and Big Bend are prime examples. We often spent two to four hours driving in the car to see attractions in far-flung sectors of those parks.
As we traveled around the country, the car’s range enabled us to go where we wanted to go, to see what we wanted to see. For example, we traveled back roads from Winthrop, Washington, just west of North Cascades National Park, to Spokane to see the Grand Coulee Dam along the way.
Almost never did we divert from our desired route due to range constraints. The one exception was a result of temporary limitations on the availability of fast chargers.
Leaving Baker, Nevada, home base for Great Basin National Park, we had planned to travel to our next park, Death Valley, through central Nevada, with a stop at the Supercharger in Tonopah. But we decided to take the safer southern route through Utah’s Interstate 15 and Las Vegas after contemplating a 230-mile drive on Route 6 across mountains and deserts in one of the most desolate areas of the country.
We probably could have made it, but we decided it was a risk not worth taking after having seen miles on the car’s range indicator drop faster than miles on the navigation map during high-speed highway travel during the trip. We regretted not seeing that part of Nevada, and we could have made it with confidence if the planned Supercharger in Ely along the way had been completed by the time of our trip.
Although 300 miles of range is enough, range is like money and hard disk space—more is better. The Nevada case shows why a little more range would be nice to have. With another 50 miles of range, we could have made even the most challenging leg of the trip without a second thought.
The constraints on fully charging an EV’s battery are the other reason a little more range would be nice to have. The longevity of lithium-ion batteries is best preserved by keeping the charge between 20 and 80 percent, while avoiding repeated full charges to 100 percent. Due to the demands of our travel to remote locations, we were frequently charging the car to 100 percent, especially after we started noticing that 300 miles on the range indicator did not equate to 300 miles of actual range at highway speeds. That practice came at some cost to the battery’s capacity.
With a little more range, it would have been much easier to charge to only 80-90 percent in most cases.
Completing a charging session before it reaches 100 percent also saves time because charging slows as the battery nears full capacity.
Charging was mostly a non-issue.
Now to the issue that everyone wants to ask about—charging the car during our trip.
The short version is that charging was mostly a non-issue—with respect to both the availability of chargers and the time to charge.
The availability of chargers was a non-issue for three reasons. First, the Supercharger fast-charger network can get you anywhere you want to go in America. Second, we also got an overnight charge at most of the hotels where we stayed. And, third, electricity is ubiquitous even in remote areas, so there’s always a spot to charge.
And we spent very little time charging because it usually took place while we were sleeping or eating lunch.
The Supercharger network is the gold standard for fast charging on road trips.
Tesla’s Supercharger network is superb in every way. It sets the gold standard that other fast charging companies should seek to emulate. But the others aren’t there yet.
In 2022, we could only have completed our electric road trip to 51 National Parks in a Tesla using the Supercharger network. We could not have done it in an EV that uses the alternate fast charging system, the Combined Charging Standard (CCS). In a few years that will probably be feasible. But not in 2022.
Tesla got it right with the Supercharger network.
It has outstanding geographic coverage.
Stations are well located, with good amenities nearby.
The chargers are fast and reliable and available, with many charging units at each station.
And the network is easy to use, and integrated into the car’s navigation system.
Tesla made an early commitment to providing a nationwide fast charging network to support the electric cars it makes and sells. Our electric road trip benefited from Tesla’s commitment to building a Supercharger network that enables travel to every corner of the country. And travel to every corner of America is exactly what we did.
Superchargers allow Tesla drivers to get anywhere in the country. We tested that proposition, and the Superchargers met the test.
We traveled to one of the southern-most places in the country—Big Bend in Texas.
We traveled to the furthest northwestern part of the country—the tip of the Olympic Peninsula.
We traveled to the Canadian border in northern Minnesota to visit Voyageurs National Park.
We traveled to northern Maine to visit Acadia.
And we traveled to several remote, desert locations in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada.
Superchargers got us everywhere we wanted to go, but there were times when the car warned us that we couldn’t get back. A good example was our trip to Big Bend. We filled up at the Fort Stockton Supercharger on Interstate 10, and as we headed south, the car warned us to turn around before we would be out of range for the return trip. That’s where Destination Chargers and other Level 2 chargers—chargers at hotels for overnight charging—proved their worth. They are discussed in the next section.
