My advice, though? Don’t — at least not yet. The reason is that road-tripping on vacation is not only different from the driving you do back home, it’s also the worst kind for using an EV, especially for a newbie. The experience might lead you to believe, incorrectly, that the EV experience is just like this.
I admit, I had high hopes. Europe as a whole is far ahead of the United States in EV adoption, and its denser built environment means fewer long, open expanses between the kinds of cities that would have charging stations. Spain isn’t nearly as far along with EVs as the Scandinavian or the low countries, where electric cars are already a majority of cars on the road, or nearly there. But it is ahead of the U.S. So I figured driving around the country to see the total solar eclipse in a Peugeot E-5008 electric SUV would be a manageable task.
The first problem is time. Here in California, I’ve come to terms with the fact that driving long distances in an EV adds minutes. There’s simply no way to replicate the five-minute pump-and-go gas station stop, but when it comes to dealing with the slog of freeway travel from L.A. to the Bay Area, for example, I’ve come to enjoy taking a longer charging stop to breathe as opposed to making the best possible time on a car trip. On vacation, though, there’s no time to lose.
And it’s not just charging itself that takes time. Unless you rent a Tesla and enjoy the seamless experience of its Superchargers, you’re stuck with the same annoyances that have vexed so many EV early adopters in the U.S.: busted chargers, hit-or-miss credit card readers, and juggling a variety of phone apps to interact with all the various brands of charging stations one might encounter. It’s also, frankly, just mentally taxing to think about all this in a new country and a new car, the very opposite of what most people seek on holiday.
Driving abroad intensifies these grievances. In just five days of driving around Spain, I racked up five new phone apps dedicated to charging the car on different networks. (Electromaps! Movilidad! PowerGo! EnelEnergy! Zunder!). Sometimes this was out of desperation: I parked, plugged, and scanned multiple credit cards that the machine would not accept, finding pay-by-phone to be the only way to activate the machine. Of course, signing up for a new app is a 10-minute process that involves typing in endless fields of personal information just to add a few kilowatt-hours to one’s car battery. Not great when you’re already running behind, and doubly problematic if you had no or little cell service abroad and couldn’t download the necessary app at that moment. (Death to walled-off apps.)
Those chargers that did work typically ran far below their stated capacity, in the range of 70 kilowatts to 90 kilowatts of charging speed as opposed to the 180 kilowatts or 350 kilowatts they were rated to deliver. And when plugs are scarce, you have to take what you can get in terms of speed and amenities. I was overjoyed to find one that worked without much hassle in Basque Country — even though I had to ask one of the gas station employees to move her Volkswagen Passat that was ICEing a charger, and encountered an industrial stench from nearby petroleum production so strong I nearly vomited when I got out of the car.
The EV culture can be different, too. I’d hoped to charge at the plugs located in the parking garage of my hotel in Bilbao, Spain, but arrived home too late after eclipse traveling and found the lot full and locked. The nearby underground structure had plenty of charging spaces, but those were bring-your-own-cable chargers — something common in Europe that’s only now coming to the United States.
Despite the difficulties, the trip went off. We saw the spiritual experience of the eclipse through the cloudless skies of Burgos; we traveled around northern Spain without once having to buy gasoline at European prices. And while an inconvenient experience like this might be enough to dissuade someone from ever taking a chance on EVs again, it shouldn’t.
There’s a dichotomy in the electric car experience I’ve talked about ad nauseum. As detractors say, taking long road trips can be kind of annoying, and those annoyances run deeper in unfamiliar territory. But most of us don’t drive like we’re on vacation most of the time. We do our driving close to home, where electric cars are a better and more convenient experience if you can do much of your charging at home or work. Public charging still takes time. But in your own city and state, you already know the nearby ones you like and have all the necessary apps downloaded and filled out.
A more seamless time is coming, when charging stations are abundant everywhere and a simple, idiot-proof interface for plugging in is the standard. Until then, you’ll probably have a more relaxing vacation burning fossil fuels. Just don’t let that stop you from buying an EV.
Vaca Muerta looks a little like Texas. JUAN MABROMATA/AFP via Getty Images