A 600-mile road trip (and data) proves EV charging doesn’t suck anymore

600英里的公路旅行（及数据）证明：电动汽车充电不再是“噩梦”

In the minds of prospective EV buyers, charging looms large. Just over half of those surveyed by AAA last year said that public charging infrastructure was a key concern. Those concerns aren’t unfounded. EV fast charging has historically been lackluster. In 2023, after a disastrous road trip, I drafted an EV fast-charging “bill of rights,” outlining seven improvements charging networks needed to make to turn things around. What a difference a few years can make. During a recent road trip, I was surprised by how much the situation has improved. With one small exception, my charging experience was flawless.

在潜在的电动汽车买家心中，充电问题始终是心头大石。美国汽车协会（AAA）去年的调查显示，超过半数的受访者将公共充电基础设施视为主要顾虑。这些担忧并非空穴来风，电动汽车快充体验在历史上确实表现平平。2023年，在经历了一次糟糕的公路旅行后，我起草了一份电动汽车快充“权利法案”，列出了充电网络需要做出的七项改进。几年过去，情况已大不相同。在最近的一次公路旅行中，我惊讶地发现充电状况改善了这么多。除了一个小插曲外，我的充电体验堪称完美。

A near-perfect experience

近乎完美的体验

This summer’s road trip to Montreal covered more than 600 miles. We had intended to use our Kia EV9, which will travel nearly 300 miles on a charge, but the Kia is in the shop because of a broken air conditioner. Instead, we drove our Audi e-tron, which has a range of about 220 miles per charge. Despite the disparity, the e-tron handled the trip with aplomb. Rangemaxxing might sound nice, but it isn’t necessary.

今年夏天前往蒙特利尔的公路旅行全程超过600英里。我们原本打算开起亚EV9，它的单次充电续航里程接近300英里，但由于空调故障，车子正在维修店。于是我们改开了奥迪e-tron，其单次充电续航约为220英里。尽管存在续航差距，e-tron依然从容地完成了旅程。“续航最大化”听起来很美好，但并非必要。

To find chargers, I used A Better Route Planner (ABRP), an app that optimizes charging stops by accounting for everything from prevailing winds and temperature to vehicle specs and battery degradation. You can use a Bluetooth OBD reader to feed live data from the car to ABRP, but I found the app to be pretty accurate without one. ABRP said our first stop should be a Rivian charger near Lebanon, New Hampshire. The app is now owned by Rivian, so I wasn’t entirely surprised. After my experience at the Lebanon chargers, I can see why the app chose them, regardless of Rivian’s ownership. There were no lines, plenty of food options, a grocery store, and six 300-kilowatt chargers that were all working. I had downloaded the Rivian app in advance, but I needn’t have. The charger accepted my credit card and delivered more than 140 kilowatts, roughly the e-tron’s max.

为了寻找充电桩，我使用了“A Better Route Planner (ABRP)”这款应用。它能综合考虑风向、气温、车辆规格和电池衰减等因素，从而优化充电停靠点。你可以使用蓝牙OBD读取器将车辆实时数据传输给ABRP，但我发现即使不使用它，该应用的准确度也相当高。ABRP建议我们的第一站是新罕布什尔州黎巴嫩附近的Rivian充电站。由于该应用现在归Rivian所有，我对此并不感到意外。在体验过黎巴嫩的充电站后，我明白了为什么应用会推荐这里——无论Rivian是否拥有它。那里没有排队，有丰富的餐饮选择、一家杂货店，还有六个全部正常工作的300千瓦充电桩。我提前下载了Rivian应用，但其实没必要，充电桩直接接受了我的信用卡，并提供了超过140千瓦的功率，这大约是e-tron的充电上限。

We used the same chargers on the way home and had a similar experience. After that, we used a Circuit Électrique station just outside Montreal to top up for the week ahead. There, we experienced the trip’s only hitch: The card reader didn’t work, so I had to download Circuit Électrique’s app and load it with 20 Canadian dollars. After that, the session went smoothly. In retrospect, the stop wasn’t entirely necessary. We didn’t drive much during the week, and the hotel charger worked perfectly. But the kids needed a break and my wife needed a coffee, so we probably would have plugged in regardless. Each session lasted about 20 minutes, and we combined charging with lunch or rest stops. We never once waited on the car. Altogether, the three sessions took about as long as our wait at border control on the way back into the United States.

