When I received an invitation to my colleague Sam Harrington’s wedding, I was so honored. The Yale Climate Connections team had been through a pretty tough year of attacks on the free press and U.S. climate science, but we had made it through with laughter and tears.
So I knew that I was absolutely showing up with my husband and 4-year-old for this wedding in Madison, Wisconsin, roughly 1,200 miles away from my home in Rhode Island. As with most things in my life, I procrastinated on booking airplane tickets and didn’t start to look at flights until a month or so out. I couldn’t find tickets under $1,300 for the three of us, so my husband and I started to talk about making the journey into a road trip. By that time, the Iran war had broken out, and gas prices were climbing.
After doing some math, we realized that our cheapest option was to take the Kia EV6 that I had leased in January. It seemed like it would be a fun experiment that I could also turn into an article for work, because why not make everything about work, am I right?
Turns out I was right: We saved over $200.
Mapping out our route and hitting the road
My only real concern was whether there would be enough charging stations along the route. The longest trip I had done at that point in the EV was the 210 miles round trip between my house and Yale Climate Connections headquarters in New Haven, Connecticut. My husband and I did some rough mapping of the route to ensure that there were plenty of chargers in range and on our route, and it looked more than doable. We planned to make it to Wisconsin in two days, with an overnight stop somewhere in Ohio. We estimated we’d need to stop for about three charges each day.
And so the adventure began!
Trip to Wisconsin
- Portsmouth, Rhode Island, to Elyria, Ohio: 655 miles and four charging stops
- Elyria, Ohio, to Madison, Wisconsin: 488 miles and four charging stops
Our first charging stop was in Norwalk, Connecticut, at a Wegmans supermarket nearly 140 miles away from where we started. We weren’t super low on charge, but we had been in the car for a bit already and needed to use the restroom and (most importantly) eat lunch. After buying far too much food (which we do every time that we’re in Wegmans) and eating it, we set off on our merry way, fully charged in more ways than one.
We stopped three more times that day. Although we honestly could have done it with just two more charges, I got a little bit of range anxiety in Pennsylvania when we were going through a rural part of the state. The Kia has a map of all the nearest chargers, so I didn’t even really need to plan anything out, but once we got down to 40%, I would start looking for charging stations. Much like in a modern gas car, the Kia also warned us once it got down to a certain range and suggested chargers that were nearby.
I am not a fan of Elon Musk for many reasons, but it is difficult to get away from the fact that Tesla does seem to have the best charging infrastructure in the U.S. Their superchargers, or Level 3 chargers, are easy to find. My Kia is equipped with the Tesla charging port, making it easy and fast to charge up. Other options include:
- EVgo also provides decent charging infrastructure, including superchargers. According to EVgo’s website, more than 40% of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of an EVgo fast charger.
- PlugShare aggregates public charging stations all over the world.
There are even apps that allow you to find private owners who have chargers that you can use.
Charging my car from 10% to 80% took as little as 20 minutes on the superchargers, and with a 4-year-old in tow, by the time we went inside the rest area to go to the bathroom and buy a snack, we were already at 20 minutes. My husband said that it was nice to have those extra couple of minutes to slow down and stretch our legs.
Each charge cost between $15 and $35, varying because of differences in sales tax and energy prices, the time of day, and, of course, how much charge we started with.
Return trip:
- Madison, Wisconsin, to Cleveland, Ohio: 490 miles and three charging stops
- Cleveland, Ohio, to Portsmouth, Rhode Island: 628 miles and four charging stops
We charged our car for free at the hotel where we stayed in Madison. On our return trip, we took a northerly route and spent a night in Cleveland, Ohio, pulling into home in Rhode Island by 9 p.m. the following day.
Pearl and Kai Marvell explore Madison, Wisconsin. (Image credits: Pearl Marvell)
We spent a total of $328.87 round trip to charge our EV. In comparison, if we’d driven my husband’s Toyota Tacoma hybrid instead, we would have spent between $500 and $600 on gas.
I would absolutely do an even longer road trip in an EV in the future. The ride was comfortable; EVs are super fun to drive, and it made me realize just how much infrastructure to support EVs is in place, despite the Trump administration’s efforts to kill clean technology.
So, thanks, Sam, for getting married! Also, if you haven’t read her article about planning a climate-friendly wedding, you should.
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