One of my biggest reservations in getting an EV was – not surprisingly or uncommon at all – range anxiety.
I live about 400km from Toronto, and have always considered that distance my general benchmark when going on road trips. In all previous vehicles – at least in recent memory – getting to Toronto on a full tank of gas was no-problem, and would enable a bit of driving around the city before needing to fill up for the return trip home. At least that was my general experience.
So when searching for an EV, I didn’t even look at any vehicles with a range less than 400km, and ultimately decided to go with the extended range Mach-E (468km estimated range).
Of course, after doing further research and reading review after review, it became clear to me that this whole ‘guess-o-meter’ thing was legit, and that range basically boils down to ‘well, it depends’. Regardless, having a rough number as to the ‘ideal’ range gave me a starting point to do my EV shopping.
While looking for vehicles, I had to really admit to myself that my typical ‘trip to Toronto’ benchmark was more like a ‘mythical’ trip. I rarely travel ‘up the 401’, and the overwhelming majority of my driving is less than 100km per day, often much, much less. Why was I so focused range and highway driving, when I rarely do it?
Anyway – as mentioned, I bought the extended range AWD Mach-E. and have been extremely happy. I’ve never seen anywhere near the quoted 468km range, but I also had never charged to 100% either.
That all changed (mostly) when I finally hit the road to go to Waterloo, Ontario for a hockey tournament for my stepson.
Leading up to the trip, I had been pretty busy with work, and it was sort of unclear if we’d need to go up Thursday night , or wait until Friday morning (the tournament schedule was incredibly late). As it turns out, we ended up leaving Thursday night, but I hadn’t really had time to charge up the car. We departed with about 82% battery in temperatures around 8ยบ Celsius. The trip was roughly 300km, and as we left the house, I had an estimated 360km of range. I knew we’d likely make a stop to charge on the way, i just hadn’t really figured out where.
As we started to drive, it became very apparent that there was no way we were going to get the 360km out of charge, and the estimate almost immediately dropped about 30km as soon as I hit the highway. Travelling at about 120km/h give or take, I watched the range drop much faster than the km distance to go. As we passed London, Ontario (roughly 180km into the trip), I had about 35% battery left, with a range of about 120km. My range anxiety was building, so I decided to stop off in Dorchester, Ontario at a Petro-Canada Station, as it was an easy-off, easy-on exit from the highway, and they had a L3 charger. 17 minutes and $8.50 later, we added 30.5kWh, and about another 120km or so of range (if I remember correctly).
The rest of the trip was uneventful, but my roughly 250km of range from leaving Dorchester quickly evaporated. We arrived at our hotel somewhere around 40% battery and something like 125km of range estimated. The hotel had complimentary EV charging so I let it go to 100% (for the first time!) overnight as I knew we’d be doing a lot of driving all weekend back and forth to games.
Throughout the weekend, I think we used about 40% of the battery, and so I re-charged up overnight Saturday night before we headed home Sunday – back up to 100%, with an estimated range of around 440km.
Driving home, I felt much more confident leaving Waterloo with a full battery, and we drove the whole way home without a charge, pulling into the driveway with somewhere around 20% battery charge left.
So… what did I learn? Well, I still get a bit of range anxiety, even though we had zero issues making it to anywhere we needed to go and free charging at the hotel was awesome! Could you imagine getting a free tank of gas from a hotel as part of your room rate!?
I also learned that my mythical trip to Toronto seems highly unlikely to do on a full charge – maybe if I dropped my speed and/or it was much warmer out, it MIGHT be do-able, but not without me constantly looking at the guess-o-meter and sweating the entire time.
But I also learned that stopping to charge isn’t that big of a deal. In less than 20 minutes we were on our way. It gave me a chance to take a bio break and re-fuel on caffeine, and my wife really didn’t seem to mind the extra 10 minutes or so on this stop compared to any typical highway rest-stop trip we’d ever done in the past.
I especially enjoyed that the entire weekend road trip cost me $8.50 (thanks to home charging and free charging at the hotel). Previously when I drove my Jeep, doing the same trip would have cost about $80 – $100 in gas. I’ll take the extra 10 minutes for charging to save $70+ any day!
Since we did that trip, we also did another trip to Hamilton, Ontario (just a little further than Waterloo), and it was much of the same – stopped to charge in Dorchester, and made it to Hamilton with about 30% charge. We probably could have made the trip without stopping as this time I left home at 100% charge. However, it was a much colder day, and we needed to stop for a bite to eat anyway, so I decided to stick to what I know and stop at the Petro-Canada. This time, we fuelled for about 27 minutes at a cost of $13.70 for 34.1kWh added.
Driving home on that trip was again done without stops, but I squeaked into the driveway with only 5% charge remaining. I might not do that again, but we were just eager to get home and didn’t feel like stopping anywhere. Again, colder temps meant running the heat the entire trip, plus the heated seats, so I guess that’s what ate up the additional battery.
All-in-all, I would obviously prefer more range to have more of a ‘safety-net’ in place for these types of trips, but as I currently have no plans for another such journey any time soon, I am good with my purchase and am still overall MUCH MUCH happier driving my EV day-to-day. When we do head back out on the road it will likely be the Spring or even next Summer and range should hopefully be better. It would absolutely be nice to be able to do a Toronto trip on one charge, but even in warmer conditions, I don’t think that’s likely to happen. Regardless, the ‘sacrifice’ of 10-20 minutes extra on one of these trips to save money and do whatever little I can to help reduce emissions is way more beneficial to me.