Superchargers set the standard for fast charging—in geographic coverage, as well as other characteristics. You wouldn’t want cell phone service that works in Virginia but doesn’t work in Texas or Utah. Similarly, fast charging networks—if they want to be considered real networks—need to provide universal coverage, and not just cherry-pick areas where there are lots of EVs. Tesla gets this point with its Supercharger network, and other charging companies would be well served to follow that standard.
Superchargers are fast. The first generation pumped electrons at a rate of 120 kilowatts. The second generation bumped that to 150 kilowatts, and the latest generation at the time of our trip, Version 3, operates at 250 kilowatts. We used all three types, but the different speeds didn’t actually matter as much as we expected because the car was always done charging before we had finished eating lunch.
We used Superchargers 112 times during our six-month, 27,000-mile electric journey. Virtually all of them were located near one or more restaurants. Our favorites were the ones at rest stops with a choice of fast food restaurants.
Almost all the Supercharger stations have eight or more chargers. A couple have 40. In 112 stops, we never encountered a situation where we had to wait for a charger, though it was close a couple of times.
We never encountered a Supercharger station that was down. There were a couple of units that had damage, usually because someone had backed into them, but there were plenty of other available chargers in those cases.
We encountered one—almost—exception to this record of near-perfect reliability. And it actually demonstrated the excellence of the network.
While driving up the Oregon coast toward Portland, the car’s navigation system gave us a warning message that our planned Supercharger in Lincoln City was down. We contacted Tesla’s road service on the phone, and they informed us that they already knew about the problem and had dispatched a repair team. By the time, we got there, the station was already back up, though we no longer needed it because we had stopped for lunch at a lodge with Destination Chargers.
A reliable network needs to be closely monitored, and the Supercharger network passed that test with flying colors.
Superchargers are easy to use. You just back into a space—the hardest part for those of us who are backup challenged—and plug in. After a few seconds, the green light on the car’s charging port comes on and you’re Supercharging. The cost is automatically charged to your Tesla account, which you can track online. No activation codes, no special apps to use, no credit cards needed.
The stations are open 24/7 and are well lit.
For road trips, overnight chargers at hotels are equally important as fast chargers.
Fast chargers like Tesla’s Superchargers get most of the attention during discussions of the EV charging infrastructure. And rightly so, because they are obviously essential for road trips.
But overnight chargers at hotels are just as important for road trips, as we found during our six-month journey to the National Parks.
Chargers at hotels come in two flavors.
Units that charge Tesla vehicles are called Destination Chargers. Many hotels have them because Tesla offers free hardware to establishments that apply—a smart strategy to build the charging infrastructure in a way that benefits both Tesla and the hotels, which get added business from EV owners who find the chargers, and links to the hotels, on Tesla’s website.
Units that charge other EVs are called J-1772 chargers, or Level 2 chargers. Tesla vehicles can use these chargers with a simple plug adaptor provided with the car.
Both Destination Chargers and Level 2 J-1772 chargers operate at 240 volts and can fully charge an EV overnight.
During our electric road trip, we used 30 Destination Chargers, almost all of them free. We also used 11 Level 2 chargers, taking advantage of the adaptor provided by Tesla that allows a J-1772 charger to plug into the Tesla charging port.
Why are these overnight chargers at hotels so important for electric roads trips?
With an overnight charge at most of our hotels, we started each day with a full “tank.” The car charged while we slept, saving time that would have otherwise been spent at a Supercharging stop during the day. With overnight chargers, we usually had to Supercharger only once during lunch, or not at all if our next destination was nearby. In Utah, for example, most of our hotels had Destination Chargers, so we were able to travel across the state without using Superchargers.
Charging at hotels also helped us get around the parks during our visits. Many of the parks are vast, so we did a lot of driving within many of them, in addition to travel between them. For example, in Yellowstone, some parts of the park were as much as two hours away from our lodge. We were able to do all that driving without going outside the park to use the Supercharger in West Yellowstone because we charged most nights at the Level 2 chargers near our lodge.
