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00:00Hey what's up, MKBHD here. So, have you ever wondered how much longer it would take to do a road trip in an electric car versus a gas car in 2021?
00:13And does it matter which type of electric car you take? It's an interesting question. I'm sure many of us have wondered this.
00:19And most reasonable people would probably stop there. But not me. Nope.
00:23My team and I decided to actually find the real answer by really doing it and running it like a sort of a scientific experiment.
00:31So, you know, it's one thing to go by the numbers on paper, which we all have, and the chargers on the map, which we can all look at, but it's another thing to actually go do it.
00:41But we're just going to find out. We're going to do this the hard way by actually going on a massive road trip with gas cars and electric cars to actually put this to the test.
00:51So it's a little bit unscientific, but we've got a set of rules and we've got a route we're going to take to make it happen.
00:56So, here are the cars. First we have Tesla Model S Plaid. You're probably familiar. I've already done videos about this car.
01:05With the 21 inch wheels on it right here, it has a 350 mile range on 100% battery.
01:11Next to it here, we've got Ford Mustang Mach-E California Route 1 Edition. It has about a 305 mile range. It charges out Electrify America chargers.
01:22And then, last but not least, we have a gas car control. This is what's going to make the results of the test, I think, pretty interesting.
01:30So we've got an Audi Q5 here. On a full tank of gas, it'll get about 460 miles of range. And we're going to start them all from the same place at the same time.
01:42There happens to be a spot near our studio with a gas station, a Tesla supercharger, and an Electrify America charger.
01:49We're going to leave with a full tank and a full battery all at the same time from there.
01:54We're going to do a route that hits Ithaca, New York, Lake Placid, New York, Niagara Falls, Scranton, Pennsylvania. We're going to do this whole circle.
02:04You've probably already seen a lot of this on Twitter by the time this video goes up.
02:07But we've got members, we've got the whole team, most of the team here.
02:11We're going to be in these cars, probably trash talking a little bit and turning it into a bit of a race.
02:16But to see exactly how much time charging at these different infrastructures adds to a road trip.
02:22So, mile 1 of 1,000 starts now.
02:26So yeah, that's it. Pretty simple. The goal, just treat it like a normal road trip.
02:31You're obviously trying to go around the loop as fast as possible, but two rules.
02:35One, no speeding. We have a hard cap limit to our speed for all the cars that's the same.
02:39But two, just hit all the waypoints. Just get all the pictures we want out of all those different waypoints until you do the 1,000 miles.
02:46We added an overnight break for sanity, so we have a hotel in Niagara Falls to break the trip into two days.
02:51But everyone wakes up on the second day with the same state of charge that they went to sleep with.
02:56And we'll add up all the time deltas at the end.
02:59So, at this point, you know the route, you know the cars.
03:03Go ahead and guess how you think it went.
03:06Go ahead and guess what you think happened.
03:08What order did the cars come in and how far apart did they finish the 1,000 miles?
03:13Now, I'll go ahead and tell you right off the bat.
03:15Your guess about the order of the cars, the way they finish, 1, 2, 3, is probably correct.
03:20Your guess about how far apart they finished, probably wrong.
03:24So, we're putting together a whole video on this road trip experience on the studio channel.
03:28So, if you want all the details on every single thing that happened at each stop to each team,
03:33if you want to go on the road trip with us, go ahead and hit the subscribe button to the studio channel to see that when it comes out.
03:38But this video is the breakdown of exactly what happened.
03:42So, the gas car. The gas car had the most predictable trip, right?
03:45So, they stopped for five minutes for a break and gas on the way up to Lake Placid.
03:49Got there in four hours, 49 minutes.
03:52Then they took two short breaks on the way to Niagara Falls.
03:55One was 20 minutes for food and then the other was 10 minutes for gas and using the bathroom.
04:00That was their day one.
04:02They arrived at Niagara Falls at 11 hours, 8 minutes.
04:05So, then the Tesla trip.
04:06Took off at the same time.
