When John and I drove the 930 mile round-trip from San Diego to Baycon/Westercon last weekend, we decided to try something different — we made the drive using our BMW electric car.
Electric vehicles are not really new at this point, but the two of us had never taken a serious road trip in an electric car before. We were not sure how things would go. Would there be sufficient charging stations along the way? How much would running the car’s air conditioner affect the miles-per-charge? What would happen in that long stretch of highway running through the Central Valley?
As it turns out, the trip was amazingly smooth, both on the way up and the way home. We managed to avoid most of the Orange County and LA traffic, and we found plenty of charging stations all along the route. A couple of times, we stopped at crowded charging stations and had to wait about 15 – 20 minutes for a charger to open, but most of the time we were able to drive right up and start charging immediately.
We had heard stories from other drivers about problems with charging machines being broken. We did find a few of those along the way, but only a handful at most, and there were plenty of working chargers at each location.
The average charge time took about 25 minutes to get to an 80% charge (which is the maximum BMW recommends for our car to help with battery life). We stopped to charge twice on the way up, once at our destination, and three times on the way home. In all honesty, we probably could have gone farther between charging stations, but we were being careful not to let our car’s charge get too low between stops. Besides, stopping to charge the car gave us time to stretch our legs, use the restroom, and buy snacks.
The trip probably took about an hour or two longer than if we had used a gas powered vehicle, but was less expensive. Overall, we both considered the recent trip to be a success. We now have a lot more confidence about future road trips in an electric car.
-Susan 7/11/2025
p.s. And yes, the convention was wonderful, but I am writing about that in my newsletter, so I won’t go into detail here.
Susan and John Ruff, Fantasy Authors 
Leave a comment