Article: Charging The Electric Rivian R1S Was More Expensive Than Filling Up Some Notorious Gas Guzzlers

[kurtlikevonnegut]

On road trips I always look for hotels that offer free charging. That helps lower overall costs. On my last trip (NC to Vermont and back) I was able to charge free at 2 hotels and for free at couple of restaurants. Got to be careful with hotels - some are free, some are low cost, and others will gouge you.

One of my biggest takeaways from my recent long trip is that not nearly enough hotels offer charging for EVs. I don't think they need to have chargers, but it's not that much to ask for every hotel to have at least a handful of spots with 14-50 plugs available.

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[Deacon]

One of my biggest takeaways from my recent long trip is that not nearly enough hotels offer charging for EVs. I don't think they need to have chargers, but it's not that much to ask for every hotel to have at least a handful of spots with 14-50 plugs available.

Absolutely agree. I have occasionally driven around the hotel parking lot looking for an outlet to plug into - better than nothing.

 

[kurtlikevonnegut]

Absolutely agree. I have occasionally driven around the hotel parking lot looking for an outlet to plug into - better than nothing.

I do the same. I've found that some hotels have outlets built into the light posts in the parking area, and occasionally you can find an outlet on the exterior of the building that is reachable with a mobile charger. Even the 30-50 miles you can get from an overnight charge on a standard wall outlet is better than nothing. On my recent trip I had to do one extra (but short) charging stop to make sure I had enough juice to get to the first fast charger the following morning, which would have been unnecessary if the hotel had available wall outlets.

 

[Rivian Owner]

ICE vehicles not all that long ago couldn't go more than a couple hundred miles because they got 8 to 10 mpg. I remember a lot more gas stations and more frequent stops for fuel. This only changed as engine technology got a lot better. It only took 100 years. Given modern batteries and all, I think it is pretty amazing how far EVs have come in so little time.

 

[TexasBob]

Public charging is ridiculously more expensive than it should be and outside of Tesla network it is very unreliable...

He's not wrong. I just did a 2400 mile trip from San Antonio to Greenville,SC and public fast charging (mostly on Tesla and RAN) cost more than it would have to drive our Honda Odyssey that gets about 25 mpg. I made a spreadsheet to track costs and charging speed and it was a little shocking how expensive it is.

For reference, I paid an average of $.42/kwh. Electricity on average is $.12/kwh across the US, so charging providers are charging roughly 350% to charge your EV. Gas is usually sold at cost or sometimes even below cost. My takeaway is that scarcity is driving costs, and until there is more charging available the public charging providers will continue to scalp the early adopters.

Public charging IS too expensive and it is why I have narrowed my DCFC to Tesla and RAN with one paid membership.

A pretty reliable rule of thumb for EVs is as follows:

Highway driving 1 kwh = 0.1 gallon of gasoline
City Driving 1 kwh = 0.12 gallon of gasoline

You can run various examples for yourself, but the upshot is that ~10 kwh gives you the same driving distance on the highway as 1 gallon of gasoline in a comparable vehicle and ~8.3 kwh gives the same driving distance in the city.

With that in mind, the gasoline equivalent price (current national average $3.00 a gallon) is 30 cents / kwh highway 36 cents / kwh City. Anything more than that and you are paying a premium for driving electric.

N.B. Even efficiency champion Lucid, with its new Gravity, gets a notional 3.9 miles / kwh combined city/hwy. That should equate to around 3.7 highway on the EPA and when compared to its look-alike Toyota Sienna which is rated at 36 mpg on the highway (i.e. 1 kwh = ~ 0.1 gallon of gasoline).

 

[kurtlikevonnegut]

Public charging IS too expensive and it is why I have narrowed my DCFC to Tesla and RAN with one paid membership.

A pretty reliable rule of thumb for EVs is as follows:

Highway driving 1 kwh = 0.1 gallon of gasoline
City Driving 1 kwh = 0.12 gallon of gasoline

You can run various examples for yourself, but the upshot is that ~10 kwh gives you the same driving distance on the highway as 1 gallon of gasoline in a comparable vehicle and ~8.3 kwh gives the same driving distance in the city.

With that in mind, the gasoline equivalent price (current national average $3.00 a gallon) is 30 cents / kwh highway 36 cents / kwh City. Anything more than that and you are paying a premium for driving electric.

N.B. Even efficiency champion Lucid, with its new Gravity, gets a notional 3.9 miles / kwh combined city/hwy. That should equate to around 3.7 highway on the EPA and when compared to its look-alike Toyota Sienna which is rated at 36 mpg on the highway (i.e. 1 kwh = ~ 0.1 gallon of gasoline).

I came to a similar conclusion at about $.32/kwh being the breakeven between ICE and EV cost. based on $3.00/g gasoline. Considering the costs of electricity, it's really not that much to ask to have charging available at less than $.30/kwh.

