Poll: Charging Away From Home (US/Canada)

If the rumors are true, we might actually get CHAdeMO adapters in the US soon. If so, I'd like to step in front of that event and see where we are at with regard to on the road charging today.


Please take 5 seconds to click on this link and reply to the poll. Basically, what methods have you used to charge your car away from home (including at work, in your town, or when travelling). If you've had your car for a while (like 6 months or more) and you haven't yet charged away from home at all, click that option too.

Please only US/Canada responses.


Poll - EasyPolls.net

So far 42 people have responded. I am getting the impression that charging away from home is less of an issue than it used to be? The last time I ran this poll (8 months ago), I had a lot more people interested in responding to the poll.

After responding, you can see the current results.

Jaff said:

I would suggest that to date, charging away from home has been hugely overrated as an issue from the get go...it seems to me that the majority of folks who cite charging away from home as the pinnacle concern for EV driving are not daily EV drivers...(Those who are looking to buy an EV but are totally inexperienced with "day to day EV life" / those in the media / those who are anti-EV)

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Speaking for myself, I certainly agree. I've had the car almost 2 years and never once had an issue. Having said that, I have had to plan out trips more carefully. In particular:

- I once had to search for a hotel that had a charger and didn't find one, so I used Plugshare and found a public charger across the street from a boutique hotel. Worked out great since the $2/hr charging fee was cheaper than the valet parking

- When booking condos for extended stays, I now search for ones that have a garage - that way I can at least charge at 120V, 12A or 16A.

- I am lucky that a year ago, a Supercharger got turned on one hour away so that it is now feasible to do long day trips to/from Los Angeles.

Rockster said:

Question: For the purposes of your poll, does "on the road" include destination charging at the homes of family members?

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Yes. Anywhere that isn't home. Work would count as away from home too.

That's ok, plugging just case you might need the juice for an unplanned detour is certainly a good idea.

So far 106 people have responded. Last year I stopped the poll when I had 145 responses, and then I'll summarize the findings (which are interesting, especially in comparison to last year).

One thing I'm curious about though, is that 4 people said they charged using "other". What other charging could that be? Beta testing CHAdeMO?

OK, I'm shutting down this poll after a pretty robust 125 responses. Here's the chart of the result as a percentage of people who responded.



I ran this poll 8 months ago and had different results then.


This time around, a huge 86% of people have used a Supercharger. Considering all the holes in the map in North America, that's a very large percentage. 8 months ago it was 69%.


78% of people have used a J1772 public charger, up from 62% 8 months ago.


The two included adapters, household 15A plug and NEMA 14-50 plug use has also gone up to 58% and 51% respectively, again an increase over the 40% number 8 months ago.


Dryers (both plug types together, about an equal split between them) were used 28% of the time, only slightly more than 8 months ago.


The 20A household plug also stayed at about the same percentage use, around 9%.


Conclusions? The effect of the Supercharger build out can be seen with increased Supercharger use. But I think the build out has also allowed more travel in general, because more people use the other types of plugs when travelling (presumably at their destinations). Indeed the increased amount of J1772, 15A household and 14-50 plug use is more or less the same increase in percentage terms as increased Supercharger use.


It will be interesting to run this poll in 8 more months when (hopefully) the CHAdeMO adapter has been out for a while and the Supercharger network is even more built out.