Hey, what's up mkbhd here so have you ever wondered how much longer it would take to do a road trip in an electric car versus a gas car in 2021 and does it matter which type of electric car you take? It's an interesting question. I'm sure many of us have wondered this and most reasonable people would probably stop there, but not me nope nope, my team and i decided to actually find the real answer by really doing it and running it like a sort of a scientific experiment. So you know it's one thing to go by the numbers on paper which we all have and the chargers on the map which we can all look at. But it's another thing to actually go.

Do it, but we're just gon na find out we're gon na. Do this uh the hard way by actually going on a massive road trip with gas cars and electric cars to actually put this to the test? So it's it's a little bit unscientific, but we've got a set of rules and we've got a route we're gon na. Take to make it happen, so here are the cars first. We have tesla model s, plaid you're, probably familiar.

I've already done. Videos about this car with the 21 inch wheels on it right here. It has a 350 mile range on 100 battery. Next to it here, we've got ford mustang, machi, california, route 1 edition has about a 305 mile range charges that electrify america chargers and then last but not least, we have a gas car control.

This is what's going to make the results of the test. I think pretty interesting, so we've got an audi q5 here on a full tank of gas. It'll get about 460 miles of range and uh we're gon na start them off from the same place. At the same time, there happens to be a spot near our studio with a gas station, a tesla supercharger and an electrified america charger we're gon na leave with a full tank and a full battery all at the same time, from there we're gon na do a Route that hits uh ithaca new york lake placid new york, niagara falls scranton pennsylvania, we're gon na do this whole circle.

You've probably already seen a lot of this on twitter by the time this video goes up, but we've got members. We got the whole team. Most of the team here we're going to be in these cars - probably trash talking a little bit and turning it into a bit of a race, but to see exactly how much time charging at these different infrastructures adds to a road trip. So mile one of a thousand starts now so yeah.

That's it pretty simple. The goal just treat it like a normal road trip, you're, obviously trying to go around the loop as fast as possible, but two rules, one no speeding. We have a hard cap limit to our speed for all the cars. That's the same, but two uh just hit all the waypoints just get all the pictures we want out of all those different waypoints until you do the thousand miles we added an overnight break for sanity, so we have a hotel in niagara, falls to break the trip Into two days, but everyone wakes up on the second day with the same state of charge that they want to sleep with and we'll add up all the time deltas at the end.

So at this point you know the route, you know the cars go ahead and guess how you think it went go ahead and guess what you think happened. What order did the cars come in and how far apart did they finish? The thousand miles now go ahead and tell you right off the bat, your guests, about the order of the cars the way they finish. One two: three: it's probably correct your guess about how far apart they finished, probably wrong, so we're putting together a whole video on this road trip experience on the studio channel. So if you want all the details and every single thing that happened at each stop to each team, if you want to go on the road trip with us, go ahead and hit the subscribe button to the studio channel to see that when it comes out.

But this video is the breakdown of exactly what happened. So the gas car, the gas car had the most predictable trip right. So they stopped for five minutes for a break and gas on the way up to lake placid got there in four hours 49 minutes. Then they took two short breaks on the way to niagara falls.

One was 20 minutes for food and then the other was 10 minutes for gas and used in the bathroom. That was their day. One they arrived at niagara falls at 11 hours, eight minutes. So then the tesla trip took off at the same time right off the bat it gets interesting.

I was driving and i decided to be kind of bold and go all the way from the starting point to like placid up those mountains on one charge without stopping. We actually passed by the sign without stopping to take a picture, because our battery was so low that we weren't sure if we were going to make it, but we did make it to the top and there's a supercharger up there. I had one mile remaining on the battery, but that was our first stop for half an hour where we got some snacks. We got passed by the gas car, but then we doubled back a bit to take a photo of the sign and then headed over to niagara falls and we stopped two more times to charge on the way once for 46 minutes, where i actually filled up the Battery and another quick, eight minute stop for safety before arriving at niagara falls with about 70 miles left on the battery in almost exactly 12 hours, then the mustang maki okay, so they headed up towards lake placid, along with the tesla again at the same time, but With the smallest range they had to pull off first and the car routed them to an evolved new york charger.

That was out of order. So, with 36 miles on the battery, they had no choice but to head the wrong direction into vermont to the nearest available charger there. They had to sit for almost two hours before they left with enough battery, and at this point they had gone so far. Out of the way and they're so far behind that they just decided they could just skip lake placid just to make it to niagara before the end of the day.

So that's what they did. They skipped it and went straight across west. They hit one more charger for 41 minutes which brought them to near 80 battery, then at 9 30 they arrived at another charger, stop that was also broken, so they navigated for another half hour to find another charger. This turned out to be a barely working trickle charger where it only added two percent to their battery, so they drove another half hour precariously to an electrify america charger where they arrived with five percent left, and this one worked perfectly for 46 minutes which gave them Enough juice to finally get to niagara falls by 12 40 in the morning after 16 hours and 40 minutes on the road.

