I’ve read your article entitled “I rented an electric car for a 4-day road trip. I spent more time charging it than I did sleeping,” by Rachel Wolfe. (I rented an electric car for a 4-day road trip. I spent more time charging it than I did sleeping.) I’m sorry to say that Ms. Wolfe seems to have done inadequate research on the subject before writing the article. The article is unclear about precisely how she “plotted a meticulous route,” but based on the clues in the article, I’d guess that she either used a gas-car-centric mapping application (Google Maps, Apple Maps, etc.) to plot a route from New Orleans to Chicago and then used PlugShare to find charging points along the way, or used the PlugShare Web site’s trip-planning feature to map a route. Unfortunately, neither approach is optimal.

As minimal research in any on-line EV forum would have revealed, the optimum tool to use for planning EV road trips is A Better Routeplanner (https://abetterrouteplanner.com; there are also apps for iOS and Android). This tool has pre-sets for most EVs on the market, as well as information on the charging speeds available at most DC fast charging stations in the United States and Europe. Advanced features enable setting expected weather conditions, adjusting preferences for minimum acceptable state of charge, and so on; but these features are icing on the cake, as it were. Using ABRP, it’s possible to plan a trip that will minimize total travel time (including charging time), avoiding the slow and unreliable stations that Ms. Wolfe encountered on her trip. The result sometimes looks like a detour — when I used Google Maps to plan a trip from New Orleans to Chicago, the result was a 927-mile drive; but using ABRP, the route curves to the east to take advantage of reliable and fast Electrify America stations, extending the drive to 1,075 miles. This drive, though, requires just 3:11 of DC fast charging charging time. (This DC fast charging time would be reduced if an overnight stay at a hotel with Level 2 charging equipment was planned.) This is a far cry from the “more time charging than… sleeping” claimed in the headline of Ms. Wolfe’s article. Other routes require no detour at all. I’ve regularly driven my Tesla Model 3 from my home in Rhode Island to visit my sister in Cincinnati, and I take the same routes I’ve always taken in gas-powered cars.

Another way to think of the problem that Ms. Wolfe encountered is that there was insufficient CCS DC fast charging infrastructure along the highways she drove. There IS, however, very good Tesla Supercharger support along that route. ABRP claims that a Tesla Model 3 LR RWD (the car I happen to drive) could make that drive, along more-or-less the route that Ms. Wolfe seems to have taken, with a total distance of 965 miles and a mere 1:34 spent charging. Tesla’s in-car navigation system should be able to plot this route, too (certainly Tesla’s route-planning Web site can). Electrify America, ChargePoint, EVgo, and other providers are building out new DC fast charging sites at a steady clip, so I wouldn’t be surprised if today’s sub-optimal route that Ms. Wolfe took would work much better in a year or two — but I haven’t researched these providers’ plans for new stations along that route, so I’m certainly not making any promises about that.

In the interest of journalistic integrity, I strongly encourage Ms. Wolfe to do this trip again, or perhaps another EV road trip of similar length, but this time use the right planning tool: ABRP. Asking for advice on an EV forum, or from EV industry insiders (from Kia or Electrify America, for instance) would likely be helpful, too; but my one piece of advice (to use ABRP) will make the most difference. In the absence of such a follow-up piece, my confidence in the integrity of Ms. Wolfe, and of Fox Business, is degraded.