I’ve put 50,000 miles on my electric car, around half of them on long distance road trips. But when people ask, “Don’t those take a long time to charge?” my response is that I’ve spent less time waiting to charge than I used to spend filling up with gasoline. You just have to know how to do it right, and you need right charging infrastructure. That latter factor is why I have to say “almost,” because this is not always true in these early days of EV adoption, but it will be true almost all the time as the EV transition continues. Here’s my guide to zero-wait charging and how you can do it, too.

I also have a video about a recent road trip demonstrating the zero-wait principle.

Zero Wait Many people have heard it can take 30 to 60 minutes to refill an EV at a fast charger. They may have done a double take when they read the specs on charging an EV from a regular household plug and it said it would take over 2 days. That seems completely unworkable, and it would be, if that’s what you did.

The reality is that most cars are parked more than 22 hours every day. As long as there’s charging—even fairly slow charging—where you park, then charging takes no time since it happens while your car is just sitting there. Over 90% of EV owners have charging at either home or work. At home, the car charges while they sleep, and they wake up every morning to a full car. They never go to charging stations (or gas stations) in their home city. Or it charges while you work, taking no time from your day. The mantra is “Charge where you park, don’t park where you charge.” The idea of making a special journey to a charging station is part of “gasoline thinking” and we need rid of it. Charging, like parking, should be just part of life with a car. You never ask, “How much time did you spend parking that thing?”

Of course, today, some people who want EVs can’t have charging at home or work. That’s the main thing we need to change. Most laws and subsidies are focused on pubic chargers that most EV drivers will never use. Instead, they should focus on getting slower “Level 2” charging at apartments, condos, curbsides and commuter parking lots. But there are solutions for those who don’t have this yet, though I generally advise such folks to wait a bit longer on getting an EV, as they won’t have the zero-wait experience that’s better than gasoline in all ways. (Public charging also tends to be much, much more expensive than private. I mean like as much as 5 times as much.)

On a Road Trip People driving around their home city never spend any time charging, but that changes on the road. There are two types of road trips—recreational, and the hard-slog “A to B” variety. Recreational road trips tend to want to enjoy the journey, and don’t drive more than 4-5 hours in a day. That means tons of time parked. All road trip charging should begin at hotels or homes where again, you charge while you sleep, taking zero time from your day. A decent fraction of hotels now feature charging, quite often free to guests, though there are still plenty that don’t. This is the next thing that needs to change. Just about all hotels should have it, and enough for all EV guests, possibly with a way for guests to reserve it.

Again, the road tripper wakes up to a full car. On a recreational trip, that’s all they need, as most cars can drive 4 hours or more, and then charge again overnight. In fact, with charging at popular travelers’ destinations (parks, attractions, etc.) they can have enough to do more hours each day.

Charger and food Right across from this Tesla Supercharger in Soledad, CA, was an amazingly good Mexican RestaurantBrad Templeton On a hard-slog trip, though, the car will need charging after about 4 hours—just in time for lunch. Today, this involves a bit more planning. You pull out your favoring charger app, and look at your fast charging options where your car will drop down to 10-20%. Here, no solution is perfect, because while Google maps has charging stations on it, it’s not as good at planning charging as Plugshare or ABetterRoutePlanner. Once you’ve found your chargers you’ll want Google Maps or Yelp or similar with their excellent listings of restaurants with ratings. You want to find a lunch restaurant within a 5 minute walk of a charger which has good food of the sort you like. You probably want counter service food, because fast charging takes about 30-40 minutes, and sit-down meals take longer than that—the charging is just too fast and you may have to get up from your meal to move your car when it’s full. But that’s doable too and in the future will find better solutions.

Once again, the charging takes no time from your day, though it does constrain your meal choices, at least today. In the future that will go away. You’re off for another 4-6 hours of driving on your slog, though ideally, you will take a few breaks, and catch 5 minutes of fast charge while using the bathroom etc.

For many people 8-10 hours of solid driving is more than enough, in which case go to your next hotel to plug in. Otherwise, catch dinner next to charging as you did lunch.

Sometimes there isn’t a good restaurant near a charger. In that case, Google Maps again comes to the rescue as you can use it to find take-out along your route to your planned charger. I carry a folding table and chair in the car (both quite small) and do this if the weather’s passable. It would be nice if charging stations had covered picnic tables, or even small heated dining areas. In the future, aside from finding charging at most travel restaurants, you may find ones that let you order from the car, timed for your arrival, or delivered to your car.

This is how my road trips have gone, but as I wrote, “almost”—there are times in these early days where this hasn’t worked so smoothly, or it’s required too much compromise or planning. As we build out more charging, this will fade away, if we do it right. Even when it didn’t work, I spent the charge time doing things I already do every day—surfing the internet, watching streaming TV, reading. I have never just sat there waiting. For people on a “go-go-go” trip who eat while driving, there may still be some waiting and delay.

In Part Two, I’ll go into details on how even people without charging at home or work can still live most of the zero-wait life, if we serve them well, and more tips on making this work. I also outline some of the circumstances where this approach has failed, and I’ve had to wait. This strategy gets you closer to the ultimate EV goal—to make EV trips superior to gasoline ones in almost every way, as that’s the key ingredient for everybody to want to join the EV transition. No mandates or rules needed. Just better, faster, cheaper and greener, and you don’t have to care about the greener.