Chargers at our hotels also allowed us to return from remote areas to the major highways where Superchargers are located. For example, the charger at the Lodge at Whitefish Lake near Glacier National Park allowed us to get to the Supercharger in Missoula, Montana, on the way south to Yellowstone.
Even in the most remote places, electricity is ubiquitous and can provide a charge with an EV mobile charger.
There are EV chargers all over the country—many more than most people realize. But there are still a few remote areas where they are scarce. We traveled to some of those places during our electric road trip to the National Parks. But even in places where there are no chargers, there are ways to charge an EV.
What’s the secret?
Electricity is ubiquitous.
And not just standard 120-volt electrical outlets. If you know where to look, 240-volt outlets suitable for fully charging an EV overnight are widely available. In fact, they are almost always available in those remote locations.
Why?
Because those remote locations usually have campgrounds for RVs. And campgrounds have electrical hookups—typically 240-volt NEMA 14-50 outlets. One of those, combined with a mobile charger like the one that came with our Tesla EV, makes the functional equivalent of a Destination Charger. In fact, it’s better than a Destination Charger in one way: RV sites can be reserved, so you don’t have to worry about potential competition for a charging spot at the end of the day.
We used the campground solution twice during our electric road trip.
At Lassen Volcanic in northern California, one of our favorite parks, we stayed at the nearby Highlands Ranch Resort. An affiliated campground is directly across the road, and we rented a RV site there. It provided a perfect charging solution, with the added bonus that it could be reserved. It also provided an opportunity to share National Park stories with some of the campers, as well as another Tesla owner doing the same thing we were.
Great Basin in Nevada is one of the most remote National Parks. Baker, Nevada is what passes for its gateway town, but there’s not much there. The motel we selected, the Stargazer Inn, didn’t have a charger at the time of our visit. But they do have a few RV sites along with the motel—in fact, in the same parking lot. So we plugged our mobile charger into the RV hookup we rented and had a reliable charger every night.
Great Basin also provided one of our favorite stories from our electric road trip. At the Visitor Center, we ran into another Tesla owner. Seeing our Virginia license plate, he approached us and asked how in the world we had made it to Baker, Nevada in our EV, and how we were charging in such a remote location during our visit. He had actually rented a gas-powered SUV for his family’s visit to the park, because he didn’t think charging would be available. But he could have driven his Tesla—because electricity is ubiquitous.
RV campgrounds aren’t the only charging solution when chargers are not available in remote locations. Houses also have electricity. And they usually have 240-volt outlets suitable for overnight charging.
North Cascades, in northern Washington near the Canadian border, is a beautiful park. Part of its appeal is its relatively undeveloped condition—making it a backpacker’s paradise. There are very limited lodging accommodations and other infrastructure. There are a few Level 2 chargers in the nearby town of Newhalem. But they are located in a parking lot and near the general store—nowhere near any overnight lodging. Sitting in a parking lot for hours to charge at the end of the day didn’t seem like a good solution, though it was a good backup option.
Our solution?
We rented a wonderful VRBO house in Marblemount, just a few miles down the road from the park. With the advance permission of the owner, we used a clothes dryer outlet that was no longer in use, located in a room right next to the side door, to charge each night.
To prepare, we had brought along with us on the trip a heavy-duty NEMA 14-30 30 amp extension cord, along with the appropriate Tesla adaptor plug for the mobile charger. This arrangement worked perfectly—like the RV hookups, providing the functional equivalent of a Destination Charger. The only downside was leaving the side door of the house ajar for the extension cord. We used towels to keep the bugs out, and we unplugged when we went to bed to avoid a nocturnal visit from one of the local bears.
Electricity is ubiquitous. Even away from grid.
Big Bend in southern Texas is another remote National Park, with an undeveloped infrastructure. At the time of our visit in 2022, there were no hotels with chargers in Terlingua, the park’s gateway town. The nearest one was in Marathon, 80 miles to the north—a long drive for daily travel to and from the park.
