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

Very interesting. It's still a little pricey. In Cal thegas is still 4.00 so my Toyota getting about 35 a gal that trip would be almost half the cost. It would be nice for comfort to have a larger vehicle though. EVs are getting there 10 years and they will be a contender, if they can bring the price down for the car itself.

Wow, $350 for electricity and he says it is comparable to a gas engine. He has a math problem. Average fuel cost for regular is close for all three states he passed through with Colorado being highest at $2.59. let's add .20 for filling up at station near interstates, so $2.79 gallon. My old V8 Grand Marquis gets at least 21 mpg in similar conditions so let's assume gas model of his SUV can at least match that which is more than reasonable. 1482 divided by 21 times $2.79 is $197. $197 isn't comparable to $350. If I drive my lifted Jeep Wrangler which has the aerodynamics of a brick and over pay for gas at $3.00 a gallon I still save over $50 on gas over electric. Closer to comparable, sign, but still wrong. One of our cars is a plug in hybrid and my son has the KIA in the article. Both are charged at home and/or for free at work. That saves a lot of money over gas, but free at work helps a lot, lol. The day is coming when batteries with have much longer range and will charge much faster. At that point EV road trip will make sense from both an economics and travel time. Currently EV road trips do not make much sense.

I thought this was supposed to save money. $350 in charging to travel <1,500 miles? That's $200 in gas in an SUV. $180 in a mini van. $170 in a full-size sedan. And probably 15 minutes in fueling time, total, versus hours of charging time.

I dont see the value here ...

This article just confirmed that the math for EVs do not work. I own a full size SUV and we take family trips quite often. We often drive 700-800 miles per day at speeds of 75-80 mph. I average 20-21 mpg. Quick calculation of 1500 miles of driving at 20 miles per gallon equals 75 gallons. Gas prices in the south are $2-2.50 per gallon. At worst case of $2.50 per gallon, the fuel costs is $187.50. That is just a tad more than half the costs of that EV utility charges. Again, we are utilizing full size American SUV packed to capacity, often w a hitch rack filled as well. If we leave on a full tank, I only need to stop once for gas as opposed to 10 times for electricity. For a family, it couldn’t get any worse w never ending (10 stops) to charge. Time is valuable. All that wasted time along with range anxiety is not worth the headache or the added costs. EVs are best suited for city commuting. I wish real world auto press would be honest about the costs and hardships.

Seriously, $350 for 1480 miles? That's crazy! If you have a car getting 30mpg that would be 50 gallons. At even $4 per gallon that would only be $200. I have a VW ID.4 and charge at home. It costs me less then $2 to go 100 miles. If you plan on doing long distance trips it makes no sense to use an EV. Ours is used just around town. Paying 50-60 cents /kwh at charging stations is ridiculous. My home charging is about 7 cents/kwh. And frankly the few times I did use it going to a location 150 miles away was a challenge. Every time I went to charge it, 3 or 4 units out of 10 were never working. EV's are great for around town, but long distance, forget it!

Sounds OK, until you compare it to the cost of driving a comparable hybrid, our Toyota Rav 4. At almost 40 mpg, and 500 miles range, we would make that trip on 40 gallons, times $3 per for $120. And could do it with only 4 gas stops, including the refill when we got home. That is one third the cost, in a comparable vehicle. And our battery is warrantied for 10 years 150000 miles. Hybrid is the future.

I don't see the appeal in this case. 1500 miles in an older SUV getting only 20 mpg at $4.50/ gallon is only $337.50.

This reporting only reinforces my opinion that EVs are overrated and less convenient for long distance travel. It's a shame industry and regulatory agenda pushed so hard in this direction rather than embracing plug-in rapid charging hybrids with incredible fuel economy, rapid refueling when needed, electric charging when price and timing allows and capability for zero emissions for short commutes.

My Palisade gets 25-27 mpg on the interstates. At $4/ gal., it would have been significantly cheaper. Yes I know home charging is inexpensive but not everyone can do that. Where is the value proposition?

The mileage is 114miles per charge. My work van with v6 and fully loaded gets 500 miles to tank plus a tad more. 3 tanks gas is less than by almost half. Where’s the savings

My F150 at 20 mpg would have cost less than $210 @ 20 mpg and $2 75 per gallon.

That’s actually pretty terrible fuel economy. I drive a 1500 RAM, and we did over 2000 mile trip from New York to Tennessee last summer and we spent around $300 in fuel cost! And that’s for a pickup truck, not a very fuel efficient vehicle.
Weren’t EVs supposed to be super cheap to drive?

