A new study tries to answer the question: Is an electric vehicle or a gasoline vehicle cheaper to drive on Route 66 and other iconic roads?
The verdict by Upgraded Points: Electric is cheaper, but it will cost you time.
It examined the trade-off between time and fuel cost if a driver were to travel on some of America’s most famous highways, such as Route 66 or California 1, with an EV compared to a gas car.
According to a summary of the analysis:
- Electric vehicle drivers save 11 cents for every mile driven but add 15 seconds to their total journey to account for charging.
So here’s the breakdown on Route 66:
An EV would extend your trip by nearly 10 hours, but you’d save $257.58, leaving you with plenty of extra cash to stay in one of the iconic motels along Route 66!
The 2,451-mile road trip would need to be broken up into several days, as it’d take the average gas car owner 41 hours and 9 minutes to complete and an EV owner 51 hours and 8 minutes.
Gas car owners would need to make nearly 7 pitstops to fuel up while EV owners would need more than 10.
You can see more data in the graphic above.
The article also contains information on each state’s average miles per EVSE port, which are ports that provide power and charge one electric vehicle at a time.
When factoring in that most newer EVs can go 250 miles on a charge, New Mexico’s average of 313.40 miles per port looks a tad daunting. That’s the highest of Route 66’s eight states, by the way. Most of the rest are well under 150 miles.
This recent Roadtrippers.com article, however, indicates the number of EV charging spots on Route 66 now is pretty ample. Even tiny Goffs, California, has one.
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The switch to EVs will have a detrimental affect on Route 66 tourism. A fill-up of gas occupies a pump for a few minutes, and many stations have a lot of pumps, so no wait. A charge not only takes 30-45 minutes, but there will be long waits just to hook up for the charge unless a station has 100 or 200 charging stations. I wonder what the investment would be to install so many charging stations? Can you imagine the wait at Clines Corners? Will the infrastructure along Route 66 be able to afford to install the stations?
Further, most of us won’t take the chance to run the battery down close to the edge, so more and time-consuming stops will be required. Route 66 trips will take a lot longer. The calculation of added time in the article is recklessly optimistic, assuming there will be an available charging station without waits. If I need a charge at Goffs, how many others will be in line ahead of me for the one charging station? Can the business at Goff’s afford to install ten? Thirty?
Suppose I set my Route 66 adventure so that only one charge is needed during the day. What happens at night, where the Route 66 tourists congregate? Will Tucumcari have 1,000 stations? Will I need to get up during the night and grab that charging spot at 3:45 AM? Will the Safari, Roadrunner, Blue Swallow, and other vintage motels install stations? One for each room? What is the investment? Can the owners afford it?
Hopefully there will be a break-through in the charging technology, or perhaps the rotation of wheels on a car can run a gadget that replenishes the battery during movement.