After some searching, we found a ranch-style B&B a few miles north of Terlingua that operates totally off the grid. They have a solar array and a large battery system that powers the entire complex. Just prior to our visit, they had expanded the solar system and installed an outside 240-volt outlet like the ones used at RV campgrounds. They promised it would be ready for our visit, and they tested it the day before our arrival.
After first stopping in the park during the afternoon, we pulled into the ranch at the end of the day and found the solar array out back. The car had 40 miles of range remaining. As the first guest to use the new system, we experienced our first case of range anxiety.
We plugged our mobile charger into the outlet and waited for the familiar green light on the car’s charge port to appear. Nothing. Range anxiety reached a new level. Not knowing whether the outlet had been left on or off, we pulled the switch. After a few seconds, the green light appeared. Relief.
The system worked perfectly every night. And we needed it, because Big Bend’s vast size, together with the travel to and from Terlingua, required us to do lots of driving every day.
And, of course, we needed enough range at the end of our visit to get back north to the Supercharger at Fort Stockton.
This was my favorite charging setup of the entire trip. It not only showed that you can go anywhere in an EV—even off the grid. It also allowed us to run on 100 percent clean electricity for the entire time we were traveling around Big Bend. As we say, we were truly runningonsouler during our visit to Big Bend.
If the solar-powered outlet hadn’t worked, our backup would have been a 120-volt outlet in our cabin. That certainly would have limited our range and activities, but it would have been useful, as discussed in the next section.
Level 1 charging from a standard 120-volt outlet was unexpectedly useful.
Prior to our trip, I had always regarded Level 1 charging using a standard 120-volt electrical outlet as virtually useless, given how long it takes to fully charge a battery. Level 1 charging adds about 5 miles of range per hour and takes more than 24 hours to fully charge an EV battery.
But you don’t always need a full charge. Sometimes, all you need is a little extra range to get to your next destination, or the next Supercharger. With a charging session starting in the late afternoon, a Level 1 charge can add 50-70 miles by the next morning. And that was all we needed on a few occasions.
Sequoia National Park has no chargers for electric vehicles. That is somewhat inexplicable given its remote mountainous location in California—the state with the most EVs. The nearest Supercharger is in Traver, California—86 range-eating miles up the mountains to the Wuksachi Lodge in the park. That uphill drive left us with limited range for travel within the park and our eventual return to Traver.
The problem was solved by charging at an external 120-volt outlet near the lodge, which added at least 50 miles each night—plenty for our travel within the park each day.
Level 1 charging also served as a useful backup when we ran into problems with a planned charging location.
A good example was our trip across Route 160 in southern Colorado from Mesa Verde National Park to Great Sand Dunes. This has long been a “dead zone” for Superchargers, though Tesla is finally adding one in Alamosa.
We left Mesa Verde with a full charge, thanks to the Destination Charger at the Far View Lodge there. That was plenty to get to Alamosa, south of Great Sand Dunes. But not enough to get to the next Supercharger after our visit to the park.
Our hotel in Alamosa had two Level 2 chargers, which would provide plenty of charge to visit the park and then travel to our next destination. But the activation system for the chargers wasn’t working during our visit. There were other options in town, but those chargers were not near the hotel—inconvenient for overnight charging.
Instead, we asked the manager if we could use the external outlet near the front entrance to the hotel. That turned out to be just what we needed. We added 70 miles from the mid-afternoon to the next morning—enough to get us to Great Sand Dunes and then on to the Supercharger at Poncha Springs, Colorado, with 40 miles of range to spare.
This particular route through southern Colorado will no longer be a challenge in the future because Tesla plans to add a Supercharger at Alamosa in late 2023. In addition, there are a number of CCS fast chargers along Route 160. Tesla now makes an adaptor for using CCS chargers—something that would have been a helpful backup during our trip.
Regenerative braking came in handy—boosting range when we traveled downhill from remote mountain locations.
The electric motors in EVs can operate as a braking system when traveling downhill. This feature recaptures energy and sends it back to the battery. EVs vary in the aggressiveness with which they brake when the driver lets up on the accelerator. The regenerative braking on our Tesla is strong enough to allow one-pedal driving, which is a real pleasure when traveling on mountain roads.
