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by bryanlarsen 923 days ago
That's ridiculous. My trip was from Ottawa Canada to Saskatoon. It goes through some seriously unpopulated territory, unlike yours. It does follow major highways, so there are Tesla superchargers along the route every 100-150 km or so. We'd stay at a hotel with charging overnight so start at 100%, drive for 2.5 hours and then bathroom/charge for 15-20 mins, drive another 2.5 and eat/charge for 40 or so, repeat the morning pattern in the afternoon, and then drive for another couple after supper before stopping at a hotel to charge while sleeping.
2 comments

So you're not charging back up to 100% until the overnight stop?

When I think about how I would do a long trip in an EV, I envision getting a full charge, because first, that's what I currently do with gasoline, and second, I want as much range as possible to account for unplanned detours and/or other unexpected issues.

Once or twice we did hit 100% because supper took longer than expected, but otherwise you never charge to 100%.

A critical component is the trip computer that knows about upcoming construction and charger status. On our first trip the Sault Ste Marie charger was down, and Sault Ste Marie <-> WaWa is the longest stretch between chargers because of a huge provincial park. But the car warned us about it and told us to make sure we were above 90% at Blind River.

AFAIK the charging rate slows down as the battery gets fuller. That's why all the fast charging metrics are like "30 minutes to charge to 60%" rather than "60 minutes to charge to 100%". So on a trip where you want to spend as little time charging, you want to stop charging before 100%.
Canada has some good charging infrastructure. If you are driving a Tesla, even better, super chargers are the gold standard for EV charging, everything else is kind of unreliable.