Which Hotels Have Electric Car Charging Stations?

I haven’t written about this yet, but a few months ago I decided to buy a new car. When moving to New York from Chicago the last thing I ever expected to do was to buy a car. After all, I didn’t have a car in Chicago so why would I need one in New York? Well, it turns out, having a car in the New York City area is incredibly valuable. Without one you are at the mercy of various forms of public transportation, none of which are particularly reliable. This makes it impossibly hard to travel around the greater New York City area.

After deciding that I needed a car, I had to then figure out what car to get. As much as I wanted a german luxury vehicle (Audi, BMW, or Mercedes), the economics just didn’t make sense. The upfront cost was of course significant, but also the maintenance and depreciation. Next, I looked through the other obvious choices, Toyota, Honda, Ford, or Jeep. Sure, there were a few options, but again, everything I looked at was unappealing to me or too expensive.

Eventually, I turned my search toward Tesla. Tesla’s Model 3 has raised a lot of eyebrows due to its affordability when compared to the much more expensive Model S and Model X. As I did more and more research I learned of the Federal Tax Credit, the fact that I wouldn’t pay sales tax on an EV in New Jersey, and that, so far, Tesla’s have held their value incredibly well. In fact, there are several articles out there that argue a Tesla Model 3 is cheaper to own than a nicely outfitted Toyota Camry!

Living With An Electric Car

As you can assume by the title of this post, I did end up ordering a Tesla Model 3. I’ve now had the car for just under 5,000 miles and I couldn’t be happier. The car is incredibly fun to drive, extremely quick, and and amazingly simple.

For example, I don’t carry a car key. Instead, my phone is the key. So, when I walk up the car and pull the door handle, the car unlocks. When I sit down, put my foot on the break, and put it in gear, the car goes. There is no ignition. The same is true when getting out of the car. You simply put the car in park and walk away. As you walk away the car turns off and locks. It’s made driving traditional cars a bit awkward as I’ve forgotten to turn them off once or twice since owning the Tesla.

While the car has been fantastic, there has been one overarching concern; Charging. See, I don’t have home charging, which means I’m forced to charge at Tesla Supercharging stations or Public Chargers. Overall, this hasn’t been an issue. Tesla’s Superchargers charge the car from empty to full in about 45 minutes and from a charging session I’ll get about 250 miles of range. Also, the Northeast is covered in Superchargers which makes road trips a breeze. There’s much more to how to live with charging, but I’ll leave it at that for this post.

Several Hotels Now Offer Public Charging

One of the interesting things about owning an electric car is that you can fill it up while it’s parked. If you have home charging for example, you’d ideally wake up every morning with a full charge. So, one of the more frustrating aspects of taking an electric car on an overnight trip is that it sits overnight, without charging.

Instead, you have to think about charging prior to parking or early in the morning as you get going. It would be so nice if you could plug in to a charger overnight. Thankfully, hotel brands are starting to figure this out and have begun adding charging stations to many of their properties.

Hilton Hotels for example has an interactive map that outlines all of their properties with electric car charging stations. As you look at their map coverage you’ll quickly realize that a surprising number of properties offer car charging.

This maps make it easy to figure out if there are any EV friendly hotels along your proposed route.

Finding an EV friendly property is a bit more difficult. To my knowledge, Marriott doesn’t offer a map, but instead lists EV friendly hotels on their website. To make matters worse, the hotels aren’t even listed by locations. Instead, they are listed by name which makes it impossibly hard to find hotels with charging along a particular route. You have to Control + F to search for a hotel by state and then narrow it down from there. It’s not nearly as easy a process a Hilton’s map.

Final Thoughts

So far I’ve taken my electric car on two overnight trips since purchasing the car earlier this year. On both trips I was unable to find hotels with electric car chargers. Now, I must say, not having charging on either trip wasn’t necessarily an issue. Instead, I just planned accordingly by charging prior to parking at the hotel. However, it would have been much easier to charge the car while parked overnight.

Overall, I’m glad to see hotels embracing electric car charging. There is no doubt that the automotive industry is moving toward electric cars. I’m not implying that all cars will be electric in the future, but rather that more cars will be. With that, many car owners will realize how nice it is to wake up to a full charge after plugging in overnight.

Finally, if you are interested in buying a Telsa, please consider using my referral code when ordering a new vehicle. In doing so, you and I will both receive 1,000 free Tesla Supercharging miles.