I Drove an EV Deep Into the Wilderness. I Never Feared Running Out of Juice.

 Three years ago, a good old-fashioned American road trip in an electric vehicle could be a nightmare.

Two years ago, it was at best touch and go.

Today, based on the latest industry data and my personal experience on not one but two long-distance summer treks, I’m confident saying this: An EV expedition isn’t only a possibility, but a breeze.

Not just in a Tesla, by the way. The EV evolution from early-adopter toys to mass-market appliances has more to do with the rapid build-out of America’s fast-charging infrastructure than the cars themselves. EVs are currently an attractive buy ahead of the Sept. 30 expiration of the EV credit for consumers, and according to some reports, sales are up. It’s unclear how long that bump will last.

And that charger build-out—which too few Americans are aware of—is happening despite the Trump administration’s pullback on those EV incentives, and is in fact accelerating. An EV road trip might have its fair share of hiccups, as mine did, but range anxiety wasn’t one of them.

There are now nearly 12,000 fast-charging stations in the U.S., with around 60,000 total ports, according to EV-charging data platform Paren. By 2030, the U.S. is projected to have 180,000—three times as many—fast-charging ports, says William Hotchkiss, head of public charging for GM. A collaboration called Ionna, which includes eight automakers including GM, plans to roll out 30,000 new chargers in that time.

The implications are huge: EVs are no longer best-suited for people who only charge at home and mostly tootle around cities. They can finally be for just about everyone.

Better than gas?

My nearly 1,600-mile EV road trip began on a hot August morning in Los Angeles, near the LAX airport. Here, in what you might call the EV capital of the U.S., charging opportunities were plentiful. But so were other EV drivers looking to top up. Fortunately, I found one of the new EV-charging megaplexes.

At the BP Pulse charging station across from the rental-car garage, there are a whopping 48 EV charging ports. Every single one can charge today’s EVs blazingly fast. Many are rated for 400 kilowatts, and those typically exceed 200 kilowatts in real-world conditions—as fast as it gets for U.S. “ultrafast” chargers.

Rivian lent me its big, honkin’, made-in-America EV—the 6,929-pound R1S tri-motor with a cavernous 140-kilowatt-hour battery pack. This model can get up to 371 miles of range on efficient tires. Though I feared the giant battery meant longer stops, I was able to charge the Rivian at my first stop from 43% to 80% in about 28 minutes. (Charging to 80% is a good timesaver, since charging slows between 80% and 100% to protect the battery.)

From LAX, I took a meandering route through the suburbs to Valencia, where I stopped in a shopping center for a late lunch. Here it occurred to me that topping up an EV is almost always a better experience than gassing up a car, even if it takes longer. Since chargers can be placed virtually anywhere you can park, many are in spots with good food and clean bathrooms. Ironically, the biggest inconvenience tended to be that my 20- to 30-minute charging time was shorter than I needed to finish my food and hit the head.

One thing to note: Charging an EV at home is almost always cheaper than buying gas for an equivalent car. On the road, it’s more variable, with higher prices for faster charging and discounts for network memberships. Without such discounts, I paid about as much for electricity on this trip as I would have paid for gas in a comparable traditional SUV.

Where no EV has gone before

If you heard the next place I went was off-roading—in the wind-scoured Mojave Desert, skirting one of America’s austere and eerily beautiful airplane boneyards, far from any EV-charging infrastructure whatsoever—you would probably hope I swapped my EV for a Jeep with a spare gas can.

But no. I shifted the Rivian into off-road mode via its touch screen, which lifted the ride height for better clearance in rocky terrain. The 850-horsepower powertrain and electric-motor torque made it a not-too-scary ride, even for a relatively inexperienced off-roader like me. Hopping over train tracks at unmarked junctions? Washed-out dirt trails? I never got stuck or bottomed out.

Next I drove to Buttonwillow, Calif., just west of Bakersfield. The cattle feedlots outside of town made for one of the smelliest nights I’ve ever experienced—and I’m from Texas. In the morning, I hit my third charging stop, part of the Rivian Adventure Network—a smattering of superfast chargers serving Yosemite, Joshua Tree and other scenic destinations.

To escape from a 90-degree lowland, I did something that would seem truly daft in an EV: With about 60% battery left, I drove into Sequoia National Park, gaining 6,000 feet in elevation in a couple of hours, then spent the night in the vehicle, running the battery in “camp” mode to keep warm. (The temperature got down into the 40s.) The park has no charging stations whatsoever—and probably very few tow trucks.

From the heights of the Sierra Nevada, I cruised to breakfast in Fresno. This part of the journey included a descent so precipitous the vehicle returned to sea level with more charge than it started, thanks to regenerative braking.

The inevitable hitch

Throughout the journey, when I needed a top-up, I used either the indispensable app A Better Route Planner, or the vehicle’s in-dash navigation system. Both will plot routes for you that minimize charge time, and both have some real-time data on the quantity and reliability of chargers at each stop along the way.

I stopped 10 times for charging during my five-day journey. The only time I couldn’t just roll up and start charging was in wine country, Paso Robles, Calif. At this stop there were four chargers: three occupied, one out of order.

So as I waited, I chatted up the Parkes family of Los Angeles, on their own EV adventure. Like me, they’d had a good experience on a multiday trip, until this charger. In California cities, says Christian Parkes, there are so many EV drivers that he often gets to a station that ought to be twice as big—and twice as fast.

Curiosity led me to the Tesla Diner in Hollywood for a final top-up. I felt like the transfer kid on the first day of school, the only non-Tesla in a sea of homogeneous Musk-mobiles. And charging itself was awkward, since the cables don’t line up with my SUV’s port. My outsider status also meant paying a hefty premium, around 30% more than a Tesla driver would pay.

The experience made me grateful that Tesla’s network is no longer the only option for road trips. And while most of America’s fast chargers are still Tesla’s, that probably won’t be the case for long.