Preface: I drove electric cars exclusively for six years (a Leaf and a Bolt) and I love them.
That said, this description is not the reality of an e-road trip. The problem is electric charger capacity out in the wild is about 10x below demand. Every where you go, every single public charger will be occupied, frequently for hours at a time. Unlike gas, you absolutely cannot rely on chargers being available anywhere you go. The best electric experience is charging at home at night and staying within round trip range of your house. Trying to do more than that right now will definitely strand you, potentially over night because some dude left his car on that charger that your navigation app says is the only one for 50 miles and never came back.
The charger occupancy information in the apps is frequently wrong, they often miss critical info like “this charger is in a car dealership that locks the gates at 5pm”, etc.
The infrastructure will get there, but it’s a long way from it at the moment. People need to think differently about electric car driving. You don’t drive them with the same patterns as gas. It’s not “go where ever I want and fill up on the way if needed”. It’s “fill up every night whether needed or not and always be back here at the end of the day”.
Again, I love electric cars and I’m seriously considering the Lightning myself, but it behooves people to have realistic expectations of what electric car ownership currently is. I rent gas cars for road trips because it’s still the only practical option for that.
The other takeaway though is that most people do a lot less “road tripping” than they think they do and it’s an unnecessary barrier to entry for most people.
