Pining Away
(Click to enlarge) 		3rd California Roadtrip
in our Ioniq 5

Mark D Larsen

September 5-20, 2025


Narratives, Photos, and Movies

Tamara’s sister Lisa and her husband Dean were planning to take an extended camping trip to the northwest in September, and invited us to stay at their home in California while they were gone. We happily agreed to do so. Their father had died shortly after our previous trip there last February, so this would also give us the chance to visit their 90-year-old mother who had since moved into an assisted living facility.

Like with my roadtrip to Texas last June, I compiled so many photos and movies on this trip that I have decided to split the narrative into separate parts. Readers can pick and choose the segments that most interest them:


EV Data Summary

For those merely interested in the overall EV stats from driving our Ioniq 5 on this roadtrip, I have compiled the basic data from our public charging sessions in the following table:

Miles Driven: 1,793.2
kWh Used: 528.4 kWh
Average Mi/kWh: 3.5
DC Fast Charges: 17
Average Minutes per Charge: 00:11:52
Total Cost: $23.77


Detailed Breakdown of the EV Data

If readers are interested in more specifics about the miles, charges, and efficiency, here are three tables with more details:





Since Rocinante came with 2 years of free 30-minute charges with Electrify America, I should explain the $23.77 highlighted in red above. I had plugged in at these particular chargers In Loomis, CA, several times during our 2nd California roadtrip last February without any problem. I therefore assumed that this time would be the same. Not so!

Electrify America had since sold this site to Costco. The display on the chargers stated that, as a consequence, Costco would no longer honor the pricing for Premium and PASS+ accounts with EA. Well, according to my EA account, I do not have either a Premium or PASS+ plan, but rather a “2024 Ioniq 5 Charging Plan.” I therefore assumed I was safe to again charge there. NOPE! I ended up paying the full amount to plug in, regardless of my 2-year plan. I deem it devious and underhanded for EA to weasel out of their commitment to provide 2-years of free charging by selling its chargers to private businesses. Shame on them!

When I confronted EA about the issue, they responded that my account is “Premium,” although there is nothing —NOTHING!— on my EA account page that specifies such a plan. Nor is it ever specified in the link that describes my “2024 Ioniq 5 Charging Plan.” Moreover, that page states:

"Electrify America reserves the right to end this complimentary promotion at any time before its automatic termination date for any reason, in its sole discretion, provided that Electrify America will send an email to the address associated with your account in the event of any change to the scheduled end date of this promotion."

I never received any such e-mail! Obviously, EA has failed to live up to its agreement with Hyundai and its customers with the 2-year plan by providing such an e-mail when it decided to sell its sites and chargers. And the icing on the caca is that PlugShare and navigation apps continue to identify such sites as “Electrify America,” when in reality they now belong to the private businesses that purchased them. That is downright misleading and deceptive.

Switching to a related topic, readers will also note in the above tables that I included columns with the amounts normal EA customers would have paid on this trip, as well as the cost for gasoline if we can kept our old Subaru Outback, or if we had driven a more fuel efficient car like a Honda Civic. Those columns show that driving an EV would have cost less than our Outback, but more than the Civic. I now know what kind of expenses roadtrips will entail when my 2-years of free 30-minute charges expire in 4 more months. Ah, well… I never invested in my EVs to “save money,” but to simply do my small part to help mitigate the climate crisis.

Finally, I should also clarify that we drove 147.8 miles locally in the Sacramento area during our visit, so the total distance on this trip adds up to 1,941 miles.