Driving into the Future: EV Roadside Assistance

You know that sick feeling you get when your gas light comes on? Well, a similar feeling for electric vehicle owners is called “range anxiety.”

It’s when you feel stressed about whether you have enough battery to get where you’re going.

The good news is, if you do run out of juice, there are options that don’t require a tow in the form of a mobile charging station.

“Our main thing is to get you on the go,” said Anthony Love with AAA. “So we get you on the go, you can make it home.”

Love, who is a fleet manager, showed us how AAA is adding to its roadside assistance program with a new mobile charging fleet that is a free benefit for its members.

“You call AAA, we send out one of our vehicles that has the equipment to charge your vehicle,” he said.

The service takes between 15 to 30 minutes, depending on how much juice you need.

Love showed us how the roadside service has level two chargers with adapters for any electric vehicle.

“I run it straight to your vehicle, we just plug this in and that shows that it’s giving it a charge,” he said. “We get you enough to go about 20 miles, maybe to get home or enough to the closest charging station. We’ll check to make sure that they have a good enough charge and follow them to the closest gas station just in case.”

EV manufacturers like Toyota, Ford, and Tesla offer similar mobile charging roadside assistance.

The programs vary a bit, depending on the automaker, so just make sure to ask about it.

AAA tells us it still gets more calls for gas refills but is seeing a definite uptick in mobile EV charging as customers become aware of the service.

It says it will add more mobile chargers to their trucks as needed to keep up with demand as more consumers “drive into the future.”