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.
Thanks for this – not something I realized.
Red meat for the anti-EV, “climate crisis what climate crisis?” crowd?
Or just an effective reading of the room to help the survival of a smallish electronic publication in MAGA-mad America?
That being said, not having price per kWh prominently displayed the same way it is for gas and diesel is, in my opinion, a major regulatory miss. Then again, regulations are evil, right?
The EPA sticker for an EV should list the city, highway, and combined RANGES.
I’m not an expert on EV MPG rating but for gasoline vehicles the EPA test is based on an average highway speed of 48.3 mph. I know they have newer cycles that go briefly to 80 mph but the older, more common, test cycle peaked at 60 mph. The higher the average actual speed, the worse fuel economy gets (you get worse mileage at 80 than you do at 60). To do an actual comparison you would need to drive a gas guzzler the same distance at the same speed. You cannot just compare Monrony sticker data.
You’d think OEMs would be busting ass trying to improve EV infrastructure seeing as it’s the biggest hurdle to EV ownership but no one seems to give a fuck. Electrify America has been operating for 8 years now and it doesn’t feel like we’ve made it very far. I was in the market for an EV but recently pulled the trigger on a hybrid because of the couple long distance trips I make yearly.
I love the idea of an EV, and the Rivian would be my cost no object pick, but IMO they don’t make sense as anything other than a commuter, IF you can charge at home and or at work. I can currently do neither of those things, so it’s a no from me, dawg.
And if they’re only going to use it as a commuter few owners need 300+ miles of range.
I have a different EV but 300 miles is a great number. That gets me from my rural area to several large metro areas as well as anywhere in between.
For longer, 600+ mile trips, I would prefer more like 400 miles of range just so in the extremes of winter, I still have 300 miles of range. Our car is rated at ~260 miles and we’re seeing between 3 mi/kwh and 4 mi/kwh on the highway. So between 300 and 215 mi of range. Still gets the jobs done.
We’ll keep our ICEV SUV for out of state trips which is rare these days. I’d like to have something like the BYD Shark driveline in a mid-size SUV body. I’d rather have a BEV but don’t even really need a second car much of the time.
That’s great. Like I said, though, “if they’re only going to use it as a commuter few owners need 300+ miles of range.”
Same. If you don’t have free/cheap charging at home/work, it doesn’t make sense right now.
This is really the crux of it, and exactly what I tell anyone asking me if they should buy an EV. Do you live in an apartment and commute an hour each way to work? Do NOT get an EV.
I only ever charge at home, using a public charger maybe 2-3x a year at most, and my effective “cost per mile” rolling up maintenance/insurance/fuel is $0.03/mile compared to $0.33/mile on my Subaru I had previously. I tracked all vehicle expenses religiously ever since I bought my first car (a weird habit my parents taught me), so I had years of cost data on exactly how much my car usage cost. That made the calculations for EV savings when I started shopping for one pretty straightforward, but again, that only applies to my very specific needs.
I looked around on Plugshare, and it does seem like public charging rates have seen a massive hike in my area recently. I know electricity rates have gone up a lot, but stations that used to be about $0.02/kWH are now over $0.40/kWH.
Yep. when I bought my first PHEV, I didn’t know the wiring in my garage couldn’t charge it (not grounded properly, so the charger refused to work). I considered using public chargers, but once I did the math, like you I realized that its average 50 mpg meant it was cheaper to just run it on 100% gas until I fixed my house.
That and all the stupid apps you have to download… just let me stick a credit card in the damn machine! I’m sure (well, hoping) things will get better as chargers become more ubiquitous and proper competition sets in. Or straight up regulation.
Yip, but the Rivian has all the drag reduction features of a brick, which does not help.
California / Nevada are not alone, public charging prices are outrageous in places like France too.
is there any transparency to what these charging stations are paying per kw/h to the power company? i know there is more to it than that they have to convert the AC to DC and some of them have large DC battery banks as a buffer … but shouldn’t there be some sort of regulation on a maximum price these charging stations are allowed to charge?? What’s stopping these charging stations from jacking up rates when there is a big event or around the holidays when there is more traffic. I know there are similar regulations on gasoline pricing so why not on charging stations as well?
