EV Chronicles #67 - EPIC Polestar 3 and EV9 Winter Roadtrip

I just returned from a weekend roadtrip from my home in SE PA to Warsaw, Indiana and back.  This is the first time I have road-tripped using mostly Non-Tesla chargers. Other than the cost/kWh being 25-50% more than the Tesla chargers (particularly with a monthly subscription), all of the chargers we stopped at were great. I think we ran into only 2 Chargers that weren't working and I had one session on my final leg home where I seemed to be having a communications issue between my Polestar and Francis Energy chargers in our dozen or so charging stops. Each site we stopped at had 6 or more Non-Tesla chargers, so that is more than a 94% working percentage which is pretty great if you ask me. Many sites we stopped at also had 8 or more Tesla (NACS compatible) chargers nearby if not directly across the parking lot that we could have used IF we ever had issues. When you have as many different charging options available to you near each and every planned charging stop, EV road-tripping becomes so stress free, because you no longer have to stress about congested chargers or running into charging issues and being stranded somewhere.

My journey started at 6:30 AM on a Friday morning from Royersford PA in my 2025 Polestar 3. The plan for the trip was to meet my brother in Breezewood, PA where I would leave my Polestar for several days. From there, we took his new 2026 KIA EV9 the rest of the way. I departed, fully charged and pre-warmed up from the charger to minimize range loss due to the COLD weather that morning. The stats for that first leg to Breezewood were as follows:

• Distance Traveled: 160 miles

• Time = 2.5 hours

• 593 wh/mile = 95 kwh used = ~92% of the battery (never trust the BMS!)

• Average Temp = 22 F

  
  

I had the cruise set at 80 mph most of the way which certainly was a big reason my efficiency was so terrible on this leg. The cold didn't help as I used also used 13 kwh of energy for this leg of the trip for cold weather things; 5 kWh for climate control and 8 kWh for misc electronics and battery conditioning. It was really chewing up energy in the last hour as I approached Breezewood as the battery started to condition itself for charging once I arrived at the Rivian Adventure Network Chargers in Breezewood. I didn't want my car to sit in cold weather and at a low SOC (I arrived at 5%) for several days, so charging up for a little bit once I arrived was a must.

Over 635 miles from Royersford to Warsaw

We were at Breezewood long enough to get my car up to 30% SOC (I should have added another 20% or so), hit the bathrooms, got some coffee (and a donut, but my wife will never read this, so I can say this here), and moved all my things over to my brother's 2026 KIA EV9 AWD Long Range for the rest of the trip.

Sadly, more than one of the charging areas were not taken care of through OH

I don't have all the data and specific charging information from his vehicle for the rest of the trip, but I was overall very impressed with how the EV9 charged and handled the cold weather. My brother has reported to me that the vehicle averaged about 430 wh/mile (2.3 miles/kwh) for the entire trip (he started in and returned to northern VA). We generally stopped about once every 2 hours and added about 50-60% to the battery at each stop. Because of the really cold weather we experienced on our journey, we weren't comfortable with driving down into single digits on arrival at our charging stops. We tried to optimize our charging stops based on the EV9's theoretical charging curve (see chart below - our experience was very close to this on every charge). As such, we generally arrived at chargers at around 15-20% and charged up to 70-75%. The EV9 has such a great charging curve that it holds 200 kw charging deep in the pack (~60%), but really starts to fall off quickly after that. We arrived in Warsaw, IN by about 6pm (11.5 hours from when I left home).

EV9 charging rates beyond 70% SOC really fall off quickly

On our return trip, we had some terribly icy and snowy roads until almost the OH-PA border. We used two gallons of washer fluid! Although this slowed us down a little, overall, I think it only added about 30 minutes total to our return trip. We were definitely burning less energy during the first 6 hours of our drive as we were averaging maybe 50-60 mph. Time lost to driving slowly was probably slightly gained back by needing one less charging stop coming back.

Meanwhile, my Polestar was sitting in the cold in Breezewood for 3+ days. It lost about 10% SOC just sitting and another 5% from me warming it up before we arrived to pick it up on our way home. There is no way to start conditioning the battery remotely in the app as far as I know, so my first charging session there in Breezewood was a bit brutal. I averaged 50 kw of power over 25 minutes and only added about 25% to the battery. Fortunately, that was plenty to drive 40 miles down the turnpike to the next set of chargers, which was far enough away to have sufficient amount of time for the battery to warm up significantly. I didn't want to keep my brother waiting too much for me (he arrived slightly before I did and had already charged up to about 80%) just to charge a car that was going to sit for 3 days. I just wanted to add enough to make sure it didn't completely drain the HV battery while we were away. I probably should have added another 20% there at that stop (maybe 10 more minutes) and I would have been able to just drive the car to warm it up upon my return.

