Charging on the road

• Before you leave
• Plugs
• 80% or 100%
• How many stops
• What it costs
• Etiquette
• When it's broken

Before you leave

• Leave full. The night before a trip is the one time charging to 100% at home is exactly right. It's the cheapest energy of the whole journey.
• Let the car plan it. Put the destination in the car's own navigation. Most EVs pick the stops, tell you how long each one takes, and warm the battery on the way in so it charges faster.
• Set up payment first. Download the apps for the networks on your route and add a card at home, not at the charger with one bar of signal. A contactless card works at most newer chargers and few of the older ones.
• Know your plug. And pack the adapter, if your car needs one. The adapter finder will tell you.
• Expect less range than the sticker. Highway speeds cost 10 to 20%. Cold weather can cost another 20 to 30%. The car's estimate is usually honest about this. The brochure wasn't.

The plugs, in one paragraph each

Adapters let a CCS car use many Tesla Superchargers and the other way round. The adapter finder shows which chargers your car plugs straight into, and which adapter the rest need. Buy the one your carmaker sells or approves. A fast charger pushes hundreds of amps through it, and it is not the place to save forty dollars.

Should you charge to 100%?

At home before the trip, yes. At a fast charger, almost never.

A battery takes power quickly when it's empty and slowly when it's nearly full, like the last few people squeezing onto a train. On many cars the charge from 80% to 100% takes about as long as the charge from 10% to 80% did. You wait twice as long for a third more range.

So the fast way to travel is to arrive low, charge to somewhere around 80%, and leave. More stops, shorter stops, less time overall. The exceptions are real but few: the next charger is a long way off, it's bitterly cold, or you're stopping for a sit-down meal anyway and the car might as well keep eating too.

One battery note. Cars with LFP batteries are happy to sit at 100%, and the maker usually says to do it weekly. Others prefer 80% day to day. Neither kind minds a full charge right before a trip.

How many stops, really

Rule of thumb: the first leg is the long one, because you left home full. After that, each fast-charge stop buys you about two thirds of the car's highway range, since you're running between roughly 10% and 80%.

For most current EVs that works out to a stop every two to three hours of driving, for 15 to 30 minutes. Which is, give or take, how often people stop anyway. The difference is that you don't get to choose not to.

If you're staying overnight, the best stop is the one you sleep through. A hotel with a Level 2 charger sends you off at 100% without a minute of waiting, and it's worth filtering for when you book.

What it costs

Fast charging is priced like convenience, because it is. Expect to pay two to four times your home rate.

• Per kWh is the normal way. A few places still charge per minute, which punishes cars that charge slowly.
• Memberships knock a good chunk off on some networks for a monthly fee. Worth it for one long trip, then cancel.
• Idle fees start a few minutes after the car is done and add up by the minute. They exist to make you move. They work.
• The card hold. Tap a card and the charger holds a set amount until the session settles. It isn't the price, and it falls off in a day or two.

Against a gas car, a trip on fast chargers alone costs about the same. The savings come from the full battery you left home with and from every other week of the year. The charging cost calculator does that comparison for your car.

Etiquette

Nobody hands you a rulebook. This is it.

• A charging space is for charging. Not parking near the door. That goes for EVs that aren't plugged in as much as for the pickup that definitely isn't.
• Move when you're done. Set a phone alert. The person waiting can see your car is at 100%. They've been looking at it for ten minutes.
• If there's a line, leave at 80%. The slow last 20% is the most expensive time on the whole site, and other people are paying for it.
• Take the charger that fits your car. If your car tops out at 100 kW, leave the 350 kW unit for someone who can use it, when there's a choice.
• Park so the cable reaches without blocking a second stall. Charge ports are in different corners on different cars. Sometimes that means pulling in at an odd angle. Sometimes it means picking another stall.
• Don't unplug a stranger. The one accepted exception is a Level 2 where their car has clearly finished and the next plug won't reach. Even then, some people will mind.
• Hang the cable up. Connectors left on the ground get driven over, and then nobody charges.
• Report the broken one. Thirty seconds in the app saves the next driver twenty minutes.

When the charger doesn't work

It happens less than it used to and more than it should. In order:

• Unplug, wait ten seconds, push the connector in firmly until it clicks, and start again. A half-seated plug is the most common failure there is.
• Try a different way to pay. If the card reader fails, the app often works, and the other way round.
• Move to another stall. Chargers fail one at a time far more often than whole sites do.
• Call the number on the charger. They can often start it remotely.
• Leave. This is why you arrive with 10% and not 2%.

If you're curious why any of this goes wrong, How charging works walks through the handshake between the car and the charger. It's a small miracle it ever works at all.