I… am curious about that myself.
To answer your question, there is little regulation. Some states have laws about only charging by time or kw/h, but that’s about it. It’ll be fun to try and pass regulation in the upcoming years!
yeah at minimum the states could pass either a maximum price they are allowed to charge or a maximum markup percentage. Or you know the municipalities could offer a municipal charging service to increase competition to lower prices
How is that any different than when you see 3x gas stations in a row, all charging different. I have a trio near me sitting at $2.65, $2.79 and $2.85 all for 87 – a worse jump between the three exists for premium. Just up I-95 a few miles, they are charging $3.35 for 87. My electricity rate all in is at $0.29 per kwh and one of my local superchargers was around $0.43 per kwh when I last charged which was limited to 2x partial charges for the few days before I installed my charger at home. Given that Tesla has to make some money to pay for the land, and to install and maintain the 20 chargers at that location, I was never under any illusion that public charging would ever be cheaper than home charging.
I also went into EV ownership eye wide open. I had a PHEV for 80k miles before I went back to an 87 only machine for another 74k miles and now into a Model Y Performance. By all calculations, I am saving pennies per day at most. But, I gained better performance, more space, an overall fun driving experience, AWD, etc. Anything else that was gasoline powered that would have done the same would have me in a vehicle guzzling premium at a rate of at least $1k more per year at my local prices – and that assumes that it could get the same 28-29+ mpg average year round I achieved in my previous Sonata N Line which was a combo I couldn’t really find for what I was looking for.
I don’t think there are any regulations on gas prices. There were in the 1970’s I think, when I worked at a gas station (yes, I’m old and I pumped, washed windshields, checked oil at a job while I was in high school; it is where I learned how to Lube/oil/filter, and more importantly, to do it under a lifted car instead of crawling under an unlifted one). What is needed is transparent PRICES.
Honestly, it is none of my business how much a product for sale costs the seller. I’m going to make decisions based on the information I have, which is the PRICE I’ll pay. Heck, a lot of gas pumps +convenient stores lose money on gasoline, in order to get you inside to buy overpriced items inside.
Not having the prices easily conveyed, as well as the wait time, is a crime against Econ 101.
That said, DT should have been able to check prices and wait times in the greater Vegas area. Or, he should have charged up in Baker on the way and on the way back if it were a lot cheaper. Downside: it means waiting in Baker.
Idea: Is there a market for people with home chargers selling electricity? Heck, if this were profitable, I can imagine neighborhoods filled with chargers, even at houses with no EV (yet), and just selling electricity to passers-by. Vegas could sure use a network like that, based on DST’s article.
Can anyone cite a recent example where there was a big paradigm shift in an existing industry/institution that was sold to the public as a cost savings measure that didn’t end up costing the consumer much more in the end?
rideshare. Uber was definitely billed a cheaper and more convenient option to taxis. The more convenient thing still sticks, but the general pricing is about the same at best; and surge pricing for ubers is near criminal.
It used to be substantially cheaper pre-pandemic, at least in my experience. Uber Pool was insanely cheap in NYC.
100%. Rideshares were only cheap at the beginning due to hundreds of millions of VC dollars subsidizing the cost. The companies operated at a massive loss, but the idea was the low fares would attract customers and build some degree of loyalty/confidence that would retain them when prices went up. Uber only *just* had a profitable year, barely, and a lot of that is credited to the higher margin on the UberEats delivery service. Why someone will pay $40 to get a $10 fast food meal delivered cold an hour later is beyond me, but apparently a lot of people do it.
Uber was originally thrust on us as a service to sign up for to more or less pick people up who were going the same place you were already driving to. More or less digital hitch hiking. It quickly spiraled into a taxi replacement.
That’s just enshittification at work. Capitalism!
Sure.
Telephone Deregulation & Breakup of the Bells
Airline Deregulation.
Above actions resulted in service costs for flights and phone service today that are lower cost inflation adjusted than before the paradigm shift.
…and it STILL took over an HOUR AND A HALF to do that.
Exactly why we don’t take our EV on road trips. For the same cost, I’d rather save time and not waste it sitting waiting for the car to charge.
