The American electric vehicle charging network is not ready for your family road trip, let alone the expected wave of new cars

Electric cars are the future. Literally.

Whether you want to go green or not, most of us will drive an EV in the next two decades. Car manufacturers spend billions on reorganizing factories and renewing their fleets to become electric or fully electric in the next ten to 15 years, plans fully approved by President Joe Biden, who wants half of all sales of automobiles in the US are electric vehicles by 2030. This is a large amount target given the market, including plug-in hybrids, currently stands at around 3%.

One of the biggest barriers to the adoption of electric vehicles is the American charging network. There are approximately 136,400 service stations in the U.S., but only 43,800 charging stations, according to the Department of Energy. And it takes about 10 minutes to fill the car with a gas tank, but about 45 minutes to fully charge an EV, sometimes more.

While Biden is committed to building 500,000 charging stations across the United States by 2030 as part of its $ 2 trillion infrastructure plan, we are still a long way off.

So my producer Harriet Taylor and I decided to test the California cargo infrastructure on an 8-hour road trip from Southern California to San Francisco. California accounted for 9% of electric vehicle sales in the first quarter and has America’s largest charging network, so it made sense to start there.

We specifically wanted to test anything other than a Tesla, which has the largest charging network in the world with 25,000 charging stations worldwide. You need an adapter to use it, but the advantages and high availability of the Tesla charging network are generally well known.

Load on the road with any car brand others that Tesla is something not much is known.

I admit that, even as a car man, I had a lot of questions about cargo, new terminology, speed, potential costs, and more.

We rented a new Polestar 2, Volvo’s recent entry into the electric car market, at Enterprise. Most electric vehicles have a range, to what extent they can drive with a single full charge, between 100 and 300 miles. The Polestar range was advertised at 265 miles, but this can vary depending on several things: cold weather, uphill or downhill hills, or use of AC, for example.

I had driven the Polestar 2 on a short test a few months earlier, so I knew it well enough to feel comfortable on a long trip.

We drove about 60 miles from Enterprise to our first stop in Mountain Pass, California, about 15 miles from the Nevada border in the “high desert” around 5pm on a Tuesday night at 105 degrees .

We had to remove a metal cap from a power outlet in the mine, but then we were able to plug in and get to 100% before we left.

Two initial shots after a few miles: one, it’s easy to get anxious staring at the giant “load percentage” screen (so we turned it off) and two, we had to unload a lot of applications as we learn to navigate the new “world of the range”.

Our goal became PlugShare, which shows you where the charging stations are, regardless of who owns them, what network it was on, how fast it was loaded, if it’s currently available, and hopefully an image so you can see what you have. re enter.

PlugShare became a favorite because it was an agnostic brand and customers left reviews of their experience. These reviews were valuable, as we found that many chargers were not as fast as advertised and that some did not work or were in strange places.

The Polestar also has Google map integration that shows charging stations along the route, as well as the expected load percentage on arrival. We found the load forecast to be very accurate, but we thought Google could improve the filtering experience by charger type (we were jealous of Tesla while its stations were popping up everywhere).

We arrived at our first stop at a Walmart in Barstow, California, it was an Electrify America location and they had about eight chargers. Only one was occupied by an Audi eTron and so we plugged it in, arriving at the facility store and honestly just for a walk through the air conditioning (did we mention it was hot, hot, hot? !).

The charge took 37 minutes and cost us $ 13.33.

Now, to Bakersfield.

The journey along Route 58 was fascinating. We passed by one of the aircraft storage camps along with the Alta Wind Energy Center, one of the largest wind power facilities in the world. It was a magnificent sunset drive down the mountain with many hills along this route.

The hills matter to Polestar 2 in two ways: first, the hill up seems to burn more load as the car is loaded pulling its own weight up, but going down is a victory because the car has an energy-generating system in the car without braking. So, once achieved, you almost never touch the brake pedal and produce some energy while doing so.

We entered Bakersfield with an 18% charge after traveling 135 miles and connecting to the Chargepoint system at the Hampton Inn. It only had two plugs, but we were the only car there and the person in charge of the night said that no one had ever actually seen it. It was slow but free, and we left with 89% charge about 10 hours later.

The long, boring, hot one (did we mention it was hot?) Continued straight down I-5 down the California Panera. Harriet had a flight at 4pm outside San Francisco airport, so we had a slightly tight schedule and had to leave time to load.

The various applications showed us that the best possible stop was at Firebaugh, about 140 miles from the road. There seemed to be some fast food shops and places to have a coffee. And that’s pretty much all it was. Our Electrify America plug was at a Shell gas station (as many seem to be) with a small convenience store.

We grabbed some water and, well, we stayed around. It took us 41 minutes and cost $ 21.93 to reach 87% charge and we looked enviously at the Tesla network on the other side of the road, where drivers charged faster and had shade from the roof of the seasons (did we mention the heat it was?). We bought sunscreen again.

Now, the last stage. Firebaugh at San Francisco International Airport. Or not. The car software indicated that we would achieve SFO with a low load of 5%. And as he continued towards the city, it would not be enough. We should stop again. Annoying, but not the end of the world, as we would be hungry and drive to Silicon Valley, where charging stations are as plentiful as garlic in Gilroy. We found a charger near a ramen joint and fed both ourselves and the car.

I left Harriet at the airport and finished the short trip to the city, arriving near the CNBC studio with a solid 42% load and many curious looks from drivers wondering what kind of car it was.

Professional Tip # 2: Because of the hills, SF is the perfect place for Polestar 2 and its regenerative braking.

A long road trip on an EV right now is not impossible, but it is not ideal. Yes, we know that 95% of car trips are short jumps along the same routes: work, school, shop, rehearsal.

Electric cars may be the future, but the future must be accelerated. And by that, we mean that charging speeds should be accelerated as fast as the Polestar 2 in green light: 45 minutes every 200 miles or so won’t cut it for any family who wants to take one more road trip. long.

We didn’t see a loader shortage. Even in the desert we found chargers to use. However, there is a shortage of chargers in places you really want to stop. Ultimately, I think the EV game is less about cars and more about real estate.

The more electric vehicles are on the road, the more charging stations will be needed. At this time there is not much demand for them, so cargo ports were plentiful during our trip. But just think of 20 cars sitting for 45 minutes or more at a time on a single charging station. This requires a lot of time and space.

For most people, a new car should be useful 100% of the time. Based on this trip, it’s not clear that we’re still there.

CNBC’s Michael Wayland contributed to this article.