Yahoo Autos We took our long-term 2022 Kia EV6 on a 1,400-mile road trip
Taking our long-term 2022 Kia EV6 GT-Line on road trips to test both it and our country’s charging infrastructure is one of the big reasons why we decided to spend a year with this EV. So, when the opportunity for me to embark on a 1,300-mile journey came up, I jumped for the EV6’s keys.
The route? Detroit to Saratoga Springs, N.Y. That’s just over 650 miles there and another 650 miles back — of course, like any road trip, I took a number of detours along the way that caused the total mileage for the trip to be closer to 1,400 than 1,300. Having experience in electric car road trips helps make future ones smoother — you’ll go in knowing that there’s far more prep work necessary than hopping in a traditional gasoline-powered car for a long trip. Some EVs (namely Tesla) make this prepwork either negligible or non-existent thanks to navigation systems that automatically route you through charging stations for maximum efficiency. However, our EV6 has no such advanced routing software.
I turned to the handy PlugShare app (there are ads, but it hasn’t let me down before) to map a route from Michigan all the way to eastern New York. Assuming you tell the app what EV you’re driving, it will automatically suggest charging stops along the way that take into account the car’s range. For the first 650-mile stint, it required three charging stops, all near the major cities of Cleveland, Ohio, Buffalo, N.Y. and Syracuse, N.Y. I spent the evening before the trip topping off the EV6’s battery to a full charge, which is highly recommended to get you going strong on the first leg of any EV road trip.
At my first stop along the way just outside Cleveland, the initial attempt at charging at a Electrify America station was a failure due to a broken payment terminal. What a great start! I moved the car over to the next stall, and this charger worked flawlessly. If you’ve ever experienced a particular pump not working properly at a gas station, requiring you to move to a different one, the experience is similar here, but a little worse. It simply takes longer to maneuver the giant, heavy plugs and get the electricity flowing than it does to pop a gas nozzle into a car.
Once juice is flowing, this is where the EV6 shows its superiority over most other EVs. The charging speed quickly ramps up to and even past 230 kW, meaning you only need to spend about 15-20 minutes to go from a 0-80% charge on chargers maxing out at 350 kW. A 20-minute stop still isn’t as convenient as a five-minute fuel stop, but if you’re someone who likes to take breathers on road trips, it’s the perfect-length break to stretch the legs and grab a quick bite to eat at a fast-food joint (hopefully there's one nearby). Kia’s app, which we’ll touch on in a future update, does a lovely job of keeping you informed about how much charge the car has, and will even notify you if the car unexpectedly stops charging due to a charger malfunction — yes, this happened later on in the trip. Electrify America's app will also do this.
From Detroit to Buffalo, it only took six hours and some change. Most gas-powered cars could do this trip without a single stop in 20-30 minutes less time, which is notable, but it’s hard to get worked up over an extra half hour. Charging up in Buffalo for the N.Y. leg of the trip was met with another small annoyance. As soon as I made it into the nearby Walmart to aimlessly stroll about for 15 minutes, the charger “broke” and stopped charging the car. Of course, EV chargers tend to be in the far-reaching parts of any lot, so I needed to make the long trek out to the car and plug into one of the other available chargers, causing more time to pass and even more irritation. This one worked the whole time (and thank goodness it wasn't already occupied), but with my trust broken, I didn’t leave the car’s side.
That’s two charging stops with two minor annoyances that in the end were easily overcome. Still, that’s two annoyances too many, and if these charging stations were full of other EVs charging, I would’ve been out of luck and subjected to much longer waits. Luckily for me, I hit these Electrify America stations when they were deserted.
The last charging stop in Syracuse was the least troublesome and best of the bunch. It was an Electrify America station, but was part of the Evolve NY program that the state is touting to increase the number of charging options. Every charger at the station was working flawlessly, and the car charged at its peak potential. This is how it should work!