 

[AARivian48]

This is the BS California has pulled. in the beginning they piled on free charging, special rates to charge at home. Once enough of us got on electric cars, then public and home charging rates tripled and they continue to increase electric rates although state has excess renewable energy during day time. it made a ton of sense in every aspect to get an EV and charge at home 5-7 years ago. Nowadays it is not beneficial. Not only my electric car costed me more money to buy, but also costs per mile to drive and insure. most people on fixed income or on salary could not keep up with it. cheaper to drive my 4runner then R1T in every aspect. I still keep my 2 electric vehicles and drive them because it is a personal preference and can afford it.

 

[Rivdog]

Electricity used to be significantly cheaper than gas but times have changed. My total kWh cost has gone up nearly 50% over the past several years while gas is still about the same. Gas is obviously more volatile and has the potential to be much higher at times, but the idea that driving an EV saves money on fuel isn’t that strong of an argument. I drive EVs because I love the way they drive (and for national security reasons, which is another topic altogether), not because they save money anymore.

Back when Tesla was giving out free supercharging and a midsize SUV got 22 MPG combined in real world use, sure, EVs saved a lot of money. With the hybrid market becoming so strong and EVs like Rivian only getting about 2.5 miles per kWh under typical use (and less in the cold), it’s only a significant cost savings if you can charge at home and drive a lot. And that’s fine! Make an educated choice and don’t complain if you didn’t do the research. I’d buy a Rivian even if it was just as expensive for electricity because it’s just waaaaaay more enjoyable to drive than a comparable ICE.

 

[mikehmb]

David Tracy is actually a quite brilliant gearhead, and while the title of the article could be improved, his points inside of it are valid. He's also an admitted "Series Hybrid Range Extender Stan" which I do not disagree with, on a practical level.

The uneducated public will see "xyz MPG" and think they'll get that at all speeds, which is dumb. The same public will see "range xyz" and think they'll get that at all speeds, which is similarly dumb but a little more understandable, as the city/hwy mpg estimates are flipped with EVs and hybrids - most of which the general public has no experience with.

Also - public charging infrastructure, as we all know, is much more expensive than what most of us pay at home (considerably so for people in low-cost energy states).

Anyway, I'm a huge Autopian fan, and while I've taken issue with the way several of his articles have been positioned, the content is not wrong.

 

[elatrickWheels]

It was certainly more enjoyable to drive past California gas stations with >$6 prices when the RAN was free.

 

[LR4toR1S]

Many of us drive electric due to the overall (however slim is some cases) waste emission generated from manufacturing and using an BEV in total. IMO it has very little to do with cost of charging vs ICE. I have a full solar array. My impact is much smaller and cheaper on my wallet than someone who relies solely on public charging. But that isn't my main motivation. It's to push the clean modes of transportation into profit so everything eventually gets much much better.

 

[DCFC]

David Tracy is actually a quite brilliant gearhead, and while the title of the article could be improved, his points inside of it are valid. He's also an admitted "Series Hybrid Range Extender Stan" which I do not disagree with, on a practical level.

The uneducated public will see "xyz MPG" and think they'll get that at all speeds, which is dumb. The same public will see "range xyz" and think they'll get that at all speeds, which is similarly dumb but a little more understandable, as the city/hwy mpg estimates are flipped with EVs and hybrids - most of which the general public has no experience with.

Also - public charging infrastructure, as we all know, is much more expensive than what most of us pay at home (considerably so for people in low-cost energy states).

Anyway, I'm a huge Autopian fan, and while I've taken issue with the way several of his articles have been positioned, the content is not wrong.

Exactly, everything David said was accurate. The only mistake he made was not going to the RAN in Vegas.

 

[iansriv]

Not knocking the man but, what similar ICE SUV gets 19MPG? My RR got about 8MPG at that speed. Even if the ICE and EV were the same at highway speeds, the biggest factor is home charging. For me at least.

"Sure, that’s at 80 MPH much of the time, but come on. You could get 19 MPG highway doing 80 MPHsome of the way with lots of gas guzzlers out there."

 

[CANCERDOC]

This is why the figure of mi/kwh is a better way to estimate mileage than the dumb MPGe which assumes ridiculously low electric rates that only exist in the middle of no where. EV charging costs on the west coast are much higher and charging at home is a necessity. The amount you save by charging at home (even with CA electricity prices I estimate I am getting the equivalent of 50mpg) more than offsets roadtrip costs.

 

[DCFC]

Not knocking the man but, what similar ICE SUV gets 19MPG? My RR got about 8MPG at that speed. Even if the ICE and EV were the same at highway speeds, the biggest factor is home charging. For me at least.

"Sure, that’s at 80 MPH much of the time, but come on. You could get 19 MPG highway doing 80 MPHsome of the way with lots of gas guzzlers out there."

This is also one area of improvement that could have been made in his article. Plenty of SUVs than can get 19mpg at 80mph, but none that have 600+ hp and do 0-60 in the 3s or 4s.

Edit: my mistake, he does actually address this.

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