It snowed pretty much non-stop in Indiana from Friday night until Monday morning

Since I don't have a ton of nerd level details from my brother, I thought I would share some overall thoughts and impressions from this trip. This is the first time I have road-tripped in an EV that wasn't mine and it was one of the first times my brother has taken the EV9 beyond 200 miles or so from home, so it took us both a little time to get comfortable understanding how the vehicle was going to do in the cold at highway speeds. So here goes!

First, the mapping industry is falling asleep at the wheel right now.  ABRP, Google Maps, Waze...they all have their short comings. Even ABRP which is I have found to generally be best EV route planner, was challenging us because it constantly had out dated data.  My observations are as follows:

• All of the Map Apps are really struggling to keep up with the constant change in EV Charging infrastructure. Good that new chargers are being added so quickly, bad that they cannot keep up with them in the Map Apps.

• We primarily tried to use our in-car apps (KIA's native and Google in my Polestar 3) and then on our phones, ABRP, Waze, and Google Maps.  The main issue we ran into was that many of them are missing chargers that have been up and running for weeks to months.

  • PlugShare was up to date mostly and a good resourse, but it isn't very helpful for planning out a trip like ABRP or in the Car Navigations

• The KIA in-car Navigation is just terrible.  

  • We forced ourselves to use it on the way home.  As soon as our SOC at our destination charger dropped below 20%, it started to attempt to add additional chargers to our trip. That is when we realized the default setting was 20% arrival at the charging destinations. We changed it to 10% arrival (the minimum you can set) for chargers but it didn't seem to accept us changing this value right away.

  • There is no visible estimated SOC at your next destination on the main navigation page in the EV9.  This is a huge miss.

    • I kept ABRP running from the back seat and every 15 minutes or so, updated the realtime SOC in my App compared to the EV9's current SOC to get an updated SOC on arrival. I was able to get ABRP dialed in with its settings to replicate our efficiency experience pretty closely, which helped us build confidence about our estimated SOC on arrival, but this just shouldn't have been necessary.

    • We did discover on the return trip that the SOC at stops is displayed when you are in the planning screen of the Navigation. It was clear if this is updating as we were driving or not.

  • The EV9 navigation is so bad that my brother prefers android Auto with Google Maps or Waze from his phone, but then he has to remember to manually start to precondition his battery 

    • My Polestar 3 has no method to manually start preconditioning of my battery, so I HAVE to use the in-car navigation. The Google Maps in the Polestar isn't nearly as bad a the EV9's navigation.

    • As far as I know, ALL EVs rely on the in-car navigation to figure out when to start conditioning the battery for the next charging session. As soon as you swap over to a map app on your phone via Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, the in-car navigation is basically "turned off". Auto manufacturers really need to change this to allow the in-car navigation to continue to run in the background.

• In-Car Navigation's charger network "prefer" algorithms sucks... it needs major improvement

  • When I select several providers including Tesla, my car always only shows Tesla chargers.  EV9 did the same thing

    • Example: I set my end point on the first morning as the Rivian Charger in Breezewood.  My navigation planned a stop at the Tesla charger like 1/4 mile from the Rivian to charge there before getting to the Rivian chargers.  WHY?

  • Too many of the new charging networks aren't even on the list to select as a preference... IONNA and Evergreen in particular, and already covered above, but also, their chargers don't seem to all be listed in map apps either, so setting them as a preference wouldn't do much good.

• ABRP, Waze, Google Maps

  • All have out dated charger info.  At times, the newer chargers aren't even listed in these Apps on our phones (or in the case of the Polestar 3, Google Maps is also my in-car navigation).

  • I was using ABRP a lot on this trip because the KIA navigation was terrible.  Many times my brother, who has driven this route a few times, knew about the existence of an EA or an Applegreen station at one of the Rest Stops which ABRP didn't have listed.

Finally, I have two other items to mention about this adventure:

• Compatibility Issue between Polestar 3 and Francis Energy Charging station

  • I had a charging session which failed 3 times after a short burst of energy (~1 min) from the Francis Energy chargers in Newberg, PA on my trip home.  Luckily the Tesla chargers were right there. In 2026, this should still not be happening. My brother indicated that he has had issues with his ID.4 at Francis Energy chargers as well. I have no idea what charging hardware they are using and if that is the issue or if there is something else going on.

• The EV9 is a cold weather MONSTER

  • In temps 10-25 degrees, we were consistently getting ~240 miles of range at 70-75 mph, with cabin temps set to 70-72 and with battery preconditioning running for every charging stop.

  • We consistently got 190-210 kw charging rates up through 50-60% which was awesome. The EV9 has an "800-volt" battery architecture and we had no issues finding chargers that could deliver the voltage the car needed to charge at those rates. Charging at a Tesla charger would have limited us to 120 kW I believe.

  • We typically drove about 120 miles stretches using ~50-60% each time.