NZ Family Takes EV Road Trip in US Southwest

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The wide open spaces of the American Southwest can be big and intimidating, even if you grew up in the United States and are familiar with the big gaps that can happen between towns. Add in the current charging situation for EVs in the United States, and some of those wide open spaces become literal and figurative charging deserts. But, again, longtime EV owners in the US know to expect this.

But what happens when people from a much smaller country on the other side of the world try to take this all on? Fortunately, we can learn all about it from this video: (article continues after)

New Zealand is only about the size of the eastern seaboard of the United States. North to south, that’s not very small, but planning road networks and charging over that distance is easier because there’s no need for long-distance driving east and west. This makes it easier to just put chargers in along the “spine” of the country and cover the needs of travelers. Because there’s so little space to cover, the EV charging network really doesn’t have any big gaps where they’re from.

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Planning The Trip

Flying out to the Southwest and renting a Tesla was a very different experience. The Morgan family’s rented Tesla Model Y was an easy choice, as Clayton had been investing in Tesla for a long time. This vacation gave him an opportunity to take his skeptical wife out to see what EV driving was all about. In other words, it was the family’s first experience with driving an EV! He had to plan the trip ahead of time to avoid getting talked out of renting the Tesla by his wife or a skeptical travel agent.

The Model Y was the car he’d eventually like to buy in New Zealand, it had plenty of room for luggage and the family, and it was readily available where they landed in Los Angeles. After spending a few days visiting Los Angeles, the Morgans picked the Y up, and “drove into the desert.” His wife had a list of places where she wanted to go, and the family drove a loop around all of them, ending again in LA.

About the only challenge he faced planning the trip was getting from the Grand Canyon to Monument Valley. During initial planning, there was no open station in Kayenta to support that drive, but he assumed that the charging station would be open by the time he went. Fortunately for him, it was open by the time he went, so it was easy to get to all of the national parks he planned to go to.

Actually Going On It

In the beginning, while driving for the first time on the other side of the world from home at much faster speed with more aggressive drivers, he had to figure out how to use Tesla navigation and other aspects of Tesla driving. He also had a chance before leaving LA to learn to use FSD and otherwise get used to it.

Getting out on the open road, he learned that Americans pretty much all speed, and he struggled the first night to get used to it and get to the first hotel. On the second day, he drove a full 12 hours (8 driving, 4 charging), passed through a traffic jam going to Palm Springs, and got directed onto a dirt road by navigation. Fortunately, using ABRP and Tesla planning, he was able to avoid range anxiety for the most part, and arrived with 12% at the lowest arrival of the trip.

While the specific route wasn’t given, it sounded like he was taking a “Big 5” national parks trip (Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Zion) after going to the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley. They had the car for 8 nights, drove just over 3000 kilometers (1800 miles, or about 1.5× the length of New Zealand), and got pretty tired by the end of the trip. By the end of the trip, he would describe his trip as “busy.”

What We Can Learn From This

Before I get into what this means for EV owners and the industry, let’s quickly talk about the right way to visit a national park. Of course, there’s no “right way,” and you can do whatever you want, but one thing I’ve learned is that trying to “do” the parks instead of getting to know them can make a trip feel busy and tiring.

I love doing scenic photography, but I’ve learned that to really do a great photo of a place, you need to spend time learning how it changes through the course of a day, see the place in different conditions, and otherwise take time to get familiar. This also gives you time to relax and really enjoy the scenery, see more things, and not miss a bunch of it.

For EVs themselves, the good news is that this shows that EVs have mostly arrived at prime time. If someone can get a common EV, start driving it, and then take an 1800-mile trip around the Southwest without getting stranded or feeling sick with stress, anyone can drive an EV. It’s really not impossible to do today.

I know that there are going to be people thinking “Good thing he was in a Tesla! Other EVs couldn’t have been so easy.” But, looking at the likely routes he took, that’s really not a problem for hardly anyone now. The big gap going through that area is the Grand Canyon to Monument Valley one, and most other EVs can now use the Supercharger at Kayenta. Plus, there are non-Tesla fast chargers at places like Bluff and Monticello, Utah, that make the trip easy for all EVs, including Teslas.

Of course, this doesn’t mean there’s no work still needed. To support a future with more EVs, more stations and stalls are going to be needed all along the way to these parks. There are also still some big gaps to popular places like the North Rim and other non-Big 5 parks in the region, especially Great Basin.

Featured image by Jennifer Sensiba.