Toyota bZ4X road trip shows how devastating an EV journey can be if you choose the wrong car

• i drive a new car Toyota bZ4X Electric SUV from New York to Washington DC and vice versa.
• Nine hours of driving involves three hours of charging.
• I learned the hard way that sometimes you need to choose between staying warm and maximizing range.

Electric cars are fast, quiet and kind to the planetbut limited range and long charging time mean road trip not exactly their strong suit.

That’s what I learned when I took Toyota’s new bZ4X SUV from New York to Washington DC on a weekend in early April. The 500-mile journey is not an epic adventure from coast to coast, but the kind of long-distance drive someone can casually take a few times a year and without thinking twice. — if they were behind the wheel of a regular scooter.

However, in a battery-powered car, things are not always so simple.

Charging may take a long time

Let’s take a moment to establish some basic concepts.

Each EV has a maximum charge rate, expressed in kilowatts (kW), that governs the amount of power it can accept from roadside fast charging. Give bZ4X The AWD I tested, it’s 100 kW can’t compete. The higher the EV’s rating, hypothetically the faster you can charge it — as long as you find a charging plug with the same or higher rating.

But you don’t always reach that maximum charge due to chargertemperature of batteryor, in my case, the settings are built into the vehicle itself. During my entire trip, the car never got close to 100 kW, resulting in some very annoying charging times.

Toyota A spokesman said the SUV has been designed to prioritize battery life, which means placing a damper when fast charging, which can accelerate battery wear.

On my way down to DC, I pulled over to an Electrify America station with a 37% charge, looking to recharge just enough to last the rest of the way. Toyota refused to tow more than 35 kW, so just reaching 74% took a 45-minute wait – absolutely not something you want to do at night when you still have hours of driving ahead.

That span adds 95 miles of range, according to the SUV’s estimates. But highway speeds drain energy quickly, so in real terms it’s probably more like 75.

On the return trip, I stopped at an EVgo station with 6% left. This time, Toyota won’t budge more than 50 kW, so charging to 80% takes a painful hour and 15 minutes.

All in all, and the charging stops added two hours of travel time to the roughly nine-hour trip.

But this experience is not common. Tesla fast charging And benefit from an extensive, private charging network. Some Hyundai batteries can be fully charged in the time it takes to find the bathroom and get some beef jerky. Many vehicles beat Toyota’s 222-mile rangecut the frequency and urgency of stops.

You need to leave yourself a big buffer

On each full charge, I made sure to create a comfortable buffer between the distance Google Maps indicated I had left and the distance left by the Toyota, as indicated on its display. I ran out of range too far from my previous charging station and it’s not fun.

It turned out to be a wise move. Factors such as high speed, incline, and — as we’ll discuss in more detail later — using the climate setting can deplete an EV’s range faster than expected. So unless you know your EV well, don’t blindly trust what it tells you.

Here is an example. When I left the Electrify America station in New Jersey and headed to DC, the Toyota showed 188 miles—a lot to drive for the remaining 138 miles, right? Are not.

I watched my beautiful cache wither to only 11 miles by the time I arrived, triggering a disturbing message asking me to charge it up soon. A few wrong turns left my final run to only 9 miles.

Since the charging station not nearly as rich or as clearly marked as petrol pumpsyou need to carefully map out your pit stops in advance to avoid a bad time.

You can charge and do other things at the same time

One of the bright spots about driving an EV is that you don’t have to sit in the car while charging. If you’re not on your way somewhere, you can plug it in and get on with your day.

The morning after arriving in DC, I checked the car and found its mileage had dropped to just 6 miles overnight. Since I didn’t want to sit around charging for an hour right before hitting the road back home the next day, I searched the city for a charger and found several EVgo stalls near Union Station.

I drove in, plugged it in, and went sightseeing for a few hours. During that time, I was able to check the charging progress of my car through the EVgo app on my phone. This is the best charging session I’ve had all weekend: 3% to 77% for an hour, limited to that particular charger.

Better yet, the EVgo app provided a QR code to flash at the gate so I could leave the parking lot without paying.

However, it’s a pity that I have to spend the day driving to the charging station. If the garage at the apartment I’m staying in had its own charger, that would make the whole trip much more seamless.

Prepare to choose between comfort and range

An internal combustion engine car generates heat as a byproduct, so starting the radiator shouldn’t be a big deal. But electric cars use energy from batteries to generate heat, making the driver choose between maximum range and maximum comfort.

I was on my way back to New York on a chilly morning 176 miles. When I went to turn on the heat, the indicated range plummeted to 125 miles. The choices become: Keep your appetite intact and charge it twice, or endure the cold and stick with the planned one-stop strategy. Given the bZ4X’s lackluster range and my previous long experiences charging it, I opted for the latter.

I packed and mostly relied on the seat and steering wheel heaters (which are more efficient than regular heaters) to make things almost tolerable. I would be lying if I said I didn’t curse these silly electric cars once or twice.

But electric future seems inevitable at this point, so we too can learn to live with it.