Non-Tesla EV Roadtrips 'Sucked' Last Year. Now, They're ‘Dramatically’ Better

Is having access to the Tesla Supercharger network really such a big deal? This YouTuber set out to find out.

Non-Tesla EV road trips are

Photo by: Aging Wheels (YouTube)

Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Dec 7, 2024 at 10:00am ET

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The Tesla Supercharger network is opening up to a growing list of automakers.
However, non-Tesla charging networks are also getting better.
There are more chargers and the old ones were either repaired or replaced with new models.

The list of non-Tesla electric cars that can access the Tesla Supercharger network in the United States and Canada is growing. Fast. Overnight, owners of EVs like the Rivian R1T, Ford Mustang Mach-E and Chevrolet Blazer EV suddenly received access to over 17,000 fast chargers that were previously exclusive to Tesla owners.

That’s on top of what’s already available from the myriad of smaller public charging operators like EVgo, Electrify America, ChargePoint and more, whose charging stalls more often than not come with CCS cables instead of Tesla’s NACS connector.

In total, owners of EVs that can top-up at both Tesla Superchargers and CCS stalls from other operators have over 37,000 ports at their disposal in the United States, according to the Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center. The Tesla Supercharger network has over 28,000 ports, but roughly 10,000 of those are still exclusive to Tesla EVs.

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In other words, there’s a lot of choice. So much so, that Robert Dunn from the Aging Wheels YouTube asked if having access to the Tesla Supercharger network is really such a big deal now. So he set out to see what the charging situation was like on a 400-mile trip from Saint Louis, Missouri to Chattanooga. Tennessee.

Last year, he did the experiment using a Polestar 2 and a rented Tesla Model 3. In the Tesla, he only used Superchargers and the experience was flawless. In the Polestar, he only used CCS chargers and he had nothing but issues.

This year, he repeated the experiment with the same Polestar 2 and a Kia EV6. The Polestar now has access to the Supercharger network and that’s what was used to top-up the batteries, while the Kia was only recharged at CCS fast chargers.

Dunn tried almost every charger on the 400-mile route, albeit for short periods of time, just to see if the stalls worked and how fast they were. The short answer is that things have improved “dramatically” since last year. Old CCS chargers were either upgraded or replaced, and more of them have been installed along the route.

The long answer is in the video embedded above.

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Some CCS chargers were a bit of a pain in the neck to activate, and there’s still the need for multiple smartphone apps to use all of them, but the good part is that, at least on this route, things are much better. So better in fact, that you might not even need to use Superchargers in a non-Tesla EV during a road trip, but if you need them, they’re there.

More choice means less charger anxiety and fewer worries.

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