Sten Hankewitz, executive editor at Estonian World, faced a daunting brief: drive from central New Hampshire to Toronto — roughly 600 miles each way — in his all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E to cover KESKfEST, an Estonian diaspora festival at the nearly finished KESKUS centre. His first instinct was to refuse. His second was to treat it as a real-world test of whether long EV road trips are finally practical in 2026.
His car is the Mach-E Premium with a 91 kWh extended-range battery, officially rated at 300 miles. Real-world figures vary a lot: he gets 3.3–3.7 miles per kWh in mixed driving, but sustained motorway speeds of 70 mph or more pushed efficiency down to around 2.7–3.0 miles per kWh, effectively cutting the car's full-battery range to about 254 miles.
The outbound leg through New York State ran 587.9 miles and took 13 hours including stops, against roughly ten and a half to 11 in a petrol car. Four charging stops of about half an hour each accounted for the extra two hours. The route ran via Concord (New Hampshire), Latham near Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo, with charging timed so the estimated range was always about double the distance to the next stop. He rolled into Toronto at 9pm with 43 per cent battery still on board.
The return, routed through eastern Ontario and Quebec, was smoother in atmosphere — quiet roads and courteous drivers — but delivered one wobble near Montreal. The fast-charging station at Salaberry-de-Valleyfield had only two chargers, both occupied, and a backup station's app offered Puerto Rico as its only country setting. With 50 miles of range left, he backtracked to the original stop, where a charger had just freed up.
The practical lessons are clear. Plan three or four stops for a 600-mile EV leg, not two, even from a full charge. Highway speeds eat range faster than most drivers expect, so build in generous margins. Use charging apps before you leave and check which networks your car supports. And note that fast charging in Canada tends to be cheaper than in the US.
There is also a gentler argument here. Half-hour charging breaks forced the driver to step away from the wheel regularly — breaks most petrol drivers skip on long hauls. On a solo 600-mile day, that regular downtime, he argues, kept him alert, sane and probably safer. The northeast US and populated Canadian corridors turned out to have plentiful fast chargers, making this one of the easier places to attempt an EV road trip. For holidaymakers considering an electric car for a long drive, the takeaway: it is entirely doable now, budget extra hours, and treat the stops as part of the trip rather than a nuisance.
