First EV Road Trip Log
In January on a road trip to Grand Marais, we hit a deer. We’ve been a one-car household since early in the pandemic, and while we managed to limp home, the car was totaled (the deer was, too).
We had already decided that we no longer wanted to buy a gas-burning car, so after about six weeks of borrowing cars from our parents (thanks, parents!) we became the proud owners of a brand-new Kia EV6. It’s easily the fanciest car we’ve owned, but part of that is because we haven’t bought a new car in 11 years. Technology has advanced a lot in that time, but we’re big believers in the “drive it until it’s dust” theory of car ownership.
Nearly everything about owning an EV is better than a gas car: it’s fast, it’s quiet, it’s smooth, and we never have to go to a gas station because we charge at home. But road trips in an EV are more challenging, because you can’t just pull off on any freeway exit and find a place to fuel up.
In fact, when I ask my friends and family why they haven’t bought an EV yet, road trips are the one reason literally everyone gives. Even my parents, who have owned a series of EVs over the past decade-plus, still keep a Prius in the garage just in case they need one for a long road trip. Which they don’t, because they’ve actually driven their EVs for all long trips in the last several years.
But now my wife and I are an EV-only household, and since our next vehicle is going to be a F-150 Lightning, we will continue to be EV-only for the foreseeable future. We’re going to have to figure out how to do road trips, and this weekend is our first.
The trip is a long weekend to Grand Marais to visit our property and see the waterfalls along the North Shore of Lake Superior when they’re at their peak.
Planning: The drive from home to the place we’re staying is 281 miles if we go direct. The “official” range of our car on a full charge is 282 miles. But just like you wouldn’t drive a gas car until the tank is completely dry, we know we don’t want to arrive with zero charge remaining. Plus, EV range (like fuel economy) can be reduced by a variety of factors like cold weather, headwinds, hills, etc.
Using the amazing PlugShare app, we found there’s a free fast charger in Duluth, a little more than halfway to Grand Marais. We also called ahead to the place we’re staying and confirmed that they will let us plug in to recharge overnight. A couple of state parks along the way have free level-2 chargers, so we figure we can plug in while we look at waterfalls, too.
First Leg: We started the trip with a full charge, which the car claims is good for 259 miles of range. The car adjusts its range estimate based on temperature and driving history—and since we bought the car in February in Minnesota, we have never actually seen the claimed 282 miles the EPA says we should be able to get (on cold mornings, it would usually say a 100% charge is only 225 miles or so). Starting from the Twin Cities, where it was around 60 degrees in the morning, our distance traveled and remaining range tracked almost perfectly.
Two of our kids live in Duluth, so we let them know we’re passing through. One was available and agreed to meet us for lunch near the charging station. As we get close to Duluth the weather starts to get chillier and we notice the estimated range remaining starting to tick down—when we arrive, we’re down to 32% charge remaining, and the car estimates 72 miles of range. We drove 170 miles (including running some errands on our departure), and saw our range drop by 187 miles.
We found the charging station, and it was in fact free—both in the sense of not charging any money and also not in use. This was the first time we’d ever recharged our car away from home, so it took a little messing around to figure out how to plug in and activate the charging station. The car estimated it would take 50 minutes to reach 80% charge (the manufacturer doesn’t recommend fast charging above about 80% to preserve battery life). This is relatively slow for a fast charger, but it gave us exactly enough time to walk to a nearby pizza place and get lunch.
Second Leg: With full bellies and an 80% full battery—estimated 208 miles of range—we began the leg of the trip along the North Shore. With only 110 miles to go, we had plenty of charge. But waterfalls awaited: our first stop was Gooseberry Falls, and the falls did not disappoint! The Gooseberry Falls State Park has a free Level-2 (aka “slow but not as slow as a wall outlet”) charger. One of the two charging stations was broken, but a Chevy Bolt was pulling out of the working one so we plugged in even though we didn’t need the charge. After spending a half-hour at the park, we had added nine miles of range.
We made stops at the Beaver River and the Cross River. Both of these have pulloffs next to the bridge across the river, and the bridge offered a spectacular view of the gushing rapids. Unfortunately these waterfalls were both dynamited a century ago during the logging era in order to make it easier to float logs down the river. So what we see today is nothing like what it would have been back then.
After dinner at Hungry Hippie Tacos in Grand Marais, we arrived at Croftville Cottages early in the evening with 64 miles of range remaining. We are apparently not the first EV owners to ask to plug in for the night at this cozy hotel/resort, and the owners had no objections. Charging an EV from a 110V wall outlet is painfully slow—our car estimated it would take over two days to get back to 100% charge—but every bit of range helps.
Visiting our Property: By the next morning, we had charged back up to only 116 miles of range. That’s not a lot, but we figured it would be plenty to get us up to our property less than 15 miles away. The gotcha, though, is that our place is at the top of a ridge and our hotel is right on Lake Superior. That’s 1,600 feet of elevation change, and all that uphill would not do good things to our range. By the time we arrived, the car’s odometer had ticked up 12 miles, but the range dropped 25 miles—not great, but not as bad as we’d feared.
Up on the ridge there was still two to three feet of snow on the ground, but the air was almost 70 degrees in bright sunshine. Snowshoeing through the deep slushy snow took more effort than we expected: it would have been better to wear T-shirts than the sweaters and jackets we had on. But we made it all the way back to the building site for our future cabin, snapped a couple photos, changed the SIM card in the trail camera, had some lunch, and headed back.
One of the cool things about an EV is that it can recharge when you drive downhill. The drive back to the hotel only consumed three miles of range, and the round trip of 25 miles took a total of 28 miles of range. All that uphill didn’t cost us as much efficiency as we’d feared, because we got almost all of it back on the downhill.
In the afternoon while we were in Grand Marais, we decided to use the 50kw fast charger in town to recharge while we did other stuff. This was the first and so far only time we’ve paid to charge our car, and while it was expensive (about 3x what we pay at home for electricity), on a cost-per-mile basis it turned out to be almost exactly the same price as what we used to pay to put gas in our dearly departed Prius.
Our road trip was a success: with a little bit of planning we had no issues at all. The Minneapolis-to-Grand Marais route has very limited EV charging options compared to almost any other direction we could have gone from the Twin Cities, but we were able to plan recharging stops to line up with the times and places we wanted to stop anyway.
Afterword: The next day we drove to the Pigeon River on the Canadian border. The Pigeon River High Falls are reputed to be among the most spectacular on the Great Lakes, and I believe it.
