EV Chronicles #59 - The 500 Mile Polestar 3 Road Trip

This has been one of the hardest blogs I have every written. Mostly because I just started typing out all the things I wanted to get off my chest about how simple and easy road tripping in an EV can be, how the media (funded by the oil and gas industries) continues to manipulate the general public into believing that road trips take hours and hours longer in an EV, and how the Polestar 3 now makes road tripping even easier for us (vs. our sold 2021 Model Y LR). And before I knew it, I had an 8 page Word document full of stuff that is just going to have to become like 4 different blogs at some point. Trying to figure out what should go into this post has been tough.

So I settled on talking about my recent business trip where I covered 500 miles in 5 days and then using what I learned about my Polestar 3 on that trip and in the 2200 miles of ownership so far to talk about what a typical 500 mile road trip might look like. So here goes.

Just over a week ago, I completed a week long business trip. The journey took me from Home (Royersford, PA) to Springfield VA for 5 days with an excursion to visit family, to Harrisburg, back to home. Despite the horrific DC traffic on my way there (nothing new), this trip in my new Polestar 3 might have actually been one of the easiest roadtrips from a "fueling" perspective; and the easiest trip I have ever taken to DC in an EV and maybe even in a GAS vehicle. I say this, because I managed to cover over 500 miles without really spending any time just sitting in my EV while it was charging (I spent 15 minutes). This was mostly due to three things:

• The Polestar 3 has significantly more highway range than the Model Y

  • I estimate about 30% more range

    • Polestar 3: 285 miles

    • Tesla Model Y: 220 miles

• The Polestar 3 charges at higher rates at higher States of Charge (SoC)

  • See my pervious post on the Polestar 3 charging curve vs. Tesla here.

  • Above about 40%, the Polestar charges 25-30 kW higher! I underestimated how much this would change my trip experience

    • This equates to 4-5 kwh of additional energy added for every 10 minute charge which equates to about 10-15 miles of more range I can add to the Polestar vs. the Tesla for each of my quick stops.

  • This might not be important for everyone, but it is important for us because of how we like to travel on a road trip. We often stop every 1-2 hours for quick bathroom breaks of about 10 minutes and make sure those stops are at places we can also charge the car. The first 2 or 3 stops on a trip will be when the battery is well above 40%, and the extra 25-30 kW that the Polestar can receive in those stops equates to an extra 50-100 miles of range added before we have to stop for a big charge, and is going to be a game changer for us.

• Not Polestar specific - Chargers are EVERYWHERE here on the East Coast of the US

  • With just the Tesla Supercharger network alone that is available to other EVs, you can find one every 10-15 miles on I-95, and every 30-40 miles on I-81 from Harrisburg to Roanoke.

  • When on a business trip away from home, it is getting easier to find hotels (mine didn't last week) that have L2 chargers

    • Well, my hotel DID have Tesla destination chargers but the owners (the hotel) are idiots and don't have the site configured to allow non-Tesla owners to find the chargers and initiate a charging session.

  • Tesla Superchargers and CCS Chargers (fast chargers) are in enough places that while on a week long excursion away from home you most likely can plan a charging event to coincide with a meal or a quick shopping stop resulting in zero personal time spent charging an EV.

All of the above resulted in only have to sit in my car while it charged for 10 minutes (I stayed an extra 5 minutes to record a charging curve to 60%). It would have taken 10 minutes to fill up a gas car twice on this trip (once on the trip and once at home to return to full). To read more about my experience on this road trip, jump down to the detailed section toward the bottom of this blog.

So then I got to thinking...

What would a 500 Mile Road Trip (single day) in a Polestar 3 Look Like?

So I wanted to take what I experienced from this out of town trip and what I have learned about my Polestar 3 during my first 2200 miles of ownership to extrapolate what a seriously long, one day road trip might look like in the Polestar 3. After looking at all of my personal road tripping data, I found the following to be true, and we drive/road trip more than the average American couple:

• About 10 times a year, we travel 200-500 miles in a single day

  • 8 of these 10 are in the 200-300 mile range which now means maybe one short charging stop needed for these trips

• Less than twice a year on average did we drive over 500 miles in a single day and I'll explore that below

• Our most miles driven in a single day was just over 800...and it sucked. 500-600 miles is one day is about all I every want to do honestly

I have looked at this sort of road trip with ABRP since buying the Polestar, but I wasn't 100% sure I believed some of the excellent results I was seeing. Well, based on two trips to DC, several trips to Harrisburg, and numerous charging tests completed, I am starting to believe ABRP.