That's about five hours behind the gas car, so that first leg taught us a lot so we're sitting about 650 miles in. At this point. The gas car, as you probably predicted, is in first place. The tesla, as you may have also predicted, isn't second, it's about half an hour behind after this first leg, and the mach e in third is now about five hours behind.

So i mean we've seen we've seen: we've read the articles before of of horror stories of charging trying to do a road trip in a porsche thai can getting to a broken charger and all that we've seen that online in the past. But now that it's happening to this team as we're doing it, it's a whole nother thing to actually live through it, and actually both the the members of that maki team are ev drivers now in an attempt to even it out a bit on the second day. Uh, the the gas car and the tesla wouldn't really change much, but team machi would now operate under their newfound knowledge that the in-car navigation on the forward could not be trusted, so they would be using their own apps. They would be essentially trying to only hit electrify america chargers for this leg of the trip ignore what the car tells you to navigate to ignore the forward approved stops because that clearly didn't work last time, they're just going to do it on their own more advanced Way and that shocker went much better, so all cars took off at the same time again and the gas car went straight to the cornell clock, then after that photo they took a short 10 minute gas stop and then an hour later took another quick 10 minute Food break didn't even add gas during that stop just stopped to eat, then they went straight to scranton for the paper building photo.

Then all the way to the finish no range concerns at all no problem. This second leg took them seven hours 51 minutes. So the tesla the tesla arrived at niagara with pretty low battery 70 miles left. So we actually started off going right to a charging.

Stop at cheektowaga 15 minute stop there. Then we drove to another supercharger at ithaca for 25. More minutes of charging, then, from there we got the ithaca photo and then went all the way down to scranton took that photo and then took one last charging and food stop at bartonsville, which gave us plenty more than enough to get home in our total, which Was eight hours which was pretty impressively less than an hour behind the gas car? Again then, the maki, with their newfound confidence in only using electrify america chargers. This time had a much better time today, so they went to waterloo for their first charge, where the first charger didn't work, but the second one did and they charged for 32 minutes here, then they got to ithaca, took their cornell photo.

Then they drove to scranton. With one brief coffee break in the middle, then nearby stopped at another ea charger, where three of the four chargers didn't work, but the last one did so they charged there for 32 minutes and made their way back to the studio. Just about half an hour behind the tesla so for a total of eight hours, 49 minutes, so the order was still the same, but the day two deltas were a bit smaller, so i'd say i learned a few things from this whole thousand mile road trip. Actually things that we we kind of already knew, but that are much more crystallized now that we've gone through it now to answer the question straight from the beginning: how much time does switching to electric actually add to the road trip? First of all, i want to acknowledge that there are plenty of different variables that could contribute to some of the deltas.

Not only could i have used a different car or different wheels for a different range on each of them, but there are also things like different traffic different amounts of time, taking photos at the waypoints, different navigation routes and habits, and things like that. So i'm gon na i'm just gon na give like a plus or minus ten percent delta. Just on how long these things took. So at the end, we got the tesla added one hour, 32 minutes per thousand miles of road tripping.

It's really not bad and the mustang machi added seven hours and 32 minutes. Although six and a half hours of that was on the first day and then it was an hour and three minutes on day two. So i think it's safe to say that if you do a lot of road trips, the tesla road trip experience is currently pretty far ahead of any other electric car, especially here where we did the test in the us uh, but not for the reason you might Be thinking like there's a couple variables in here and part of it is the slightly longer range of the car. Sure and part of it is the supercharger network versus the other networks used by the machi sure.

But the biggest thing that contributed to our results was the accuracy of the information displayed in the car, so for range differences. It's actually interesting. It seems like the tesla goes by the max epa estimated rating they can possibly quote, which is mostly based on highway driving and there's even some other official ratings in europe. There's a wltp rating which has different ratios of city mixed in with highway there's another called nedc, but generally i've found that achieving tesla's quoted range would require pretty much perfect conditions: perfect, weather, perfect temperature outside perfect roads, perfect traffic, not driving too fast.

You pretty much. Never get it perfect, so the plaid model, s that i've been driving that we use for this test has a full battery rating of 345 miles on those wheels. It's right between the long range model, 3 and long range model y, but i would never ever attempt to try to reach a charger 345 miles away because, as you're driving, you can see the range dropping off of the battery faster than you're, covering them on the Road matter of fact, on the first leg of that trip, we just did we went from the studio up to lake placid that went from 345 miles full battery all the way down to one mile left when we pulled in 0.3 battery - and that was only a 293 mile trip, so that's a 15 difference between the range you're quoted on paper, with perfect conditions and what we actually got and i feel like all tesla owners. I know have really started to calibrate for this, like if your car says you have 40 miles, left you better get to a charger in the next 30 miles, or so like that's just the way it is especially in winter or if it's particularly cold.

You know, despite the new heat pump, it doesn't take zero energy to get the battery to the temperature it likes. So that's just the tesla range and efficiency factor. Now the mustang mach e, on the other hand, very very consistent with the number being displayed on the dash and the range you actually got. It actually consistently outperformed that number just a little bit, which leads me to believe ford, isn't quoting the maximum epa rated range possible, and we found this to be true of some other electric cars too.

