But I did rent a Mustang Mach-E for 12 days as I tooled around between Houston, Dallas, and Austin.
At one point I had found a Tesla supercharger and thought it would work (it wouldn’t, because it wasn’t one of the upgraded ones and didn’t support CCS).
The cords on those things are ridiculously short. IIRC the Tesla’s have their charge port all in the rear-right corner and when they aren’t pull-through, they require Tesla owners to back in very close to the charger.
Most other cars cannot reach the charger (even if it is CCS compatible) due to the placement of their charge ports. Some, like this Rivian, require the driver to park like an ass to use it.
And sometimes you may not have a good option. When I was driving from my hotel (near Galleria) back to IAH, I tried to find a fast charger on the way.
The first one I found (EVConmect I think) was at a Walmart. The one charger that was opened was out-of-order (and according to a local, it had been that way for a while. All the others were occupied and a few were even sitting in their cars at mid-90% and a line forming behind them (which, I don’t know much about charger etiquette, but I think that’s a faux pas. Charging slows down dramatically after 80 and as I understand it’s generally a bad idea to regularly charge past 80 anyway).
The next closest one took me 18 minutes out of my way to a Shell station. My hotel was only 35 minutes or so from the airport.
Oh, and on the way between the cities, there were times when I was at least 75 miles from the nearest charger. Buc-ees almost always had a ton of chargers, but almost all of them Superchargers.
I don’t normally drive an EV.
But I did rent a Mustang Mach-E for 12 days as I tooled around between Houston, Dallas, and Austin.
At one point I had found a Tesla supercharger and thought it would work (it wouldn’t, because it wasn’t one of the upgraded ones and didn’t support CCS).
The cords on those things are ridiculously short. IIRC the Tesla’s have their charge port all in the rear-right corner and when they aren’t pull-through, they require Tesla owners to back in very close to the charger.
Most other cars cannot reach the charger (even if it is CCS compatible) due to the placement of their charge ports. Some, like this Rivian, require the driver to park like an ass to use it.
And sometimes you may not have a good option. When I was driving from my hotel (near Galleria) back to IAH, I tried to find a fast charger on the way.
The first one I found (EVConmect I think) was at a Walmart. The one charger that was opened was out-of-order (and according to a local, it had been that way for a while. All the others were occupied and a few were even sitting in their cars at mid-90% and a line forming behind them (which, I don’t know much about charger etiquette, but I think that’s a faux pas. Charging slows down dramatically after 80 and as I understand it’s generally a bad idea to regularly charge past 80 anyway).
The next closest one took me 18 minutes out of my way to a Shell station. My hotel was only 35 minutes or so from the airport.
Oh, and on the way between the cities, there were times when I was at least 75 miles from the nearest charger. Buc-ees almost always had a ton of chargers, but almost all of them Superchargers.