When traveling, do you bother with trying to find hotels with EV charging? Can you depend on them?

[henderrj]

No. My reasons are at What app do you use to find hotels with charging?.

I haven't had time for many EV road trips but so far , I've not sought one out when I've had an EV w/me. Since the hotel never said it had any, they met my expectations.

And, there’s a report at Finding hotel/motels with ev charging stations of an insane $10 per hour for level 2 charging.

CT4000: 30A Dual Port Level 2 EV Charger | ChargePoint is typical for public and workplace L2 (my work has dozens of these). They're only 30 amp max and at 208 volts (common for US commercial power), the best you get out of them is 30 amps * 208 volts = 6240 watts = 6.24 kW. If they are on a 240 volt feed, you'd get 7200 watts = 7.2 kW. So, for each hour, 7.2 kWh at best comes out of each plug, costing you $10. That's really horrible pricing for 7.2 kWh.

We've been road tripping our Tesla for seven years. Destination chargers have been available for most of that time, we've stopped at dozens of motels that have them, have never once been charged a dime to use them. Yes, if you find some other brand of charger, you'll probably pay for it. Although we've gotten that for free too. But, that's actually rare to find. Tesla destination chargers are pretty common, the others are not.

We look for destination chargers via the map on the in vehicle screen, and then decide if it's a good hotel or not. We do occasionally run into places where there are no destination or other chargers available. But most of the time we can use the destination chargers and they have always, 100% of the time, been free. Well, included with the cost of the room.

 

[KJD]

I really wish that some hotel chain would say we are going to provide charging at ALL of our locations. I think they would have a loyal following if they did. Sad to say no hotels are that forward thinking.

When I got my first Tesla I tried to stay at hotels with charging, but found it to be time consuming and often led to disappointment for one reason or another. Now I plan my trips around the best supercharging route and then try and find a hotel near to the last supercharger of the day. Seems to work out a lot better that way.

It appears that finding a hotel with charging is going to get much easier in the very near future. I may have to do this more often from here on out.

Up to 20k Tesla Universal Wall Connectors to be installed at 2k Hilton sites

 

[Olle]

It appears that finding a hotel with charging is going to get much easier in the very near future. I may have to do this more often from here on out.

Up to 20k Tesla Universal Wall Connectors to be installed at 2k Hilton sites

Posted in two other threads in the section. Mods: perhaps merge threads or move posts?

 

[Tronguy]

So, hotels installing Wall Connectors (or the equivalent) sounds like a great idea; looks like Hilton is getting a bit ahead of the game.

Couple of random musings.

First: Quite a few lower-cost hotels hand out free breakfasts of varying attractiveness, but still saves one something around $10 (plus or minus) vs. having to go find a Dunkin Donuts or equivalent. Higher cost hotels Always Charge for that, and usually a heck of a lot more than $10.00!
Say one shows up with, say, 10% charge left and wants to do a charge to 90%. A 2023 M3 LR is 82 kW-hr, so an 80% charge would be 65.6 kW-hr. Say the Actual Cost of Electricity is $0.20 at the hotel; so that would be $13.12 or thereabouts. Hm. I can see where $RANDOM_HOTEL would charge about $15 for the service and people would be Happy.

Second: The time to charge, in this example, with a TWC and 208 VAC (commercial properties almost always get three-phase in the U.S.) would be 65.6kW-hr/(208V*48A) = 6.57 hours. Well, that's pretty much overnight, longer for our non-Tesla brethren with less efficiency and bigger batteries.

Third: If it's a TWC or some such where a VIN number can be used to charge with, that would keep the freeloaders out, excepting the usual ICE-ing going on. The bigger problem would be the Entitiled who think that once they've ponied up their $15 for the privilege, they get to keep that spot Forever. So, given that the hotel usually knows which car goes with which room, there might have to be some fol-der-rol to keep people from hogging charging spots, especially when the number of customers outnumbers the number of charging spots. Sigh.

I can see the need for a (hopefully standardized) pile of software for the front desk to manage it all. Unless every parking spot gets a charging point.

