Alert reader Ken (see comment) mentions that sometimes you can get lucky and avoid being stranded by charging your EV at an RV (recreational vehicle) park. He’s right. Here’s a real-life example on a remote stretch of I-70 in Utah.
By way of background, consider how it works if the EV that you are driving has a CCS charging port and if you are headed west on Interstate 70 out of Grand Junction, Colorado. You might think that you could tough it out and drive all the way to Salina, where there are several CCS charging options. This would be very risky, for a lot of reasons. Yes, nominally this is a mere 208 miles. But it might be very hot and you might feel the need to run the vehicle’s air conditioner. It might be very cold and you might feel the need to run the vehicle’s heater. The desolate stretch of highway from Green River, Utah to Salina often has strong headwinds. There are substantial uphill and downhill stretches. Yes, you can hope that regenerative braking would help, but this remote length of interstate highway is not a place where you would want to end up with an empty battery.
Put plainly, for a westbound driver there is absolutely no choice but to charge up in Green River, Utah. It turns out that there is exactly one CCS charging option in Green River. It is a four-plug Electrify America station, seen at right. It will be no surprise to the reader that this is a very popular charging station nowadays. In the photograph, for example, you can see a fifth car waiting patiently for one of the four plugged-in cars to finish charging.
This Electrify America charging station was broken for two days in March of 2023.
The fallback position, for any driver of a CCS vehicle who had planned ahead, would be to drop by the nearby Shady Acres campground. For a few dollars you can plug your travel charger in at a 14-50 receptacle, charge up your battery enough to get to Salina, and be on your way. They have restrooms, showers, free wifi, and a sandwich shop.