At the moment DC fast charging is pretty expensive. Gasoline stations have a very low profit margin on fuel. They make most of their money on items purchased at the convenience store. I suspect that at some point as fast charging gets more common, someone will figure out how to make money on food, drinks, etc when folks stop to charge their cars. Today, most of the fast chargers are in neighborhoods right off the freeway in a shopping center. The profits go to whatever places just happen to be close to the charger. When I stop to charge, I’ll go grab breakfast, lunch, dinner etc. When more places like Flying J or others install fast chargers they should be able to sell the electricity at closer to what they are paying for it like gasoline because they will be making their margin when folks buy the food and drinks.
Seems like it would be easier to make money on incidental purchases at an EV charging station than a gas station given the time it takes to charge an EV.
I wonder what the break-even would be to build a solar powered charging station? How much solar panel SF would you need? You don’t necessarily need to be connected to the grid.
“The price was fairly typical at a public charger on the West Coast: 38 cents per kWh”
And that’s the problem right there. Your electricity rate is insanely high.
To put that into perspective… US$0.38 is about CAD$0.53
You know what I pay as my highest on-peak rate at home in the Toronto area?
About CAD$0.18 per kwh.
What you pay is more than double my highest rate.
It’s clear that rate is padded with a large amount of profit margin.
And it’s an example of how deregulation doesn’t work a lot of the time.
At an insanely high electricity rate like that, it makes more sense to drive a hybrid unless the cost of gasoline is significantly more expensive.
Also if I was subjected to an insane electricity rate like that, I’d be looking at loading my roof with solar, adding a small wind turbine and have a battery buffer.
So keep in mind that 38 cents is for a public charger. That is not reflective of a residential rate.
Unless you’re saying public chargers in Canada operate at residential equivalent rates, but I’d be honestly surprised.
I know. But the point I’m making is that rate being charged at the public charger is insanely high with probably at least a 100% markup.
And the secondary point is that you can’t count on private business competition to keep rates reasonable.
Looks like I misread your initial comment. Thanks for the clarification!
Business 101 – You need to recoup your construction and operating costs plus a profit if you want to stay in business. Of course it is high, but a multiple of three over a residential rate is not outrageous considering the costs involved in constructing charging stations.
“You need to recoup your construction and operating costs plus a profit if you want to stay in business.”
So to do that, they “need” a 100% or higher gross margin to do that?
Sorry… but I am literally not buying it.
I stopped at EA chargers last weekend that charged 53 cents per KWH in a nearby city. Residential prices here at about 11 cents per KWH. I don’t mind paying for the equipment but wow.
We typically use our EV in a repetitive routine so with a bit of planning normally we just need to top off the battery when away from the house and not a full charge. Adding 15%-20% rather than 70%-80%. That helps the cost.
Charging at home is the key. Otherwise buy a PHEV.
Sorry to say, but residential rates in southern California are also $.30-$.65/kwh depending on time of use… I’m liberal as they come and even I am pissed off that our governor has let our utility commission be completely overrun by private investor interests.
“$.30-$.65/kwh depending on time of use”
Well as I said… that’s an insane rate and if I lived there, getting a solar solution would be priority #1. And if the utility tried to make me pay some ridiculous fee for that, then I’d do an off-grid solution and tell them to take a hike.
But it IS representative of many workplace rates! At my workplace, they use… I think Autel chargers, and it’s 35c/kWh.
And those work place rates are often set insanely high as well.
At a rate like that, I’ll pass and instead look for a standard 120V outlet I can plug into for free or look for free charging options listed on plugshare.com.
In my case though, I have a Ford C-Max Energi plug in hybrid. And I’ve calculated that if the rate is over CAD$0.20/kwh, it’s not worth the hassle. I’ll just run it in hybrid mode.
But generally I plug in at home and at public places where it’s free such as at my local Ikea.
And if we had markups like that on gasoline, there would be people protesting in the streets.
Oh it’s way more than 100% markup. My residential rate is 0.18c/kWh, and where I charge at work, they don’t charge employees any extra on top of what the business pays for electricity, so it’s just 0.06 c/kWh. Public charging is exorbitant.