Based on this recent road trip being about 500 miles and my driving habits that suggests that a typical or average "big travel day" for us would also be about 500 miles at most, I decided to try to figure out what a theoretical 500 mile travel day might look like in a Polestar 3. If you don't want to read all the analysis and my thoughts on the matter below, basically all you need to know is that A 500 mile trip in a Polestar 3 AWD will require about 40 to 60 minutes of charging added to approximately 7.5 hours of driving, and depending on how many stops you want to make in a day, it can be done with stops that are no longer than typical bathroom breaks at each stop. Most people on a trip of this duration in a gas vehicle are going to have almost as many stops for food, fuel fill-up, and bathroom stops in that same 500 mile journey.

Conclusion: Driving a Polestar EV (most EVs) vs. a gas powered vehicle adds nearly ZERO time to a road trip

I have looked at this sort of road trip with ABRP or by building up "theoretical" road trips in a spreadsheet or table, and have discovered that no matter how you go about executing a 500 mile road trip in a Polestar 3, it really doesn't matter all that much. The total time it takes to get between two points that are roughly 500 miles apart on major highways (assuming no traffic) is roughly the same total amount of time... about 8 hours. You can do 500 miles in Polestar 3 with as few as 2 stops, or as many as 6 very short stops without really changing the total time of the trip. The shorter range of the Model Y and its poor charging performance over 60% resulted in your style of road tripping having a larger variation on the total trip time.

Here is all the nitty-gritty analysis I did to come up with this conclusion

Analysis

• Round Trip Across Pennsylvania and back (using A Better Route Planner)

  • Minimal Charging Stops Option (I call this the "Bladder of Steel" approach)

    • 2 Charging Stops totaling 45 minutes (26 and 17 minutes)

    • 8:05 Total Travel Time (497 miles)

  • Many Short Charging Stops Option

    • 5 Charging Stops totaling 35 minutes (5, 5, 5, 5, & 15 minutes)

    • 8:17 Total Travel Time (504 miles)

  • How I would Plan this trip

    • 3 Charging Stops totaling 41 minutes (10, 17, & 14 minutes)

    • 8:12 Total Travel Time (503 miles)

  • Results:

    • 2 vs. 5 stops has up to 12 minutes of variability

  • Will we actually be doing this exact trip for real soon, but over two days and with L2 charging available to us as we stop to visit with family. I don't think we will actually ever need to stop for a fast charge except for when we want to do a bathroom break.

• SE PA to points South on I-95 (home to Lumberton, NC) using A Better Route Planner

  • Minimal Charging Stops Option (I call this the "Bladder of Steel" approach)

    • 2 Charging Stops totaling 34 minutes (10 & 24 minutes)

      • Theoretically possible with 2 stops in the Tesla Model Y, but you more than double the charging time to 80 minutes.

    • 7:42 Total Travel Time (503 miles)

  • Many Short Charging Stops Option - Once an hour

    • 6 Charging Stops totaling 34 minutes (6, 6, 6, 6, 7 & 8 minutes)

      • Tesla Model Y needed 7 stops with a total of 55 minutes of charging, but also extra overhead time for these charges.

    • 8:05 Total Travel Time (498 miles)

  • How I would Plan this trip

    • 4 Charging Stops totaling 33 minutes (5, 5, 13 & 10 minutes)

      • Note, with this same approach, the Tesla Model Y also needed 4 stops but each stop is slightly longer for 50 minutes of total charging.

    • 7:52 Total Travel Time (501 miles)

• Theoretical 500 Mile Trip (spreadsheet / table)

  • Common Assumptions:

    • Leave home at 100% SOC

    • Charging stops are perfectly located when you need them every time

    • 7.5 hours of driving (66.66 mph average)

    • 285 miles of range using entire battery (100% to 0%)

    • Use Polestar 3's Charging curve to estimate % added at each stop, rounding down to nearest 5%

  • How I would Plan the trip - 4 Stops

    • Drive 100 Miles between stops

      • 90 minutes for each leg of the trip

      • Equates to 35% SOC used on each 100 mile leg

    • 4 Stops:

      • Stop # 1: Bathroom Break

        • Arrive with 65% SOC

        • Charge for 10 minutes adds 15% to the battery due to high SOC.

        • Depart with 80% SOC

      • Stop # 2: Bathroom Break

        • Arrive with 45% SOC

        • Charge for 10 minutes adds 20% to the battery.

        • Depart with 65% SOC

      • Stop # 3: Bathroom Break

        • Arrive with 30% SOC

        • Charge for 10 minutes adds 25% to the battery.

        • Depart with 55% SOC

      • Stop # 4: Meal and Bathroom Break

        • Arrive with 20% SOC

        • Charge for 25 minutes adds 60% to the battery.