04:07Right off the bat, it gets interesting.
04:09I was driving and I decided to be kind of bold and go all the way from the starting point to Lake Placid,
04:16up those mountains on one charge without stopping.
04:19We actually passed by the sign without stopping to take a picture because our battery was so low
04:24that we weren't sure if we were going to make it.
04:26But we did make it to the top and there's a supercharger up there.
04:29I had one mile remaining on the battery.
04:31But that was our first stop for half an hour where we got some snacks.
04:34We got passed by the gas car.
04:36But then we doubled back a bit to take a photo of the sign and then headed over to Niagara Falls.
04:41And we stopped two more times to charge on the way.
04:43Once for 46 minutes, we actually filled up the battery.
04:46Another quick 8-minute stop for safety before arriving at Niagara Falls with about 70 miles left on the battery
04:52in almost exactly 12 hours.
04:55Then the Mustang Mach-E.
04:57Okay.
04:58So, they headed up towards Lake Placid along with the Tesla again at the same time.
05:02But with the smallest range, they had to pull off first.
05:05And the car routed them to an Evolve New York charger.
05:08That was out of order.
05:10So, with 36 miles on the battery, they had no choice but to head the wrong direction into Vermont to the nearest available charger.
05:18There, they had to sit for almost two hours before they left with enough battery.
05:22And at this point, they had gone so far out of the way and they're so far behind that they just decided they could just skip Lake Placid
05:30just to make it to Niagara before the end of the day.
05:32So, that's what they did.
05:33They skipped it and went straight across west.
05:35They hit one more charger for 41 minutes which brought them to near 80% battery.
05:39Then at 9.30, they arrived at another charger stop that was also broken.
05:44So, they navigated for another half hour to find another charger.
05:48This turned out to be a barely working trickle charger where it only added 2% to their battery.
05:53So, they drove another half hour precariously to an Electrify America charger where they arrived with 5% left.
06:00And this one worked perfectly for 46 minutes which gave them enough juice to finally get to Niagara Falls by 12.40 in the morning after 16 hours and 40 minutes on the road.
06:12That's about 5 hours behind the gas car.
06:15So, that first leg taught us a lot.
06:18So, we're sitting about 650 miles in.
06:20At this point, the gas car, as you probably predicted, is in first place.
06:23The Tesla, as you may have also predicted, is in second.
06:26It's about half an hour behind after this first leg.
06:29And the Mach-E in third is now about 5 hours behind.
06:33So, I mean, we've seen, we've read the articles before of horror stories of charging, trying to do a road trip in a Porsche Taycan, getting to a broken charger and all that.
06:43We've seen that online in the past.
06:45But now that it's happening to this team as we're doing it, it's a whole other thing to actually live through it.
06:51And actually, both the members of that Mach-E team are EV drivers.
06:56Now, in an attempt to even it out a bit on the second day, the gas car and the Tesla wouldn't really change much.
07:02But team Mach-E would now operate under their newfound knowledge that the in-car navigation on the Ford could not be trusted.
07:11So, they would be using their own apps.
07:13They would be essentially trying to only hit Electrify America chargers for this leg of the trip.
07:19Ignore what the car tells you to navigate to.
07:21Ignore the Ford-approved stops because that clearly didn't work last time.
07:25They're just going to do it on their own, more advanced way.
07:28And that, shocker, went much better.
07:31So, all the cars took off at the same time again.
07:33And the gas car went straight to the Cornell clock.
07:36Then after that photo, they took a short 10-minute gas stop.
07:39And then an hour later, took another quick 10-minute food break.
07:43Didn't even add gas during that stop, just stopped to eat.
07:45Then they went straight to Scranton for the paper building photo.
07:48Then all the way to the finish.
07:50No range concerns at all, no problem.
07:52This second leg took them 7 hours, 51 minutes.
07:55So, the Tesla.
07:56The Tesla arrived in Niagara with pretty low battery, 70 miles left.
08:00So, we actually started off going right to a charging stop at Chiquitahuaga.