 

[KJD]

Third: If it's a TWC or some such where a VIN number can be used to charge with, that would keep the freeloaders out, excepting the usual ICE-ing going on. The bigger problem would be the Entitiled who think that once they've ponied up their $15 for the privilege, they get to keep that spot Forever. So, given that the hotel usually knows which car goes with which room, there might have to be some fol-der-rol to keep people from hogging charging spots, especially when the number of customers outnumbers the number of charging spots. Sigh.

I can see the need for a (hopefully standardized) pile of software for the front desk to manage it all. Unless every parking spot gets a charging point.

You do know that Tesla has already committed to providing the software to manage this billing right ?

With a growing number of Tesla cars on the road, a Wall Connector can pay for itself over time. Property managers will soon be able to set the price of charging sessions while Tesla handles payments automatically and securely – with no monthly fees.

https://www.tesla.com/commercial-charging

 

[Tronguy]

You do know that Tesla has already committed to providing the software to manage this billing right ?



https://www.tesla.com/commercial-charging

Nope, missed it. Thanks!

 

[kpanda17]

Hilton and Tesla just announced the TWCs going into hotel parking lots. Would be nice if that includes monitoring for how many times did we check into a hotel to find rhe L2 broken? I have

 

[SVMike]

I did a 3600 mile road trip this summer and ~half the miles were from hotel chargers. Only one charger didn't work properly and luckily there were two chargers and no other EVs.

 

[R.P.E.]

I did a 3600 mile road trip this summer and ~half the miles were from hotel chargers. Only one charger didn't work properly and luckily there were two chargers and no other EVs.

The Midwest needs to catch up quick. Like…today already. I live in a major city, and none of the key player Hotels( Hilton, Double Tree, ect.) have any chargers whatsoever. It’s ridiculous. I’m just dumbfounded how behind the infrastructure is here in the Midwest, almost to the point where it’s embarrassing. And people wonder why EV’s aren’t taking off in terms of sales in the Midwest. And that’s part of it, is that there’s not enough expanded infrastructure.

 

[Supcom]

The Midwest needs to catch up quick. Like…today already. I live in a major city, and none of the key player Hotels( Hilton, Double Tree, ect.) have any chargers whatsoever. It’s ridiculous. I’m just dumbfounded how behind the infrastructure is here in the Midwest, almost to the point where it’s embarrassing. And people wonder why EV’s aren’t taking off in terms of sales in the Midwest. And that’s part of it, is that there’s not enough expanded infrastructure.

An exception to this is the small town of La Plata, MO (about 1.5 hour north of Columbia) in the middle of a large Amish population, no less. The one motel (very nice, actually) in town has two L2 chargers, one Tesla and one J1772 that are free for guest use. I've stayed there and made good use of the Tesla unit. I had the only EV there at the time. Given that the nearest SC is in Columbia, this made my stay particularly enjoyable since I had no need to conserve battery for the time I was there. It's particularly curious that the owners installed the chargers at least a couple years ago, showing that they were pretty forward thinking.

The point is that the big cities don't have as much need for destination chargers as the small ones that are located far from SC sites.

 

[Earl]

The Midwest needs to catch up quick. Like…today already. I live in a major city, and none of the key player Hotels( Hilton, Double Tree, ect.) have any chargers whatsoever. It’s ridiculous. I’m just dumbfounded how behind the infrastructure is here in the Midwest, almost to the point where it’s embarrassing. And people wonder why EV’s aren’t taking off in terms of sales in the Midwest. And that’s part of it, is that there’s not enough expanded infrastructure.

My experience doesn't reflect that.
Many small midwest towns have RV hookups in their city parks or fairgrounds with 14-50 outlets for events. The problem is that these are often not listed on internet sites.
There are also a lot of RV parks in the midwest, unlike in the more urban areas.
I also know of hotel owners in WY and NE (Lusk and Wheatland, WY and Gothenburg, NE come to mind as very early ones), who jumped in and begged for destination and Superchargers very early on, making it easy for Tesla to roll out the Superchargers.
Then there was the town of Elk Horn, IA, where an ambitious local resident realized, very early, how easy it is to put in an 14-50 outlet and just put a few around town because it was easy and the right thing to do. For a while Elk Horn had more chargers per capita than anywhere else in the world.
I think the issue is that things, in general, are more sparse in the midwest. If only 10% of places have chargers, that still leaves big gaps.
A good NEMA 14-50 mobile connector is essential, however.

