Advice to new EV owners

If you are new to electric vehicles, apparently the advice you get from the dealer is to get the apps for all of the different charging people like Charge Point and EV Go. I surmise this because I've spoken to several new electric vehicle owners who don't seem to know anything else. I recommend two websites for an overview of all of the different chargers available:

abetterrouteplanner.com
plugshare.com

Both of these have phone apps. Both of them will show you 90% of the available chargers of any brand (that's why it's useful to have both, to get the overlap. I don't really understand why some chargers are not present on both apps). You can filter the results to show only CCS fast chargers or only tesla chargers or whatever. Both of them have places to leave reviews when you do use a charger, and I recommend doing so if a charger you use has not been reviewed recently, so that other people know that it is working. (Or not working.) ABRP is tricky to use sometimes, it really wants to PLAN your route rather than giving an overview of options; plugshare just shows you everything it knows.

You should also get the individual apps of the charging companies. This is just to make it easier when you do find a charger, to invoke it by waving your phone at the machine rather than dorking around with a credit card.

It's easier with Tesla because there's only one company and they are pretty good about keeping their stuff working. The other companies are hit and miss and often you are disappointed to find a charging station broken. So when I'm driving a non-Tesla, I always identify several charging locations along my route, and I charge before I need it in case that one's broken and I need to go to the next one. Note that even if you have the Tesla adapter, not all Tesla fast chargers will accept them. In particular chargers at the Hooksett NH rest area do not.

Battery charge level:

Car dealers will probably also not tell you about battery life management. You should try to keep your battery charge level below 100%. Cars usually have a mechanism to set a maximum charge level; it varies by manufacturer what they offer. Kia lets you choose a level at 10% intervals; Tesla lets you choose a level at 1% intervals; the Nissan leaf allows you to choose between 100% and 80%. The sweet spot is 20%-80%, so if you can keep your car in that range it's best. My understanding is that going low is worse than going high, so if you know you are taking a longer than average trip will come back with 10%, then you should goose the charge beforehand if possible. We generally keep our charge limit at 70%, which lets us do pretty much anything we want in the greater Boston area and return with above 30%.

Fast charging is also bad for your battery, so if you have access to level 1-2 charging on a regular basis, you should prefer that. Obviously if you don't, you're stuck with fast charging. And if your situation is such that "you don't know where your car's next meal is coming from", well, you'll have to suffer with expected battery life reduction.

Aside about gas cars:

Now that you have an EV, you may find yourself driving your gas vehicle less often. A gas car should be exercised once every two weeks for about 10 miles. This helps it get warmed up and all of its bodily fluids flowing, and the exhaust warm enough to blow out any crap which can be deposited while it is cold. You should also put gas stabilizer into the tank when the time between fill ups is greater than two months. Get the blue enzyme stuff (Star Tron is one brand), not the traditional pink stabilizer, because it works better with gas with alcohol in it.

Back to my electric car journey.