In addition to enabling one-pedal driving, regenerative braking can also provide useful range augmentation when traveling down from a mountain. Earlier, we recounted the loss of range when traveling up the mountains to Sequoia National Park. But the other side of that coin is the significant range that is regained when going back down. Our return trip from Sequoia gave us a significant range boost, allowing us to make it back to the Supercharge at Traver with range to spare—even though we had limited charging capability while in the park.
Regenerative braking also gave a significant range boost when we traveled back down from Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. That is another remote location with limited charging options within the park. At the end of our stay, we left the lodge with 234 miles of range. Traveling downhill, we used zero range in the first 56 miles of driving. That extra range allowed us to skip the Supercharger in Myrtle Creek and drive all the way to our next destination in Bandon on the Oregon coast.
PlugShare is an invaluable information resource for finding chargers.
All EV owners know about PlugShare. It is the wiki for chargers, available on an app or their website. PlugShare is a wonderful information resource that shows on its map just about every EV charger in the country. For each station, it shows the number and type of chargers. It also includes photos and useful notes and reviews from users.
We used PlugShare extensively during the planning of our electric road trip to the National Parks. To identify hotels and lodges for our stays in the parks, we started with the Destination Chargers shown on the Tesla website. That covered most of our hotel stays.
But there were some places where there were no Destination Chargers. In those cases, we used PlugShare to look for Level 2 chargers at or near hotels at the parks and other stops along the way. That filled in most of the overnight charging gaps. We used Level 2 chargers at 11 hotels, including Taharaa Lodge in Estes Park near Rocky Mountain National Park, the Inn at Death Valley, the Ahwahnee in Yosemite, Lake Crescent Lodge in Olympic National Park, Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone, and the Bar Harbor Inn at Acadia.
PlugShare also helped fill in some challenging gaps in our charging plan. A prime example was the Cabin O’Pines Resort in Orr, Minnesota. That was one of the few options for lodging with charging near remote Voyageurs National Park adjacent to the Canadian border.
We also used PlugShare to find chargers to top off range a few times during lunch stops along the way. A good example was the trip from Yosemite to Lake Tahoe. Leaving Yosemite, we traveled east over the famous Tioga Pass to exit the park and then headed north on Route 395. When we stopped for lunch in Bridgeport, California, PlugShare showed us a charger at Rhino’s Bar and Grill. The Tesla wall charger there added 50 miles during lunch while we enjoyed great BLTs and chatted with the owner. The extra range allowed us to skip our planned Supercharger stop in Gardnerville and head all the way to our lodge at Lake Tahoe.
Another good example of useful topping off made possible by PlugShare was a stop in Ironwood in northern Michigan. The trip from the Supercharger in Duluth, Minnesota to Marquette, Michigan is more than 250 miles. Stopping in Ironwood for lunch, we used PlugShare to find a nearby Level 2 charger operated by ChargePoint. During lunch, we added about 50 miles of range, giving us a margin to make the rest of the trip to our destination in Marquette without experiencing range anxiety.
The cost of charging was about half the cost of gasoline.
During our electric road trip to 51 National Parks, we traveled nearly 27,000 miles. That would have been a lot of gasoline—and a lot of gas money—if we had been driving an internal combustion engine car. The cost of going electric was about half what it would have been with gasoline.
If we had been driving an internal combustion engine car with gas mileage of 35 mpg, the trip would have consumed about 765 gallons of gasoline. At $4 per gallon, that would have cost more than $3,000. A 25 mpg car would have used more than 1,000 gallons of gasoline at a cost of $4,000.
Our 112 Supercharger sessions cost $1,668.13. We spent another $100 or so on a few Level 2 charging sessions.
A good part of our cost advantage resulted from the complimentary charging at hotels where we used Destination Chargers and other Level 2 chargers.
Supercharging used to enjoy a bigger cost advantage. But Tesla has raised rates over the last couple of years. I can remember when rates were around 25 cents per kilowatt-hour. During our 2022 trip, rates varied across the country. Most rates were around 45 cents, plus or minus a couple of cents, with some in the mid-30s.
Although rates have gone up, we didn’t object because we’re happy to see the revenue plowed back into the continued expansion of the Supercharger network.