08:0415-minute stop there.
08:05Then we drove to another supercharger at Ithaca for 25 more minutes of charging.
08:10Then from there, we got the Ithaca photo.
08:13And then went all the way down to Scranton, took that photo.
08:16And then took one last charging and food stop at Bartonsville.
08:20Which gave us plenty, more than enough to get home.
08:23In our total, which was 8 hours.
08:26Which was pretty impressively less than an hour behind the gas car again.
08:30Then the Mach-E.
08:31With their newfound confidence in only using Electrify America chargers this time.
08:36Had a much better time today.
08:38So, they went to Waterloo for their first charge.
08:40Where the first charger didn't work, but the second one did.
08:43And they charged for 32 minutes here.
08:45Then they got to Ithaca, took their Cornell photo.
08:48Then they drove to Scranton.
08:50With one brief coffee break in the middle.
08:52Then nearby, stopped at another EA charger.
08:55Where 3 of the 4 chargers didn't work, but the last one did.
08:59So they charged there for 32 minutes.
09:02And made their way back to the studio.
09:04Just about half an hour behind the Tesla.
09:06So for a total of 8 hours 49 minutes.
09:09So the order was still the same.
09:11But the day 2 deltas were a bit smaller.
09:13So I'd say I learned a few things from this whole 1000 mile road trip.
09:16Actually things that we kind of already knew.
09:19But that are much more crystallized now that we've gone through it.
09:22Now to answer the question straight from the beginning.
09:24How much time does switching to electric actually add to the road trip?
09:28First of all, I want to acknowledge that there are plenty of different variables.
09:31That could contribute to some of the deltas.
09:34Not only could I have used a different car.
09:36Or different wheels for a different range on each of them.
09:39But there are also things like different traffic.
09:42Different amounts of time taking photos at the waypoints.
09:45Different navigation routes and habits and things like that.
09:48So I'm just going to give like a plus or minus 10% delta.
09:53Just on how long these things took.
09:55So at the end we got that the Tesla added 1 hour 32 minutes.
09:59Per 1000 miles of road tripping.
10:02Which is really not bad.
10:03And the Mustang Mach-E added 7 hours and 32 minutes.
10:07Although 6 and a half hours of that was on the first day.
10:10And then it was an hour and 3 minutes on day 2.
10:13So I think it's safe to say that if you do a lot of road trips.
10:16The Tesla road trip experience is currently pretty far ahead of any other electric car.
10:23Especially here where we did the test in the US.
10:25But not for the reason you might be thinking.
10:29Like there's a couple of variables in here.
10:31And part of it is the slightly longer range of the car, sure.
10:35And part of it is the supercharger network versus the other networks used by the Mach-E, sure.
10:42But the biggest thing that contributed to our results was the accuracy of the information displayed in the car.
10:50So for range differences, it's actually interesting.
10:52It seems like the Tesla goes by the max EPA estimated rating they can possibly quote.
10:58Which is mostly based on highway driving.
11:00And there's even some other official ratings.
11:01In Europe there's a WLTP rating.
11:04Which has different ratios of city mixed in with highway.
11:07There's another called NEDC.
11:09But generally I found that achieving Tesla's quoted range would require pretty much perfect conditions.
11:16Perfect weather.
11:17Perfect temperature outside.
11:19Perfect roads.
11:21Perfect traffic.
11:22Not driving too fast.
11:24You pretty much never get it perfect.
11:26So the Plaid Model S that I've been driving that we used for this test.
11:29Has a full battery rating of 345 miles on those wheels.
11:34It's right between the Long Range Model 3 and Long Range Model Y.
11:39But I would never ever attempt to try to reach a charger 345 miles away.
11:45Because as you're driving you can see the range dropping off of the battery faster than you're covering them on the road.
11:52Matter of fact on the first leg of that trip we just did.
11:54We went from the studio up to Lake Placid.
11:57That went from 345 miles full battery.
12:00All the way down to one mile left when we pulled in.