The porsche tycan is one that actually consistently way outperforms its quoted range by a pretty big margin, and you might remember also ford, told me their f-150 lightning. Their quoted range will be with a thousand pounds of cargo in the trunk, so it may even go further when it's empty, so these are all different ways of going about quoted range, but i think the general philosophy you're, seeing with the forwards and porsches of the World is under promise over deliver just so your customer doesn't have to worry too much about the range that they say they're going to get in the car, but here's the the crazy part of all this is tesla model s plaid on those 21s 345 miles of Quoted range ford, mustang, machi, california, route 1 edition 305 miles of quoted range. I would expect those cars to go about the same distance, something to think about, so the tesla may have a bit more range sometimes, but that clearly doesn't make nearly as much of a difference as the infrastructure or the charging network to fast charge and go on Road trips: now, if you don't go on road trips, that much none of this may really matter to you in your ownership experience and that's fine. But if you do, the tesla supercharger network is built and owned by tesla, and it's built to the exact spec of their cars works great with them and then there's every other ev and all the other public charging networks.

That kind of all have somewhat variable experiences. I kind of think of it a little bit like lightning versus usb type c, so right now, today, there are about 1100 tesla supercharger stations in the u.s and they're, mostly along major roads, either at rest stops or in mall parking lots or around food things like That and then, with the mock e, you will use the fordpass charging network. And if you look on ford's website for the maki, it says that that's the largest public charging network in north america offered by a car manufacturer, which is it feels like they're, trying to loop in a couple different things there to make that statement. True, they definitely want to be able to say they've got the biggest network, but it's a public network too, and it's clearly it's not built by ford, and so the fordpass network is looping in a bunch of different other public charging networks into one.

It streamlines the payment experience, so you only need one ford pass account it's convenient for the buyer, but that includes about 600 electrify america super fast chargers, some of them up to 350 kilowatts when the car supports it. That's amazing, but that also includes some slow chargers. Some offline chargers, some out of order, broken chargers and that's the difference, and because these chargers aren't built by four, they aren't managed directly by ford there's a bit of a communication gap between when one of them might go down and that information actually showing up to The driver in the car usually doesn't know until he gets there, so the difference is literally when i sit down to plan a road trip in the tesla on the screen. I'm getting all of my information.

This is what they've done so well with their software. It's telling me whether or not i can make it to my destination on one charge. If i can't it's going to route me through superchargers along the way, tells me how long i need to charge at the supercharger to continue my trip and how much battery it'll leave me with when i arrive, but even better, yet for each charger. It tells me how many stalls there are the speed of the chargers, how many are out of order and how many are literally currently being occupied by other cars charging right now.

Ford is able to tell you about as much as they know, but they often don't know if there are charges that are down or broken or offline or something which is what happened during our trip. The trip in the car navigated them to a charger that was offline. I think it was for maintenance, it was being updated or something, but that would have been really bad if they'd arrived there with, like one mile of battery left like i did when i arrived at lake placid, knowing trusting that the superchargers would be there and working. That's the difference.

I could really trust what was being shown in the car and when i arrived there, i'd have charges available and that's just not the case in the ford. So i kind of felt like if lightning is the tesla supercharger network, it's tightly controlled by apple, the same way the tesla supercharger network is tightly controlled and you have the vertical integration and that helps the experience. But then, on the other side, there's usb type-c. A more open standard kind of like ccs, which is the charger but like there's some that are faster.

There are some that are slower and there's a whole mix in between. So just i'm getting in the weeds. But that's what it reminded me of, but then last faq i know we were wondering: what's the cost difference actually, between these two trips, electricity is typically cheaper than gas after all, but how much cheaper. So i wrote this down.

All the cars started from roughly 100 percent, like we said, leaving that initial stop the gas cars spent 84.79 during their trip just on gas, the tesla, which had free supercharging credit, but i went back and calculated how much it would have cost 66 dollars and 35 Cents and then the mock e same idea. We had ford pass charging credit, but we used about 61.25 of that credit, so they all charge per kilowatt. It was something around 30 to 35 cents per kilowatt. So overall, take from this.

What you will you? You might not be someone who does road trips, like i said, and a big part of the electric car owning experience is like starting every day with 100 battery in your garage. That's a totally different part of this. But if you do a lot of people do frequent road trips, maybe an annual road trip, maybe even more than that. Then you start to think about this stuff, and this situation is also constantly changing.

We're constantly going to be getting faster and faster chargers, we're going to get more chargers all over the world. We're also going to get longer and longer ranges in these evs and so i'd be curious. If we did another one of these tests in a year or two how it would fare, you know the 4680 batteries are around the corner, allegedly for some of these cars. So we'll see.

But again, if you want to see how this entire experience actually went, if you want to feel like you're going along the road trip with us studio, channel link below is where you should go for that. But in the meantime, i'm curious now that you've seen this now that you know i want to know what you think your next car purchase will be. Do you think it will be a gas car or an electric car? We'll use the comment section as like a polling, and if you want to tell us why, let me know why, but you think your next car, whenever that is, will be gas or electric. Alright, that's been it thanks for watching this experiment.

Talk to you guys in the next one peace.