I can make that trip in my F350 for less money and fuel prices here are $4.86 a gallon

I can make a trip like that in my F350 for less money even with fuel prices over $4.00 per gallon and cause less environment impact without the caustic lithium batteries and exotic materials contained in your Kia. Giving less impact on climate and being just as comfortable

100 miles average between charges ? 13 to go 1400 miles? And 20 minutes to a half hour each charge?
#patience

Too expensive of a vehicle. When someone makes an EV in the low $20's, let me know.

I don’t understand how this is a cost savings. Glad he loves his suv, but my truck gets >700 miles on a 24 gallon fill up on highway drives. At OK prices, that equates to $150 in diesel.

Am I mathing wrong? 1481/29.1 mpg=50.89 gallons burned.
50.89*$3=$152.67…and I’m being conservative.

Plus, only filling up three times and arriving home full versus charging for 20 minutes every 100 miles… I like EVs but feel like there is this over excitability around them by fans. I also still don’t like them for road trips….love them for commuting.

So the electricity costs was about $0.80 per KW. Yikes!! Gasoline in Oklahoma City and Denver is under $2.60 per gallon now.

A Kia Telluride is bigger than an EV9 and the all wheel drive version gets a combined 20 mpg.. So, doing the math, this trip would cost under $200 for gasoline in a Telluride. With it's 18 gallon tank you can go over 300 miles per tank. That woudd only be maybe 5 or 6 stops for gas instead of 12. This road trip is a pretty weak showing for EV9.

What? That's not efficient at all. That is twice the cost of gas than my Forester gerring 30 mpg on a road trip.

The cost of charging is of 350 for 1482 miles is an effective fuel cost of 23.6 cents per mile. This may not include the home charge the vehicles began with which would add to the cost. Ignoring that and assuming the total cost for this trip was $350, then any similar SUV that gets 20 mpg on $3.50 avg cost per gallon would cost $259 for the same trip. This totally refutes the premise that this was a.lower cost trip than a gasoline powered vehicle. Making claims and not actually comparing to other gasoline powered vehicles is either biased or uninformed and presenting a false picture of reality.

Lmao $350? It would have cost less than $200 in a gas car getting only 30 mpg. What kind of delusion is this?

For comparison, a 2024 Toyota Camry hybrid would consume about 30 gallons gas ($4/gallon, Los Angeles price), so $120 fuel expense, would stop twice for total of about 20 minutes. One third the expense, one tenth the time to refuel.

My hybrid would do it for about $100 in gas and many hours less time.

So .. it cost twice as much as driving my 2019 Toyota Tacoma?? At today's gas prices, it would cost $155 for me to make that same journey.

They didn't say how long it took. I average about 55mph when long distance driving even with stops for gas/meals. So overall, the trip would probably take 27 hours spread over 2 days. We used to routinely drive 600 miles in 11 hours w/2 stops up the I-75 corridor, so that's pretty close.

I tend to plan gas stops ahead of time, so that's no different than planning charging stops. We usually grab a bite close by where we get gas, averaging a total of 30 minutes/stop.

At that distance, at 20 mpg and $2.50 gas prices, it would have been a $185 gasoline fuel cost. Am I missing something?

Great article about the Kia EV9 Wind. One thing that I see that is missing is the total number of hours it took to make the trip.

Can no one do math here. If he spent $350 for 1482 miles that is $0.236/mile.

Lets assume that insurance, registration and oil changes all wash out between EVs and gas, although this is not the case for me where I live in MI.

If that is the case and you use the current national gas price of $2.86/gallon then if you drive a gas car and assume the same cost, that gas car gets 12 .1 miles/gallon ($350/$2.86 per gallon)/1482 miles.

No what car gets 12.1 miles per gallon these days. My wife's Kia Nero PHEV gets 45-50 MPG...

Also note that I own a Cadillac Optiq. Real world efficiency here in Michigan on my 45 mile one way commute (mostly expressway at 70-75 mph) averages 2 miles per kWh in the winter and around 3 miles per kWh.

If charging at home at a cost of $0.17/kWh is comparable to the driving a gas car that gets 33-50 MPG (using the $2.86/gal fuel cost). Still not bad, but not great as I am sure I could get a car to do better than 33 MPG in the winter. Now if you use public chargers then electric cars are significantly more expensive to operate than gas cars...

So a brand new ev got ~11mpg? This would barely make sense if it was an electric hummer...

So the cost was comparable at $350 but stopping 13 times with an average of 17min per stop, he had to wait 221 minutes or 3.6 hours to just charge his vehicle? I guess if you don't care when you arrive, then EV is COMPARABLE? Yea doesn't seem better lol

$350 trip costs seems high to me. A Toyota Grand Highlander Hybrid gets 32 MPG. At $2.49 per gallon at our local Costco, the total fuel costs for that kind of trip would have been $116.

So at $2.99 a gallon that would be just under 13 mpg.