12:030.3% battery.
12:06And that was only a 293 mile trip.
12:10So that's a 15% difference between the range you're quoted on paper.
12:14With perfect conditions.
12:15And what we actually got.
12:16And I feel like all Tesla owners I know have really started to calibrate for this.
12:20Like if your car says you have 40 miles left.
12:23You better get to a charger in the next 30 miles or so.
12:25Like that's just the way it is.
12:27Especially in winter or if it's particularly cold.
12:30You know despite the new heat pump.
12:31It doesn't take zero energy to get the battery to the temperature it likes.
12:34So that's just the Tesla range and efficiency factor.
12:37Now the Mustang Mach-E on the other hand.
12:39Very, very consistent with the number being displayed on the dash.
12:43And the range you actually got.
12:45It actually consistently outperformed that number just a little bit.
12:48Which leads me to believe Ford isn't quoting the maximum EPA rated range possible.
12:54And we found this to be true of some other electric cars too.
12:56The Porsche Taycan is one that actually consistently way outperforms its quoted range.
13:01By a pretty big margin.
13:02And you might remember also Ford told me their F-150 Lightning.
13:06Their quoted range will be with a thousand pounds of cargo in the trunk.
13:09So it may even go further when it's empty.
13:11So these are all different ways of going about quoted range.
13:13But I think the general philosophy you're seeing with the Fords and Porsches of the world.
13:18Is under promise, over deliver.
13:20Just so your customer doesn't have to worry too much about the range that they say they're going to get in the car.
13:26But here's the crazy part of all of this is.
13:29Tesla Model S Plaid on those 21's.
13:32345 miles of quoted range.
13:34Ford Mustang Mach-E California Route 1 Edition.
13:37305 miles of quoted range.
13:39I would expect those cars to go about the same distance.
13:43Something to think about.
13:45So the Tesla may have a bit more range sometimes.
13:47But that clearly doesn't make nearly as much of a difference.
13:49As the infrastructure or the charging network to fast charge and go on road trips.
13:54Now if you don't go on road trips that much.
13:56None of this may really matter to you in your ownership experience.
13:59And that's fine.
14:00But if you do.
14:01The Tesla Supercharger network is built and owned by Tesla.
14:04And it's built to the exact spec of their cars.
14:07Works great with them.
14:08And then there's every other EV.
14:10And all the other public charging networks.
14:12That kind of all have somewhat variable experiences.
14:16I kind of think of it a little bit like lightning versus USB type C.
14:21So right now today.
14:22There are about 1100 Tesla Supercharger stations in the US.
14:25And they're mostly along major roads.
14:27Either at rest stops or in mall parking lots.
14:30Or around food.
14:31Things like that.
14:32And then with the Mach-E.
14:33You will use the FordPass charging network.
14:36And if you look on Ford's website for the Mach-E.
14:38It says that that's the largest public charging network in North America.
14:43Offered by a car manufacturer.
14:45Which is.
14:46It feels like they're trying to loop in a couple of different things there.
14:49To make that statement true.
14:50They definitely wanted to be able to say.
14:52They've got the biggest network.
14:53But it's a public network too.
14:55And it's clearly.
14:56It's not built by Ford.
14:57And so the FordPass network is looping in a bunch of different other public charging networks.
15:04Into one.
15:05It streamlines the payment experience.
15:07So you only need one FordPass account.
15:09It's convenient for the buyer.
15:10But that includes about 600 Electrify America Superfast chargers.
15:15Some of them up to 350 kilowatts.
15:17When the car supports it.
15:18That's amazing.
15:19But that also includes some slow chargers.
15:24Some offline chargers.
15:26Some out of order broken chargers.
15:28And that's the difference.
15:30And because these chargers aren't built by Ford.
15:33They aren't managed directly by Ford.
15:35There's a bit of a communication gap.
15:37Between when one of them might go down.
15:39And that information actually showing up to the driver in the car.
15:44Usually it doesn't know until it gets there.
