How is the public charging situation in north and west of Yellowstone?

[3l3c7r1c]

I am driving to Yellowstone from Seattle area by end of June. Now that looks like my R1S may actually arrive by then, I started to think about the charging situation there. So far I can see the last EA charger is at Butte, Montana. After that pretty much no reliable L3 chargers. Inside the part there are some level-2 chargers (I am staying at Canyon Lodge). Even though there's no guarantee if I can get an L2 charger available at night, I am still counting on those. We will come back using I-84 and situation seems little better there.

Any non-Tesla EV owner here with experience of driving this route?

@MT_Tom tagging you as I found you are from Bozeman.

Thanks!

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[NorthernOak]

I'll give what experience I can coming from a Tesla. I road tripped from MN to Yellowstone/Grand Teton last summer with my wife and kids in our Model 3 last August. Outside the park I used Tesla Superchargers to get there. When we were at our hotel/cabins we stayed at outside the parks I plugged into a standard 110 outlet. Extension cord -> mobile charger -> Model 3. I had asked both places we were staying ahead of time for permission to plug in and they agreed. As soon as we would get back from the parks I would plug in and I left charging to 100% the whole trip. It may not be fast and it may not give much, but its still better than nothing.

When inside the park there are a few chargers, but they definitely need more. Use the Plugshare app to see all the charging locations in the park. Some of them claim you need to be staying at a certain hotel to use them. The hardest spot to get a charge was at the Old Faithful Lodge charger. There are 2 plugs but when I was there only 1 was working. The working plug was "in use" by another Tesla. We got there at about 7:30am and it was pretty clear that car had been there for a while and the charger showed it wasn't putting out any more energy. Its pretty frustrating when people use public chargers, fill their car, and then don't move them shortly after charging is complete. In this instance I felt OK with unplugging them from their adapter and plugging in my car. I made sure to apologize to their Sentry Mode cameras. About 2 hours later after checking out Old Faithful and walking some of the nearby hiking trails we came back to our car to see someone else trying to use the broken charger, and the other Tesla I unplugged earlier was still there. I moved our car and gave the plug to the newly arrived car.

Whenever you go, I recommend getting into the park early. We always left before sunrise so we could see some amazing sunrises and views without the crowds of people. Then it still being early morning, drive into the more "tourist" spots that happened to have chargers and plug in for a couple hours while we walk around, eat breakfast (sometimes brought, sometimes a restaurant), and hike the area. We generally were leaving or driving to get out of the park around noon. Usually we would stop at a picnic spot to eat lunch and then finish the drive back to our hotel/cabin and get our little kids down for a nap.

We had a great trip and our kids had a blast. Our 3 year old talks about that trip all the time. We have one of the first Model 3 Standard Plus battery pack with 19" wheels so our max range was 220 miles at 100%. I think most mornings we went into the park with 60-80% charge state. Inside the park I would say we almost never "needed" a charge, but the charges we got did allow us to go further down some roads to see some extra sites, or to not have range anxiety. With the R1T or R1S larger battery pack and range I would feel much more comfortable. Looking at charger maps it does seem like the bigger issue now will be getting there.

 

[Lawrence-of-Blaine]

I'll give what experience I can coming from a Tesla. I road tripped from MN to Yellowstone/Grand Teton last summer with my wife and kids in our Model 3 last August. Outside the park I used Tesla Superchargers to get there. When we were at our hotel/cabins we stayed at outside the parks I plugged into a standard 110 outlet. Extension cord -> mobile charger -> Model 3. I had asked both places we were staying ahead of time for permission to plug in and they agreed. As soon as we would get back from the parks I would plug in and I left charging to 100% the whole trip. It may not be fast and it may not give much, but its still better than nothing.

When inside the park there are a few chargers, but they definitely need more. Use the Plugshare app to see all the charging locations in the park. Some of them claim you need to be staying at a certain hotel to use them. The hardest spot to get a charge was at the Old Faithful Lodge charger. There are 2 plugs but when I was there only 1 was working. The other plug was "in use" by another Tesla. We got there at about 7:30am and it was pretty clear that car had been there for a while and the charger showed it wasn't putting out any more energy. Its pretty frustrating when people use public chargers, fill their car, and then don't move them shortly after charging is complete. In this instance I felt OK with unplugging them from their adapter and plugging in my car. I made sure to apologize to their Sentry Mode cameras. About 2 hours later after checking out Old Faithful and walking some of the nearby hiking trails we came back to our car to see someone else trying to use the broken charger, and the other Tesla I unplugged earlier was still there. I moved our car and gave the plug to the newly arrived car.

Whenever you go, I recommend getting into the park early. We always left before sunrise so we could see some amazing sunrises and views without the crowds of people. Then it still being early morning, drive into the more "tourist" spots that happened to have chargers and plug in for a couple hours while we walk around, eat breakfast (sometimes brought, sometimes a restaurant), and hike the area. We generally were leaving or driving to get out of the park around noon. Usually we would stop at a picnic spot to eat lunch and then finish the drive back to our hotel/cabin and get our little kids down for a nap.

We had a great trip and our kids had a blast. Our 3 year old talks about that trip all the time. We have one of the first Model 3 Standard Plus battery pack with 19" wheels so our max range was 220 miles at 100%. I think most mornings we went into the park with 60-80% charge state. Inside the park I would say we almost never "needed" a charge, but the charges we got did allow us to go further down some roads to see some extra sites, or to not have range anxiety. With the R1T or R1S larger battery pack and range I would feel much more comfortable. Looking at charger maps it does seem like the bigger issue now will be getting there.

Awesome info. I have no plans for a Yellowstone trip soon, and I’ve been there years ago, but this is great info regardless. And two big thumbs down for the knucklehead who hogs a charger.

