EV Road Trip Planner Calculator

Usable Range per leg is set to 85% of the entered Vehicle Range, leaving a 15% buffer. This reflects real-world EV road-trip practice: drivers plan to arrive at the next charger with meaningful range remaining rather than running the battery down to empty, both for safety margin and because charging speed slows significantly as a battery approaches full, so arriving with some charge left and topping up partially is typically faster overall.

Each leg's distance is capped at the smaller of the Usable Range and Avg Charger Spacing -- a driver cannot skip past a charger they need even if the car could technically travel farther on the remaining charge. Once Avg Charger Spacing exceeds Usable Range, the Usable Range becomes the binding limit on leg length, so further increases to Avg Charger Spacing no longer change the number of stops needed.

Driving Time is calculated using a fixed average speed of 60 mph, applied to the full Trip Distance regardless of road type or traffic conditions. This is a simplification for estimating total trip duration; actual driving time will vary with highway speed limits, traffic, and route terrain.

The gas-car benchmark assumes one 5-minute refueling stop roughly every 300 miles of Trip Distance, added to the same Driving Time used for the EV. EV Time Overhead is the difference between the EV's Total Trip Time and this simplified gas-car total, showing how many extra minutes the charging stops add compared to a quick gas-station fill-up schedule.

No -- Avg Charge Time per Stop only affects how long each stop takes (and therefore Total Charging Time and Total Trip Time), not how many stops are needed. Charging Stops depends only on Trip Distance, Vehicle Range, and Avg Charger Spacing, since it answers a purely geographic question: how many charger locations must be visited to cover the distance.