Nevada EV driver adds 50 miles to Las Vegas to Reno route to avoid charging gaps

Scott Allison drove nearly 50 extra miles through California on Highway 395 rather than take Nevada's Highway 95, the most direct north to south route, because charging stations are more frequent across the state line and offer backup options if one fails. His six day road trip across Nevada tested whether the state's EV charging network can support long distance travel, revealing single points of failure on key corridors where a single broken charger can disrupt journeys. The experience underscores infrastructure challenges as EV adoption accelerates across Nevada and the Mountain West.

Why it matters: The detour exposes critical reliability and redundancy gaps in Nevada's charging network that procurement teams and CPOs must address to support corridor travel. Single points of failure on major routes like Highway 95 signal urgent need for denser station deployment and uptime guarantees in rural and inter city corridors.