Planning a 700 mile trip in my 2021 ID.4 from NC to FL along I-95 - what do I need to know?

I would include fluency with google maps, or whatever your smartphone has on it. That will be a general help. In addition to charging the car, you will need to charge and change oil on the humans.

Also get familiar with the assisted driving on the car. Like the setback from vehicles in front of you, cruise modes, etc. I-95 is high workload driving, and those systems will reduce your workload and fatigue.

Finally, get familiar with the climate control features. As I recall there are places in Georgia, and probably others as well, where the area has smoke and industrial odors. You may find it helpful to recirculate air for a while, when encountering those areas. When it is extremely humid, recirculation of air will help dry it out more, and it will stay cooler easier without unnecessary moisture, with less energy.

I would be less concerned about fueling, because it appears that there are lots of EA chargers spaced nicely, on I-95, unlike North Dakota. Enroute, keep an eye out for fully loaded and unavailable chargers, to avoid getting pinched in a location where you cannot fuel up.

I look forward to your guidance, because I have a 3000 mile (one way) trip in the spring, and two 2000 (one way) road trips planned thus far for this summer.

Check Plugshare now to plan the route. And watch out for messages about stations that will be out of service. I randomly picked the one in Jacksonville and saw this:



This specific closure will probably not an issue in April, so you will want to check again very shortly before your trip as they can go down for replacement or repairs at any time. You don't want to arrive at a station with low SOC to find it offline. I also find the ratings on Plugshare to be nearly useless. Read the reviews instead to get a better feel for how the station is doing. It may have a 10 rating but if you read the reviews its only one working stall and everyone who charged recently got lucky that they were the only ones there. I have also seen stations with low ratings and it has three working stalls but a lot of people got unlucky and plugged into the one non-working stall first and dinged the rating. You should also try to return the favor by leaving a review on Plugshare if you have time.

If this is your first EV road trip, I would agree with others to break it into two days unless you are prepared to spend 16 hours on the road (not saying it definitely will take that long, but better be prepared for it because it might). Especially the first time, you want to give yourself a lot of extra time to deal with issues that might arise. If/When you get more comfortable with it you can try rushing things a bit, but even a very experienced EV road tripper can run into a line at a charger or two that can ruin a trip if you are rushing it.

Similarly, being new to it, you may want to plan to arrive with plenty of extra margin, maybe 30% SOC or so, until you get comfortable with arriving with less. The charging rate is much higher when you arrive with less than 20% but a miscalculation or a dead station can cause a lot of headache in that case. Best to save that for when you have more experience.

Also, figure out backup plans in the event a whole station is down. Be ready with the needed apps for those backup plans as well (Chargepoint, Greenlots/Shell Recharge, EVGo, etc.). Now is to the time to set that stuff up, not when you are low on charge and desperate and can't get good cell signal to download an app. If you have some of those stations near you, it might also be a good idea to just go test them out to be sure the app is set up correctly and you can start a charge.

On the trip, when charging at one station, check the reliability of the next station with Plugshare and the native app (be it EA, Chargepoint, EVGo, etc.) to give some confidence that it will be working when you get there.

If you plug into a charger and you think the car should be getting good speed but you are only getting 32 kW or so, try the other charging handle. There is a known issue where a temp sensor in the handle can go out and it limits the charger to about 32kW, many times switching to the other handle, even on the same charger, removes this limitation.

All of this might sound like a lot, but once you get used to it, it becomes second nature and some wierdos like me actually enjoy it. If you find that you don't like it, you can wait and maybe it will get better, or just buy a Tesla, it really is EV road tripping with an easy button.

Not much I can add that bish79 or the previous posters haven't already written. I WAS planning a similar trip last November, Durham NC area to Tamarac FL (near Fort Lauderdale), but had an issue with the ID.4 at the time and had to rent a gas SUV instead.

If possible, do share the outcome and your thoughts as its a route I plan to take regularly (at least twice a year) but haven't had a chance to actually yet but will need to in a few months. ABRP estimated the trip would take ~15 hours. Being that I have a 4 year old, I planned on breaking it up into two days with Jacksonville, FL being a hotel stop (plus the potential to use the EA stop at The Avenues) also considered a hotel that had level 2 or better charging. I had planned the same for my return trip and was planning to stay somewhere (can't recall) near the GA/SC border.

As mentioned, do download all of the necessary apps and setup them beforehand. FPL Evolution is another one that you should consider. I believe it is the charging network setup by a Florida electric company and you may want to utilize one or two of the stations if you're running low entering into Jacksonville.

I tend to research as much as possible to get an idea of the charging stops area and reliability. Not saying you need to do the same but it was helpful for me viewing quite a few Youtube videos of east coast EV road tips (I focused on non-Tesla road trips for obvious reasons). Quite a few from the Out of Spec family (Kyle and his dad) were helpful. It helped me plan backups (South of the Border charging station at the NC/SC border, I think its a Shell Recharge) or what I would consider safe/unsafe if I was in an area during the dark.

P.S. I can't wait till we get to a point where EV charging stations are added to road signs similarly to gas stations, fast food and rest areas.

Edited due to slight revision since I originally missed that bish79's screenshot is of the EA station at The Avenues in Jacksonville, Fl.