I think you are basically rehashing David’s entire point. Because public charging can be insanely expensive, he argues you shouldn’t buy an EV if that is your only charging option. Even in LA he is already stating that by charging at home, he is saving loads of money over a gas commuter. Nothing in this article has anything to do with how expensive (or not) it really is charge at home, just public for profit chargers.
19 MPG highway is what I get on my LR4 (V8).
I do a hair better than that at 70MPH, 70°F, and 70% RH (or less) in a 5.6 liter V8 (Nissan Titan).
EDIT:
I just re-read my statement and realized I sounded shitty. Apologies for that. I was vehemently agreeing with you by offering similar statistics (at least in my head).
How does it do around town? I get about 15.
13.4 🙁
“Six-figure 7-seater SUV turns out to be less economical than other options”
“Gasoline is surprisingly cheap right now making it cheaper than some EVs sometimes in some one-off use cases”
I drove LA to Vegas in September in a rental 2023 Honda Civic. 39mpg at 80mph.
A couple of things.
I have road tripped my Bolt multiple times and I’ve saved money on charging by getting hotels that include free charging. This won’t help if you have to top off between hotels, but it still brings down the average cost of the trip. As my daily, I pay $0.07/kW if I charge at home and it’s free at the office. Over time, I’m coming out way ahead over a gas car.
Compared to a 20 MPG vehicle I’ve saved quite a bit of money charging at home. ~$2000 (gas) vs about ~$350 (EV) this year over 12K miles.
The rate I would pay for charging at home in the central coast of California is -$0.40 so home charging likely won’t save me any money over gas. I’d have to invest in more solar than I already have to get cheaper electricity to even justify a EV commuter to save money. Funny enough most of my neighbors have EVs but they can’t be bothered to do math. PHEVs are even worse as they are less efficient than EVs, higher maintenance than gas, and crappier to drive than either, never will I consider a PHEV.
PHEVs have much lower maintenance costs than ICE only vehicles. Since the engine doesn’t run nearly as much oil change intervals are much longer, pretty much once a year whether it needs it or not. Spark plugs and air filters also last much longer again because they aren’t used as much. Brakes also last much longer again since they aren’t used as much. The only maintenance on the EV portion is to change the motor and electronics coolant at 10 years like you are for the engine coolant. Net is that PHEVs are cheaper to own than an ICE before you consider the fuel savings.
I should have clarified that repair costs instead of maintenance costs. PHEVs are not even cheaper to drive than a gas car at my electricity rates so I don’t see how they can be cheaper to own by having only 1 oil change instead of 2 per year that I do now. Just go to fueleconomy.gov add my electricity rate of $0.40 and my gas price of (4.30 for regular, 4.5 for mid, 4.7 for premium all from costco) and the Prius prime is more expensive to charge than to just drive on gas. Same with a Volvo XC90.
Those are some brutal electric and gas prices for certain. Putting those numbers into the FE.gov website shows that yes a PHEV version of the same car would still save you money vs the ICE only version due to the better MPG when in hybrid operation. However you would save more money by not plugging it in vs plugging in or of course just buying the Hybrid.
There aren’t a lot of vehicles out there available in ICE, HEV, and PHEV versions but here is one and they also have a similarly sized EV just for comparison.
2025 Escape FWD annual fuel cost $2150
2025 Escape FWD PHEV annual gas+elec cost $1850
2025 Escape FWD HEV annual fuel cost $1650
So you would still save $300 per year on fuel with the PHEV and plugging it in but you would save $500 per year with the Hybrid or not plugging in the PHEV version.
Vs a Ford EV
2024 Mach E RWD annual electric cost $2000
So you are making my point, PHEVs and EVs are pointless where I live. HEV is still technically a gas car, but I should have been more specific. Also FE.gov doesn’t account for the losses while charging, so the numbers ~11 % worse. (1/.9=1.11)
I still see that EVs have value as a luxury purchase and if I had to commute in rush hour traffic I probably would own one already for many reasons. The average price per kwhr in california is $0.3164/kwhr, but that includes all the lower tiers. And electric car will almost be exclusively increase your electric usage in the upper tiers so I’m not sure how people in CA save money with PHEVs and EVs anywhere in the state unless you are heavily invested in solar which also has a cost.
