This is my second time renting an EV. First time wasn’t too bad. We stayed local and only had to charge once.
This Thanksgiving we had to drive from Chicago to Omaha to Minneapolis and back to Chicago. It was approximately 1400 miles total. $289 in electric charges. (that feels a lot more expensive than gas). We had to stop every 2 hours to charge for an hour so it extended our trips by 50%. This was quite challenging when we were in a caravan of cars and the ICE ones beat us by several hours. A 6 hour drive turned into 10 hours. I shaved off a few hours by always running the car down to the last couple miles and charging it to 100%. One time was not by choice as we almost ran out due to a dead zone. We were then charged $50 to fill up 3/4 tank at an EA in the middle of Minnesota. That was kind of our breaking point.
Some positives are it was a smooth ride and felt great in the snow.
We wanted to buy an EV but wanted to see how they fair on road trips in the midwest. This experience may scare us away for a while as it was exhausting stressful and expensive. Wondering what we did wrong since so many enjoy EV.
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.
Also compared to dedicated Mercedes BEVs like EQS and EQE. The EQB was always an afterthought.