        • Depart with 80% SOC

      • Destination 500 miles from Home

        • Arrive with 45% SOC

    • Results

      • Total Travel Time: 8:25

        • 55 Minutes of Charging

  • Bladder of Steel Approach

    • Assumptions:

      • Drive until you hit 10% SOC

      • Charge up to 80% at each stop

    • The Journey

      • Drive # 1:

        • 255 miles driven - 3:50 drive time

      • Stop # 1: Bathroom Break, Meal, and Big Charge

        • Arrive with 10% SOC

        • Charge for 35 minutes

        • Depart with 80% SOC

      • Drive # 2: 80%-10%

        • 200 miles driven - 3:00 drive time

      • Stop # 2: Bathroom Break and charge

        • Arrive with 10% SOC

        • Charge for 10 minutes adds 30% to the battery.

        • Depart with 40% SOC

      • Drive # 3:

        • 45 miles driven - 40 minutes drive time

      • Destination 500 miles from Home

        • Arrive with 25% SOC

    • Results

      • Total Travel Time: 8:15

        • 45 Minutes of Charging

My takeaway here is that adding more charging stops when road tripping in a Polestar 3 really doesn't change the overall road trip time either a positive or negative way to convince me that one method is better than another. With that kind of flexibility, this allows a Polestar 3 owner to drive much more like they would in a gas vehicle. That is what we plan on doing for our summer trip to Disney. I am sure I'll blog about that!

What I mean by this (road trip similar to how you would in a gas vehicle), instead of planning food and bathroom breaks around our charging stops like we had to do in the Tesla, we'll be able to just take our bathroom and food breaks whenever we want (at locations where we can also charge of course) and not try to arrive somewhere at a low SOC to maximize our charging efficiency. Each additional stop does add some time to your trip as there will be extra overhead associated with getting on and off the highways to get to the chargers and the minute or so it might take to get a charging session started, but that is minimal when you are looking at an 8 hour day of driving. Also, it looks like the Polestar 3 is going to shave 20-30 minutes off of a 500 mile drive because of the longer range and better charging curve at high SOCs, which should be nice!

A bunch of Nerd Level Analysis below if you don't want to read the details!

Home to DC to Harrisburg to Home Trip

So lets take a closer look at my trip last week. I covered a total of just over 500 miles over 5 days (200 miles roughly at the start and end and another 100 during the week) and arrived home with 23% SOC. I plugged in my vehicle and woke up the next morning with over 80% in the battery and it ready to go for the weekend. I managed to do this with the following charging stops where I added a total of 149 kWh of energy:

• Stop #1:

  • 4 min for breakfast and bathroom break (same as a gas car) - car was at about 80%

• Stop #2:

  • 7 min for snack and bathroom break (same as a gas car)

  --- At Destination for the Week ---

• Stop #3

  • 20 min fill-up to about 80% at the mall where I had to get something from Target. Only charged long enough to get what I needed at Target so this charge basically cost me no time other than a little extra walking (100 yards vs. maybe 50 yards).

• L2 Charge at my brother's during a short visit with his family

• Used EcoFlow 3.6 kWh battery pack to charge car throughout the week. Added 28 kWh from the battery pack

  --- Return Drive Home ---

• Stop #4

  • 15 min - I wasn't sure how long I as going to be at my mother-in-law's and ended up over charging I was actually also recording the charging rate to get more charging curve data and wanted to get to 60%, so I stayed longer than I needed to.

  • TMI, I know...I really needed to use a restroom at this point but I chose a new charger location that I have never tried before just to "try it out". That was a mistake because there really wasn't any good places to go to a restroom at this site, although, it was SO easy to get into this site. I stopped to pick up dinner just a bit later and used the restroom there.

• L2 Charge at my mother-in-law's

  --- Home ---

• Arrived with 23% SOC

• Constrained my overnight charge to Super-Offpeak hours of midnight to 6am and woke with over 80% in the battery the next morning.

If the chargers at the hotel I was staying at were properly configured for non-Tesla EVs (a rant worth its own blog post), then I wouldn't have needed my last stop at all, although that then wouldn't be fair to call this a 500 mile drive. The 2 L2 Charging sessions and the EcoFlow battery charges added about 45 kWh of energy to the car throughout the week. This is roughly the same amount of energy that I added in the final 15 minute charging stop.

The above example is definitely NOT the most efficient way to travel in the Polestar on a long, continuous trip, but it it pretty close. I would have definitely done a few things differently that were already covered above. Most notably, based on the time of day that I left, I would have likely gotten two more short, 5-10 minute charges in before executing my first long charging stop in conjunction with a meal (which I laid out in the theoretical trip analysis), and I would have probably not rushed at that stop and tried to get to about 80%. And then, I would have probably been back on the short stops with bathroom breaks again which would have put me well over 500 miles until I needed another full charge. BUT, I still managed to cover 500 miles with a set of two very short charges and the equivalent of 3, roughly 15 minutes charges in total. If you assume those stops would have included bathroom stops and due to the duration of the total trip, at least one of them would have included time to get a meal, the impact of time spent charging on this trip compared to that of a gas vehicle was less than about 20 minutes at most. Not bad if you ask me for a 500 mile trip.