we actually just bought our first full Ev about 2 weeks ago. A Hyundai no less. Never thought I'd actually own a Hyundai product, let alone a full EV Ioniq 6. But hard to argue with 400-500 km range on a $10 charge.
320 Hp and AWD doesn't exactly hurt either. Man, is this thing quick! Instant torque right at idle is fun! Dropping the hammer isn't exactly good for battery range, but it sure is fun! I swear to jebus, I actually feel my eyeballs going “out of round” when I floor it from a stop. The acceleration is almost violent. Go into the OS and disable the front axle motor and flip off the traction control switch and this thing is a real tail wagger! A complete full on, lung bursting laugh machine!
I have to keep reminding my self this thing is a Hyundai....a freaking 320 hp, 446 lb/ft, 4 door..... Hyundai......cripes, I never would have seen that coming. I still remember when the "Pony" was sold off showroom floors and they threw in a roll of sheet metal and a box of pop rivets to replace the floors the next year.......
Overnight charging on a home level 2 charger to 100% and it's good to go for at least three days back and forth to work and some running around. 18 minutes for 0 to 100% on a level 3 charger (fast charger), but no need for that as it pretty much just goes back and forth to work.
Atlantic Canada cold (averaging -10C to -15C this past week) doesn't seem to bother it at all.
The thing is dead quiet inside. And I mean dead silent. Loudest thing you hear is the wind moving past the side view mirrors, It's actually kind of nice, calming, serene even. You actually start wondering why all cars aren't this quiet. Jump in my 2016 F-150 Ecoboost after the I6 and I actually noticed how much louder it was with the gas engine and my Lariat is pretty bloody quiet compared to other vehicles.
It certainly is a "mind shift" for planning how you use the available kms though. Have to put a little more thought into trips to work and the store and how much charge you're going to burn off. We’re not doing anything much less than we were before the EV, we’re just a little smarter at planning how we’re going to do things. Honestly, we should have been planning out our trips better with our gas cars before as well. The ability to "charge up" in a gas car in 5 minutes had us spoiled and we had gotten to the point where we just accepted the near 600-800 dollar a month fuel bill.
Looking back now at how much we were paying monthly in fuel and it feels like we got caught in the whole "toss a frog in hot water and it will jump out right out. But turn the stove up slowly and..." thing. Not to mention, that bill for unleaded is only going to go one way in the future and that's "up". They just keep turning up that stove nice and slow...
Overall, the change isn't as bad as most think and we're (so far and admitted only 2 weeks in to it) saving a boat load of cash. Just in the week/week-and-a-half we've had it, we're around 125-150 bucks up on what we would have spent in unleaded. Hard to turn your nose up at that with today's economic realities.
We had to trade in the old car for a new one anyways (previous car was 10 years old and starting to cost us significant cash in time and repairs) so the purchase price of an EV comes out pretty much moot for us. The old car probably would have gone another 4-5 years after the last round of major repairs, but the clock was ticking and any residual value it had left in it was rapidly evaporating. 8 grand in gov't grants for new EV's (combined federal and provincial grants) didn't hurt either. The timing of "needing to trade in an older car and buy new" plus the EV change just worked out for us. The "economics" of the whole thing might not have been as appealing if it was just swapping out a gas car for EV because, well... you want to.
We also kicked out the "bumper to bumper" warranty to match the battery pack warranty of 8 years or 160,000 kms. This car is essentially a big software driven computer, so I didn't want to have the car warranty run out at 5 years and still have batt pack warranty remaining.
I am a retired auto mechanic and aircraft mechanic, but anything more than swapping summer/winter tires and this thing is pretty much right out of my wheelhouse. I’m good to work on anything right up to this years fuel injection and computer controls, but this rolling computer is something else altogether.
I have a good grasp on the principles and components it operates on, but I'm certainly NOT sticking my hand down into a car that has a massive 800V battery pack hiding in there just waiting for me to cross a contact or something. No-thank-you. I mean, it's not like the old days where if the radio craps out you pick another one up at the local dept store for 100 bucks and slap it in the dash. Literally everything is connected to everything on this car. You can’t just change a radio or hvac head anymore. Heck, there is literally nothing like that anymore. Its all now control by a dash mounted touchscreen thats 2 1/2 feet long in this thing! There’s no way in heck you’ll be able to afford to change that sucker out if the warranty is kaput!
Extending the warranty was a couple grand extra on the purchase price, but well worth it to me. This is one of those times when you definitely want to pay someone else to work on it for you.....
EV's probably aren't for everyone, but the writing is on the wall for gas power vehicles. Whether you want to read that writing or not doesn’t matter, it's still there....
And so far, EV is working out well for us. I've always got my 2016 F-150 CC LB Lariat if we get caught out at 0% battery charge some random morning and needing to get to work...and I just gotta have a truck for hauling the occasional load of gash around. So I guess we're still "hedging our bets" a bit. Hey, the truck is paid for, I'm retired, it's only got a total of 85.000 kms on the ODO and 150 bucks in the tank lasts me 6 months or more. No sense getting rid of it anytime soon..
And when I think about it, there's still the Corvette in the garage, the Mustang and the Mini Cooper for summer fun or if something just crazy happens to the I6 or F-150....
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