I am sorry to hear this. The main problem was you picked a vehicle that is well below average for road trips. If you went with a model 3 instead your range could have been 50 miles greater, Charging would be over 50% faster and the number of places to stop would have doubles or more. If an Ioniq 6 you would have had the long range and even faster charging but less chargers to choose from for now.

Kind of like renting a van when you needed a 3/4 truck. Wrong vehicle for the job.

Charging 80-100% takes forever and usually faster to just stop at 80% then start driving until you need to charge again

Tesla has many more chargers so easier with a Tesla than a non Tesla

Day to day EV charging is done by plugging in overnight at home which is much cheaper and easier than road trips

Personally think renting EV on road trip is a bad idea, you experience the worst of an EV

You dc charged to 100%? lol. That’s your problem.

I’ll say that a 1400 mile road trip on a holiday weekend in the snow in an EV that isn’t known for its road tripping prowess is basically the worst case scenario.

I don’t know how frequently you make such trips but that’s like a once a year thing for me. So a bit of inconvenience there is offset by the other 363 days of the year when my car is charged each morning in my garage.

In a Model 3 in non-snowy weather my usual pace is a 10-15 minute stop every 2 hours or so of driving. With the Supercharger network on similar drives I have had lower costs as well.

As others have mentioned usually charging to 100% along the way is slower than charging to 50-60% and continuing on. The percentage at which charging slows down depends on your car. Some chargers charge per minute instead of per kWh so those longer charge sessions may have contributed to the cost.

I use to have to road trip between offices in some of those cities. That would not be fun. Gas stations were even pretty far apart

I shaved off a few hours by always running the car down to the last couple miles and charging it to 100%.

This actually increased the amount of time spent charging. 10-60%, maybe 70% is the sweet spot on the EQB 300.

Thanks for the honest review. That is quite expensive for the mileage you traveled. Even at a modest 3mi/kw, you should have only used about 467kw. Tesla Supercharger rates in my midwestern area are typically 0.37/kw, which would have cost you $173 for the trip.

As others have mentioned, stopping your charging at 80-90% might have saved you considerable time vs going all the way to 100%. That’s the nature of EV charging curves. In the end, if you need to “cannonball” a lot of distance in a limited number of hours, ICE may still be your best bet at this point.

Dc fast charging generally do not save you much if any money. The real savings comes from charging at home.

I will be honest on road trips ICE is just easier. I take my EV because it is the nicer car but road tripping it is generally more inconvenience.

At least it was possible to do. Doesn’t sound ideal.

The EQB is a short-range car with slow charging compared to something like a Tesla or the new Kia.

Chargers for the Mercedes are half as available as they are for a Tesla Model S and the range is barely half and it charges at half the speed. Overall, you’d have had a much more pleasant experience in a Tesla.

Then you chose to charge to 100% (which means almost 1 hour charging stops, yikes).

The “cannonball run” across the US is won by a Model S, which drives down to 5% and then charges up to about 60%. Above that, it slows down a lot.

That makes for 15-20 minute charging stops.

At least you didn’t end up in a Mazda or a Chevy Bolt, they’re far worse for road trips than the Mercedes, but the Mercedes is a decidedly bad road trip EV.

I should totally teach a masters class on this topic, The number of folks that get twisted in this area, is astounding.

I can run a Bolt EV on a road trip in 40% more time than would take an ICE vehicle.

Your charging strategy was not optimal for the EQB.

OP, I’m sorry but it is on you to do your research before planning such a long trip during the busiest travel season of the year (especially in Midwest winter)

No matter what, that experience was going to be rough. Expectations needed to be tempered and you should have planned accordingly.

Some things that you should take note of, which some other users have already written out:

• EQB is not a good road trip vehicle. Has slow charging and pedestrian range. Combine that with cold weather, the amount of stops was going to eat into your trip a lot regardless.

• Charging curves are a thing. It differs per vehicle, but in general, the higher SOC you get to, the slower the charge will be. Charging from 10-80% will be roughly the same if not faster than charging from 80-100%. Not only did you spend more time charging than needed, but you also may have clogged a charging spot for others (bigger deal with non-Tesla than Tesla SC) I get that range anxiety is a thing, but if everyone on the road charges like that, it makes the experience for everyone worse. There’s a reason why cars get charged idle fees.

• EA charging you $50 is likely a holding fee, and will be changed to the correct amount shortly. I had this happen too, and saw the correct amount charged in a few days. Honestly, not on you here, but just a PSA since it’s a common question that gets brought up.

Not harping on you specifically, as non-Teslas just aren’t there for road tripping in general, but some prior research and planning could have made it a bit easier.

We wanted to buy an EV but wanted to see how they fair on road trips in the midwest.

You rented one of the worst road-tripping EVs made; don’t allow that to turn you off from EVs in general. The EQB 300 is a low-efficiency first-generation EV from a company that is only recently getting into EV production. And it uses a charging network renowned for its poor reliability. And the icing on the cake is doing 0-to-100% charging, which is hurting your overall driving time tremendously. But I am sure the on-board route planner wasn’t really helping matters since Mercedes’ software is so poor.

Try the same trip in a Tesla. Night and day.

ABPR shows me that you would have done the trip in a Model 3 LR in 6hours 44 minutes

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan\_uuid=1523e8c5-47db-4d77-8083-6c7436d593db