CNET has a video walking first-time EV road trippers through the basics, and it covers the stuff I wish somebody had told me before my first electric leg of a long drive: route apps, battery preconditioning, and how to handle elevation.

Route apps first, because this is where EV trips live or die. In my experience the charging-planning apps out there, plus the tools baked into most EV navigation systems, all do the same core job: they tell you where the chargers are and roughly how much battery you'll have left when you arrive. The mistake first-timers make is trusting a single app blindly. I've had a charger listed as "operational" in one app turn out to be dead when I pulled up, so now I cross-check before I bet a mountain pass on it. Your mileage may vary, but it's saved me at least one grim surprise.

Battery preconditioning sounds like rocket science but it's not. It just means getting the battery to the right temperature before fast charging, so the charger can actually deliver its full speed. Whether your car does this automatically, and how you trigger it, varies a lot by model, so this is one place where I'd actually read the owner's manual instead of guessing. It's also the reason I'd route through the built-in nav if your car handles preconditioning that way, even if you prefer your phone for everything else. A battery that isn't preconditioned charges painfully slowly, and that can turn a quick coffee stop into a long, boring wait.

Elevation is the one people underestimate, and CNET flags it for good reason. Climbing eats range noticeably, sometimes enough that a big pass climb forces an extra charging stop you didn't plan. The good news: you get a lot of it back on the way down through regenerative braking. I've rolled down long descents watching the range estimate tick UP, which never stops feeling like a small magic trick. So I plan my charging around the climbs, not just the miles.

A few things I'd add from the school of hard knocks. My rule is to charge more often but for less time, since the last stretch to a full battery always crawls. Build in a buffer for headwinds, cold weather, and the fact that you'll drive 75 because everyone else is. And know your plug situation, because adapters are still messy out there.

None of this is hard. It's just different. You plan around chargers the way you used to plan around gas stations in rural Nevada, only the stops are longer and the coffee's better.

When was the last time you let a charger stop decide where you ate lunch? Some of the best diners I've found were walking distance from a plug. The road still belongs to everybody, battery or not.