EREVs are basically as efficient as EVs, have significantly less maintenance than gas cars, are as good to drive as EVs.
But I assume you’re talking about traditional PHEVs (which, as Scoutdude notes, require less maintenance than ICE vehicles, in theory).
I like the idea of an EREV better from a driving experience for sure. But still isn’t cheaper at my electricity rates. Just compared a lightning vs a standard f150 and its $5.44 for 25 miles electric and $5.66 for gas with the 5.0. Considering high insurance costs, tire wear costs of the EV I’m sure I’ll come out on top with my V8.
the rivian also has the aero of a brick and has 600-1000 horsepower. The kia ev9 gets very close to 3 miles per kwh, the tesla model y gets about 3.5 miles per kwh. the tesla model 3 gets 4+ miles per kwh. the lucid air gets 5 miles per kwh.
the rivian’s 2.28 observed miles per kwh is utter shit. it’s also a press car .. maybe something is wrong with it?? don’t use this example in the article to gauge if an ev would be more expensive than a gas car in your area. Run the numbers yourself. What miles per kwh would you need to be cheaper? then see what is available.
Taking my love for manual transmission cars out of the equation, compare a model 3 RWD to a Toyota Camry hybrid (non PHEV). The Tesla cost $2.78 per 25 miles while the Gas Toyota Camry costs $2.15. And I’m not even comparing the prius hybrid.
alabama added a $200 fee for all EV registration which considering how little i drive might sway me in the direction of my next car being a prius / camry hybrid/ lexus ux hybrid as well.
Funny you mention tires, friend is now about to get his second set of tires replaced on his Mach -E at 36,000 miles. seems a bit ridiculous how fast it goes through them. And of course they are sort of bespoke for the car he is telling me.
I got 53,000 out of the original tires on my Bolt, but our Leaf is on its second set in less than 47K. The issue with the Leaf though is that the car was damaged at the dealership and they didn’t disclose it. I haven’t felt it was important enough to fix the suspension as long as I keep rotating the tires.
We’re at 35,000 miles on our first set of tires on our mach e. Ours is just rwd and the tires do need to be replaced at this point, but going through 2 sets of tires in about the same mileage either means an alignment problem or driving aggressively. At this point I’m pretty confident the EVs eating tires narrative is almost entirely down to the very obvious: they are heavy and fast. If you drive aggressively you will eat tires, just like any other heavy and fast vehicle. If you mainly drive for economy/range like we do, your tire wear will be reasonable.
I would agree that the weight of the car probably contributes as much or more to the phenomenom. though I suppose it could be the drivers speed as well. I have not experienced overly aggressive or fast driving from the guy, but it is certainly possibly when i am not around. I imagine the quiet motion hides actual speed versus perceived for a lot of drivers.
Perhaps cheap tires. Our 25 year old CRV ate through the factory set of tires in less than 40K miles. Replaced them with Michelin and they lasted 70K+.
I know our ’21 Kona came with budget tires from the factory. The previous owner did not rotate the tires so at 31K miles it needed new front tires. I put the factory tires on the front and the new tires on the back. That also helped with tire noise. The forums are reporting 60K+ miles on quality tires.
Thanks for the writeup David. Longtime lurker and big fan of you guys.
I drive an R1S, and this has generally been my experience. That being said, I don’t generally have a problem with it.
What public charging stations need, more than to be affordable, is to be financially viable. Most EV drivers do the vast majority of their charging at home, where electrons are cheap. When traveling, however, we need plentiful access to waypoint public stations in order to make EV travel possible. David, you’ve noted how much we need this. I would gladly pay 3x normal gas prices for the occasional road trip if that meant that there would be 3x the number of public chargers available.
I realize this isn’t the case for everyone. For those who take more frequent road trips: a PHEV makes more sense. For those who want an EV but don’t have access to in-home charging, perhaps a 7000lb refrigerator-shaped truck (even EVs are subject to physics) isn’t the best choice.
This matches the experience I had renting a Polestar in San Francisco on my last business trip.
I charged it at a public charger from nearly empty, about 20 miles of range, up to nearly full, 200 miles of range. It cost $36.
That’s about $0.19 per mile.
