Going on the open road in an electric car sounds absolutely awful.
We are admittedly ahead of the general population when it comes to electric vehicles, having experienced them firsthand ourselves many times over the past decade-plus. Most people are just now starting to become fully aware of this hardcore push to compel everyone to buy EVs as well as the many shortfalls and compromises they embody. While most corporate media stories do a great job of skipping past these negatives, painting instead an unbelievably rosy picture, every once in a while one unintentionally tells the horrific truth.
See one company’s solution for going overlanding in an EV here.
Just such a gem was published by Axios not too long ago as the author recounts her experience taking a long road trip in a Kia EV6. The stated purpose of the article was to highlight how the US needs a more robust charging network, which seems to be why it was so honest about the difficulties keeping the electric car fueled.
The trip entailed driving 1,500 miles from Michigan to Florida. That’s a long distance just in a regular vehicle. A determined road tripper can easily polish that off in two days, although the experience would be exhausting. Still, with minimal stops and a night in a hotel, the journey could be accomplished with time to spare.
From the get-go, the author seems to not understand that the EPA-estimated 274 miles of range for the Kia EV6 all-wheel-drive model she was using doesn’t really mean she can go 274 miles between charging stations. After all, in an EV everything runs off the battery, which would be like the radio, heater, AC, lights, etc. all directly burning gas from the tank of your traditional vehicle. And compared to many full-size gas vehicles, that 274-mile range is quite frankly pathetic.
What she also doesn’t seem to understand is that just because that Kia comes with the ability to use DC fast chargers doesn’t mean she will always be able to find ones that are available and working correctly. After all, many EV owners arrive at charging stations to find they’re suffering from software problems, have been vandalized, or are in use with a queue. That means either spending an hour or multiples waiting in line or risking running out of charge to find a station that’s available and hopefully working.
Details from the journey are pretty unpleasant. They didn’t run the heater at first in the dead of winter while leaving Detroit for fear they wouldn’t reach the first charging station before the battery ran out of juice. They had to stop a total of 12 times during the trip. The author tries claiming if they had cannonballed the trip they could’ve done it in 24 hours. That’s a dubious claim if each stop took at minimum 20 minutes, totaling 4 hours. But some stops required upwards of 55 minutes, so their time waiting for the car to recharge was probably more like 5-plus hours.
Finally, the author boasts about how after a while their confidence in the Kia’s range increased so she and her husband no longer felt anxiety about making it to their next destination. On a road trip, we hate getting too far below half a tank of gas yet the author bragged about how they weren’t concerned as the battery level dropped to under 10%. Unexpected situations can arise on a road trip, like an accident diverting traffic from an expected route, weather slowing down or even stopping your progress, etc. Living so close to the edge should create some anxiety. With all the Teslas and other EVs we’ve seen traveling on wreckers literally in the middle of nowhere, we think this false sense of security people feel in their electric car can end badly. Maybe someone in a gas- or diesel-burning vehicle will come to their rescue?
Images via Kia
