My mom offered to drive, but I vehemently said no. A 20 minute drive across 13 miles of rolling hills with hardly a soul in sight was no big deal in my Kia EV9, a privilege in fact. The question was, would I stay or come back?
Here’s some context. I signed my son up for a one week Children’s Program at the Catskills Irish Arts Week, where he could learn about Irish music, dance, even Gaelic Football. The location for the class was fairly convenient to my parents’ house, so we drove up from Maryland to visit the grandparents and learn some Irish music. Plus, this week was perfectly positioned right after we returned from our trip to Ireland and still had Irish culture on the brain.
I dropped my son off with his class and returned back to the house to play fetch with the dog and let the four-year-old climb the same tree I did when I was growing up. Then we all returned to pick him up. After class I’d take the kids to McDonald’s in Cairo or a restaurant in East Durham for lunch. Then back to the house to enjoy the pool.
One day I brought the dog with me, and the four-year-old, so we could do something fun together while waiting for the boy’s class to wrap up. The Thomas Cole Museum, the former home of an artist, is dog-friendly on its grounds, so that’s where we went. I had some crazy thoughts about walking the Skywalk across the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, but those thoughts were quickly squashed by signs indicating the Skywalk was closed due to construction.
The Reality of Finding Chargers in the Catskills
Of course I was curious about chargers in the area. This is what I do now. I check everywhere I go. Not just to know for myself, but so I can tell people who live there that charging is available. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with people who tell me there are no chargers, and then I tell them where they are and they’re shocked.
Sadly, the ChargePoint charger at Thomas Cole was out of order. There were a couple other VyaLink chargers in town, but one was listed at $1 per kWh, which is an insane price few would be willing to pay. It would have been perfect while we visited the town of Catskill, since we enjoyed Village Pizza II and walking around to see all the cat statues painted by local artists and sponsored by local businesses. Two hours of potential parked charging time went unused due to the overpriced charger.
Instead, I went back to the same place I charged on Monday. It was behind a Taco Bell, next to Beer World. On Monday, we paid $0.49 per kWh and walked around for a few minutes as we didn’t need long to charge. But on Friday, boy was I surprised. I didn’t even think twice when I plugged in. Then I looked up at the price listed on the stall: $0.69. How did the price go up $0.20 per kWh in four days?
We made the best of it. The car stayed on while we charged to keep us cool, and the boy played a few notes on the violin. My first experience with live music while charging my car. Afterwards, we returned to East Durham for the showcase with all the kids from the program. Such a proud Momma moment!
We charged from 33% to 90%, which took 27 minutes, and our range increased from 110 miles to 288 miles. Why the massive EV faux pas? Normally I would advise against charging over 80% publicly, but for this particular case we still needed to make it back to East Durham and then the house, so I charged extra to give us that buffer.
I knew I had done a decent amount of driving that week, but I was curious what the numbers in the app said. So I pulled up the Kia Access app and checked my EV driving history. I pulled the data into a chart and factored in my net charge used based on subtracting regenerated charge from charge used. I was impressed to learn that 62% of my charge used was returned, over the course of 265 miles of driving. The best performing route was the one between the house and East Durham. The worst was getting on the highway to return home after visiting McDonald’s in Cairo.
The following chart shows you every trip logged in between charging stops. The “Net Used” column shows you how much charge was used minus the amount of charge regenerated. As you’ll see, the vast majority of trips used less than 1 kWh of energy when factoring in regeneration.
About the Actual Road Trip There
We left the house at 7:41am with just 70% charge, as I forgot to plug in the night before to top off. The drive would take at least five hours to complete 319 miles, and the car was saying we had 213 miles of range. Over the course of the drive, I tracked our mileage and range decline. The above chart shows where our battery % was and how many miles we had remaining at each hour of the drive.
First charging stop: Applegreen Electric at the J. Fenimore Cooper Rest Area on the New Jersey Turnpike. We charged for 16 minutes, receiving 51.6 kWh of energy, and paid $30 to do so.
Second charging stop: Rivian Adventure Network in Newburgh, NY. Charging at a Rivian station is slower because of the voltage difference (Kia EV9 uses 800 volts while Rivian uses 400 volts) that requires a conversion of energy to charge my vehicle. So it took 31 minutes to charge back to 80%.
The overall journey took nearly seven hours, including 47 minutes of charging.
What We Did Differently on the Way Home
For the return journey, I knew I wouldn’t need an extra top off to get home. Just one stop would be sufficient. So I chose one that was a more direct midpoint between point A and B. This was still tough for us because both legs of the journey were longer due to traffic caused by rain.
We left Grandma’s just before 9am at 86% charge (this was after driving to East Durham, then back to the house, then charging at a house outlet for about 16 hours). We had 264 miles of range to go 321 miles.
Charging Stop: Applegreen Electric at the Richard Stockton Service Area on the New Jersey Turnpike. This time something weird happened. We went inside for our soft pretzels and bathroom break, but when we came back the car had stopped charging at 57% and 170 miles of range. I was worried that something was wrong. But I started another session successfully, paying $7 to deliver 13 kWh of energy and bring our range to 216 with a 67% battery. The first charging session lasted 12 minutes and cost $18 to deliver 31 kWh of energy.
We arrived back at the house around 3pm with 44 miles of range left and 16% battery.
So what would I do differently next time?
Stick to Applegreen Electric on the Thruway.
For the drive there, I could have made it further on the NJ Tpke, stopped closer to the transition via Route 17 to the Thruway. Then I would have stopped again at the rest area on the Thruway that was closest to my mom’s house, to top off so I wouldn’t be arriving on low charge. I would skip Rivian altogether since it was inconvenient and slow.
For the return drive, I wouldn’t necessarily change anything, but it was hard to go three hours without stopping. Having restless kids fight over the road trip card game you got them, plus driving in torrential downpours, really takes the fun out of road tripping in an EV!