We spent almost no time charging, with exceptions only when our lodging didn’t have a charger.
Surprised?
People read about charging times measured in hours, or 30 minutes or more at a fast charger. Those who haven’t yet made the EV transition envision long waits in their cars, as though they were at a gas station standing by the pump.
But EV owners know that the paradigm for charging is different than pumping fuel at a gas station. You don’t stop to charge an EV like you do to fill the car’s tank at a gas station.
Instead, you charge while you’re parked to do something else.
Most of the time, the other thing is sleeping or eating.
During our trip, we almost always stayed at hotels with an overnight charger. In those cases, we would plug in upon arrival and be greeted in the morning with a “full tank.” Time spent charging? Zero minutes. The car was charging, but we spent the time sleeping.
While traveling along the highways, we would typically stop at a Supercharger at lunchtime and charge while eating. In virtually every case, the car was done charging before we were done eating. In fact, in locations where Superchargers were in high demand, we would get a buzz from the Tesla app telling us to move the car soon or we would get charged idle fees. Time spent charging in those cases? Zero minutes. The car was charging, but we spent the time eating.
The exceptions were in the few places where our hotel didn’t have a charger.
A prime example was the time we spent in Homestead, Florida, while visiting Everglades and Biscayne National Parks. At the time of our visit in early 2022, there were no hotels with chargers in Homestead. So we spent some time sitting at the Supercharger there during our visit. But even in that case, it didn’t really bother us because we spent the time tending to emails and social media posts, activities we otherwise would have been doing in the hotel.
And we can expect these situations to decline in number as more and more hotels install chargers. For example, the Harvey Morris B&B, where we stayed in Fayetteville, West Virginia, to visit New River Gorge, was still waiting to get a Destination Charger at the time of our visit. But they got one later in the year.
Sadly, the National Park Service was the weak link in the charging story.
We were able to visit all 51 National Parks in the Lower 48 states in an EV not because of the support of the National Park Service—but in spite of their weak support for EVs. That was a big surprise for a trip in 2022, especially in the second year of an Administration that supports the electric transition.
Some of the lodges within the parks have chargers. Those included Shenandoah, Mesa Verde, Death Valley, Yosemite, Olympic, Yellowstone, and Glacier. But many do not.
In some parks that have chargers at the lodges, the numbers are grossly inadequate. The best example is Yosemite—in California, the leading edge of the transition to electric cars. We stayed at the Ahwahnee Hotel. The two Level 2 chargers there—generously provided by Rivian, a new auto company that makes electric pickup trucks and SUVs—had a continuous competition for availability among the several EVs there at the time of our visit.
Many of the National Parks are in very remote locations. Recognizing that motorists need support, they typically have gas stations within the boundaries of the park. But at the time of our visit, none of them had fast chargers for electric cars. A few of them have a couple of Level 2 chargers at the Visitor Center, but none of them were fast chargers. With the coming electric transition, every National Park Visitor Center should have a half dozen fast chargers, either Superchargers or CCS chargers—as well as overnight chargers at the lodges in the parks.
And some of the particularly remote parks provide no support of any kind to electric vehicles. Sequoia, one of our favorite parks, is a good (bad) example. It is a steep drive up the mountains to the park, and the distances within the park—especially to the adjacent Kings Canyon National Park—are long. But there is not a single EV charger in the park.
Crater Lake, another remote park, has just two chargers. But they are Level 2 chargers at a restaurant—a few miles away from the lodge. There are none at the lodge for overnight charging. They are desperately needed.
A good example of a park that badly needs chargers is Big Bend. The park’s lodge, Chisos Mountain Lodge, is centrally located in the premier area of the park. But it lacks chargers, forcing visitors with EVs to find accommodations in Terlingua, which is 20 miles west of the park, or further north.
Another example is Mount Rainier. It is a long uphill drive to the premier lodge at Paradise, at the foot of the mountain. There are no chargers at the lodge, and the one a mile down the road didn’t work.
Other park lodges in need of charger include Sequoia, Bryce Canyon, and Grand Teton.
