Follow along as Mark Faulkenberry shares his firsthand experience with an all-electric-truck -- this month, he considers charging while traveling.
EV Parking at the Airport
Have you ever dreamed of being able to park your electric vehicle at the airport knowing that when you get back from your trip your vehicle will be charged up and ready to drive home? For those of us who drive EVs, it has crossed our minds.
Recently, I had to fly for a couple of business trips. While I live close enough to the airport that I didn’t need a charge to get home, I had to wonder: what if I did?
So I did a little research to see if and what type of EV charging infrastructure local airports currently offer—and what they envision for future EV drivers. I looked at five airports: One in Oklahoma (Tulsa), two in New Mexico (Santa Fe and Albuquerque) and one in Texas (Dallas-Fort Worth).
I was shocked by the stark differences between the various airports. Some were focused on meeting the future needs of EV drivers, with others not even in the game at this stage. While the two New Mexico airports had no EV charging stations, the clear winners were Tulsa and DFW.
Based on their size and locations, I saw what I expected from DFW, which currently provides 20 level 2 chargers. But Tulsa International Airport impressed me the most. Completion of phase one of its 20-year plan recently opened 32 level 2 parking spots in its covered parking area. Phase two will add 15 dual port chargers to the economy surface lot, with the vision and commitment to install up to 120 dual-port level 2 chargers as the marketplace evolves.
Road Trips
Since January, Bolt—my Ford F-150 Lightning—and I have taken several lengthy road trips that have really opened my eyes.
The most recent was a trip to Ruidoso, New Mexico. It was a quick three-day round trip requiring me to drive out on Wednesday and back on Friday. Google showed the trip to be 543 miles with a drive time of 8 hours, 19 min. Google didn’t know I was driving Bolt.
Due to lack of adequate fast charging infrastructure and some serious headwinds, it became a 15-hour drive. I admit that I was conservative in my approach to not being stranded on the roadside, thus maybe charging a bit more than needed. But I wasn’t taking any chances.
Everything was fine until I hit a stretch— that I knew from my pre-planning—where I was going to have to use level 2 charging at one of our distribution cooperatives to get enough juice to get to the next fast charger.
I was able to coordinate a meeting with my member cooperative to use the threehour wait time productively on my trip out, but not so on the return trip. It’s one thing to use public charging to get enough juice to get home daily—it’s something else to have to use it four times in one day to get to where you’re going.
Several factors contributed to this endeavor being “the road trip from hell.” From my perspective, it could have been better, and it could have been worse! One thing is for sure: Public charging takes time, and it isn’t cheap.