'Brutal' Toyota EV road trip leaves driver bracing cold temperatures

Business Insider reporter Tim Levin embarked on a 9-hour road trip in Toyota’s new electric SUV only to learn some hard truths: EVs might not be made for road trips. 

In early April, Levin packed up his things and got into Toyota’s new bZ4X SUV—Tesla’s first real rival—to drive 500 miles from New York to Washington D.C and back. While not particularly an epic road trip, it was enough to test how the electric car fared on long distances. 

It wasn’t long after he embarked on his trip before he noticed that he had to spend an unprecedented amount of time charging the car to make it to his destination. Toyota’s EV SUV is supposed to charge the battery at a maximum rate of 100 kilowatts. Yet, the frustrated driver never saw the battery charge that fast. 

“You don’t always achieve that max charge rate due to the charger, the temperature of the battery, or, in my case, settings built into the vehicle itself,” Levin explained. “During my trip, the car never got close to 100 kW, leading to some excruciating charging times.”

To make matters worse, whenever he turned on the heat, the range that his car could run before running out of battery was 125 miles instead of the usual 176 miles. 

This prompted him to make a decision: to stay warm and charge more often or continue driving without heat to get those extra miles. His decision: to brave the cold.

“I bundled up and relied mostly on the seat and steering-wheel warmers (which are more efficient than the regular heater) to make things almost bearable,” he said.  

The 9-hour trip ended up taking a total of 12 hours due to the extra three hours it took to charge the battery. 

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t curse these silly electric cars under my breath once or twice,” Levin concluded of his trip, adding that the problem might not be universal and other EV, such as Tesla, charge faster.