15:46So the difference is literally when I sit down to plan a road trip in the Tesla.
15:50On the screen I'm getting all of my information.
15:53This is what they've done so well with their software.
15:55It's telling me whether or not I can make it to my destination on one charge.
15:59If I can't it's going to route me through superchargers along the way.
16:02It tells me how long I need to charge at the supercharger to continue my trip.
16:06And how much battery it will leave me with when I arrive.
16:09But even better yet for each charger.
16:11It tells me how many stalls there are.
16:13The speed of the chargers.
16:15How many are out of order.
16:16And how many are literally currently being occupied by other cars charging right now.
16:21Ford is able to tell you about as much as they know.
16:24But they often don't know if there are chargers that are down.
16:28Or broken or offline or something.
16:30Which is what happened during our trip.
16:32The trip in the car navigated them to a charger that was offline.
16:36I think it was for maintenance.
16:37It was being updated or something.
16:39But that would have been really bad if they had arrived there with like one mile of battery left.
16:43Like I did when I arrived at Lake Placid.
16:45Knowing, trusting that the superchargers would be there and working.
16:50That's the difference.
16:51I could really trust what was being shown in the car.
16:53And when I arrived there I'd have chargers available.
16:55And that's just not the case in the Ford.
16:57So I kind of felt like if Lightning is the Tesla supercharger network.
17:01It's tightly controlled by Apple.
17:03The same way the Tesla supercharger network is tightly controlled.
17:06And you have the vertical integration and that helps the experience.
17:09But then on the other side there's USB type C.
17:11A more open standard.
17:12Kind of like CCS which is the charger.
17:14But there's some that are faster.
17:17There are some that are slower.
17:18And there's a whole mix in between.
17:20So I'm getting in the weeds.
17:22But that's what it reminded me of.
17:23But then last FAQ.
17:24I know you're wondering what's the cost difference actually between these two trips.
17:28Electricity is typically cheaper than gas after all.
17:30But how much cheaper?
17:31So I wrote this down.
17:32All the cars started from roughly 100%.
17:34Like we said leaving that initial stop.
17:36The gas car spent $84.79 during their trip.
17:40Just on gas.
17:41The Tesla which had free supercharging credit.
17:44But I went back and calculated how much it would have cost.
17:47$66.35.
17:49And then the Mach-E.
17:51Same idea.
17:52We had FordPass charging credit.
17:53But we used about $61.25 of that credit.
17:58They all charged per kilowatt.
18:00It was something around 30 to 35 cents per kilowatt.
18:03So overall.
18:04Take from this what you will.
18:06You might not be someone who does road trips like I said.
18:09A big part of the electric car owning experience is like starting everyday with 100% battery in your garage.
18:14That's a totally different part of this.
18:16But if you do.
18:17A lot of people do frequent road trips.
18:19Maybe an annual road trip.
18:20Maybe even more than that.
18:22Then you start to think about this stuff.
18:23And the situation is also constantly changing.
18:25We're constantly going to be getting faster and faster chargers.
18:28We're going to get more chargers all over the world.
18:30We're also going to get longer and longer ranges in these EVs.
18:35So I'd be curious if we did another one of these tests in a year or two.
18:38How it would fare.
18:39You know the 4680 batteries are around the corner allegedly for some of these cars.
18:42So we'll see.
18:44But again if you want to see how this entire experience actually went.
18:48If you want to feel like you're going along the road trip with us.
18:50Studio Channel link below is where you should go for that.
18:52But in the meantime I'm curious.
18:53Now that you've seen this.
18:54Now that you know.
18:56I want to know what you think your next car purchase will be.
19:01Do you think it will be a gas car or an electric car?
19:04We'll use the comment section as like a polling.
19:06And if you want to tell us why.
19:07Let me know why.
19:08But do you think your next car.
19:10Whenever that is.
19:11Will be gas or electric?
19:13Alright that's been it.
19:15Thanks for watching this experiment.
19:16Talk to you guys in the next one.
19:17Peace.