EVs Are The Superior Road Trip Car

By John Higham, EVA Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs

There’s a pernicious untruth that electric vehicles aren’t suited for road trips. If you close your eyes and listen closely at any EV dealership, you can hear the faint sound floating across the parking lot from potential customers: “I’d love an EV, but what if I want to drive across the country?” This quip is often delivered with the same gravity as announcing you’ve decided to scale Mount Everest, only to discover you won’t have a sherpa.

Modern EVs don’t just excel at road trips—they often outperform fire-breathing counterparts. Let’s dig in and discover why.

Range Anxiety, Meet Reality

We’ve been conditioned to think road trips are 10-hour-a-day endurance tests. Maybe it's because, as a kid, your mom made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on an open glove box door, and your dad insisted fuel stops were timed events like an Indy 500 pit stop. It’s easy to get caught up in the rush of things when you have to raise your voice to drown out the roar of an engine, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

EV road trips are quieter and more relaxing—you don’t realize how much engine noise intrudes until it’s gone.

Despite what Hollywood and car commercials suggest, most road trips aren’t non-stop Cannonball Runs across the continent. All road trips are punctuated with refueling stops. EVs are no different. But, there is, shall we say, a certain cadence of life, and if aligned properly, refueling an EV during a road trip isn’t so much of punctuation as it is seasoning. 

Most of us drive for a few hours, then take a break to stretch our legs, grab a snack, use the restroom, and maybe check out a roadside attraction. Then we drive a few more hours and stop again. And repeat. 

Modern EVs—with ranges of 250, 300, even 400-plus miles and DC fast charging—fit this rhythm perfectly. The art of the EV road trip is to balance the battery range with the bladder range. 

The Bladder–Battery Balance

If you can drive for three hours on a full charge, and you typically want a break after two or three hours anyway, your needs are met with an EV. You're not sacrificing range—you’re matching your real travel habits.

For example, say you have an EV with 270 miles of highway range. You drive 180 miles, stop at a rest area with a fast charger, spend 25 minutes grabbing lunch and using the restroom, then drive another 180 miles. You’ve just covered 360 miles without discomfort or inconvenience. That's a six-hour driving day with one natural break built in. Keeping it real, our former EVA president, Elaine Borseth, wrote about her recent cross-country journey, noting that her final leg of 11 hours of driving required just three stops, each lasting 17 minutes or less.

Compare that with the gas-car mindset of driving until the tank is nearly empty, then hunting down a station. Gas-car drivers might save five minutes on paper, but they’re not adding enjoyment.

Fast Charging is the Game-Changer

Charging infrastructure and vehicle charging speeds have improved dramatically in the past few years. Charging stops aren’t long meals anymore—they’re bathroom breaks.

Many modern EVs can add 200-plus miles of range in the time it takes to stretch your legs and grab a drink. A Hyundai Ioniq 5 or Tesla Model Y can charge from 10% to 80% in less than 20 minutes. That's enough to add another 2 to 3 hours of driving. Fast chargers are strategically located along most major interstate routes. In rural areas, it may be a bit more challenging, but finding fast charging is almost always possible. I’ve driven an EV from the San Francisco Bay Area to northern Montana and the length of Norway and have never been stranded. Hundreds of thousands of others have driven similar EV trips without issue. You can, too.

EV skeptics often imagine charging as a forced layover. But in reality, charging happens while you’re doing what you were already going to do—take a break. You don’t have to think about refueling the way you do in a gas car. There’s no “we’re running low, we better find a gas station.” Charging just becomes part of the plan.

But What About Cross-Country?

Someone once argued with me that EVs aren’t really road-trip worthy because the electric Cannonball Run record from New York to Los Angeles is 39 hours and change. The gas car record is just over 25 hours. Gotcha?

Well, sure. If you’re trying to beat a cross-country speed record while swapping drivers and ignoring speed limits, gas cars have the edge. But how many people are driving from the East Coast to the West Coast without stopping?

For families, retirees, adventurers, and curious travelers, and those who are there for the journey, EVs don’t merely work, they excel because they naturally complement the pace people travel.

You’re Doing It Wrong

One of the quiet revolutions of EV travel is the way it shifts your mindset. Charging does take a bit longer, so you become more intentional about breaks. You might choose to charge at a scenic overlook, a local coffee shop, or a park instead of just the next grimy truck stop. And networks like Electrify America, EVgo, Tesla Superchargers, and others are increasingly placing chargers in walkable areas with amenities nearby.

So if you’re EV-curious and love a good road trip, don’t let old myths hold you back. Modern EVs are not only capable of road trips—they’re built for them.

They invite you to travel at a human pace, not a machine’s. They match your natural cadence of drive-rest-drive. And they let you rediscover the joy of the open road—not as a race to the next gas station, but as a string of experiences to be savored.

You don’t need an EV that can go 600 miles without stopping. You need one that fits your rhythm. And odds are, it already does. Think of charging not as interruptions, but as enhancements to your road trip..

So pack your bags, plug in, and hit the road. The EV way.