is driving from coast-to-coast a fun and enjoyable experience?what about doing it with an electric car? is the fast charging infrastructure reliable enough for it?
yesnoOnly if you stick to the interstates bypassing the most interesting part of the drive.
It sucks and people who claim to enjoy it are larping that never drove more than 50 miles from home. The vast, overwhelmingly vast majority of roads suck. For starters break it down to two different types: interstate and state highways. Interstates will always suck because there's so much goddamn traffic I'll never understand how so many people have somewhere to drive to at literally any time of any day in any place. It's also mostly just straight and flat with nothing to see but gas stations. State highways are more scenic and depending on where you are there will be some sights to see and some little towns to pass through but after you've driven through one small town you've driven through them all. There's a novelty at first but in reality you're not stopping at every single little boutique and road side attraction and historic landmark and it also takes longer because you're driving slower and there's a lot of stopping and navigating through down town areas. Also most of the country is just visually boring. Everything between the two mountain ranges is just flat and dull and gray and brown. Have fun driving for 2 days in a completely straight line through Kansas Missouri and Illinois.
>>28912525lose weight
its very overrated, especially if you drive on expressways and turnpikes, eating miles per day, just coast to coast as a goal.Country roads memes aside are 50/50, either lost truckers are going to be a pain in the ass or potholes festival destroying your wheels.now why would you do that on an ev? It would be less embarrassing riding a harley while wearing a dress down southern states
>>28912521i imagine it would be. I've driven roughly halfway (Portland -> KCMO)if you're the introspective sort, it's a good thing, spending all that time alone. it also gives you a much better perspective on just how big the US is. Driving through east through wyoming all night long and hitting nebraska just as the sun was coming up was one of the most memorable sunrises of my entire life.I'd recommend doing it at least once it, if you have a soul.
>>28912521Do roads like that really exist out west? Just miles straight with no traffic and a beautiful backdrop? I would imagine that shit is all "grid"locked with auto enthusiast tourists trying manufacture some top speed dopamine. Or a guaranteed police trap 24/7.
Anything past 24 hours of driving in 3 days is past my limit, and every year my limit drops. I do not know how truckers manage it for a living.
>>28912560yes and it's actually quite creepy/scary than 'exciting' which you seem to imagine it. People don't pleasure drive them for a reason
>>28912521if you like driving why wouldnt it be? just avoid common highways.
>>28912521The vehicle you're using makes a pretty big difference. Ideally you want something big, with comfy seats, a smooth ride, a relaxed engine and plenty of fuel range. Doing long distances in a tiny, loud, stiff shitbox screaming away at 3500rpm gets pretty old after a few hours. Motorhomes are slow as fuck and terrible on fuel but if you're feeling fatigued or tired you can pull over at a rest stop and take a nap in a full sized bed. You also don't have to use nasty hotels/motels. Doing it in a EV sounds like nightmare fuel but whatever.
>>28912560yes but you zone the fuck out and it's hard to keep your actual speed in mind after being on it more than an hour.sure you can try to treat it like a land speed record attempt but you'll get spooked by a tumbleweed and roll 15 times
It's better as a memory, memories that are nice to have; the actual experience usually sucks so hard.I love driving, but more than an hour on the interstate is torture.
>>28912563>creepy/scarylmao what? boring as fuck yeah but scary? nah
>>28912655Scary because of the inbred hill billy cannibals hiding out there
>>28912521>is driving from coast-to-coast a fun and enjoyable experience?No.>what about doing it with an electric car? is the fast charging infrastructure reliable enough for it?Prepare to spend several days worth of your life sitting by charging stations.
>>28912521>is driving from coast-to-coast a fun and enjoyable experience?Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I stay in the the south extra long for the good food.>what about doing it with an electric car? No. For reason below.>is the fast charging infrastructure reliable enough for it?Oh fuck no, you will constantly deal with broken down chargers or chargers that don't charge as fast as they claim.
>>28912560>Do roads like that really exist out west? Just miles straight with no traffic and a beautiful backdrop?Yes, absolutely
No, it fucking sucks ass. Especially from OK west.
I have driven long stints before. Straight from seattle to western colorado. 24 hours on the road is a little rough. However split it up over two days and it's a highly enjoyable drive. Lots of beautiful views. good food at mom and pop shops, and the roads are usually always interesting. WA the roads are surrounded by beautiful scenery. ID is also quite beautiful. UT has some gorgeous dessert. And CO has stunning mountains with lots of curvy roads. I bet I've driven the million dollar highway end to end well over a hundred times. Used to run all over that area during the summers. Man I wish I had time to camp all over those mountains again.
>>28912716>canyon roads>mountain roads>open roads>plentiful dirt roads>plentiful off roading>plentiful camping away from noisy RV hellsMaybe if I had made my life on the west coast I would have been happier.
