Charging The Electric Rivian R1S Was More Expensive Than Filling Up Some Notorious Gas Guzzlers

Last month I drove the 2025 Rivian R1S to Las Vegas, and though I’ll have a more comprehensive review later, for now I want to just talk about EV fast-charging costs, because it can be ridiculous. In fact, based on my experiences with fast charging prices, and infrastructure issues here in California, I wouldn’t recommend anyone buy an EV unless they can charge at home or at work (or unless they’re willing to deal with some inconvenience/understand the costs). Anyway, let’s have a look at some gas-guzzlers I could have driven to Las Vegas that actually would have saved me money over an electric Rivian R1S.

I’ve got to start this article by saying I love electric cars, which is why I daily-drive one (with a range-extender). But sometimes I have to keep it real, and the reality is that, when my parking spots at home are taken up, and I can’t find a charger at work, life becomes markedly harder for my non-Tesla, and I’m forced to drive using the gasoline range extender. The lines at charging stations can be long, many of the stations never work, but beyond that: charging can be expensive.

I learned this yet again while driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to attend the SEMA show.

The vehicle’s range on its guess-o-meter read about 400 miles, and indeed, the 2025 Rivian R1S Dual Max (dual motor, max range) has an EPA-rated range of 410 miles. But even though Las Vegas was only about 300 miles away, I knew the 400 mile range estimate wasn’t really applicable given I planned to accomplish the journey almost entirely on the highway, where EVs are less efficient (the opposite of gasoline cars).

Have a look at the EPA label above, and you’ll see that the vehicle is rated at a combined 40 kWh/100 mi, or 2.5 miles per kWh. If we want to find the mi/kWh on the highway only, we use that highway MPGe figure, 77, and we divide it by 33.7kWh/gallon of gas, ultimately arriving at 2.28 (the city figure is 2.7).

The Rivian R1s Dual max’s battery has a size of 141.5 kWh, so if you multiply 141.5 kWh by 2.28 mi/kWh, you end up with a range of 323 miles. This is farther than the ~300 mile trip I had, but not by much, and the EPA’s highway efficiency figures are very frequently considered too optimistic, especially since I was driving at 80 MPH much of the way. So I suspected the R1S wouldn’t even get me to Las Vegas.

But I was wrong. The R1S got me 300 miles to Las Vegas without much drama. In fact, the most dramatic thing was the headlights, which danced around ahead of me to get me as much visibility as possible (seriously, they’re awesome headlights).

But the extremely luxurious and quick $100,000 SUV only narrowly got me to my destination (which is impressive on one hand, and not impressive on the other, as you’d expect it to get me there with that honkin’ battery), and I thought I’d need the car the following day, so I went to charge the Rivian at my hotel, Treasure Island. Here’s how that went:

 

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D’oh!

Treasure Island, a giant Casino, still doesn’t have working chargers, even in late 2024! I’d have known this had I used the PlugShare app and planned my trip out a bit better. So I drove to a nearby Casino, Caesar’s Palace, as I didn’t have enough range to get to any other chargers.

There, I was met by Autel chargers that (annoyingly) required an app. Getting this working took a while, because my old account was stuck for some reason, so I had to delete the app, re-download it, and start a new profile:

The price was fairly typical at a public charger on the West Coast: 38 cents per kWh (I think it’s 35 cents at my workplace in LA). The Rivian’s 141.5 kWh battery needed 154.33 kWh (~10% more than the battery capacity) to be topped all the way up due to charging losses (For reference, per Car and Driver “Tesla’s own data—buried deep in 49 pages of certification documents filed with the EPA—shows it took 87.868 kWh to add 77.702 kWh to the battery of the Long Range version. That’s a 13 percent overage.”).

The 154.33 kWh cost me about $59. At an average gas price of $3.73 per gallon last month, that 59 bucks would have bought about 15.8 gallons of fuel. To go 300 miles to Las Vegas on 15.8 gallons of fuel requires a vehicle capable of scoring only 19 MPG.

19 MPG. On the highway.

Sure, that’s at 80 MPH much of the time, but come on. You could get 19 MPG highway doing 80 MPH some of the way with lots of gas guzzlers out there. Just look at these big machines (which are all about 10-inches longer than the Rivian) here that would have cost less (or about the same) to get to Vegas than the Rivian:

Now, to be clear, the Rivian would wipe the floor with any of these significantly less-expensive machines in terms of acceleration and handling, though it’d probably be a less convenient tow vehicle, but we’re not comparing performance, really — that’s not what this is about. This article is really just a reminder that driving an EV can be pricey. You should save plenty in maintenance costs since an EV basically just requires tires and some fluids every now and again, there are lots of incentives out there, and more importantly, you can save money when you charge at home.

But if you can’t charge at home — say, if you’re on a road trip — you might be surprised to find that you’re actually paying more to travel than you did with your gas car. Sometimes it can be much more.

Take the EVgo station I filled up at once I arrived back in LA. The cost to charge? 66 cents per kWh! I didn’t even fill the vehicle up all the way (since I had charged a bit between Vegas and here), and I still paid $81.22!

Yes, over 80 bucks to fill up three-quarters of the battery!

To be fair, gas in my area averaged $4.87 last month, which ain’t cheap, but you’d still get over 16 gallons for $81. And even with a 19 MPG vehicle, you can do 3/4 of the Rivian’s range (about 300 miles) for 80 bucks.

Again, I’m a big EV fan, but the truth is, if you can’t charge at home, and you’re at the mercy of public charging stations, you can expect to actually pay more for your EV than you would if you drove a gasoline car, particularly if you drive a larger vehicle in mostly highway conditions. I know some folks find that surprising, so I figured I’d share.

I myself charge my small and efficient EV at home, and save a bundle over a gas car, especially since I do lots of city driving. I don’t see myself ever going back to gas for a commuter.