Meryl records herself juicing up yet again before she’s back on the road, this time at a speedier 80 miles per hour. The sun has gotten visibly lower at this point in her journey. And as she arrives at her fourth supercharger, the amber glow of dusk hangs in the clouds. At the Supercharger station closest to her destination, there’s only a single vehicle juicing up, which looks like a Rivian. Again, Meryl plugs in her car and when she’s driving again, night still hasn’t set.
But it seems that she’s still not done charging her car, either. Because she has to juice up her Tesla yet again, plugging it in for the fifth time on her journey. At the end of her video, she records herself finally making it to Chicago. A text overlay in her clip reveals the total amount of time it took her to get there in an EV. “Made it from MN to Chicago in 7 hours,” she writes. Meryl punctuates her feelings about the total travel time with a crying emoji as her clip comes to an end.
Furthermore, a caption for her clip speaks to a problem many EV owners have opined about with regards to range estimate inaccuracies. She wrote: “I had to stop every 70 miles, I swear.”
For comparison, Google Maps projects that folks driving in a traditional, internal combustion engine vehicle from Minneapolis to Chicago, while maintaining the legal speed limit should make the 408-mile trip in 5 hours and 52 minutes.
If only there was a magical liquid readily available at convenient places along the side of the road that we could put inside our cars that would take just a few minutes to make them drivable again for many, many miles. I know that’s the stuff of science fiction, but one day, I’m sure it will be possible.