A 1,482-Mile Road Trip in a 2024 Kia EV9 Delivers 3.3 mi/kWh, $350 in Charging, The Owner Says “I Might as Well Have Been a Passenger in the Backseat 75% of the Trip”, Even Through 60-MPH Kansas Crosswinds

Not sure how one person driving around in a 5900 lb vehicle is good for the environment or other drivers or pedestrians?! BTW, 350$ for that trip exceeds what would be paid to move a more reasonable amount of weight around. And this is an "automotive journalist"? Next time you might want to keep it parked and just sit in the back seat. Lot safer for everyone and better for the environment!

Look it up -- the average weight in the eighties was 3000lbs, now it's like 4300lbs for vehicles.

Perfect for sleeping at the wheel. Can't wait for the whole extra page in the news papers.

10 to 14 mpg for gas fueled vehicle? Am i doing the math wrong here? $2.50-3.50/gallon. Sounds like a comfortable SUV but let's talk about why it cost MORE to charge than for gas.

So effectively he paid $350 for 447.95kWh or $0.7418/kWh on average. That would mean at 3.3 mi/kWh he paid around $0.2368/mile. Average fuel price for regular in the US is $2.862/gal and so anything over 12 miles per gallon would make gas cheaper.

$350 to drive 1,500 miles doesn't seem that impressive. Considering you still pay a premium for ev vehicles. A vehicle that gets just 30 mpg would do that trip for under $200.

Gas Buddy calculated (1/25/26) a fuel cost of $75.52 for my car to get to Denver and back from Oklahoma City. My average stop to refuel is less than five minutes. My car has been delivering this type of performance for over 15 years with only tires, occasional headlight bulb replacements, and oil and filter and windshield wiper changes for maintenance. We live in the same area as Mr Hart and would take our family of four skiing in Summit County (with skis and gear) for around $70 round trip. $350 is over four and a half times that, so 'comparable' might not be the most accurate word to use in this case. Electrify America's power in this area comes from the Southwest Power Pool, and though they have made great strides in clean energy (wind), have only recently been able to achieve less than 50% reliance on polluting energy sources (coal, nuclear, and natural gas). EVs still cause a significant amount of pollution, and they are drastically more expensive.

Drove 2500 miles from Texas to South Dakota roundtrip for a little over $100 in my Ford Maverick XL. Fill up time less than 5 minutes. Keep your EV🤣

Pass!
My 22 yukon xl 4x4 would have been cheaper to drive.
Fill up max 4 times for $250. But I can get 500 plus miles on a tank

Mr Hart i say bs..at $3 per gallon which is high for Ok...a car getting 25 mpg which is standard for a suv would only cost $180 half that of your trip... 3 charges $350 so does it really cost over $115 to charge this vehicle?

1482 miles ÷ 38mpg X $2.85 a gallon = $112.

Assuming a normal Kia Soul has a 14.3 gallon tank, at 38mpg highway that's 3 Fill ups! And one of those could have been before he left.

So, 2, 10 minute stops vs 11, 19 minute stops!?!?!?
That's a little under 3 additional hours to charge!

I don't want to sound like an EV hater, because I'm definitely NOT!

But, the article definitely doesn't make a strong argument for the car.

Especially, considering I used pretty conservative numbers!

You repeated yourself three times in this article to increase the word count like kids do in highschool when they are required to have 3 page essay !!

We're acting like these are good stats! 😂 Would have stopped a quarter of the times and spent half the money on good ole fuel oh and it doesn't take 17-20 min to fill my tank.

$350 to go ~1500 miles?!? That's ridiculous. My Sorento hybrid would only need 3 tanks to go 1500 miles and it would only cost about $140.

Glad I didn't look into the EV9..

Electric is still a long way from being easy ,convenient and comparably priced with gas for recharging on trips. My 2017 Buick LaCrosse with a 310 HP V6 has averaged 26 miles a gallon over the course of 60,000 miles. It gets 33-36 mpg on the highway. I would have only had to fill up four times on a 1500 mile trip at less than half the cost of recharging that electric vehicle.
If you can charge at home and don't take long trips....Electric works. The new Chevy Boltb or Equinox is affordable and perfect for that situation...but still not on long trips.
Still no contest for long distance driving!

