Audi Charging Forward from Los Angeles to New York
Slideshow: It wasn't long ago that taking a road trip in your electric vehicle was wishful thinking. Thanks to EV charging networks like EVgo and ChargePoint, about 8,000 high speed charging stations across the country means that you can plug in and recharge in 30 minutes, abating range fear and making zero-emission long-distance travel possible.
Roadtripping on zero emission
Whoever told me that I couldn’t take a road trip in an electric vehicle was clearly an ill-informed, change-fearing, gas-guzzling naysayer from the days of Datsuns and DeLoreans. Road-tripping in an EV can be done all over the country it would seem, and you can get yourself almost anywhere you want to go. You can even hop into your Chevy Bolt EV or Nissan Leaf, turn up your Tom Petty Highway Companion and hit the tracks from La La Land to the Big Apple, emission-free, leaving no carbon footprints in your wake, if you take the extra time to plan ahead.
In the old days
That’s what we used to do in the old days, before the invention and standardization of GPS. If I wanted to go somewhere, I’d unfold this large sheet of paper called a map, uncap my yellow highlighter, and start drawing a line from point A to point B, hoping to catch some cool roadside attractions along the way. Later on, in the ’80s the map was replaced by a really thick book called the Thomas Guide which was a much more detailed map chopped up into hundreds of pages.
>>Join the conversation about road tripping in electric vehicles right here in Audiworld.com.
GPS changed everything
The mentality of plotting out your course ahead of time doesn’t have to fall off the map as technology marches onward. In fact, modern technology has made it even easier to for me to plot my course and stay on it without making a “wrong turn” into an unmarked region populated by inbred cannibals just waiting for my ride to run empty.
>>Join the conversation about road tripping in electric vehicles right here in Audiworld.com.
What if I run out of juice?
That, of course, has been the knock on fully-electric vehicles all along: I’m not going to get very far before I’m out of power, and then what? How many charging stations will I find? How long will it take for my car to be charged? What happens if I lose power in the middle of nowhere?
High Speed Charging Networks
Thanks to charging networks such as EVgo and Chargepoint, you can now find an intricately woven matrix of high-speed chargers across the country, making almost any road trip doable if you do a little planning before pressing your touch start and shifting into drive.
>>Join the conversation about road tripping in electric vehicles right here in Audiworld.com.
Los Angeles to New York
Take LA to NY for instance. Not many people will make this drive. It’s long, arduous, and expensive especially when you factor in lodging and meals. However, plenty of people do it for many different reasons, and even though EV owners can’t do it any which way we'd like to like gas-guzzlers can by the sheer volume of crude oil stations littering our highway, your Audi e-tron, Tesla, Leaf, Bolt, or I-PACE can get you most anywhere without range anxiety.
>>Join the conversation about road tripping in electric vehicles right here in Audiworld.com.
Knowing your EV
You know your electric vehicle. You know what sort of miles you can get out of a full charge. You know how that range can change depending on road conditions, speed, the other goodies you might want to use that will burn your battery more quickly.
>>Join the conversation about road tripping in electric vehicles right here in Audiworld.com.
Audi e-tron
The 2020 Audi e-Tron will make its debut later this year, and according to Road & Track among other sources, the German automaker is estimating 248 miles per range. Let’s say conditions weren’t great and a summer heat wave necessitated the use of your a/c for long stretches of road. We might lower that range to 210 miles in some stretches.
>>Join the conversation about road tripping in electric vehicles right here in Audiworld.com.
Plotting your course
If you go to the EVgo website, you can find an interactive map of all their charging stations. Their coverage is pretty good as of this writing but will be even more expansive by this time next year. You could not travel from LA to NY on EVgo alone, but save for a few stops along the way, you can visit an EVgo station in 12 out of 15 charging points along the way. Taking a look at the Plugshare map you can set a course that will get you to a charging station every 200 miles or so. You can then create a Google Map, dropping in all of these stops, in some cases overnight stops, and fill in any historical landmarks or points of interest that might appeal to you along the way. I did it. It took some time but not any more time that it would have taken using my Thomas Guide. Check it out here.
>>Join the conversation about road tripping in electric vehicles right here in Audiworld.com.
Map of Charging Stations from LA to NY
We are not going to bog you down with the details of each stop along the way from LA to NY. However, for those who want to make this trip or those who just want to see what route we'd mapped out for you to take, you check out the full article right here in LinkedIn. Or you can check out this Interactive Google Map showing one suggested route from Los Angeles to New York.
>>Join the conversation about road tripping in electric vehicles right here in Audiworld.com.
Driving Data
Driving Data
Days: 13
Miles: 2,899
Cost: $200
This cost determined by estimating a rate of .30¢ per minute for a 45-minute charging session. We estimated 15 charging sessions from LA to NY.
Gas Cost: $406 (for a car that drives 25 miles per gallon)
>>Join the conversation about road tripping in electric vehicles right here in Audiworld.com.
Leaving no carbon footprints
Years from now, we will look back on these days as the generations before us did with gas-powered cars, and we will be impressed by the matrix of electric charging stations blanketing our country and those beyond. The movement has already begun and as long as we keep buying our fully-electric cars and taking them on the road, companies like EVgo will continue to give us more and more places to go. And to that ill-informed naysayer who said I couldn’t do it, I leave you with this quote by Nelson Mandela, who said, “It always seems impossible until it is done.”
>>Join the conversation about road tripping in electric vehicles right here in Audiworld.com.
For help with your maintenance and repair projects, please visit our How-to section in the forum.