Electrify America “pumps” can be
activated via app, Apple Wallet, or a
credit card swipe; at right, Seabaugh
manhandles the bulky CCS charger.In the old days of electric vehicles,
leaving L.A. via the 43-mile-long Grape-
vine was a daunting obstacle that would
bleed off battery range. Not the case here.
I lost 67 miles of range on the 30-mile
climb, still had 155 miles left at the 4,144-
foot summit near Gorman, and gained
back 12 miles on the harrowing 13-mile
plunge into the San Joaquin Valley.
After a sole half-hour stop near Bakers-
field, with me snacking at an Electrify
America station and Reynolds at a Taco
Bell, both the Kona Electric and 1.6T
arrived no worse for the wear 4 hours and
25 minutes after we’d set off. Ducking
an illegally parked non-electric Mazda
CX-5 and Mercedes-Benz C-Class (no
respect!), we plugged the Kona Electric
into Paso Robles’ sole remaining free
Electrify America fast charger space,
charged the battery to full—in retrospect
an expensive decision—and went off to
brim the gas Kona’s tank and grab lunch.
The return trip, this time with me
in the gas Kona and Reynolds in the
electric, went much the same as the
first—uneventful. Although I missed the
electric car’s smoothness and quietness,
I didn’t hate getting back to L.A. about 90
minutes before Reynolds, whose 5.5-hour
journey included a stop at an Electrify
America station to charge and grab a late
lunch—and heavier late-day traffic.
With both cars re-energized, the
gasser from our local Chevron and the
electric from an EVgo fast charger across
the street from our office, we started to
crunch the numbers to see how much
time and money we’d spent on the trip.
The results surprised us. We’d assumed
the gas Kona would do the trip quicker
but the electric one would do it cheaper
and more efficiently. As my high school
Army JROTC instructor, Sergeant Wayne
Atherton, was fond of asking, “You know
what happens when you assume, right?”
Our over-reliance on Electrify America
stations, which charge a $1 session fee
plus a per-minute fee based on the charge
rate your vehicle is capable of accepting
(which in our case works out to $0.69 per
minute for up to 125 kW) to fully charge
the Kona’s battery is largely to blame for
the massive cost—especially because EV
charging rates slow significantly once a
battery exceeds 80 percent capacity.
Our two times charging to 100 percent
were blow-out expensive, Reynolds said,
calling the decision “stupid” in retro-
spect. Per-minute charging by Electrify
America and EVgo puts a preposterous
penalty on charging to 90 or 100 percent,
particularly Electrify America, which has
higher dollar-per-minute rates.
“Our loosey-goosy planning exposed
how eye-wateringly expensive minimal
planning can be if you choose to travel
across Electrify America’s network,”
Reynolds said. “The Kona Electric cost us
over double what the gas version did to do
basically the same trip—even while using
far less energy. This is completely upside
down from the usual situation where the
EV is about half the cost per mile of a gas
car, based on far cheaper home charging.
If we fumbled like this all the way across
the country, we’d be broke by Brooklyn.”It would break with the spirit of our
story, but a little planning would’ve gone
a long way. Although there’s no app avail-
able for other EVs as easy to use as Tesla’s
Trip Planner ( because it’s built into Tesla’s
infotainment system), free websites like
ABetterRoutePlanner.com show that we
could’ve easily saved $40 or so if we’d fast
charged the Kona’s battery only enough to
get us to our destination and then opted
for slower Level 2 charging overnight at
our hotel. Hindsight and whatnot.As with all things, both gas and electric
powertrains have their compromises. The
former offers a less refined experience,
is generally more expensive to run day to
day around town, and pollutes more. But
there are refueling stations everywhere.
The latter is generally more expensive
up front, will cost more to travel with,A half hour to (^) requires some planning before embarking
add 3 0 percent
charge to the
Kona’s battery
is pretty quick.
We found
the onboard
charge meter
to be dead-on
accurate.
Despite room elsewhere, a CX- 5 and C-Class were parked in EV charging spots.
TIME AND
MONEY SPENT
TRIP
MILES ENERGY ADDED
ENERGY
EFFICIENCY REFUELING TIME COST
Kona 1 .6T actual 514.6 17.15 gal (572
kW-hr equiv)
29.3 mpg 10 min $63.03
Kona Electric actual 514.6 168.63 kW-hr 102.8
mpg-e
276 min (L3) $140.97
Optimal L3 charge plan via ABetterRoutePlanner.com 205 min (L3) $98.60
Optimal L3/L2 charge plan via ABetterRoutePlanner.com 94 (L3) + 466
(L2) = 560 min
$82.90
Reference, Level 2 home charging for similar distance 575 min (L2) $25.87
Assumes $0.1534/kW-hr average California residential electric price