I can't say I've made a ton of road trips, in general, but I've never had a Tesla and have made road trips in CCS cars. Went from the Bay Area to So Cal in Dec 2021 then back and was fine. There's plenty of CCS charging on highway 99. Did about 1000 miles total that trip. Most of my DC FC juice was free thanks to
New Electric Vehicle Fast Chargers Now Available Along State Highways in Central California | Caltrans + a Bakerfield free DC FC (broken now).
I had to drive the '22 Niro EV I leased at end of Jan 2022 from Carlsbad to the Bay Area (450 miles, one way). I bumped into rhuber at my 1st charging stop (paid). Was fine. Also took highway 99. The next two DC FC stops were free.
I just returned last night from an over 1100 mile trip to go from Bay Area, to Los Angeles then staying in Lompoc to see Santa Barbara, Solvang, a SpaceX launch from Vandenberg SFB and Hearst Castle. I got free L2 juice from a bunch of places (offices of my company in So Cal that I dropped by to see), a shopping mall I was at, Hearst Castle visitor center, etc. I got free Electrify America DC FC juice at 3 different sites (2 on the way back) as I posted at
Electrify America Complementary Session Check-in. '22 Niro EV doesn't come with any free DC FC juice.
I took highway 99 down to So Cal and 101 back up. Because I got to full at Hearst Castle visitor center (I did pay for and take their tour + watch their movie), it looked like I might've been able to get home w/o DC FCing once (would've been easier to if it weren't cold and rainy), but I didn't want to take a chance so I did stop at Harden Ranch to try
Harden Ranch Plaza | PlugShare. It was working but it was only putting out 10 kW instead of maybe 17 to 24 kW. I used this before years ago. For kicks, I went to
Harden Ranch Plaza - Walmart | PlugShare and lo and behold, 2 of 4 units were showing complimentary session.
If you ever see that on EA, just plug right in. It'll start by itself and the juice will be free. Don't use their app, credit card, NFC or anything. This was also my 1st chance to see EA's next gen units. These were Signet dispensers.
If it weren't free, I'd have probably gone to
Gilroy Premium Outlets (3) | PlugShare to get a bit of juice. I never anticipated receiving free EA juice on the way back.
Of course, I use Plugshare and some DC FCs were down (but they had low Plugshare rating and not positive recent reviews, so I'm not surprised) but I wasn't stuck. But, I'm in CA. For sure there are DC FC deserts in the US and places where there are few/no nearby backups on a given route. I'm fairly sure there's even some of that in CA.
I take highway 99 between the Bay Area and So Cal vs. the typical route of highway 5 for ICEVs since there are WAY more CCS (and CHAdeMo) DC FC choices on 99 and thus way more backups. Some sites on 5 are problematic and can have many units down or all down. If many are down, there'd be a huge line or one an have some serious range anxiety due to lack of backups vs 99.
A Chevrolet Bolt EV Set a Cannonball Run Record and No One Noticed | Torque News made it across the US.