Exactly how long did it take from start to finish to do this 1400 Mile drive

I went Denver to central Illinois and back (just under 2000 miles) in a Chevy Colorado. Only stopped 5x... and even at 3.50/gallon spent the same. And a Chevy truck vs a Rivian obviously was much more affordable to buy/own. These articles still dont wow people even sorta on the fence. Proves they're economical against a Lamborghini

I love my EV but $350 for electric with 7 EA stops is the reason why EV will never be widely accepted..

The KIA telluride I rented last year gets 25mpg on the freeway.. that would be 60 gallons of gas. Would tale 3-4 tanks at 5 minutes each at a cost of $150-$200.

Driving within 100 miles radius is wonderful for EV, anything beyond that is not worth the trade off honestly.

Sorry but $350 for 1500 miles is expensive. The least efficient vehicle i can think of, a gas heavy duty truck, could do 1500 miles for less. Like a Ram 2500 6.4 hemi truck with 50 gallon tank could do it with one fill up.

How is this considered a positive story for EV or Kia? I would have spent half that amount in my gasoline car.

If you had a gas car that got just 20 mpg., it would take about 75 gallons. That would cost around 225 dollars. My diesel truck averages 24 on the highway. My old Maverick got about 34. Why did he stop to charge 12 times. Once every 125 miles? Something is off here.

The electricity charges here ($350 for 448 KWHs) are totally crazy. That is $.78/KWH, or 5+ times what it should cost if electricity for cars was priced similar to gasoline for cars. The cheapest gasoline in the country currently is close to $2/gal and the most expensive gas in the continental US is $4? Many people in the US have access to electricity to charge their cars at home off peak at very inexpensive rates (less than $.10/KWH) 1/10th of the rates described here. Do we have people writing articles about a drive across country where they paid $30/gal for gasoline? What would readers think of I wrote about a trip where my gasoline charges for a 1488 mile trip were $2,200, as if that was normal?
I will keep using my $.06/KWH electricity to charge my 4 mile/KWH car to drive near my home, (equal to a gasoline car that gets 200 mpg on $3/gal gasoline) thanks.

Is this article a joke? A 1481 mile journey and he had to stop and charge
THIRTEEN TIMES? That's 113 miles per charge. Google 113 miles per fill up. It tells you there is something seriously wrong with your car.

Stopping 13 times over 1482 miles? At 55 Mph that would be every two hours, at 70 Mph, what the article states, that is every hour and a half. No thanks to that drive. Does the Kia really only get a reliable 114 miles per charge, 1482/13? Kia should work very hard to kill this story. It makes their car look horrible and super expensive to own. Plus, $350 to charge for 1482 miles? At 20 mpg in a gas car with $4 gas prices it would be less than $300 for the trip and that is driving a car with terrible gas mileage buying all you gas at the highest rate. Still cheaper than this EV. Why is this considered a good article? Sometime is wrong.

I'm afraid this guy loses some credibility by talking about mountain driving when there's absolutely nothing but straight highways and windswept plains between Oklahoma and Denver. The mountains are west of Denver.

That's a charge every 150 miles. Too many for me.

I must be missing something. This seems like a reason to never buy an EV. You spent around 4 hours charging during this trip. You spent $350 to charge. My 3 row SUV can get 25mph highway and then some. $350 to charge $3.50 per gallon gas means I could have gone 2500 miles instead of 1481 for the same cost and done it with 1/3 the amount of stops.

$350 for 1462 miles is about 12mpg if the car was gasoline. Not impressed!

Gas is less than $2.50 in Kansas so spending $350 on charging works out to around 10 miles a gallon. So where was the savings?

I don't understand. 1450 mile trip assuming 30mpg would use less than 50 gallons of gasoline. At $2.95/gallon, that trip, using gas, would cost less than $150. You spent $350. Since I used very conservative estimates, the actual savings for gas vs electric is greater than $200. You also refueled 13 times. I struggle to see any advantages citing your road trip. All you proved is its doable, not efficient.
Am I missing something here?

So it took about 3 hours longer than it would in a gas vehicle. Yeah no thanks. Not there yet.