My 12 year old pickup truck costs $100 to fill up, which gives me about 500 miles of range.
That’s $0.20 per mile.
I guess this proves that you can’t have a car that’s fast, goes far efficiently, and in comfort without compromises. Even at a $100,000 plus, we shouldn’t expect cars to do everything. This car sounds nice, but I dislike the trend of trying to make cars that do everything, and promise to do it normal cost, and with some kind of environmental benefit. Consumers have been trained to have unrealistic expectations and to the point that we have them selling us huge heavy, expensive cars, that still lose money, and now I’m surprised that a huge car costs a lot of money to move around.
Okay, end rant, back to other normal dad business.
I think the part you are missing is the EV groups stating how much money you save on gas, and in this case the truth is not the case just yet. Once the stations available ramp up, if they do (it is expensive to put in even basic level 2 stations due to grid availability), then the power companies will likely continue to raise the cost per kilowatt, so not only would the drivers get pinched, but anyone using Electricity to heat and cool a house would as well.
Precisely. This is not going to get better anytime soon. Pathetic planning by the government.
I don’t understand the obsession many EV owners have with trying to prove that fuel costs will be a fraction of the equivalent ICE costs. As an EV owner I know about the reduced maintenance costs. But I live in a US area with high electricity costs and even with home charging the payback on that basis isn’t there. I constantly see social media posts that throw a bunch of numbers against the wall to prove a substantially lower fuel cost but rarely see a straightforward $/mile number. And don’t get me started on the “but I have 1000 sq. ft. of solar panels” crowd. They’re as bad as the “gotta tow my camper 500 miles without stopping” gang on the other side.
I think we could if people would just let go of the idea that their car in someway impacts other people’s perception of them.
I pulled the trigger on a new Mach E this week. I use my primary car 99% of the time for commuting 70 miles round trip a day and can charge for free at my office. So for me, it made sense. The charging availability was a huge factor in the decision.
The math doesn’t work for me yet, though I keep checking in on it. I commute about 105 miles per day (all freeway), up and down a steep canyon, and we get below freezing for months at a time and above 80 for months at a time. Meaning, I need AC and heater often. I can charge for free at my office currently, but I have no car loan, and an older car that is pretty reasonable on insurance.
The math keeps improving, but for now, I still save a pretty decent sum by driving older ICE. Add in that I have no interest in a Tesla, so has significant impact on available used options as I won’t be buying new.
Something that is not considered in a lot of conversations related to road trips, the first “tank” is filled up at home and the last one too. You only need to charge in between. In my case, that’s ~600 miles for cheap.
I went to Toronto on a road trip and I was surprised (with the help of the current value of the US Dollar) on how cheap it was compare to their gas prices. It costed me around $10USD for 60kWH. I left Detroit with a full “tank”, stopped at Woodstock to charge, stopped on a GO station to take the train to Toronto, same thing back. I arrived home with 10%.
Yes, that was my first thought, too. The author drove to his destination on cheap “home” electricity, charged there using electricity as “expensive” as gasoline, and drove home.
His actual cost was the average of the cheap “home” and as-pricey-as-gas “expensive” electricity.
He saved money despite his repeated insistence he didn’t.
Exactly. I see a lot of articles about how expensive it is to charge an EV, and they all forget that we don’t have gas pumps in our garage dispensing fuel for pennies on the dollar.
If you’re a traveling salesman who’s on the road 300 days a year, then yeah, EV is probably not the most economical idea. But most of us do long road trips maybe 5 times per year at the most. The rest is spent driving 20-40 miles a day to and from work where at-home charging keeps your fuel prices very low compared to the people who have to fuel their cars at gas stations every time.
“The rest is spent driving 20-40 miles a day to and from work where at-home charging keeps your fuel prices very low compared to the people who have to fuel their cars at gas stations every time.”
Which is why PHEVs are simply the best option. You can do that 20-40 miles per day with little if any gas use and then road trip with ease and lower costs.
Really depends on the use case. I had an i3 REx (PHEV) like David years ago, and used just ~10 gallons of gas over the two years and 20,000 miles we had it, even despite doing a 1,500 mile road trip.
