For any electric car driver, the first big trip is full of unknowns. In 2025, in France, we can expect everything to go well, as long as we stick to the main roads. Are you still a planning novice? Here’s how to become an expert in travel optimization.
Some people experience the anxiety of the first big trip in an electric car the very day they receive the vehicle, others wait months or years before attempting to move radically away from home with it. Whatever your case, rest assured, there is really nothing to be afraid of. Apart from a few deliberately biased reports, everything goes well in an electric car.
With the densification of the charging infrastructure in France in recent years, and even if you stick to the main roads, crossing the country is no longer a problem as soon as you have a car capable of traveling more than 100 km on the highway, in all circumstances.
However, between the one who simply wants to get to their destination, without further thought, and the one who hunts for every minute to optimize to arrive at their destination as quickly as possible, planning is different. Here are 3 route planning methods, which will allow you to travel serenely in all cases. But, if you want to gamify your trips, you will see that it is possible to optimize journeys and charging to take advantage of all the capabilities of your car.
- Start with the planner integrated into the electric car (beginner level)
In 2025, an electric car worthy of the name must have an integrated route planner. Of course, this is not essential for a vehicle that operates within a 100 km radius of the home. However, it must be a sine qua non condition for the purchase of any electric car made for traveling.
Route planning with automatic addition of charging stops at Tesla remains unmatched to this day. pic.twitter.com/Shcf4Fba5H
— Bob Jouy (@bobjouy) September 26, 2022
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Let’s take the example of the most popular car of recent years, namely the Tesla Model Y — but everything that follows applies to all Teslas — to see how to plan a trip without any preparation or thought on the subject. To put it simply, you enter your destination, no matter where on the planet, and the navigation system will instantly allow you to view several relevant pieces of information:
The arrival time at the destination,
the battery percentage at the destination,
the complete journey on the central screen,
the intermediate distances and times between each stop to recharge (at a Tesla Supercharger),
for each charging stop at a Supercharger, the duration of the charge and the battery level at the time of plugging in,
the number of terminals available upon your arrival at a charging station.
You can also set a desired battery level upon arrival. This choice will potentially change the entire journey, with an adjustment of charging times at each stop, and sometimes even adding a stop just before the final destination.
It is still too rare, in 2025, to have so much information on all electric vehicles natively. Nevertheless, it should be the benchmark for other brands.
Obviously, each piece of information is not always accurate, but the tool still tries to take into account all the hazards of the road: speed limits, elevation, wind, precipitation or even temperature are all data integrated into the calculation of the Tesla planner. All this with the aim of reassuring novice drivers, to gain confidence in their car.
However, if, along the way, you start to consume more than expected