I recently went on a 2600 mile round-trip road trip in our 23 Lightning Lariat ER. I charged exclusively at Electrify America stations. It’s a bit disappointing that electricity at these chargers are roughly 80% /- what I pay for electricity at home.

I know that overtime being this is my fourth EV and 90% of charging is done at my house I will save considerably over the cost of gas, oil, and other ICE maintenance.

However, it remains disappointing that longer haul road trips, especially when considering your amount of time invested to stop & charge, plan your trip, etc. isn’t too far off from a gas car… unless you’re driving a hybrid vehicle that easily gets 35mpg on the highway.

So here’s a very rough spreadsheet to look at and compare real world numbers. Gas in the regions I drove averaged out roughly $3.70/gal.

I did a vehicle avg. 20mpg, 25mpg, and 35mpg - thinking what a “normal” F150, a smaller SUV, and a fuel efficient car might be expected to get.

Now if you really consider this inflated costs of traveling - it’s about, again very roughly, $120-200 per night for a basic hotel (thinking Holiday Inn Express, Hampton Inn, LaQuinta, Comfort Inn, etc). On this trip, it was just under $200/nt.

I used a hotel for 2 nights so we’ll say it was $400 total for lodging. And that isn’t including meals like dinner, which usually was a nearby fast-food joint.

So total EV charging $465 $400 Lodging = 865, I’ll round up to $900 which easily reflects added costs of snacks along the charging routes, lunch, etc.

This took 4 days total of driving round trip.

That’s where a big road trip vs. flying comes into question. Driving is still cheaper if you have a family (figuring more people, lower per person cost). But not if you consider you could have had 2 more days of time to play and not drive. Also dependent on things like, are you working and used PTO?

Thoughts?