We are a household that has shifted to only electric cars, and we just wanted to pass along that Tesla road trips aren’t that scary if you’re a planner.

To be perfectly clear, this isn’t a sponsored post. We just know quite a few friends who are hesitant to take road trips with an electric vehicle. And thus we wanted to pass along our thoughts–the good and the bad–with taking road trips in an electric vehicle.

Tesla road trips are a comfortable ride

Firstly, I do want to call out that we enjoy our Tesla Model Y. There haven’t been any major issues in the roughly 20,000 miles we’ve put on it so far. It takes a little bit of adjustment to get used to looking at the speedometer on the screen rather than behind the wheel. We also don’t care for any of the self-driving functionality. We don’t trust it. Yes, we’ve tinkered with it, but we’re not ready to trust our lives with it.

But there is plenty of legroom for us on our trips. While our car fits seven, our road trips have been limited to five. We get the feeling there will be some difficulty in getting seven plus all the luggage in the car, but get the roof racks for more storage.

The range won’t quite get you between LA and Vegas

There’s a big caveat with the route between Los Angeles and Las Vegas: it all depends on where you start. The LA region is quite large, so it’s certainly possible that if you’re in LA County but near Riverside, you might be able to make it on one full charge. Alas, that’s not us. So the route always requires us to charge somewhere along the way. We tend to choose Barstow as a nice stop. In fact, there’s a large facility there with more than a hundred Tesla Superchargers.

You don’t need to fully charge the battery, and if you’re using navigation, the car will tell you the minimum time you need to stick around. And while we’re talking about the navigation, the car will map out which Tesla Supercharger station to hit up. If for some reason your fuel efficiency (or is it energy efficiency?) changes, the car will automatically re-map which station to go to.

We use charging as an opportunity to get out and stretch

Some might say it’s annoying to sit around in the car, doing nothing, as it charges. While that might be true, usually there is something to do at each Tesla Supercharger. And so we plan ours with meal time as we know the kids will want to eat at a normal time. Take Eddie World just outside Barstow for example.

The food here isn’t the best, but it’s not bad. And it matched what the kids were looking for.

On top of that, there’s a little display for the Los Angeles Lakers at this stop. They clearly know who is most likely to stop off at this pit stop.

Baker has the World’s Tallest Thermometer

I’m frankly surprised nothing has surpassed it in the many years of driving past Baker, but it’s probably something only residents of Las Vegas and Southern California know about. You could stop off in Baker to go see it, but there’s really nothing there. I’d say it’s a tourist trap, but there’s no real “trap” to worry about. You come to see the thermometer, take a picture of it, and leave. No gift shop or hard sell into some package you don’t need.

We didn’t stop by on this trip, and there’s not much going on in Baker besides the thermometer. I usually just think of it as my 45-minute warning to the state line.

There are other diversion you can take on the route, but I think those get some visitors when people want something other to do than to sit in traffic. If you take this route after work on a Friday to Vegas, or a Sunday afternoon to Southern California, you have my sympathy. We’ve done the route during those high demand times and it pushed the journey 3.5 hours longer than it normally would take.

LA to Mammoth may require two stops

Shortly after our trip to Las Vegas, we took another trip–this time to Mammoth. Given the elevation on the way up to the mountains, we found this route will end up taking two stops. But, if you’re looking to do the bare minimum charging, you only need to stop for about 10 minutes for one of the stops.

One of the more interesting stops we did was in Lone Pine, where you can see Mt. Whitney. There’s a map showing the mountain range at the Supercharger station.

And you can just admire the picturesque background as you charge. It’s beautiful here.

Bishop is a nice place to make a pitstop for lunch

We mentioned this in our commentary about June Lake, but Bishop is a nice pitstop for lunch. Getting here in time for lunch means you’ll want to leave Los Angeles around 7-8AM. And there are electric vehicle charging options in the city, so Tesla road trips are indeed possible.

We stopped off at Erick Schat’s Bakkerÿ for lunch, which is a cute place.

Rather than just eating at the tables outside the restaurant, we instead took our lunch across the street to the Bishop City Park. There is a small playground there and some ducks that wanted to be fed.

Road trips in an electric car don’t have to be intimidating

To summarize, I think there are a few main areas where people have apprehension on electric cars for road trips:

• Needing to plan out stops to charge
• The time it takes to charge is longer than it takes to fill a car with gas
• What to do in an emergency or you forget to charge

Hopefully, from the above, you’re not quite as intimidated with planning out where to charge. And that it’s not bad to spend time charging if you just use the time to eat or multi-task. But what about what to do if you’re just too far away from an electric vehicle charger? Well, it’s not that tough to track one down. And if you have an adaptor, you could charge from any electrical outlet, which opens up more possibilities. You’ll have even more freedom if you get solar panels to strap on your car (something we’re considering) and you can charge anywhere.

All else fails, you can call up AAA for assistance, assuming you’re a member. Isn’t that what you would do if your car takes gas anyways? In other words, we’re not viewing electric cars and gas cars as fundamentally that different.

Have you taken a road trip in an electric vehicle yet?

Suggested reading:

• Low Las Vegas Crowds: Is It As Empty As They Say?
• Quick Hit: Overriding The Hotel Thermostat In Your Room
• Destination Spotlight: Lake Tahoe