Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has said she wants to make Lake Michigan’s shoreline America’s best electric vehicle road trip by boosting infrastructure and the presence of EV chargers.
Late last month, three reporters with Bridge Michigan put that goal to the test by taking a more than 1,000-mile drive in a Chevy Bolt over the course of four nights and five days. They traveled from Detroit to Muskegon to the Upper Peninsula and down to Wisconsin on their drive.
Throughout their trip, they found that there was a learning curve to managing range anxiety, the fear that the car might not make it to the next charger without running out of battery, and finding working or available chargers among other challenges.
WKAR's Sophia Saliby spoke with business reporter Paula Gardner about the trip and how the state's goal to increase EV charger accessibility is going.
Interview Transcript
Sophia Saliby: Governor Gretchen Whitmer has said she wants to make Lake Michigan’s shoreline America’s best electric vehicle road trip by boosting infrastructure and the presence of EV chargers.
Late last month, three reporters with Bridge Michigan put that goal to the test by taking a more than 1,000-mile drive in a Chevy Bolt. They traveled from Detroit to Muskegon to the Upper Peninsula and down to Wisconsin on their drive.
Business reporter Paula Gardner was part of that team, and she joins me now. Thank you for being here.
Paula Gardner: Thank you. I'm excited to be here and talk about our trip.
Saliby: Why did you and your colleagues decide to take this very, very long drive?
Gardner: You know, we're trying to remember some of the genesis of it, and all we can think of is we all had some sort of a dream of telling a story about driving an EV in Michigan and just explaining for readers what it was like for us as we discovered what it meant.
And it grew somehow from "Let's just drive overnight" or "Let's do this on the way to another story" to "Well, there was that Lake Michigan circuit, and it's summer in Michigan and summer in Michigan means tourism," and all of a sudden, we were on the road for four nights and five days.
Saliby: The big concern for taking long trips in EVs is what's called "range anxiety," which is that fear that you might not make it to the next charger before the car is out of battery. Did that come up for your team at all?
Gardner: It came up immediately. We picked up the car, and we did not choose the Bolt, the Bolt chose us. In part because of the rental agency, we took what we could get. We had it reserved for some time, and the second I pulled out of the lot, it was half-full. So, I was handed the car basically knowing that I didn't know if I could make it to Lansing to pick up Kelly [House].
So, first thing we had to do was basically charge the car and solve some range anxiety. It appeared pretty much throughout the trip to different degrees.
Saliby: How did it feel, the availability of chargers? Because I know there's been a lot of talk about putting more of them, having them show up more frequently along this kind of corridor. Did it feel like there was enough to go around?
Gardner: No, it did not. And one of the reasons...I said, I took what I could get with the car. We started out not wanting a Tesla because that infrastructure is built out to a different degree than the random other EVs.
There were many times where we just either couldn't find a charger within the the miles that we needed to, or we also found some broken chargers.
And even along the way, we would ask people about charging, and they'd be like, "Oh, Meijer has a whole bank of chargers." Well, that might have been all Teslas without adapters. So, I think the public kind of sees an infrastructure, even if they're not looking for it, just ambiently, that doesn't necessarily fit every driver.
Sleeping Bear Dunes, a million plus visitors a year, at Sleeping Bear Dunes, there is one charger in Glen Arbor, and it is just for Teslas. And so, that was set up at a private basis to address a need. There were many times where we just either couldn't find a charger within the miles that we needed to, or we also found some broken chargers.
My conclusion on chargers is that there's definitely not enough and that it's not spread around to the types of charging that EV drivers do need.
Saliby: So, I understand this is a group of reporters. You've had a very planned itinerary and stops planned to do reporting and working. But after taking this trip, do you think it's feasible for the average Michigan family to take a vacation like the one Whitmer is talking about in an EV?
Gardner: It is feasible but it takes way more planning than we even did. And we were deliberately trying to preserve some sense of discovery. We wanted readers to learn along with us what we needed to do.
And we got lucky sometimes. For example, I have never been to Pentwater, and I begged us to get off the highway and let me see Pentwater. And I proved that we could because I found a charger on a list. And it turned out it was in Mears State Park which was a happy accident for us. So we got to plug in. We got to see Lake Michigan. If we had been truly on vacation, we would have set up on the beach.
The planning involved is way more intense than when you just use gas.
Those types of stops, I think, make the travel possible. But the planning involved is way more intense than when you just use gas.
Saliby: To end our conversation, there was a lot of stress involved in this trip, but it seemed like you had a lot of fun. So, is there a favorite moment that you took away either learning about the state or EV chargers or talking to people along the way?
Gardner: I think one huge surprise for me along that trip is we were dreading driving through the U.P. because we had been told it was a charger wasteland. It is a charger wasteland.
But also, I'm a lifelong Michigander and I've spent precious little time in the U.P., and it was delightful for me to be there. And also at the end of our journey, when we actually had a little bit of a handle on things and we made two really good stops. Another stop that was pretty necessary, but it let us get some things done, and we got to see a lot of things along the way including the Big Springs at Kitch-iti-kipi.
Saliby: Paul Gardner is a business reporter with Bridge Michigan. Thank you for joining me.
Gardner: Thank you.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
