[Travel] LA to Yosemite road trip with an electric vehicle.

TLDR: LA to Yosemite with an EV is a breeze. Well, a breeze for folks with decent planning sense. There are definitely some caveats which I’ll explain soon.

My wife and I decided to hit the road for our anniversary this year and our destination was the iconic Yosemite National Park. However we had one big concern…could we make it there with our EV? When planning a road trip, I think that’s the concern of anyone that owns an EV or anyone that is considering getting one. Here’s our experience.

For starters, we started the trip with a full charge. We own a 2021 Hyundai Kona EV which is advertised to have 258 miles per charge. We’ve seen up to 301 miles of the range reported at full charge on economy mode) so this trip is even easier if you own a Tesla. We live in the North Hollywood/Burbank area and our destination was Oakhurst which is about 40+ miles from Yosemite Valley Lodge. The total mileage for that trip was 253 miles. We probably could’ve barely made it on one charge, but we decided to take a pit stop and charge to 80% in Tulare, CA (and also grabbed some snacks from the location shop nearby). After which it was a straight shot to Oakhurst where we stayed for the night. Awesome news, there’s fast charging available in Oakhurst. We were considering Mariposa but we didn’t see any reliable charging stations there and we didn’t want to take the risk since we had a guided hike at 8 am the next day. With that in mind, we decided to get some more juice for the early morning trip up the mountain to Yosemite Valley.

The extra dope part about visiting Yosemite with an EV is that if you get there early and can beat the crowd for the day, you can snag charging at the lodge for free! Big emphasis on EARLY because we arrived at 7:30 am on a Sunday and there was only one spot left out of the 4 we saw. We hiked for about 6 hours and were able to get a full charge during our time hiking through the valley. Super convenient! [Peep the photos we took of the hike at the end]

Do EVs struggle with getting up mountains? 🗻

So here’s the thing, most folks think that EVs have a hard time with mountainous terrain and I’m here to say that EVs handle mountains like a boss. No literally…driving an EV through mountains is like playing a video game. Although it definitely expends a ton of energy and range on those large elevation climbs, the descent is sometimes enough to net positive on range depending on where you start.  Case and point, on the return trip from Yosemite we gained +12 miles of range during the 40+ miles from the valley back through Oakhurst. Of course, this only makes sense because we were coming from a place of higher elevation than our destination but it was cool to see the regenerative brakes of EVs in action like that. My wife and I are always in competition with each other on who can gain the most range in one session (I’m currently winning with a +5.02 mile gain 😂).

The best part of this whole experience was that it was all FREE! We didn’t pay a single cent on charging throughout the entire trip! I’m honestly not too sure why that was the case, but we usually try to stick with the chargers from Electrify America during our trips because they are pretty reliable fast charging stations and we have the membership through Hyundai. Hopefully, our experience will help anyone who is thinking about doing an EV road trip or even someone who is starting to consider purchasing an EV! We aren’t being paid for this article at all so everything stated here is solely based on our experience!

Quick Flicks from Yosemite 📷