回程时我们再次使用了这些充电桩，体验同样出色。之后，我们在蒙特利尔郊外使用了一个Circuit Électrique充电站，为接下来的一周补充电量。在那里，我们遇到了旅途中唯一的小插曲：读卡器坏了，我不得不下载Circuit Électrique的应用程序并充值了20加元。之后，充电过程非常顺利。回想起来，这次充电并非完全必要，因为我们在那一周开车不多，酒店的充电桩也工作正常。但孩子们需要休息，我妻子需要喝杯咖啡，所以无论如何我们可能都会停下来充电。每次充电大约持续20分钟，我们都将其与午餐或休息结合在一起。我们从未因为等车而浪费时间。总的来说，这三次充电的总耗时大约和我们返回美国时在边境检查站排队的时间相当。

What it used to be like

过去是什么样

Three years ago, the trip didn’t go nearly as well. I knew that fast charging could be hit or miss — I’ve driven non-Tesla EVs for more than a decade — but I still came away disappointed. That summer, we drove the same Audi e-tron to Maine, a round trip of about 350 miles, roughly half the distance of our trip to Montreal. The car could have made it to Maine on one charge, but the hotel didn’t have an EV charger. To ensure we had enough juice for the long weekend and the beginning of the drive home, we planned to charge a little over halfway there. Before we left, I had also used ABRP to weed out less reliable chargers, but the experience was still miserable. The first charger broke shortly after I plugged in, forcing me to move to another stall. The first charger never ended the session with my car, which meant the second one wouldn’t start without a call to customer service. At another stop, the charging network’s app reported two working plugs out of four, but only one actually worked. Altogether, the three sessions took about as long as our wait at border control on the way back into the United States.

三年前，那次旅行的体验远没有这么好。我深知快充可能时好时坏——毕竟我驾驶非特斯拉电动汽车已经超过十年了——但我依然感到失望。那年夏天，我们开着同一辆奥迪e-tron去缅因州，往返约350英里，大约只有去蒙特利尔路程的一半。车子本可以一次充电到达缅因州，但酒店没有充电桩。为了确保长周末和返程初期有足够的电量，我们计划在半路充电。出发前，我也用ABRP排除了那些不可靠的充电桩，但体验依然糟糕。第一个充电桩在我插上后不久就坏了，迫使我换到另一个车位。第一个充电桩从未结束与我车辆的连接，这意味着如果不致电客服，第二个充电桩就无法启动。在另一个停靠点，充电网络的应用程序显示四个充电口中有两个可用，但实际上只有一个能用。

Data reveals big improvements

数据揭示了巨大进步

Thankfully, the EV charging infrastructure looks very different today. My experiences in 2023 and 2026 are anecdotes, of course. But the available data suggests they are representative of a broader trend: fast charging in the U.S. has improved by leaps and bounds. Back in July 2023, the country had about 32,000 DC fast chargers, according to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation. At the time, many of those chargers were restricted to Tesla drivers. (Tesla announced plans to open its network in 2023, but it took more than a year for widespread access.) Today, EV drivers can use most of Tesla’s network. Continued expansion by Tesla and other companies has helped push the total to more than twice the number of DC fast chargers available in 2023.

值得庆幸的是，今天的电动汽车充电基础设施已大不相同。当然，我在2023年和2026年的经历只是个案，但现有数据表明，它们代表了一个更广泛的趋势：美国的快充水平已经取得了飞跃式的进步。根据能源与交通联合办公室的数据，2023年7月，全国约有32,000个直流快充桩。当时，其中许多充电桩仅限特斯拉车主使用。（特斯拉在2023年宣布了开放网络的计划，但实现广泛接入花费了一年多的时间。）如今，电动汽车驾驶员可以使用特斯拉的大部分网络。特斯拉和其他公司的持续扩张，使得直流快充桩的总数已超过2023年的两倍。

What’s more, they’re more reliable. My nearly flawless trip last week appears to be the norm, not the exception. Since last year, reliability has improved nearly 10 points, from 85 to the mid-90s, on Paren’s reliability index, which includes metrics such as successful charging sessions and station downtime. Tesla’s network remains dominant, according to Paren, but other networks are growing quickly. That competition has undoubtedly helped improve charging experiences across the board. Gaps in the network still exist and EV chargers still break. But more chargers are being added every month and the broken ones are being repaired more quickly than in the past. It’s not perfect, but I’m genuinely surprised by how much better fast charging has become. Someone should tell the holdouts what they’re missing.

更重要的是，它们变得更可靠了。我上周那次近乎完美的旅行似乎已成为常态，而非例外。自去年以来，在Paren的可靠性指数（包含成功充电次数和站点停机时间等指标）上，可靠性提高了近10个百分点，从85分提升到了90分出头。据Paren称，特斯拉的网络依然占据主导地位，但其他网络也在迅速增长。这种竞争无疑有助于全面提升充电体验。网络中仍存在空白，充电桩也依然会损坏，但每个月都有更多的充电桩投入使用，且故障修复速度也比过去快得多。虽然还不完美，但我确实对快充的进步程度感到惊讶。是时候告诉那些还在观望的人，他们错过了什么。