u/aeflash

Just finished a 900 mile road trip in my 2026 bZ XLE plus. I heard EV road trips suck, so I wanted to see how bad it actually was. This was round trip from the SF Bay Area to Anaheim.

• The hotel stop on the way down had free overnight L2 charging! However, I forgot to turn off the charging schedule so it only got me up to 67%, rather than 100. No big deal, just one more DC fast charger stop.
• ABRP is essential for planning routes. Just set your destination and SoC and it will figure it out. However, it assumes you're speedrunning travel and you don't run into any issues finding a stall, with the various apps, or getting charging to start. I'd pick the "fewer stops" preset rather than "optimal".
• I was using Google Maps through Android Auto navigate to the next charger. It thought every Tesla Supercharger was incompatible despite me telling it I had a nacs plug, and would warn every time I plugged in the destination.
• When you search for the next charger, search for "supercharger [city name]" otherwise you may waste time looking for a useless Tesla "Destination Charger" that will be impossible to spot and of no use.
• Plug n Charge through the Toyota app worked fine... ...3 out of 4 times. Luckily I had the Tesla app set up as backup.
• You have to turn off the car to get charging to start. I hope this is not a hardware issue and can be fixed with a software update.
• Turning the car back on to have the AC running while charging is nice. No, I don't care that it will take 2% of the incoming power to run the compressor.
• Tesla Superchargers are ubiquitous along highways in CA. I was hoping to get to use Rivian or IONNA chargers where you can just tap a card, but it ended up being all Tesla fast charging.
• Superchargers are always in random parking lots far away from anything so you have to go somewhere else to pee. Sometimes hard to find. Can't wait until every current gas station has a couple fast chargers, or fast chargers have tall sign posts advertising their location and $/kWh.
• An older gentleman came up to me at a Tesla Supercharger asking me if it was possible to charge without using an app because an elderly could trying to charge their new Cadillac had asked him the same thing. It is not.
• ABRP assumes you're just going to charge enough to get to the next DC charger, but traveling with a toddler who wanted to run around or eat, and need a diaper change, made charging stops take longer. No big deal, just replan the route from your current position and actual SoC.
• I didn't mind the longer stops vs. filling up a with gas. Good to break up driving. Partner did not. It definitely turns 7 hours of driving into 9+ hours on the road.
• The bZ is my first car with adaptive cruise control. It works all the way down to 0 mph! It also will brake as aggressively as it needs to. Made driving though LA traffic much less stressful and tiring since you don't have to constantly work the pedals.
• LANE TRACING ASSIST UNAVAILABLE SOON TAKE CONTROL OF WHEEL
• I only charged during daylight hours. California has tons of excess solar during the day. This was a solar powered road trip!
• I use L1 charging at home. The fastest DC charging speed I saw was 141 kW. It was cool to charge over a hundred times faster than usual.
• The typical charging speeds I saw were 90-100 kW between 30-80% charge.
• I spent about $110 on fast charging. The equivalent gas on my old car would have been about $180 at today's prices, $120 a year ago. DC fast charging does not save significant amounts of "fuel" money. Only home charging does.
• I averaged 3.7 miles/kWh for the trip, but I was not trying to optimize and had the AC blasting in the heat. The best stretch was heading into LA with bad traffic: 4.4 mi/kWh. The worst stretch was I-5 going 80mph into a headwind in 95 degree heat: 2.8 mi/kWh.
• My napkin math says it requires ~1% of the battery to climb 1000 feet. The reverse is also true. It was cool to see the SoC percentage tick upwards when coasting down the grapevine.
• The EPA estimate of 315 miles really is ideal conditions. My estimate at 100% is now 240 miles.
• The car was very comfortable. Can't believe I drove 7 hours in one day without being too tired afterwards.
• Decent cargo space, it held all our luggage, a stroller, car seat and all the extra crap you need to bring with a toddler. There was a little bit of stress that it wasn't all going to fit, but I made it work.

All in all the EV road trip wasn't as terrible as I thought it was going to be.

Would I do it again? Not for the foreseeable future. Travelling with a toddler was the worst thing! Any EV annoyances pale in comparison.