Choosing the right EV for your road trips

As many consumers gear up for peak travel season, one very viable option for spring break or summer vacations is a road trip. According to a Forbes Advisor Survey, 34% of Americans plan to take a road trip in 2024. Should consumers hop on the EV bandwagon before they hit the road?

Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita joins the Live show for another edition of Travel Guide 2024: Industry Insights to give insight into the best vehicle options for drivers and what they should know before considering electric vehicles for their cross-country travels.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino

Video Transcript

JOSH LIPTON: Electric vehicles are making the great American road trip a bit more complicated. If you're a new EV owner thinking of hitting the road this summer, you've got a lot to consider when planning long-distance travel. Joining us now is part of Yahoo Finance's travel guide 2024 industry insights, Yahoo Finance's Akiko Fujita.

AKIKO FUJITA: Hey, Josh. Well, the good news is that if you are planning to go out with an EV, it's going to be a lot cheaper for you. You don't have to pay for gas. There are many public stations, charging stations that are free.

The bad news is what you just said it's going to be a lot more complicated in trying to plan out that trip. So let's try to break down what exactly you need to consider. The first one is your car. If you've got an EV at home, you've already made that decision.

But if you're looking to rent, you do really want to think about the range of these cars. And we've picked out some models for you. The Model Y from Tesla, obviously.

In terms of what we're seeing at least with some of these rentals certainly has the most range, at least, in the mid-tier. EVs we're talking about 260 miles on a full charge up to 310 miles. You've got the Ford Mustang Mach-E Select. 250 miles is where it starts at.

And then Rivian R1S Dual-Motor AWB, 260 miles is what we're looking at there. Now, the key part of that travel experience, the road trip is going to be how you map out that route. Because you want to make sure that you've got plenty of charging stations along the way.

And if you're in a place like California, it's not going to be as big of an issue. If you're looking for a cross-country trip, you're certainly going to want to be looking at that. And there are two apps that you can be looking at.

The one I recommend is PlugShare. And that is a user-generated app where users around the country that drive EVs are posting where those charging stations are. You can find exactly how many chargers are in individual locations. How many are working?

Although, I will warn that that's not always accurate. You can, of course, also find information on Google Maps which tells you where some of those key Chargers are, Julie.

JULIE HYMAN: And then, OK. So you've mapped out your trip. Say you're driving cross country. How long does it take to actually charge?

And, of course, there are different kinds of chargers, right? There are ones that are faster and slower.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, I mean, that is probably where you're going to spend a lot of time in trying to get that car charged. So let's show you the level of chargers that we're talking about. Level one, of course, is the slowest charger that's out there. You get about 2 to miles per hour. So you're going to want to try and avoid that.

Level 2 is the most common. Accounts for roughly 70% of all public chargers. You get about 10 to 30 miles per hour.

And the one you really want to look for here is the level 3 DC fast chargers, 100 to 200 plus miles per 30 minutes. This is going to be the easiest solution for you because you just pull up, you plug-in. And about 30 minutes, for the most part, for the most part is key.

You're going to be able to get a full charge on your car. Now, there's a few caveats to all of this. The reliability of chargers is a big one. If you're driving a Tesla, it's going to be a little easier for you.

But if you can't plug-in to the Tesla fast charger, a lot of these DC fast chargers don't work. And JD Power put out a study last year pointing to the fact that about 20%, 21% of drivers said, they have driven up to a charging station where it doesn't work. So that's going to be probably the most frustrating part of your drive because you won't know exactly.

There's also limited availability of chargers. So you might have to wait in line to get that full charge. And the key here as you're planning out all this, be conservative in your estimation of the range.

I would say leave about 10% there. You don't want to be stuck in a place with very little charge with no chargers at all. So that's a key thing to consider here.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, that is definitely a key thing to consider. I mean, it seems like there's also kind of a business opportunity here. If you've got travelers, I mean, beyond just the sort of rest stops that we typically have in this country, which you're meant to stop at, for what? 15 minutes or so, right?

It seems like there would be a business opportunity for a little bit more of a robust stop for people to spend time and spend money at do more things at than just grab a quick bite, for example.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, and we've seen some businesses like Starbucks take up that opportunity. They have talked about installing chargers in some of their stores or outside some of their stores. You've heard Elon Musk raised the idea of a drive-in because it takes a few hours if you're using a slower charger to charge up.

So you're certainly right about that. I mean, that's something that we're likely to see in the years ahead as we think about how or where Americans are charging increasingly.

But I will tell you. If you're not driving a Tesla, you really want to have to build in that extra time to make sure you get that full charge.