First 3 months with an EV
It's been 3 months since we moved from an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) to an EV, so I thought I'd step out the good, the bad, and the ugly of the experience so far, in case you're thinking about making the change too.
Road trips
We're a family of five, who tends to drive to most of our holidays. So clearly one of the biggest fears I had was the dreaded 'range anxiety'. Would we be able to load the family into the EV and still head out for a trip down the coast without having to stop to charge?
The short answer is a resounding 'yes'. We did multiple trips to Sandy Point (150kms), with varying numbers of people, and with and without a cargo pod on the roof without a problem (in fact just over 50% battery left on some trips). We also did from Warnambool to Melbourne (about 230kms) with 5 people and the pod on the roof and had over 50kms of range left. Portland is about another 80kms, so it will be very interesting to see if we can get there with one charge if the car is in 'eco' mode, rather than 'sport'.
The boot capacity of the Ioniq 5 is on par with other EV's, but I was surprised at how little it held compared to the Skoda Superb. To be fair, I was always amazed at how much the Skoda could hold, so this is more a case of our older car being 'great' rather than the new car being 'bad'. But the luggage pod on the roof has been sensational.
Additional costs
If you've ever decided to reduce the amount meat in your family meals, or you've gone gluten free, or you've decided to make more salads from the Yotam Ottolenghi book you were given for Christmas, then you'll know that feeling of 'Oh for crying out loud, now I have to buy a whole lot of new things that I've never needed before, and learn how to cook them'...I call it 'the chickpea conundrum'. Of course you've always had to buy pasta, or eggs or plain flour...it just somehow feels unfair that now you have to buy new things.
Similarly, we bought a home charger (so that we could charge it any time...particularly when the solar panels were working), and got a roof-rack fitted, and bought a luggage pod to go on the roof-rack. So that is about $2,800 for the charger, $500 for the roof rack, and $1,500 for the luggage pod.
It could be argued that this is a pretty poor exchange for not having to go to a service station and fill up with petrol for 3 months...but in the long-term...I think it will make an for an amazing Cauliflower, pomegranate and pistachio salad.
The driving experience
Forced induction is a very interesting way of delivering more power, regardless of the number of cylinders...Ok...I think we've lost all of the people who don't have an interest in cars or driving...hopefully they've just skipped down to the 'technology' section.
The experience of driving an EV is pretty different to driving an ICE car. The power is immediate and linear (which can be great when you need to overtake...but can also feel like you're driving a dodgem car). Our car is wider and heavier than any other car I've driven, and it has a longer wheel-base (so a wider turning circle). So I would never describe the car as 'fun' to drive. In fact, every time I hop in our eldest child's 2001 Subaru Liberty wagon, with its manual transmission and no form of Apple Play, I'm reminded of how much 'fun' it can be when you really have to listen to the car and work with it.
But with more and more driving being little more than a series of 200m bursts between one lot of traffic and the next, the 'joy of driving' and 'fun' may be things of the past, and so a comfortable, quiet, sturdy car that can make Punt Rd a pleasant catch-up with your 'podcast friends' may not be such a bad thing.
Technology
Now I realise that a lot of this technology is available in any new car, so this is not necessarily EV specific...but it has been pretty awesome for the first three months, so I'm going to talk about it.
On stinking hot Australian days, I can press a button on my phone 10m minutes before we leave and it will start cooling down the car, so that when everyone piles into the car, it's not a sauna. I am WELL aware of how gauche and unnecessary this sounds...but there have been enough moments in the last three months when this has been an absolute God-send, that I will not be listening to anyone bad-mouthing this feature.
As someone who regularly parks the car, then 5 minutes later thinks 'Wait...did I lock the car?!' the fact that I can now lock the car from my phone any time and anywhere, will hopefully mean a lot fewer grey hairs for me...and a lot less of everyone else having to hear 'You just keep walking, I'm just going to race back to the car and check something'.
There is also wireless phone connection, multiple USB-C chargers for phones, a display on the windscreen of how fast I'm going, and a parking camera that shows me an overhead view of the car, which is great for showing how straight I haven't parked the car.
But also...the technology
In my lifetime, car manufacturers have gone from 'Here's a V8 with no ABS...good luck!' to 'here's a car with so many alerts and noises, that it feel less like driving a car and more like living in an Aphex Twin track'.
If you're in a driveway with any plants, the car will throw more 'beeps' at you than the 'radio safe' version of an NWA song in the 90s.
If you're travelling towards an intersection with a speed camera, it will turn down your music to let you know about it. If you disable this feature, it will still turn down your music...it just won't tell you anything.
If you travel more than 2kms over the speed limit it will beep at you...which on the face of it is a good thing...but it also believes that every school zone is perpetually 40kms/h (even at 10pm at night) and so freaks out at your speed, even though it's perfectly legal. As you drive past the tram depot on St George's Rd, it's convinced that you should be travelling at the 10km/h speed of the tram depot rather than the 70km/h speedl limit of the road you're on...and is not backward in coming forward to tell you about it.
If you're driving somewhere there are roadworks, the lane-assist will quite happily steer you to where it thinks the lane should be, rather than where it temporarily is.
I realise that car companies now have to design their safety features assuming that drivers are on their phone and angry...but for those of us who are neither, it feels pretty patronising.
Overall thoughts
I definitely feel that we've had to pay more money to get a car that pollutes less...and that sucks. I also haven't filled up my tyres at a service station, as I'm suddenly not sure if that's 'OK' with an EV. And I really don't know how well the car will hold its value with how quickly new technology is being developed.
But I love this car, and our next car will be an EV as well.
