Technology

Annoyingly, I've found that charging during meals does not work either. Your options are either AC charges, which are not fast enough to fill the battery over the course of a meal. Or DC fast chargers that will charge in ~20 minutes, give you a 10 minute grace, then start charging you an idling fee.

Alternatively, take smaller stops more often. It's so much better to stop every 100km for like 15 minutes to walk around, get a pee break, or whatever, than to endure 4 hours of sitting in one go.

My i3 only has 200km on a good day. I truly don't mind, even on the occasional long distance trip. I'll drive slower (110 vs 120kph is almost negligible), take a break every 1 to 1.5 hours and just generally drive more aware and more relaxed. It's what every driver should do, anyway.

Since they installed chargers at my workplace roughly one year ago, I have stopped exactly 3 times to charge in a public charger:

First was when we had an issue with chargers the day before I was going on a 2 weeks holiday out of town.

Second was when I arrived to my holiday destination.

Third was the day we were going back home from the holiday destination after two weeks.

That's about it in a whole year.