>>28912525>Interstates will always suck because there's so much goddamn trafficThat depends on where you are.t. just drove from New Jersey to Ohio and back on mostly-empty Interstates
>>28912560route 66 just outside of Kingman, AZ looks like this unironically
>>28912765who tf cares nigga
>>28912521>>28912525pretty much what this guy said My family had a huge emphasis on road trips, and we’d go on two big trips each year. My wife and I have also road tripped all around and once you’ve done it a few times it loses its luster. You can only stop at Buc-ee’s so many times, you can only get a ridiculously oversized Coke at a truck stop so many times, you can only eat at Waffle House so many times, it gets very old very quickly. If it’s something you’ve never done before it’s absolutely worth doing at least once, especially with friends. It can be more convenient and cheaper than flying in some cases.The destinations end up being more memorable than the journey. But there are a lot of places worth visiting that you wouldn’t even expect.The problem with doing this in an EV is that you’ll often have to decide “do i stop at [cool thing] or do i stop at [boring truckstop to charge] and then double back to [cool thing]. You’ll end up spending lots of time sitting at the charger destroying your battery by DC fast charging over and over. Even with kids going to the bathroom, I can be in and out of the gas station in under 15 minutes.
>>28912521Get a Tesla, plug in your final address. And click Start Self Driving. >it maps out the entire >it maps out entire charging stop>it drives the entire way>it parks in the charging stallNothing but relaxation.
>>28912560Yes, I commute to work on a road like that.
>>28912521great plains suck to drive through but i guess you could try to avoid that by going through the badlands into minnesota or arizona>newmex>texas, which could get pretty boring in its own right. the best state to drive is alaska hands down though.>>28912560i just just drove to canon city last weekend and everything past south park was basically that. i think i saw 2 other cars across 4 hours.
>>28912521>is driving from coast-to-coast a fun and enjoyable experience?its literally this for 80% of the trip
>>28912521It can be a fun and interesting adventure if your capable of enjoying it.I wouldn't do it in a electric car. Unless that's a maim purpose for your trioWouldn't want to have to plan everything around availability of chargers.Do you have AAA or some other travellers insurance.?
I wouldn't do a coast to coast. Too much mindless driving on highways. I've done 2 road trips. Pacific Coast highway was pretty awesome. Would do again but it's California. The second one was cape town to Port Elizabeth. That one was scary going through some black favelas. It was also uninteresting since the roads are far from the coast and I had some shitty Renault rental
>>28912562There's a reason why truckers usually drop dead early. They are slamming every stimulant they can get 24/7 to stay focused enough to not crash and stay on schedule. Every trucker is pouring all the caffeine, nicotine, and sugar into their body that they can while sitting still 99% of their day. Im surprised any trucker lives past 60.
No. Going straight for hours on end is boring as fuck
As an Australian, our countries are similar in size. (contiguous USA = 8M km2; Australia = 7.7M km2.) But the experience of driving the countries is very different.The vast majority of the inland is what most call desert, though the greenery on the east and north sides stretches further inland. These regions are extremely unpopulated. Due to this we have no comparable 'interstate' system, even the few highways which go through the middle are very quiet.We have very few east-west highways. Look at a map. They're mostly north-south. Thousands of kilometres of desert. It's worth travelling into for the experience of camping in the outback, but to get through is a bit of a slog. I personally enjoy it for the challenge however.If you were to go coast-to-coast, let's say Brisbane to Perth, which is a good approximate of east-most major city to west-most major city: you COULD go directly west, which gets progressively drier and less inhabited, but after about a 1000 kilometres or so you end up being forced to drive on dirt/gravel, or head south.After heading south several hundred kms, you'll get to the latitude of Perth at which there will be a proper highway heading west which will take you first through the outback (it's the major Sydney-Adelaide route), then you'll get to the southern coast and pretty much follow that until you get to Perth.We really don't have many highways. Australia is a highly urbanised country, despite our size we've somehow packed ourselves into enormous cities like sardines. So yeah, driving cross-country is... not many choices. Basically just a means of getting from one capital or region to another.Can you do it with an electric car - as I've heard, yes - but you have to plan quite well. As for the lower-range E-vehicles - probably not.
>>28912865https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU4ehgnTjVg&list=RDaU4ehgnTjVg&start_radio=1
>>28912521yes.no.why don't you FAFO?
>>28912560it does actually, that road is the NV-374 north of Vegas https://www.google.com/maps/place/Kingman,+Arizona,+%C3%89tats-Unis/@36.8773907,-116.8224264,3a,15y,229.07h,90.96t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1szPoi5cQUn-DD8HCJNYLs6g!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-0.9555511748227019%26panoid%3DzPoi5cQUn-DD8HCJNYLs6g%26yaw%3D229.07338226138634!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x80cddc1300936035:0xa6accfbcff04a560!8m2!3d35.1912977!4d-114.0522845!16zL20vMHFweGM?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDQwOC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
>>28912521>is driving from coast-to-coast a fun and enjoyable experience?Depends on the route, highways are boringEVs can make the boring routes following highways but not the interesting routes with fun scenery on back roads
>>28912525>American roadsThere's your problem.But I agree that driving through towns and on the motorway sucks dick.
I wouldn’t recommend it if another route could be chosen instead. I have done it 4 times for various reasons. All of the prairie states are extremely monotonous except for a few highlights like the Bighorn Mountains, Devils Lake, Devils Castle, and the Badlands. I would suggest something shorter and more scenic - Olympic Peninsula, western coastal highway, New England, or the Everglades
>>28912735Im from NJ and live in CA now. CA is very beautiful indeed, but i do miss the seasons of the northeast, and the cold and snow. It means i get to drive my 'maro year round on all seasons tho > plentiful camping away from noisy> plentiful dirt roadsYessir
