Driving Electric on Route 66
In the public consciousness, Route 66 usually conjures images of days gone by; the open road, vintage motels and service stations, classic restaurants, small-town Americana and nostalgia for simpler times. By contrast, electric vehicles typically occupy an entirely different headspace: big cities, new technology, and the modern ultra-connected world. But these two very different paradigms don’t have to conflict, and I started ElectricRoute66.com to bring them together.
Like almost everyone in America, I grew up surrounded by cars. My family took summer vacations by car, often driving hundreds of miles on a trip, and sometimes thousands of miles. We were never wealthy so the economy of traveling by car was always preferred, and as I became an adult and started a family, my sense of efficiency – getting the most out of our limited time and money – was always spurring me to examine how we lived at home, and how we road-tripped, and how we could get the most enjoyment out of both.
Pixar’s 2006 film ‘Cars’ was a great education for many, and for me it put on film ideas that I had already internalized, about the fun of taking road trips with family. ‘Cars’ got our children interested in visiting the real-world inspirations for what they saw on screen, and our already extensive vacation road-tripping began to focus on Route 66. We discovered a vibrant community of Route 66 ‘roadies’ who visit the route from all over the world, supporting the people and places that keep it alive with exciting attractions and vibrant history. We became a part of that community, and it’s been a joy to share experiences with an amazing roadie family for over 15 years.
Despite a love of road trips, I was never a big car nut; my cars had always been utilitarian and I didn’t enjoy wrenching for its own sake; I did minor work myself only because it saved money. This ultimately led to electric cars. They seemed a great fit for our family, with fewer repairs, less maintenance, and less money spent on fuel. We began our electric journey with a 2014 Chevy Spark EV, a short-range car we purchased in late 2017. It couldn’t take us on long trips, but it saved us money on work commutes until it was time to replace our main family car with a long-range EV. This we did in 2018 with a Tesla Model 3. As EV owners we were introduced to another new community, with a very different focus than road-tripping and almost no overlap with our roadie family. I decided to start ElectricRoute66.com to bridge these two worlds – to inform my roadie friends and Route 66 businesses and supporters about EVs and their advantages, and also to inform EV drivers about the possibilities of road-tripping in an EV.
An obvious question now arises: can you cruise Route 66 in an EV? The answer of course is a resounding YES! For all of the heckling by EV naysayers, and skepticism in media stories about long-distance EV travel, the simple fact is that long road trips are possible and quite enjoyable. And the type of trip that’s most enjoyable in an EV is the sort that begs to be done on old highways like Route 66. The journey itself is the point, and your ‘destination’ is a hundred different places all along the way.
The method of travel espoused in ‘Cars’ when they talk about Route 66 – taking the two-lane road at a slower pace that follows the curves of the land, stopping at numerous small towns and attractions – is actually encouraged by the strengths of an EV. Aerodynamics play a huge role in EV efficiency, so when you slow down, you go farther on a charge. In a gas car, frequent stopping can cause a sharp decrease in the car’s efficiency, but an EV takes much less of a hit from repeated stops. You can take the time to explore that old town, those abandoned roadside ruins, that museum in the historic building, or that colorful trading post which has been beckoning travelers off the highway for 70 or 80 years. And when you stop for lunch, check PlugShare for a nearby charger and maybe you can plug in, to gain range while you enjoy a great meal at a vintage diner.
As with most highways, the basic infrastructure to travel Route 66 in an EV is largely in place at this point. But you do need to make plans a little more solidly than you may in a gas car. Route 66 mostly parallels the interstates I-40 and I-44, and Tesla has had that path sufficiently covered with Superchargers since 2016. It has been continually improving since then, with more Superchargers making travel easier. Commercial fast-charging networks for other cars are in place as well, though not quite as robust. If you liked to ‘wing it’ on a road trip in your gas car, getting gas whenever you felt like it, then traveling long distance in an EV may pose a noticeable change to your methods. It’s an adjustment but not a difficult one. If you are the sort of person who plans more thoroughly – looking up your route ahead of time, using the Gas Buddy app to find cheap gas so you don’t end up paying through the nose at the only gas station in the middle of nowhere – then the adjustment to using PlugShare to find charging should be pretty minor.
Slow charging is a work in progress along Route 66; it’s sparse in some areas but plentiful in others. Many of the vintage places along 66 that are worth stopping for may have too limited a budget to add chargers, or lack sufficient power infrastructure. These are growing pains that will resolve over time, but in the present we strive to patronize the classic stops even if they don’t have charging, so that they continue to survive. Vacation spending that once went into a gas tank can serve a better purpose, to keep these places alive and thriving in the all-electric future instead of being left behind by it. And maybe the next time we come through, they will have a charger too!
At Electric Route 66, our goal is to bring the EV and Route 66 communities together by informing and supporting them both. There is information for small business owners, on what EV drivers are looking for and how to attract and support them with limited resources, and there is information for EV drivers like tips for road tripping, tastes of the road through trip reports and event notices, and dash cam video of actual travel on Route 66. At heart, it’s a personal blog from a road geek couple in their spare time, so it’s not mass-market or high-polish, but I hope it’s helpful to folks. For road trippers and businesses, it’s proof that the EV revolution is here and there’s no reason to be apprehensive about it; for EV drivers, it’s proof that you don’t just have to drive your EV to work and back – you can get out on the old highways and back roads to travel, see, and do in your EV, and you absolutely should.
By Mike May
Mike and his wife Jessica May are owners of Electric Route 66, and trustees of the California Historic Route 66 Association. Jessica May is President of the Route 66 Electric Vehicle Association.
EVinfo.net appreciates exclusive publishing rights for this original article by guest author Mike May, co-owner of Electric Route 66.