 

[Feathermerchan]

Found this out today. Tesla map in car used to include an icon for destination charging in the data block for a hotel. We're staying in a LaQuinta that has Destination charging but we only found it by using Google maps and looking thru the amenities link. Anyone have a good way of finding these?

 

[Supcom]

Found this out today. Tesla map in car used to include an icon for destination charging in the data block for a hotel. We're staying in a LaQuinta that has Destination charging but we only found it by using Google maps and looking thru the amenities link. Anyone have a good way of finding these?

plugshare.com is a good source. Enable the connector types you can use (Tesla, J1772, 14-50, etc) and you can see chargers on a map.

 

[AudreyHTX1]

Found this out today. Tesla map in car used to include an icon for destination charging in the data block for a hotel. We're staying in a LaQuinta that has Destination charging but we only found it by using Google maps and looking thru the amenities link. Anyone have a good way of finding these?

I find PlugShare.com to be the most useful, mainly because people post about their experiences: availability, whether working or not, if well maintained, etc. Pretty critical info.

 

[Park2670]

Rented a Polestar at LAX, and used the Marriott app to find a hotel with onsite charging. Stayed there for a week, charging every other day, unplugging before I went to bed so others could use it.

Worked perfectly. Never had to use DC charging, and never had to pay to drive around.

 

[unk45]

I really wish that some hotel chain would say we are going to provide charging at ALL of our locations. I think they would have a loyal following if they did. Sad to say no hotels are that forward thinking.

When I got my first Tesla I tried to stay at hotels with charging, but found it to be time consuming and often led to disappointment for one reason or another. Now I plan my trips around the best supercharging route and then try and find a hotel near to the last supercharger of the day. Seems to work out a lot better that way.

I've been staying at hotels with charging solutions available since 2012. I have not yet failed to find charging that way. Recently I've found hotel charging in hotels in greece that ostensibly do not have charging. In the US Select registry has BEV charing at every location, many Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt hotels have charging, and those that do not invariably have outside outlets used for support services that have always been available when asking nicely.

Recently people seem to have been less inclined to do workarounds, but those of us who've been driving BEV's since a decade or more tend to have a frunk full fo adapters so can even use welding shops in a pinch. Two night ago I displaced a hotel golf cart to get my charge. Where there are golf carts there is charging.

TSLA values still benefit from that Supercharging and Destination Charger infrastructure so workarounds are not often needed, except for those of us who are dedicated to charge while we're sleeping.

 

[MikeRadio]

I always look for hotels with chargers. Preferably free chargers. And good PlugShare scores. However, I don’t get there with such a little amount of charge that if they are being used or not working, I can’t get to somewhere else, but I do make the effort to use hotel chargers in my journeys times I’ve been able to use them and a few have been in use already but on a long road trip you can save hundreds of dollars in supercharger fees by using hotel chargers. And now with the new charger is going in at Hilton and Marriott properties, which were announced the other week , they’ll be even more hotels with chargers. Hopefully they won’t try to gouge us on the price.

 

[kpanda17]

Has Marriott and Hilton added EV charging to their location search criteria?

 

[sdc100]

Has Marriott and Hilton added EV charging to their location search criteria?

As of Sept. 2023, the major hotel chain websites don't often properly filter the results for EV chargers even if the search option seems available.

People report that the hotel chain mobile apps do work much better for filtering by EV charging in the search results for some reason.

Marriott does have a list of hotels by state with EV chargers but it doesn't help much at glance if you are not familiar with the geography of the state (is Orange, CA near Anaheim, CA? for example) nor if it is a special hotel listed without the location (where is Marriott's Timber Lodge?)

 

[Feathermerchan]

The data block on Tesla's screen used to show destination charging. I don't see it anymore. We have resorted to calling ahead and asking but you have to get the front desk and not a reservationist. Since we make reservations as we approach anyway, it works to call and check then reserve. If you plan several weeks in advance this may not be the best option.
Using your phone sometimes 'destination charging' or 'Tesla charging' are listed under 'Amenities' or 'More Amenities'.
In Tucumcari, NM we were told that the hotel next door had destination charging but we could use it. Strange. It was actually a Supercharger in the parking lot of the hotel next door. Such is EV life at this stage.