The trip required lots of planning, far in advance, but most of that planning was unrelated to charging.
We started planning the trip more than a year before we launched.
Most of the planning had little to do with the EV element.
The first step in the planning process was determining the best route. In 2016, many people followed the minimum-mileage route to visit all the National Parks during the celebration of the National Park Service’s 100th birthday. We modified that route to try to be in key parks at the best time of the year, based on both weather and crowds. For example, we put a high priority on being in Utah in June and Yellowstone and the Tetons in early September.
We iterated the route a few times, and once we settled on that, the second step in the planning process was deciding on the right amount of time in each park. We wanted to make sure we spent enough time to appreciate the highlights of each one, but we also had a window of only six months between the start at Shenandoah in early April and the end at Acadia in mid-October. Determining the numbers of days at each park required us to do a fair amount of reading on the highlights of the parks we were not already familiar with to get a feel for them.
After finalizing the route and the number of days at each park—along with a few stops with friends and relatives along the way—the third step was to start making lodging reservations. For the lodges inside the parks, this was one of the most challenging and time-consuming parts of the planning process. Most of the lodges are very popular, with limited seasons and lodging availability, and they typically allow reservations a year ahead of time. That required a continuous, rolling effort to make reservations as the window for each lodge opened over the course of the prior year.
In one case—Glacier—reservations are so scarce that we were unable to get our preferred dates, even after calling the reservation line the morning it opened.
Adding the electric component to the trip planning added a little more time and research, aided by the Tesla website and PlugShare to identify hotels and lodges with chargers. Those two information resources identified charging solutions for about three-quarters of the parks.
We also checked the geographic coverage of the Supercharger network to make sure it could get us everywhere we wanted to go. There was no doubt about travel down the east coast at the start of the trip, nor travel on the west coast in the middle of the trip. Superchargers are plentiful along both coasts. Our checks of less-traveled parts of the country—like Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas—showed that Superchargers would also get us to the more remote parks.
But there were seven or eight more challenging cases that required some additional research and creativity to identify charging solutions.
Although Superchargers would get us to the parks, we needed local chargers to travel within some of the parks and to return to the main highways. In the challenging cases, Destination Chargers and Level 2 chargers at hotels within or near the parks were harder to find.
At Big Bend National Park, Terlingua, Texas, serves as the closest gateway town for visiting the park. But at the time of our visit in May 2022, there were no hotels with chargers in the area. The closest one was in Marathon, 80 miles to the north. Our solution, as indicated earlier, was a solar-powered ranch with an outside outlet.
Carlsbad, New Mexico, is another charging dead zone. It has no fast chargers of any kind and very few Level 2 chargers. Fortunately, the residents there had provided a trip-saving solution—a couple of crowd-sourced chargers—one Destination Charger and one Level 2 charger—at the parking lot behind the McDonalds restaurant in the center of town. We found these chargers on PlugShare and contributed to the Go-Fund-Me campaign prior to our trip—and after.
We used these chargers, a short walk from our B&B, most evenings during our stay. We didn’t need much range to travel the 25 miles down to Carlsbad Caverns and back. But the other park in the area—Guadalupe Mountains—required a repeated round trip of more than 100 miles.
Great Sand Dunes is another isolated area, and the route across southern Colorado to get there has no Superchargers, although Tesla now plans one in Alamosa, south of the park. We had initially planned to stay in the nearby campground and rent an RV site to charge. But illness caused us to change plans and stay in a hotel in Alamosa. When we arrived, PlugShare showed two chargers at the hotel—new since we had planned the trip—but they malfunctioned. That resulted in the use of Level 1 charging described above.
Lassen Volcanic in northern California was another challenging case, solved by the use of an RV campground across the road from our resort.
The lack of chargers at Crater Lake Lodge caused one of the few cases when we spent considerable time sitting in the car while it charged. The only chargers in the park were two at a restaurant seven miles down the road from the lodge. We had dinner there and charged while we ate, but the combination of the slow speed of a Level 2 charger and competition among several EV drivers resulted in a couple of evenings in the car doing social media posts and reading.
