What it's like to take an EV on a rural Canadian road trip [video]

While reviewing the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo Turbo S, I decided to take the opportunity to get a better understanding of what it would be like to take an electric vehicle (EV) on a long weekend road trip to visit my parents near Ottawa.

While the experience wasn’t as seamless as when I drive my Jetta to their house, I was able to make it there and back without running out of battery, so I guess you could call the trip a success. It was also a great learning experience for me regarding electric vehicle charging both on the road and at home.

To start, I’ll preface the video by mentioning that most of the time I review EVs, I’m driving around the Greater Toronto Area. That means that I’m never really that far from a fast-charger, so I haven’t lived with a lot of range anxiety — at least not yet. However, I’m also aware that most people don’t live in Toronto, so I’ve always wanted to take an EV a little further north in the province to see what the experience is like in a small rural town like Renfrew, Ontario.

There’s roughly 400km of road between these two legends of Ontario geography. While I usually cruise that distance in around four hours in a gasoline car, it took closer to five in the Taycan Cross Turismo Turbo S, plus once we arrived at my parent’s house, we only had about 20km left of charge.

If you want to find out how the rest of the story went, I’ve documented the entire experience below: