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.
Yep, public charging is expensive. I pay $0.12 per kWh at home. The local public chargers are $0.35-0.48 per kWh. Not having to go to the gas station weekly is nice.
This. I live in the pnw and with all the hydro power it is inexpensive.
I have an R1 and it is not as efficient as my wife’s model 3 which is not shaped like a brick.
I find the whole EV charging thing a bit of a game in finding the inexpensive/free places to fill up. In 20k ish miles I can count less than 10 times stopping at a fast charger.
Also really fast chargers are more expensive than typical fast chargers and it is a time vs $$ equation. Rivian sent me a free NACS adapter and the Tesla charge station experience is seem-less and is sometimes less expensive than open source chargers that are often in the same parking lot.
Lucky to have the option to charge at home where the cost is low so this use case works.
I needed a replacement for an 18 year old navigator and could not justify the same money on a truck that would require normal ic maintenance.
I find myself doing quite a few road trips, including towing a small camper. Fast charging is unavoidable. I keep reminding myself that our ICE tow vehicle needed to stop about every two hours for fuel and that any other tow vehicle capable of effortlessly towing that brick would be a fuel hog year round. I usually always get electric sites so some charging is included in the campsite price.
What does the small camper do to your efficiency numbers? Thinking forward to someday when we replace our V6 SUV with something electric. We have a smallish EV now but would pair it with a larger family EV to replace our current V6 midsize SUV. It’ll need to tow about 3500 lbs occasionally.
Close to doubles energy consumption. I usually average about 250 wh/mi, a bit less in the summer. Towing the popup it’s 450 wh/mi. So we’re stopping to charge about every hundred miles. I knew that going in. Analyzing our previous trips, we were stopping every 100 miles or so anyway. It wasn’t a big change for us.
I wish all the talk about rAnGe would be replaced by more discussion of efficiency (as in kWh/mile, or whatever). More efficiency means you can get away with less battery for the same user experience (in terms of rAnGe), yet faster charging and less $. One of the few companies that pay attention to this is Lucid. There was a recent study by University of Trier (Germany) and the Colorado School of Mines about real-life energy consumption of EVs (https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/17/7529) and Lucid’s results were quite remarkable.
Right there with you on this – tired of all the discussion over range in EVs, especially as the average miles driven daily by americans is reported to be somewhere between 30 and 40 (we make do with ~20 miles/day here in Europe on average). EVs clearly aren’t practical for road trips at the moment, but getting more efficiency out of batteries and making them smaller – and the whole car lighter – should really be a key aspect of R&D right now. Advances in battery efficiency would allow for small EVs to become more practical than ever and a no-branier choice for city driving. The ideal non-enthusiast 2-car garage at this point would be a small EV for city driving/short trips, and a hybrid SUV/SW for roadtripping/hauling stuff, and what you propose would have a very positive impact in both kinds of propulsion.
I agree with you to the extent that the vehicle is basically a city car, but range is important when you’re taking a trip. If you’re going a couple hundred miles to somewhere without a charger, you need to know you can get home. If you’re driving across a few states, you might want to know how much time to add for charging.
Just like people buy huge trucks to daily drive just so they can tow the boat to the lake once a month, people buy EVs based on the occasional road trip, not their daily commute.
Absolutely. Sometimes one vehicle has to do all the things you do, not 90%.
You encounter one major problem in getting from here to there. Aesthetics. Efficiency will drive design in very different ways than “art” will. But since buying cars is often more of an emotional purchase than a hard facts purchase, allowing efficiency to dictate final design has a high likelihood of NOT selling. I.E. Lucid isn’t selling well, despite being an amazing vehicle. The new Gravity is a hell of a lot uglier than a Rivian, so if I were in the market, I would be ignoring efficiency and buying something that looks better.
Agreed, efficiency is very important. Uses less energy, costs less, charges faster (assuming the same charge rate in kW), etc.
Lots of people other than Lucid are focused on this, too, though. Out of Spec just did a 3000+ mile drive across the US and the Lucid Air efficiency was quite good, but the refreshed Model 3 comfortably beat everyone and beat the Lucid by quite a bit (3.8 mi/kWh vs 3.3 mi/kWh).
“You should save plenty in maintenance costs since an EV basically just requires tires and some fluids every now and again”
More – and more expensive? – tyres because of the extra weight and, if you plan on keeping it for a reasonably long time, are electrical parts really more reliable? From new, the major replacement parts on our 440,000km ICE minivan have been the entire ignition system and two alternators.
Tires has to be dependent on the vehicle. I have 50k+ miles on my polestar 2 and I’m waiting for the tires to wear down to when they need replacement. I’m buying tires now but storing them for a few months because there are rebates i want to take advantage of. I’m not easy on the car but I’m not hard on it either. I expected the tires to last 30k miles.
We replaced the tires on our EV at 50,000 miles. The second set have plenty of tread left at an odometer over 88,000 miles. So no, tire expense isn’t significantly higher for us than our previous Avalon.
Yes, an electric drivetrain has around 100x fewer moving parts than an ICE drivetrain with virtually no regular maintenance. Newer EVs even have lifetime 12V (or in some cases 48V) accessory batteries. You’ll still need to replace wipers, cabin air filters, and the like, of course.
And yes, considering the complexity of ICE systems, they are remarkably reliable. But don’t get cocky. Modern EVs are less than 15 years old and the tech is still advancing fast. The gap behind EVs will widen considerably over the next decade.
It is how you drive and how well you keep your car aligned that determines tire life. Folks that are always stomping on the accelerator and pulling .8g through every corner wear out tires if they are in an EV or an ICE. It seems like most drivers don’t plan ahead very well. I see people accelerate towards red lights then just have to rapidly slow down and wait 30 seconds for it to turn green instead of coasting to a red
Absolutely. Tires on my Civic rarely lasted more than 30.000 km when I was in my 30s. Now I’m over 40 and drive a hybrid, which has changed my driving style, I have just replaced all four tires and in spite of it being a heavier car (RAV4) I got 90.000 km out of the front ones, and the rear ones were still the OEM that came from factory, which means they managed about 140.000 km and only got replaced due to age and degradation, not wear.
Yes, it is more boring, but I have three bikes to burn rubber with, without wife or dog. 🙂
Even when major systems don’t fail the routine maintenance for an ICE vehicle is expensive if you aren’t doing the work yourself. (Which is most people). My parents put almost 200K miles on their 2010 Prius and it was incredible reliable. However, every 5,000 miles he was paying the dealer a couple hundred dollars for a service.
The one and only time I let the dealer do a routine service on my 2014 VW TDI it was $600 for the 40K mile service. (I had it in the shop for a bunch of warranty items)
I was just making the slightly tongue-in-cheek point that the only major failures on our van have been electrical systems. (Now the wiper switch is playing up…)
Our previous van, also a Toyota bought from new, was burning oil like a two-stroke by the time we replaced it, something not likely to happen with an EV.
Does that garage have regular 120V outlets? Do parking garages feature these often? Because then you can do Level 1 charging for free 😛
Most casinos don’t, except maybe the elevator.
And get what – 20 miles of range overnight? That works at my house with our small EV running~15 miles per day. Not some much with a large EV and long trips.
Meh, my 14 year old Challenger R/T with a manual transmission and 94,000 miles easily handles 80 mph at >20 mpg. I doubt even a Hellcat would much worse at that speed, though I suspect the widebody versions pay a mileage penalty due to their wide tires and bodywork.
Best I got for my non-widebody Hellcat was 23.5mpg.
I think one of your mistakes is comparing the R1S to vehicles that are “bigger” without including vehicles with comparable performance such as a BMW X5, Aston DBX, Audi RS/SQ8 or Mercedes G63 AMG. Not to mention the fact that as an EV driver and former automotive engineer, you should know the sweet spot for fuel/electron economy in basically any car is 70mph and it just gets worse the faster you go.
That first part is mentioned in the piece, and the second part isn’t true. 70mph is far, far above the “sweet spot.”
Isn’t it about 50-60 MPH?
https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10312
According to this data from Argonne National Laboratory the best fuel efficiency is around 55mph.
I totally got myself in an awkward situation recently knowing my fuel was quite low and a decent distance to the next gas station. (ICE Range Anxiety…) I very much used this little tidbit of info and slowed way down to mid fifties for the remaining distance. No idea if it helped really, but I made it!
For my Colorado ZR2 diesel (which is a brick) mileage drops fast above 65mph. If I hold around 60-65 I’ll average 24-28mpg depending on wind. Bump that up to 70 and it drops to 20-22mpg.
On a recent trip back from Omaha, I got lucky with a tailwind and a straight, flat highway (60, for you SE MN folk) and got a new 50 mile average of 33.7mpg.
As a motorcyclist I can confirm that above 60-65 is when the wind resistance starts to rise very quickly. If most car drivers could feel the body difference between 75 and 65 they’d be pretty surprised.
As a fellow motorcyclist, I can confirm that the best way to keep your license is to get a naked bike
In a Rivian gen 2 the fastest you can go while still being able to get the claimed EPA range is 70-73mph.
Old brochures often included “marching speed”, I presume this was the speed at which the car is the most efficient?
It is very vehicle dependent – In general, the better the aerodynamics and the smaller the frontal area, the higher the “sweet spot” speed will be. But tires and other factors can also influence the outcome.
My dad bought a new Model 3 a month ago (San Jose, CA. Your mileage may vary.) The app shows his cost vs gas. So far the Tesla app says he’s spent 50% more on electricity (just got it so SuperCharger only) than it would have cost him to use a gas car.
There needs to be a better way to convey the fuel efficiency of electric vehicles. The math David did to calculate the highway range was fairly simple, but even as a car enthusiast, I wouldn’t have known how to convert from MPGe to miles per kWh without David’s explanation. We shouldn’t need to memorize that 33.7kWh/gallon of gas conversion factor. A normie sure isn’t going to remember that. With a gas car, I just multiply the MPG by the tank capacity and there’s the range.
The miles per kWh figures would be way more useful to put on the window sticker, but they’re not as sexy as the MPGe numbers that approach 100. People aren’t wowed by “2.28.”
Most folks can’t even calculate their MPG or barely understand what it even means, so unfortunately this is what they came up with. I’m assuming that eventually miles/kWh will make more sense to folks.
MPGe was created for the sole reason of allowing EVs to be factored into CAFE calculations. It wasn’t really intended to be used on the sticker but those high numbers look impressive so that is what is used.
Window stickers highlight the MPGe, but also show kWh/100 miles and typical cost of electricity per year based on “normal” electricity rates and miles driven. To get a good number, people would have to know how much they pay for electricity per kWh, and most people don’t know that, unfortunately.
MPGe is a worthless number except for CAFE and marketing. My Bolt shows miles / kWh which is interesting but not really what I care about.
The important metric for me is cost per mile. For my Bolt that is 3 cents per mile for electricity IF I paid for every kWh. However, I only pay for about 1/2 of them because my employer has free chargers.
For comparison:
At 2.5 miles per KWh you could say that Rivian is quite the electron guzzler.
Lucid reaches 5, Teslas and a few others 4.something
It’s an SUV while the Lucid is a sedan…
Which is exactly why I purchased a PHEV because I use it for road trips and it does that just like a Hybrid with no charging anxiety and good fuel economy.
However there is no one size fits all since gas, electricity, and DCFC prices vary significantly from area to area.
For someone who proclaims to to be a big proponent of EVs I find it very disappointing that you don’t know how to road trip with an EV. You should actually plan your trip and know when, where and how long to charge along the way.
It takes a few seconds to google the R1 charging curve and see that charging to much more than 70% is not preferred as between 70 and 80% the charge rate falls off of not one but two cliffs before starting the tapering off to near zero at 99%. You’ll also find that it takes ~42 min to charge from 10-80% while it takes 1 hr 42 min to charge from 10% to 100%. In other words it takes an extra hour to do the last 20%.
If it were a longer trip, I’d have done things differently. But I wanted to see if I could get all the way to Vegas on a single charge, and I did! That was cool, and honestly, I was glad I didn’t have to stop, since I just wanted to bomb all the way there without stopping like I would with a gas car. Too bad about the chargers!
Proper planning makes for boring content.
Or it makes for good content, “How to road trip an EV without charge anxiety”.
Do you hear yourself? Google the charging curve? What are we, learning how to code before we can use the Internet?
This is really helpful article for non-engineers, people who just need to get where they’re going.
I’d say it is a horrible article for non-engineers who just need to get where they are going. Road tripping in an EV just isn’t the same as with an ICE vehicle, you simply need to do more planning since there isn’t a charger on every corner and it takes more time to charge than fill with fuel. When is the last time you drove your ICE vehicle until it said it only had 1 mile of range?
You really don’t understand people. And by people, I mean, non-engineers. The average citizen wants a vehicle to just work. They don’t want to learn about their cars beyond, how do I make it go, and what’s the least amount of effort I need to put into maintaining it. Not having a charger on every corner IS the problem. Sigh. Also, people drive their ICE vehicles until the gas light comes on ALL the time. No, it’s not 1 mile of charge, but a lot of people fill up from empty. It’s not uncommon.
EVs aren’t quite dumb simple yet due to the time to charge and limited charging opportunities.
That said we love our little EV and will always own an EV going forward. The question is whether we’ll replace our ICEV with an EV too since we rarely drive it. We have several classics to drive if we want to burn gas. Just not sure I’d want to leave those classics unattended in a parking lot.
No, I do understand that most people aren’t engineers, thankfully, and just want their car to work w/o having to think so hard to do a road trip. Not sure about your vehicles but yes I regularly drive mine until the low fuel light comes on, but on my vehicles that means it still has ~50 mi of range left and I usually fill it shortly there after.
Having a charger on every corner wouldn’t really fix that for people who want to do road trips since they would still need to figure out how to charge most effeciently, or end up sitting for ~2hrs since they are used to filling their gas tank to 100% and just can’t wrap their head around the fact that more charging stops to a lower charge level will take less time than fewer stops of charging to 100%.
For the average person that just wants their EV to work manufacturers have helpful route planning apps in their EV. You put in your destination, select fastest time, select that you want X% buffer for each charge and it spits out a route that shows each charging stop, how long you should charge for at each charger, and how long the trip will take.
Charging to 100% is not a fast or efficient way to road trip in an EV. Not only does the charge time increase as the battery state of charge increases but the charging efficiency drops at a higher SOC which costs you more money for those expensive electrons at a DC charger.
I think a large part of the point of this article relates to people not knowing to do things like google the charging curve. Then if you do and get this: https://evkx.net/models/rivian/r1/r1t_quad-motor_awd/chargingcurve/ , how do you correlate that to your trip? This is one of the things that contributes to range anxiety and hinders EV adoption. If I want to travel 800 miles in my ICE vehicle, I know what the mpg it gets and how much the tank holds. It is very easy to figure out how many stops I need to make and how much fuel to put in the tank to make my destination. For the average Joe, this calculation on EVs seems to be much more difficult and uncertain.
Which is why the car literally does the calculations for you!
Just enter your destination. Read your arrival time on the display. Stop at the charger to which it navigates you and charge until it says to continue.
It’s literally simpler than a gas vehicle, but what a boring article THAT would make, right?
My point was made in the last sentence: “For the average Joe, this calculation on EVs seems to be much more difficult and uncertain.” Underline “seems”. For car people, this makes sense. For people that have EVs, they have run into this. I don’t think the average person understands this or knows this is available on a EV display. A co-worker is buying a Tesla and asking me this type of question. I’ve never owned or driven an EV, but I can answer more of his questions than anyone at the Tesla store or on-line is doing.
Some dealers that actually want to sell EVs have tools in their dealerships to help with this. The Chevy dealer I leased my Spark EV from back in 2016 had a big touchscreen where you could put in common destinations that you drive to and it would show: Where all the chargers are on the route, which ones you should stop at, how long the charging will take, and how long the trip would take.
It was super helpful for them because a potential buyer could easily see that yes, I can get to grandma’s house, I can get to the beach, I can drive over to Bend, OR, etc. It also showed that there are a LOT more chargers than most people that don’t drive EVs thing. Most people don’t notice the little charger in the back lot of a big box store.
Now most EVs will do the same thing on the navigation screen in the car. IF the salesman takes the time AND knows how their products actually work.
Yes and no. Our EV’s nav does not show all brands of DCFC that I am aware. Seeing all the possible chargers requires “A Better Route Planner” or “Plugshare”.
Check the route with the first one, verify with the second one. Maybe double check whatever brand DCFC app.
Living here I drive through charger deserts in a couple directions. Our destinations are well practiced now so no worries. Only thing that gave me pause was below freezing weather range but that was ultimately a nothing-burger despite not having a heat pump equipped EV.
These days I don’t even check the DCFC at our typical destinations. There are multiple, we know where they are, etc. The car has plenty of range at the destination to drive to the different DCFC if necessary.
If you’re in a Tesla, yes, this is how it works. It’s extremely easy.
If you’re in most other EVs, though, it’s not quite that easy. You often can’t count on the built-in Nav to have all the ideal charging stations in the database, can’t count on them to have accurate charger availability and functionality status, etc., so you have to use other apps to supplement the planning and confirm availability/reliability of chargers.
I don’t do any pre-planning anymore, really, with my non-Tesla, because I have access to Tesla Superchargers and the infrastructure is to the point that I’m not worried about whether a trip is *possible*, but there’s still some en-route work that needs to be done to be confident I’m stopping at a working, available charger.
It is pretty simple how that relates to your trip, at least if you want to get there with as little time spent at a charger. That curve clearly shows the diminishing returns of charging past 70% and even worse above 80%. Simply put charging past 80% is very time inefficient and is something most EV drivers wouldn’t do at a fast charger. At home before your trip, or when staying at a hotel with level 2 chargers then yes charge to 100%, otherwise stop at the cliff wherever that may be for your particular vehicle.
You probably miss using MS-DOS.
?
Take this with a grain of salt as I’m 100% for the EV future & trying to convince my wife she needs an EV for her next car, but also a realist that we’re not there yet for a lot of applications and a lot of people…
This also just feeds into Joe Schmo’s family vacation range anxieties more tho. You’re telling them that EV’s are less efficient on the interstate to start with, and on top of that now after consulting a curve chart they need to cut their tank size by 30% to keep the battery within the 10-80% range for peak charging efficiency? This adds several 45-minute stops to an already lengthy drive.
*Anecdotally*, my family vacations growing up were multi-state road trips to our destination (FL to VA/PA/OH/NY, etc. and the return trip…). My wife’s family was the same way and we’re from different states. We drove until the tank was empty (not at 1/3 remaining for peak curve efficiency). And it wasn’t breaking out an app for the nearest fast charge station – it was pulling off the next exit for a 5-10 minute stop to fill up at the pump, hit the bathrooms, and grab some snacks from the convenience store. And maybe another 5-10 minutes thru the nearest drive thru if it was breakfast/lunch/dinner time.
These are the people you have to convince to get over range anxiety. And I think EV vocalists underestimate how many of these people there are.
It is definitely difficult for many people to understand that making say 4 or even 5 stops for a partial charge will be quicker than 3 stops with a 100% charge.
I’m one of those who did a lot of those multi state trips where I drive until the low fuel light comes on, though I definitely break out the app to find the best gas prices along the way, now that it is an option. Then yeah quick fill at the pump, a bathroom break and maybe a run through a drive through. Which of course is one of the reasons I’m a PHEV fan, it does road trips the way I’ve always done longer road trips.
That said my son grew up in the back seat of a car doing those road trips, but once he got a good paying job and decided to buy a new vehicle he went EV. Because he was the proud owner of a brand new truck, he wanted to do a family road trip like we did when he was younger. It definitely added a lot of time and there certainly was a bit of charge, not range anxiety along the way. It also wasn’t cheap since there were many locations where charging prices were very high, in part no doubt that they had the only DCFCs for miles around.
I really have no interest at all in planning road trips like a WWII battle campaign. It takes ~5 minutes to put 600 miles of highway range in my Mercedes wagon, literally anywhere and everywhere, at quite reasonable cost.
I’d buy a PHEV if anyone made one I can stand at a cost I am willing to pay. Volvo comes closest with the V60 Recharge, but since they only sell it as an idiotic Polestar Edition, the price is stupid.
Yeah, electricity rates in California (and Nevada I guess) are outrageous, and pretty unrealistic compared to the rest of North America.
On the flip side, the rates are so high that you can install a Tesla roof on your home and it would pay for itself in a few years.
After that, you’d be charging your EV for an average price of $0.00.
In most other parts of North America, the Tesla roof doesn’t make financial sense, but home charging is ridiculously cheap.
Yeah, Level 3 charging is certainly more expensive, but it’s also dependent on where you are in the country. In areas with lower energy costs you’d still come out ahead of the gas equivalent. I read articles on that very fact, like, a year or two ago.
Quite a bit of the country has expensive electricity. I would pay almost as much as he did at a charger in my own house in Maine. The wonders of “deregulation”. The electrons themselves there are of fairly average cost – but you get to pay a different entity to deliver them to your home. That was supposed to make it “cheaper” somehow, but instead you get a choice of expensive or REALLY fucking expensive electrons from the couple of providers. Fun!
Solar would make it make more sense – but that is another very expensive can of worms, nor would it pay off in a “few years”. More like 10-15, at which point you are going to be looking at doing at least some of it all over again. Panels degrade, get broken, and inverters definitely have a finite lifespan. And in that area, you don’t make jack for power half the year. My place in Florida is PERFECT for solar, but electricity there is so cheap the payback time is roughly the heat death of the universe. Go figure. I looked at going with solar and heat pumps in Maine, and it was just not viable – I’d be dead before I saved a penny – and that’s with expensive oil heat and expensive electricity. Problem being of course, is that when you need the solar to not use the expensive electricity so your heat pump can not use the expensive oil is when your solar panels aren’t producing jack shit. At least in FL peak electricity production corresponds with peak usage.
I’ve spoken to people who actually have solar. Payoff is 6-7 years. Sooner if your state has incentives. Faster if you drive an EV. And the equipment is durable. Solar panel warranties are 25+ years. Like EV batteries they last longer than the warranty but by then better panels will be available on the market.
The payoff is going to vary *wildly* depending on exactly where you are and what needs to happen for that solar install to work. As one who has gotten actual estimates and done the math for both of my homes, for my two locations it’s a nonstarter currently, albeit for very different reasons. They are not as reliable as you think they are, based on the direct experience of friends and coworkers who have solar in Massachusetts, where there are very good incentives. Good luck collecting on the warranty, given that the average life of a solar install company seems to be about five years.
And you have to add in the capital costs to acquire that EV. I have *five* paid-for cars that I have no reason at all to replace, I sure as hell am not spending many thousands on a different car to save not a whole lot of gas, given I have no commute and other than long trips I rarely drive more than five miles from home. I don’t drive enough for an EV to make sense.
I love the idea of solar, but I have an accounting degree and am VERY good at math… And even that said – I probably will have solar and battery on the new hyper-efficient house I am building in Florida. Though not for saving money, because it won’t, but to allow running off-grid for those fun post-hurricane periods.
I know I’m nitpicking, but I kinda disagree that EVs are less efficient at the highway. I assume the thermal efficiency of an electric engine should be nearly the same, no matter the speed? And much higher (above 90%) than an ICE (luckily, 40%), right?
We’re so used to the idea that ICE engines actually spend more fuel when operating on slower speeds that we sometimes forget that electric cars have a more linear consumption pattern – you drive faster, you use more “juice”. Or does efficiency really go down as the speeds go up? Battery weight and aerodynamics shouldn’t be a factor, the way I see it – as the first is an issue all the time and the second also impacts ICE cars.
Also, it’s been some 15 years since I’ve taken the LA-Vegas route, so I don’t remember how flat it is. This maybe also more of a factor in electric vehicles due to the potencial for regeneration …
I didn’t say electric motors are less efficient at highway cruising speeds, I said the efficiency of the vehicle itself drops at high speeds, which is true since vehicle efficiency is measured in terms of mi/kWh.
But it’s an interesting thing to think about regardless. Thank you for the comment!
EVs are absolutely less efficient the faster they go because drag, rolling resistance, induced current losses, and the like all scale non-linearly with velocity. ICE vehicles are also subject to these same loss scalings, but the average ICE powertrain in the average ICE vehicle is subject to a fairly parabolic efficiency curve that drives the overall vehicle efficiency to a maximum at roughly highway/freeway speeds. We are used to this phenomenon because we deal with it every day driving an ICE vehicle, but when you stop to think about it, it’s kind of nuts and not at all obvious why it would be true. EV efficiency is much more intuitive.
Well said. The big move to small, DI, turbo engines running at lower RPM is all about extending the sweet spot of that efficiency curve, where BSFC (Brake Specific Fuel Consumption – a measure of fuel per HP) is best. There’s an excellent Ford R&D document floating around that puts numbers to everything.
Fun fact from the calibrator of the original Volt (who was on a forum I read years ago): some amount of ultimate fuel efficiency in hybrid mode was left on the table for NVH concerns. It would have used less fuel if he had configured it to run the engine at peak efficiency for a while, storing excess energy in the battery, then shut it off for a while and use the battery. Trouble was, it was pretty grating from a user perspective.
Yes, exactly! I think you’ve summed it nicely with the “parabolic efficiency curve”. Still, I assume that, even at the top of efficiency, an ICE engine would still have its curve below an electric – meaning that, if we can compare by “equivalent energy unit” (BTU perhaps?), an ICE engine will deliver less power per energy unit than an electric motor, no matter the point in the power curve.
I just like to stress that because I feel that some people, trying to defend ICE cars using any means possible, will say that these are inherently more efficient than electrics at the highway, and I don’t think that’s the case. Now I’m not saying that David did that, but I guess some people could interpret it in this way. The challenge for electrics is the (still) low energy density of batteries, compared with gas. If (and that may be still a big if) we reach higher density levels and / or faster, ubiquitous charging, my hunch is that electric cars will surpass ICE cars, even on a cost-per-mile base, also on the highway.
I know that overall efficiency should take a lot of other issues into account, but the fact that its was so expensive for David to recharge is much more a market/technology availability issue than an efficiency one.
You’re talking about the thermodynamic efficiency of the drivetrain, and indeed an electric motor absolutely wipes the floor with basically any ICE motor ever made, like 90%+ vs 40% on a good day.
BUT….
Drivetrain thermodynamic efficiency is only one portion of the overall vehicle efficiency, and the question that actually matters for determining how deep you have to dig into your wallet to fill up, or what’s the carbon footprint of actually driving you car, is what is the total system efficiency. As you noted, the energy density of a battery is way, way less than gasoline (like 150x less for say, a Model 3), which results in BEVs needing to carry heavy battery packs just to get something approaching the same range and usability as an ICE vehicle. All of that mass takes energy to move about, so while the BEV has a much more efficient drivetrain, it needs that efficiency to haul around it’s vastly less efficient energy storage.
The end result is that there is no end result, you really can’t generalize and say “BEVs/ICEs are more efficient at blahblahblah”, it all depends on what specific vehicle you are talking about, what the use case is, and for economic concerns- how expensive electricity and oil happen to be at any given moment. Like, I could do my daily commute in a Hummer EV, and burn 10x the energy as if I used a Geo Metro. The hummer would technically be “more efficient” while crusing down the street, but if the result is the same at the end of the day (I go to and from work) then we can’t really say I made an efficient choice and that the planet is better off for it.
Our EV returns 5 mi/kwh around town at 45 mph and less even with the a/c on. On the highway in mild weather, it returns 4 mi/kwh. Now in temps near freezing, it is returning 3 mi/kwh some of which is undoubtedly related to the PTC heater.
It’s very flat once you get into the desert, so most of his trip, and the weather was nice for F1 so I can’t blame cold weather.
Maybe his headlights were draining the batteries.
I get 18 ish on the highway in my 2017 Colorado ZR2. Sometimes better but I am in the mountains most of the time. About the same size, Riven has better aero.Riven is heavier.
Rivian is a preferred nomenclature.
correct
I’ve gotten over 18 in my 2014 Hemi Ram 1500 on highway only.
Charging cost varies immensely from region to region my local Supercharger costs $0.25/kwh in the daytime, $0.21 outside peak hours, $0.12 overnight – all in CAD.
I can charge at home for $0.10 CAD / kWh or at our cabin in Washington state for $0.08 USD / kWh.
A full charge for a Model 3 is right around $6 at home or $14 at a Supercharger.
That same amount of range (500km) in a similar gasoline vehicle would cost around $80 at the current rate of $1.71 CAD / L
The cost difference is staggering. I can charge at home (AZ) for about $0.08/kwh, so filling up is dirt cheap. Electrify America stations are $0.48/kwh near me. 6 times more expensive! It’s absurd. The cost of EV charging is yet another significant barrier to adoption for most people. Why get an electric car when it costs just as much as if not more to fuel than a gas car for people who can’t charge at home?
Right! This article is not a critique of the R-S (though I don’t think so many should drive such giant, inefficient vehicles), it’s about absurd fast-charger pricing.
To hit both topics (Big EVs + expensive fast charging) at once, I recently rented a 9,000 lb Silverado EV from Hertz with a ~200 kwh battery (!). Charging up at an Electrify America charger from near empty was painful.
Condolences!
Can you imagine if I had to charge that up with the 66c/kWh charger? Yikes!!
.53 cents / kwh at EA here in the southeast.
A lot of EV drivers are fine with spending the same or even more for non-home charging, understanding the importance of reducing CO2 emissions. EVs save between 50 to 70 percent CO2 equivalents (and the time needed to recoup the additional emissions caused by battery production is one to two years).
This!
I think my parity with ICE wrt my Bolt is ~$2/gal. But, even costing the same, I would not care as I am not directly burning a scarce fossil fuel to get myself back and forth to work 66 miles each day.
Perhaps driving 66 miles/day is also part of the problem…I dunno.
I tried desperately to find a job that was closer to work. Believe me, this 66 miles per day is absolutely killing me right now. I just started less than 2 months ago. My only gripe with this new job is its location.
Weird, my job is at work. Can’t get any closer than that.
That’s the 2nd time this week I have made that same brain fart mistake.
“…find a job closer to home.”
Did that for 40 years. It did get tiresome. Would also have cost me a ton to move.
I am so, so, so grateful that this article’s title is NOT clickbait – not one bit 😀
It is not like it would have had to be named “Charging the Rivian at station X is more expensive than charging a gaz-guzzler at station Z”, or anything such.
It is accurate, and not comparing apples to bamboo sticks at all.
This why I don’t have an EV: I prefer my gaz guzzler, because I can fuel it up at home for cheap with fuel I do with my solar panels, or at least on nightly electricity prices, and then drive around. And I never – I repeat: NEVER – see any gas station that would randomly have prices 40% higher that the ten other stations a few miles away. This is only the case with charging stations. Them suckers 😀
I realize you jest, but as someone seriously looking into getting an EV nothing would piss me the fuck off more than pulling up to a charging station and having to download an app to charge. You know what needs no app to simply fill up a car? The Chevron, or Shell, or 76, or Arco, or BP, or Sunoco, or…any gas station.
It’s the same problem with parking in most American downtowns nowadays where you must download the app to even pay—so if you’re in a cell coverage shadow, I guess you’re just screwed. Why did we give up on the good old parking meter? Not enough user data collection, I suppose?
The good old parking meter was making municipalities loose money, as what was paid for was the spot, not the car using the spot. One could leave the sport earlier, and someone else could park and use the remaining time.
The one per block Schlumberger kiosks that printed paper receipts put an end to that, but people would still take the risk of parking and overstaying their time without paying.
Paying by app or text message brings much more money, as it’s easy to extend parking. And every time its by less than a buck, so no one minds, and it quickly adds up.
As for chargers – yes, but stating the obvious does not material for an article make: it is insanity to own an EV without personal charging at home, and expect to make any savings. Public charging should be for travel and for emergencies.
Sure, but that’s a terrible mentality to have. Public charging needs to and ought to be better considering how easy buying gasoline is. Hand-waving that away under the notion that only people who can charge at home deserve to own EVs is blasé at best and elitist at worst.
There are so many reasons people might need to charge away from home, and every time I read an article that mentions public charging it’s always a shitshow of non-working chargers, insanely long lines, and compulsory corporate apps. With that sort of wild-west uncertainty it’s no wonder so many Americans are afraid of EVs.
Of course it is important. And I really hope it will get ironed out.
It’s just that public charging is the big levelling up with gas fueling. Price-wise it is actually not even supposed to be less expensive than gas. It’s a product.
To be very fair, if a car that runs on water appeared tomorrow, I wouldn’t expect it to be fillable at the well, or at the faucet, or at my garden hose. I can very well see it being fillable only with some special, highly taxated water, and so on and so on. I’ve lived in France, I’m marked for life 🙂
It would be a bit easier to understand the high cost of public charging if there were a road tax being collected/paid to the state as with gasoline. I haven’t been paying close attention, but since electric cars can be charged at home, there’s no opportunity to collect road taxes by that method. I assume that a road/usage tax is levied at annual registration time, hopefully based on mileage.
Many states charge MORE than the typical gas tax would collect as an annual EV registration road maintenance surcharge. You’re welcome.
But seriously, since EV market share continues to climb, we should simply repeal the gas tax and charge an annual weight-based road maintenance tax on ALL vehicles.
Fair is fair.
At both of my homes, charging at more than L1 would require $10-15K+ in electrical system updates even before I bought a charger. And at one of them, charging at home would cost nearly what charging at David’s cheaper public charger would cost even after that. The joys of one home that is 200+ years old, and the other being tiny, and having a correspondingly tiny electrical capacity. And “touch anything, bring it ALL up to current code” regulatory regimes, not that it would be safe to NOT do that, and no licensed electrician would EVER install a charger in either house the way things are.
And then there are all the condo and apartment dwellers. Owning a home is a privilege denied to many at this point.
But if I cared about how much my transportation costs, I would just buy a used Prius and be done with it.
Also – pay and display parking without lined spots means more parking per street in many cases, since here in ‘Murica every metered space needs to accommodate an F-One Fiddy. An absolute boon for me when my urban weapon of choice was a 500 Abarth that would fit in spaces nothing other than a Smart car could use.
All the EA chargers I have seen allowed us to use our debit card / RFID chip to start the charge. I can also use my phone’s NFC. One of the DCFC I frequent requires me to use this method b/c for whatever reason my phone’s GPS+app won’t trigger the charging process at that charger. Other charger’s not a problem.
And the charging price is the same whether I start with the app or my debit card aka expensive.
…it’s not even slightly clickbait. It’s literally saying what happened, with lots of hedges throughout the piece about how you can actually save plenty of money driving EVs, just don’t be surprised if you don’t save money when using fast chargers for highway drives.
But naturally, I expected to get some blowback for saying anything not effusive about EVs. Tis part of the game!
Eeeeh 🙂
Any title that can be used as-is as fuel-infused firewood for the armies of anti-EV drones is clickbait to me, as it can be used as clickbait by them.
Tis the sad state of the world where criticism = clickbait, but I see where you’re coming from.
And by the way, criticism should be something we all welcome, as insane electricity rates we’re seeing at fast chargers are wack! And so are low-efficiency EVs. I’m not going to pull back criticism because I’m worried some folks will use it to bash EVs. If they use it, fine! It’s real!
I think the issue is that the chosen headline seems to place the blame on the car rather than infrastructure. In the US, we’ve had nearly a century of marketing propaganda selling us the idea of the car as freedom from any system that it seems as a society, ICE cars would not work as a primary mode of transportation without the vast network of fueling stations and sprawling highway system, thereby making them part of a system. The blame should lie squarely on Reagonomics and neoliberalism dismantling our government’s ability to effectively build anything. Now we just contract and subcontract everything to the lowest bidders who then half ass anything and everything, reinforcing the tautological claim that government can’t get anything done it should be defunded.
David, the title reads as clickbait to me too.
Had the title been “Public Charging the Electric Rivian R1S Was More Expensive Than Filling Up Some Notorious Gas Guzzlers” it would be both a clear and accurate title for the article without an ounce of clickbaity tactics.
When talking about the cost of charging EVs, the most important distinction that can be made regarding charging cost and convenience is home charging vs public charging. That’s where the biggest differences and cost usually are. Why omit in the title that you are referring to the cost to recharge using PUBLIC charging?
Are myself and others that are upset with the title being a bit over sensitive? Yeah, probably. I know enough about this site and the people that run it to give them the benefit of the doubt on stuff like this. I know you aren’t trying to misinform on purpose and that the info in the article is good stuff. But I see this title, knowing that an incredibly key piece of information was left out of the title on purpose, and it reminds me of the volumes of articles from dubious sites with a clear agenda of EV misinformation I have had to wade through for years. Why spend so much time and effort writing an excellent article to give it a title that doesn’t reflect it as accurately as possible?
Also, I think it is a bit condescending to reduce this criticism to “blowback for saying anything not effusive about EVs”. That’s bullshit, David, because that’s not what is happening. The criticism is with the editorial decision NOT to clearly identify the type of charging in question within the title of the article. Articles with dubious and incomplete titles have been used for years for the purposes of EV misinformation. Why title your factually correct article in a way that allows it to be exploited for the cause of misinformation?
Lessee:
When I plug in your $0.38/kWh and $3.73/gal numbers into the same vehicles side by side on the same fueleconomy.gov website I get the following fuel costs over 5 years compared to the average new vehicle:
2025 Rivian R1S Dual Max (22in): $1,500 more
2024 Ford Expedition 4WD: $5,500 more
2024 Toyota Sequoia 4WD: $4,000 more
2024 Jeep Wagoneer 4WD: $4,750 more
That’s with 45% highway, 55% city.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=48434&id=47180&id=47212&id=47186&#tab1
Making it all highway we get:
2025 Rivian R1S Dual Max (22in): $2,500 more
2024 Ford Expedition 4WD: $2,750 more
2024 Toyota Sequoia 4WD: $2,750 more
2024 Jeep Wagoneer 4WD: $2,250 more
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=48434&id=47180&id=47212&id=47186&#tab1
So that tracks.
But what happens for folks who only use this big burly thing in stop and go traffic?
2025 Rivian R1S Dual Max (22in): $500 more
2024 Ford Expedition 4WD: $7,500 more
2024 Toyota Sequoia 4WD: $4,750 more
2024 Jeep Wagoneer 4WD: $7,500 more
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=48434&id=47180&id=47212&id=47186&#tab1
So if all you do is highway AND you only charge at public stations (or bend over for PG&E) you probably won’t save much if any money
BUT
if you use it to commute in shitty traffic you will save quite a bit in energy costs even if you do charge at public stations or bend over for PG&E
Yep, that all tracks.
My favorite thing about EVs is that, when you’re most miserable driving (i.e. when you’re in traffic), at the very least you’re getting great vehicle efficiency. Not so with ICEs.
At least there’s plenty of heat.
So much; crank that dial into the red!
This has been my exact experience!
When there is no traffic, I’m in the 3’s, when there is traffic, I’m in the 4’s.
As I still there in traffic I calculate how much it cost to do things, like be in the 3’s. Then I get frustrated, cause I’m in the 4’s.
At least the OPD makes traffic palatable compared to the previous 30 years driving a manual.
My i3 does about 4.3 overall (a little more highway than not). Probably 3.5 highway, maybe 5 city.
Similar with our 1st gen Kona Electric.
Anyone want to factor in the extra cost of an EV compared to what a comparable ICE vehicle would cost? How about depreciation? At the end of 5 years say 60k miles, what’s the comparison of costs per mile?
Early this decade my Tesla literally appreciated. 😀 Now it is depreciating a bit faster than an ICE because battery prices are declining rapidly and EV tech overall is advancing every year, making new EVs comparatively more appealing.
I would expect the latter for roughly another decade, so factor that into your car shopping plans.
Edmunds has that tool… Rivian doesn’t seem to work in it though.
But just what I could look up quickly, you get the true cost to own…
’21 Tesla Model 3 Long Range Dual Motor = $44,971
’21 BMW 330i xDrive = $58,417
’21 Cadillac CT4 Luxury = $51,535
’21 Toyota Camry XLE AWD = $40,071
’21 Acura TLX Type S AWD = $60,846
What ones of those are direct competitors? I dunno. Everyone seems to have different ideas.
Buy used. Our’s was effectively a 56% discount compared to new. With 30K miles. And a new battery.
And water is, surprisingly, wet. Film at 11.
where is this, the whole USA? You’re going to get gas in LV at the average of the USA?
Nowhere near me is gasoline under $4 and that is for regular (shitty 85 octane, sure), and my car requires premium, dude.
So, what was the gas price in LV? and what was it in The Valley? Local Costco in Van Nuys will suffice.
Also, did you check the Electricity prices on the highly visible signs outside the station — oh, yeah, that’s not required. Period.
Also, when I drive to Vegas, I usually get the extremely high octane. If I win, I mean.
… yes, all the gas prices are in the respective locations… Las Vegas and my part of LA.
Damn, I gotta move (Ventura County, apparently the highest average of the five county area)! I’m normally getting gas at Costco.
I might have to request pics and date/time of these gas prices.
I filled up for $3.29/gal in Livermore CA a couple of days ago.
Thank you Gasbuddy!
Gas buddy sez $3.15 to $3.34 for the first 6 stations.
Since I can’t edit my previous comment, I have to clarify that the gas buddy prices quoted were for Las Vegas, not Livermore. Around Roseville, it’s from $3.70-$4.00/gal.
$2.89 here in the southeast…
Yeah but we get “special” gas.
(Pretty sure the “special sauce” is just higher taxes)
85 is your regular? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything below 87 in my life
Altitude lets them offer lower octane since there is less oxygen in the air to combust.
87 is the regular regular, but this 85 crap is offered at a few places, with a special yellow price placard and a dollar/gal lower.
Is water actually wet or does water only MAKE something wet when it touches something dry? I’ve pondered this since I was a teenager.
humans can’t sense wet. they sense temperature and pressure/contact, but not wetness.
wat
$3.35 is easy to find without looking hard here in Vegas, $3.45 if using credit card.
90% of my driving is highway driving, so I’ll keep driving my V8 gas guzzler then. It gets like 22-23mpg if I keep it below 90mph. 35k miles a year, yeehaw.
You’ll do even better if you keep it WAY below 90 MPH.
To many people the time saved is worth more than the extra money spent.
How about the lives saved? Are those worth anything?
Depends on what you’re talking about. Yes, people shouldn’t drive 90 in the city. But on an open highway with light traffic? I’m in favor of 90. Studies have shown it’s not speed itself that kills, it’s difference in speed between cars on the same road. If you want to drive well under 90, I suggest taking a US route instead of the interstate.
That is certainly true of a 90 mph speed difference between a moving car and an immobile object. Even more true of the combined speed of a 90 mph speeder and a 65 mph adherent. Time to react to a problem are lessened, consequences increased.
I’m not sure where you drive but it’s not where I drive. 90 MPH is nowhere near the norm. I recently drove on Nevada, Utah, California and northern Arizona interstates and it was the posted speed limit the whole way, no problem. If anything someone doing 90 MPH would have been quite the danger weaving through the rest of us.
I drive 82 miles a day round trip for my commute in the Phoenix metro area, you can absolutely do 90 here without passing everybody. The freeways here are a lawless free-for-all, for better or worse.
I can’t speak to Phoenix. I haven’t been there since the 20th century. Thankfully I have no reason to travel to that blast furnace.
I know exactly how to summon you, lol. Just gotta make some reference to speeding.
Better to say Beetlejuice into a mirror a few times.
DON’T say Biggie Smalls!
Yeah this isn’t too surprising. My buddy was visiting from Houston, and we calculated that it would be more expensive to run a Volt like mine on EV alone, than to just run it as a hybrid. Gas there is so damn cheap, and power is pretty damn expensive. Essentially the reverse of where I am (WA).
For reference, I pay 8 cents a KWH, I think he pays something like 25 cents.
David pointed this out in the article, and it’s worth reinforcing – this is if you cannot charge from home using significantly better rates, even if you’re being ripped off (like me) by PG&E or our friends in SoCal paying high SoCal Edison rates.
Electricity at my house is $0.27/kWh, ignoring the panels on the roof. I get about 2.5 mi/kWh in my Rivian. This translates to about 11c/mile. In my former Tundra, which got about 16mpg at 80mph (on a good day), at CA gas prices of around $5/gal I’d be paying about 30c/mile.
Now if you live in a normal place where gas is, say, around $3, the math changes. But electricity prices in those places tend to be lower as well. I don’t think many other areas pay the electricity extortion rates we pay here in CA.