As described earlier, North Cascades has no lodging with chargers, but the use of a dryer outlet at our rental house gave us a good solution equivalent to a Destination Charger.
Charging options at Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota were also quite limited. But we eventually found a lake-front resort in the town of Orr that had a couple of chargers.
Even with the success—and pure joy—of our trip to the National Parks, we still have a wish list of things we’d like to see improved for the next electric road trip.
Superchargers got us around the country, but the continued expansion of the network—both to increase its density and to fill gaps—would make future trips easier.
Ultimately, we’d like to see fast chargers in the parking lot of every fast food restaurant and at every highway exit.
And, as described previously, there are a few geographic gaps to fill in the Supercharger network. For travel to the National Parks, we’d like to see Superchargers added in several remote locations:
- Terlingua, Texas (Big Bend)
- Carlsbad, New Mexico (Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains)
- Baker, Nevada (Great Basin)
- Chester, California (Lassen Volcanic)
- Prospect, Oregon (Crater Lake)
- Marblemount and Winthrop, Washington (North Cascade)
- Columbia Falls and St Mary, Montana (Glacier)
- International Falls, Minnesota (Voyageurs).
Fortunately, Tesla is finally filling in one Supercharger “dead zone”—in southern Colorado along Route 160. After a couple of years of delay, it is planning to build a station in Alamosa, Colorado, near Great Sand Dunes National Park later in 2023.
We’d also like to see Superchargers—or fast chargers of some kind—at every Visitor Center in the National Parks. With the recent availability of adaptors, either Superchargers or CCS fast chargers would serve the needs of all EV drivers.
Our wish list also includes overnight chargers at all the lodges inside National Parks, especially the most remote ones. With the rapid growth in the number of EVs, a half dozen chargers at each lodge would be a good number to start. In most lodges we visited in 2022, two chargers were enough. But in areas with lots of EVs—like Yosemite in California—it was already clear that two were not enough.
For planning road trips, we’d like to see the travel websites like Expedia offer a filter to identify hotels with overnight chargers. We planned our trip with the aid of the Tesla website and PlugShare, but a filter would make it easier to find hotels with chargers.
As more EVs hit the highways, and as more hotels offer chargers for their guests, we’d also like to see hotels establish reservations systems for overnight chargers. Just as you can reserve a room, you should be able to reserve a charging space so that EV drivers don’t have to worry about availability when they arrive. Although most hotel overnight chargers are free now, it would not be unreasonable to start charging a fee as more and more guests use charging facilities, especially to secure a reservation.
Finally, as mentioned earlier, continued increases in EV range would be helpful for road tripping. We made it work with 300 miles of range, but another 50 miles would have been useful. And EV ranges should be specified in terms of highway range, which is what matters most—and range at realistic highway speeds. Greater range comes at a cost in both weight and vehicle expense, but continued improvements in battery chemistries should provide the modest added range.
Along with greater range, another item high on our wish list of improvements for electric road tripping is a more accurate range estimate in the car’s navigation system. At highway speeds, a 300-mile EV cannot travel 300 miles. We routinely watched the car’s range estimate drop faster than the number of miles we had traveled. Starting a 200-mile trip with a full battery and 300 miles of estimated range, the 100-mile margin would continually drop and eventually be as low as 50 miles by the time we reached our destination. A more accurate estimator would provide more confidence in planning long-distance road trips.
Conclusion
We highly recommend a trip to the National Parks like ours to anyone who has the opportunity. It is the trip of a lifetime to some of the most beautiful places in America.
Even if you don’t have enough time to visit all the parks in a single trip, there are several clusters of parks that make wonderful trips of a few weeks duration. Great options include the five parks in Utah (along with the National Monument in Escalante); the five parks in Oregon, Washington, and Montana; and the nine beautiful and diverse parks in California. A longer trip could cover the large cluster of 15 parks in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.
Based on our experience, we can also recommend electric road tripping to the National Parks. Our EV provided an excellent driving experience with no required maintenance and lower costs for fueling. Charging was mostly a non-issue, both for availability and time. And with the rapid expansion of the charging infrastructure, electric road trips will get easier every year as more fast chargers are built and more hotels and lodges install overnight chargers.