The REx was necessary, then, because the battery was small and non-Tesla charging stations were so spread out in 2015-2017 when we were doing long trips in i3s, but now, if you’ve got a normal-sized battery in your BEV, doing a few long trips per year, the inconvenience of a BEV is often very small, so the trade-off of complexity and maintenance of the engine isn’t worth it for a lot of people.
Doing a 1500 mi trip in a i3, even with Rex, sounds brutal. That inconvenience of a BEV on a road trip, even if it doesn’t happen that often just isn’t worth it for the majority of people and it will keep a lot of people out of the market for an EV.
Yeah, the i3 trips were an adventure, but interesting because many believed it to be basically impossible. In 2015, it was bad. In 2017, with a bigger-battery i3, it was much better, but not anywhere near “mass adoption” levels.
Nowadays, though, with an EV like a Model 3 Long Range, the inconvenience is often tiny.
My wife and MIL hopped in a 2018 Model 3, plugged in their destination 600 miles away, and made it there and back with no issues and a very small time cost (net time adder of maybe 30 minutes each way on a 10-hour drive). There are even sufficient chargers along major routes, now, that you can pick and choose which ones you want to use based on timing and amenities.
The convenience advantage of a PHEV (or ICE) vs a Long Range Model 3 is very small, now, and if you’re not constantly doing really long trips (not just typical American “long trips” of ~500 miles round trip), it’s not worth dragging around a second drivetrain, IMO.
My opinion is that dragging around the extra weight of that expensive battery just isn’t worth it for the long road trips. Adding an ICE is cheaper, plus it is well proven and its road trip range will not degrade over time like an EV. Not to mention in most locations it is cheaper to run on gas than on DCFCs when you are on that road trip.
The bigger battery is beneficial outside of long trips, though. Faster charging (bigger batteries generally charge faster), fewer battery cycles per mile, more buffer to charge less frequently (PHEV often would have to be charged every day), faster acceleration due to higher max battery output, etc.
Highly variable. Model 3 Long Range for $35k after tax credit is pretty affordable. BMW i5 is very competitive on price with the PHEV 5-series. The base i5 is cheaper, then PHEV, then fastest i5 is more expensive.
Road-tripping a Tesla is well-proven, as well. Thousands of people did it just last weekend.
Not really a big deal. Like I said, it was a 2018 Model 3 that my wife used. Most of the degradation has already happened on that car, as it starts “faster” and slows down over time.
On a typical “long road trip” for Americans (284 miles each way according to gov data), the Model 3 LR would do more than half the trip on its original home charge, which is substantially cheaper than gas, then the rest on public charging. Probably wouldn’t be a meaningful difference compared to using gas.
On a super long trip, lots of variables (like free charging at hotels), but either way, it’s not going to be a huge difference worth making a car decision over.
I’m pro-PHEV. I’ve owned two. But they have their “cons”, so I just don’t agree they’re “simply the best option” without substantial qualification of the use case and vehicles considered, etc.
The problem with PHEVs is that gas goes stale which means most if not all of them will run the engine when they don’t need to if it hasn’t gone through enough gas. And you still have that gas engine to maintain, which means the maintenance cost advantages of a pure EV don’t apply to you.
Most road trips are doable with an EV if you plan charging stops well and understand that you might have to get lunch or something while the car gets topped off.
For those that aren’t, most EV drivers with home chargers also own a gas vehicle. Just take that.
I think it would have been a better comparison to have had him charge at a station in Cali, but he did say the cost per KWH was similar in Cali, and also that it only made sense if charging at home, but yeah, at Cali’s current rates in LA hovering around 28 cents per KWH on average, I would in fact like to see how much better it really would be to do it at home.
Not true; I did not save money. Press vehicles arrive with a full tank/charge. A Jeep Wagoneer would have cost me less money to make the same journey. (Though not a lot less).
I think the overall point of the article was that, if you can’t charge at home, you probably won’t save money over gas. He used his experience on the road trip to illustrate this, not to say that you can’t ever save money with an EV.
Great point. I do the same with my 4Runner when I head up north. Fill up at the discount station at home right before setting off, fill up once on the trip, then fill back up at discount station when I get home. I used 3 tanks of fuel, but only one was the more expensive price.