All that said, if you are stuck using only public chargers, you’re probably paying $0.50/kWh, maybe down to $0.36/kWh if you’re a subscriber to Tesla or, for Rivian owners, the RAN, pretty much everywhere in the US. Sometimes significantly more – like the $0.66 listed above. Sometimes it’s highway robbery and I’ve seen >$1/kWh at some locations on Plugshare (DT is correct here – USE THAT APP) – stations that I happily bypass unless it’s an emergency.
Yet, Newsome wants all Californians to ditch their gasoline mobiles (including big rigs) for electric vehicles by 2035. Way to provide negative incentives, there Newsome.
Well, at the rate Tesla Semis are going – Diesel Semis are going to remain a thing in CA for quite some time….
The only hope we have is that Newsome will be out in 2 years, but the unelected bureaucrats at CARB will still be there. They spread havoc and disaster wherever they look.
The CARB rules are already outlawing Class A motorhome for 2025. The Advanced Clean Trucks regulation requires ZEV for heavy vehicles (over 8500#). While primarily aimed at big Diesel trucks that log about of miles/year, it also collects Class C & A motor coaches.
I grew up in California. A co-worker of mine worked in Long Beach in the 1980’s. It took him 2 years to be able to see the mountains due to the smog. Another friend who grew up in LA in the 80’s couldn’t play HS outside sports on “clean air action days” pretty frequently and often came home with a hacking cough after soccer practice. In the last decade every time I’ve driven through the LA area the air quality has been good. CARB gets a lot of criticism but they have done an amazing job of making the air healthy to breath again. There are many places in other parts of the world that have terrible air quality due to pollution. I thank the lucky stars that for the most part we have cleaned up the air in our country.
I think the COVID period reminded us how clean the air can be.
Nikola semis are lightyears better. Tesla semi trucks are a joke. Any trucker knows alley backing a semi from the center of the truck by mirrors only is a recipe for disaster
You know that’s not true.
Hey, all electric big rigs in Cali will work, it is only 239 miles to the Arizona border from long Beach. I suspect then it will be relayed to Phoenix from there, and warehoused in Phoenix to be transferred to long haul trucks. Only downside is, loss of warehouse jobs in SoCal, because if the long haul trucks can’t go into Cali, why bother warehousing there. But judging by the amount of warehouses going up in Phoenix, that is already planned for.
There are big warehouses on the outskirts of Reno for Walmart and other outlets. There’s a lot more sq footage up there than can be utilized by western Nevada. I see Pepsi Tesla trucks 150 miles from there in California. Not sure if the teslas can make the round trip on one charge or not. They do have one advantage, they go downhill loaded and would be empty going back up.
Yup. Now you see the plan. Cali gets their political desires, other states get their business.
And their House of Representatives seat that Cali lost due to net out migration of citizens
Well, nothing is more short sighted than a politician.
Good grief –
It’s the sales of new vehicles that are affected – Not existing ones.
Why are you spreading disinformation?
Small comfort to the RVer that would like to buy a new motorhome. Also can’t buy a new one out of state and bring it in. It’s not like an RV will be driven 50k miles/year like a commercial carrier.
Uh – Many people actually purchase Class A RVs and register them in states where taxes are more advantageous – such as Montana and Delaware.
Ask me how I know.
And nobody is saying you won’t be able to drive your non-CA registered vehicle in CA.
Again: Quit with the disinformation.
Ain’t disinformation if it’s true. It may not fit with your worldview, but Autopian’s own Mercedes Streeter wrote about this not 2 weeks ago.
“You could get 19 MPG highway at 80 MPH with lots of gas guzzlers out there.”
Are we sure about that?
Maybe if you’re going downhill in a Hurricane (Apologies to Joe Isuzu)
We know that highway MPGs are based on speeds much lower than 80MPH – and we also know that brick-shaped objects get worse mileage than their EPA ratings because those EPA ratings are derived from data while running the vehicle on rollers in a lab and a formula regarding aerodynamics – with zero regard for altitude changes.
Might be worth doing some B2B trips to Vegas to investigate further.
It’s based on the delta in the Rivian’s range compared to its highway rating, applied to the ICE vehicles, with a safety factor built in (which is why you don’t see any 19 or 20 MPG cars shown above).
I do say 80 MPH much of the way, but it was probably still an average of like 74ish MPH if I had to guess.
Worth noting that, per C&D, the Expedition will indeed do 20 MPH at 75MPH.
So will a Dodge Viper, for reference.
Good to know!
my MPG goes down 2 to 3 MPG if I drive over 75 in my Colorado. There seems to be a speed for boxy vehicles where MPG takes a dive. Idaho is a killer if it is windy.
Indeed – 3¾ times that. But what did they find was the Expedition’s fuel consumption at 3.75(20 MPH)?
My ’12 XC70 T6 gets about 22 mpg doing ~80 mph on a desert run which is actually oddly close to the EPA rating of 23. Still, it’s got a lot less frontal area than an Expedition.
I got well north of 20 in my V8 truck on a drive from Minnesota to Utah and back. I don’t know if any of that was done at 80, but at least a good chunk of it was 75.
Modern ICE drivetrains are kind of amazing, especially in high volume vehicles like full-size trucks that get the big R&D bucks.
I don’t believe the EPA mpg ratings are done at 80mph, are they? My experience with full size pickups trucks is that after about 65mph the mpg drops off dramatically.
But yes, purely financially it doesn’t usually make sense to charge an EV anywhere but at home or work. At least it’s (at home) predictable and stable unlike gas prices from one day to the next. The current gas price you quote for gas seems VERY low for the San Fernando Valley, is that the low point for this year? What was the high and the median?
No, they’re not. Have a look at my explainer on the topic.
The average speed for the highway testing is absurdly low. IIRC, somewhere around 54 mph.
This article from Hagarty quotes a Car and Driver article on the beginnings of CARB, the EPA and CalEPA. Early testing was pretty primitive, but quickly grew to repeatable results.
https://www.hagerty.com/media/magazine-features/fifty-years-ago-the-government-decided-to-clean-up-car-exhaust-its-still-at-it/
I ran into this conundrum when I rented a Cybertruck for fun off Turo while on a work trip weekend. The cost I logged from picking it up by the marina in San Diego, ending up in DTLA with a stopover near Irvine on the way back, then getting it back to 80% for the dropoff in San Diego was not much less than driving the vantruck the same distance… even with California diesel prices.
It was one peak-hour supercharging session to be fair. The other two were a destination L2 charger and then an off-peak hour SC at return.
I mean, sure, I can give some credit for “two shed-shaped objects needing basically the same power to displace air in motion” but I didn’t expect it to be so close.
Would have to dig through my receipts and e-mails to get exact numbers, but it was on the order of $80 or so.