 

[virgnia_rivian]

Not in Yellowstone, but if you plan on going south into Jackson Hole, the city has put in public chargers, including one right in the town square and the public parking garage a few blocks away.

https://www.jacksonwy.gov/284/Electric-Vehicle-Charging-Stations

 

[kanundrum]

If you do plan on camping you can also rent a Campsite with a 50amp connector to help. Pretty bleak unless you want to wait a long time.

 

[3l3c7r1c]

I'll give what experience I can coming from a Tesla. I road tripped from MN to Yellowstone/Grand Teton last summer with my wife and kids in our Model 3 last August. Outside the park I used Tesla Superchargers to get there. When we were at our hotel/cabins we stayed at outside the parks I plugged into a standard 110 outlet. Extension cord -> mobile charger -> Model 3. I had asked both places we were staying ahead of time for permission to plug in and they agreed. As soon as we would get back from the parks I would plug in and I left charging to 100% the whole trip. It may not be fast and it may not give much, but its still better than nothing.

When inside the park there are a few chargers, but they definitely need more. Use the Plugshare app to see all the charging locations in the park. Some of them claim you need to be staying at a certain hotel to use them. The hardest spot to get a charge was at the Old Faithful Lodge charger. There are 2 plugs but when I was there only 1 was working. The working plug was "in use" by another Tesla. We got there at about 7:30am and it was pretty clear that car had been there for a while and the charger showed it wasn't putting out any more energy. Its pretty frustrating when people use public chargers, fill their car, and then don't move them shortly after charging is complete. In this instance I felt OK with unplugging them from their adapter and plugging in my car. I made sure to apologize to their Sentry Mode cameras. About 2 hours later after checking out Old Faithful and walking some of the nearby hiking trails we came back to our car to see someone else trying to use the broken charger, and the other Tesla I unplugged earlier was still there. I moved our car and gave the plug to the newly arrived car.

Whenever you go, I recommend getting into the park early. We always left before sunrise so we could see some amazing sunrises and views without the crowds of people. Then it still being early morning, drive into the more "tourist" spots that happened to have chargers and plug in for a couple hours while we walk around, eat breakfast (sometimes brought, sometimes a restaurant), and hike the area. We generally were leaving or driving to get out of the park around noon. Usually we would stop at a picnic spot to eat lunch and then finish the drive back to our hotel/cabin and get our little kids down for a nap.

We had a great trip and our kids had a blast. Our 3 year old talks about that trip all the time. We have one of the first Model 3 Standard Plus battery pack with 19" wheels so our max range was 220 miles at 100%. I think most mornings we went into the park with 60-80% charge state. Inside the park I would say we almost never "needed" a charge, but the charges we got did allow us to go further down some roads to see some extra sites, or to not have range anxiety. With the R1T or R1S larger battery pack and range I would feel much more comfortable. Looking at charger maps it does seem like the bigger issue now will be getting there.

Great info!! Yes, the bigger issue is to going there. We will be staying inside Yellowstone for 3 nights, and Grand Teton for 2 nights, so I am hoping at some point I can get a chance to charge up to full overnight at the lodge chargers (staying inside the park also means driving less). I am worried most about Butte, MT to Yellowstone. And with 2 years old and a 5 years old, stopping at a level-2 charger is probably not practical. The level-3 chargers plugshare is showing, has low ratings and not reliable. We can probably juiced up slightly at the airbnb we'll be staying on the way, but bigger battery also means slower trickle charge (by miles of range gain) at a 120v outlet.

Reserved all the hotels 11 months in advance and driving plan is yet to be decided. So trying to figure out the most Rivian friendly route and stops.

 

[NorthernOak]

(staying inside the park also means driving less). I am worried most about Butte, MT to Yellowstone. And with 2 years old and a 5 years old, stopping at a level-2 charger is probably not practical.

Yeah since we stayed outside the park we had those extra miles of coming/going. And a few afternoons/evenings we would head back into the park after the kids nap time to see a few more things. When we went last August our kids were 3 and 1. As we can see in this area and others like it, level 3 charging for the masses needs to improve. For our Tesla most stops were 20 mins and a perfect amount of time to get the kids out, change a diaper on the one and take the other to the bathroom (we were potty training at the time), get snacks and get strapped back in. Since we have the small battery we had to stay longer at a few places in Wyoming to get full 100% charges to reach the next Supercharger. Those stops I tried to plan over a breakfast or lunch stop. Unless it was my only option and I only had to do it once, I wouldn't want to rely on a level 2 charger during my driving to/from portion of my road trip.

We can probably juiced up slightly at the airbnb we'll be staying on the way, but bigger battery also means slower trickle charge (by miles of range gain) at a 120v outlet.

I totally get it and agree, the bigger battery means even less miles than I got on my Model 3 on a standard outlet. I just wanted to let you know how I used it and remind people its still there. I've seen plenty on here call charging on a standard outlet for such a big battery "useless" but energy in slowly is still energy in.

 

[3l3c7r1c]

level 3 charging for the masses needs to improve. For our Tesla most stops were 20 mins and a perfect amount of time to get the kids out, change a diaper on the one and take the other to the bathroom (we were potty training at the time), get snacks and get strapped back in.

I was looking at Electrify America and looks like they are spending just $2B total to implement their network, and mostly focused on California. So I am hoping the new government incentive of $7.5B should improve the public charging by a lot in next few years

I totally get it and agree, the bigger battery means even less miles than I got on my Model 3 on a standard outlet. I just wanted to let you know how I used it and remind people its still there. I've seen plenty on here call charging on a standard outlet for such a big battery "useless" but energy in slowly is still energy in.

Totally agree and I haven't thought about that. Thanks for pointing this up. Even getting 10-15% SOC means something.

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