We own EVs. Ask Us Anything.

[cyure]

Unrelated to the current line of questioning (sorry).

My family just jumped aboard the EV train earlier than expected. With the federal tax credit going away, and some seriously massive incentives by manufacturers to move product before then, combined with the likelihood of tariffs and inflation driving up vehicle prices more over the next few years, we took the plunge.

We picked up our 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9 yesterday. We got it for almost 25% off of MSRP. Enough of a discount that instead of paying a premium for an EV, it was actually a few thousand less than a similarly equipped Toyota Sienna/grand highlander.

Still pricy for my blood, but I’ve done the math 6 ways through Sunday, and even compared to used 3 row vehicle pricing, it’s not bad. We paid a few thousand more than the avg used 3 row vehicle with <60k miles on it. And the math shows that over 5 years, the “fueling” costs for the Ioniq 9 is between $6000 -$14000 cheaper if charging at home.

Anyway, we are still learning. But our PHEV experience was good enough we wanted a 3 row family vehicle. Although we did keep the PHEV for road trips for now. Maybe the scout will be a harvester for that purpose when it arrives. Or maybe we will be comfortable enough with EV’s by the time the scout comes out to get the BeV version. We will see.
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These 2 vehicles are 29 model years apart!

Start a thread so us newbies can follow your experience. Please and thank you.

 

[THil08]

Scout has said 36” fording but the question is how to do that in the harvester without choking out the engine

water fording 36" might only be allowed when harvester is off. that way water isn't sucked it.

 

[Logan]

That's awesome! We need you to share your early experiences! The learning curve can be so different for different people and different uses.

My first two learning experiences:

1) Units:

My wife has been involved heavily in the vehicle decision. But, she hasn't been as "technical" with the understanding of how EV's work. So yesterday we were talking about efficiency, and range, and charging things, and she was getting really confused between KW, and KWH, and how you'd use those terms.

Just like with gas vehicle efficiency, there are a bunch of ways you can talk about efficiency/consumption of electricity. IE, with a gas vehicle we usually use "miles per gallon". But you can also do gallons per 100 miles, or liters/100km, or a bunch of other things.

EV's have the same thing with units, and it took me a little while to find another measurement that made "sense" to me. And I've settled on "Miles per KWh" as the one that works in my brain. Its basically the same measurement as MPG, because its distance divided by "the thing you pay for".

But my wife hasn't mentally understood what any of these terms are, and its taking some time to wrap her head around it. So if I said "we got charged 4kw", she'd say "what percentage is that" or "how far can I drive with that".

So, this isn't a bad thing, just making sure you understand the units/measurements., will help de-mystify the charging experience a bit. (I say that I like I know anything about it, but so far its making sense to me).

2) Adapters:

My buddy got an almost identical vehicle (different interior/exterior colors, but same model/trim) the same weekend, for the same reasons. He doesn't have an L2 charging setup yet. His wife went to the local safeway to try to get some charging while shopping (it has free L2 charging for 2 hours). She tried and failed.

Turns out, she was using the wrong charging adapter. She was using the CCS > NACS adapter, which doesn't allow AC charging.

My buddy went back with the right adapter, and got it to work.

For the next few years, it seems like adapter tetris is going to be the name of the game.

 

[J Alynn]

water fording 36" might only be allowed when harvester is off. that way water isn't sucked it.

That’s about the only way I can figure it out maybe there will be like a snorkel button you push that cuts off harvester when you get to a water pass or questionable wet areas and once through you hit the but and back to available harvester???

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

My first two learning experiences:

1) Units:

My wife has been involved heavily in the vehicle decision. But, she hasn't been as "technical" with the understanding of how EV's work. So yesterday we were talking about efficiency, and range, and charging things, and she was getting really confused between KW, and KWH, and how you'd use those terms.

Just like with gas vehicle efficiency, there are a bunch of ways you can talk about efficiency/consumption of electricity. IE, with a gas vehicle we usually use "miles per gallon". But you can also do gallons per 100 miles, or liters/100km, or a bunch of other things.

EV's have the same thing with units, and it took me a little while to find another measurement that made "sense" to me. And I've settled on "Miles per KWh" as the one that works in my brain. Its basically the same measurement as MPG, because its distance divided by "the thing you pay for".

But my wife hasn't mentally understood what any of these terms are, and its taking some time to wrap her head around it. So if I said "we got charged 4kw", she'd say "what percentage is that" or "how far can I drive with that".

So, this isn't a bad thing, just making sure you understand the units/measurements., will help de-mystify the charging experience a bit. (I say that I like I know anything about it, but so far its making sense to me).

Note: “we charged 4 kW” is analogous to “we got 4 gallons per minute.” The unit of kW is a rate; the unit of kWh is analogous to gallons. The battery “contains 99.8 kWh" is the amount of energy that’s stored. The battery "charged at 240 kW" is the rate at which that energy was put into the battery.

I’ve noticed that units have been a source of confusion for a lot of people, even well-seasoned EV drivers. Eventually everyone seems to find a way to make it make sense to them. I created a spreadsheet for my partner so she could better understand the various numbers she’s seeing in both the Mustang and the Lightning. Because who can easily divide/multiply by 90 or 130 in their heads? Not many of us.

Here’s a sample for the Lightning. The numbers across the top row are battery state of charge in %. The numbers down the first column are the reported efficiency in miles/kWh. The numbers in the interior of the table are estimated remaining range (in miles), if the efficiency stays the same. Our table goes from 1.0 to 3.5 miles/kWh and includes every 5% instead of 10% battery state of charge.

Battery % Miles/kWh	100	90	80	70	60	50	40	30	20
1.4	183	165	147	128	110	92	73	55	37
1.6	210	189	168	147	126	105	84	63	42
1.8	236	212	189	165	141	118	94	71	47
2	262	236	210	183	157	131	105	79	52
2.2	288	259	231	202	173	144	115	86	58
2.4	314	283	252	220	189	157	126	94	63

2) Adapters:

My buddy got an almost identical vehicle (different interior/exterior colors, but same model/trim) the same weekend, for the same reasons. He doesn't have an L2 charging setup yet. His wife went to the local safeway to try to get some charging while shopping (it has free L2 charging for 2 hours). She tried and failed.

Turns out, she was using the wrong charging adapter. She was using the CCS > NACS adapter, which doesn't allow AC charging.

My buddy went back with the right adapter, and got it to work.

For the next few years, it seems like adapter tetris is going to be the name of the game.

My guess is that there will be two standards for the next 20+ years until a better standard takes over both. And even then, we’ll likely still see the odd charging station that only works with older vehicles without an adapter. One of the reasons I think the entire NACS vs CCS1 debate is silly. There are so many more CCS1 plugs out there that putting NACS on the cars isn’t making anything more compatible. In fact, those with NACS will be using adapters more often than those with CCS1. And they’ll still have to have a DC and an AC adapter.

 

[BeerParty]

We picked up our 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9 yesterday. We got it for almost 25% off of MSRP. Enough of a discount that instead of paying a premium for an EV, it was actually a few thousand less than a similarly equipped Toyota Sienna/grand highlander.

Welcome to the fold! (fellow Hyundai Ioniq owner here) I hope the HI9 serves you well for years to come.

 

[Logan]

Note: “we charged 4 kW” is analogous to “we got 4 gallons per minute.” The unit of kW is a rate; the unit of kWh is analogous to gallons. The battery “contains 99.8 kWh" is the amount of energy that’s stored. The battery "charged at 240 kW" is the rate at which that energy was put into the battery.

I’ve noticed that units have been a source of confusion for a lot of people, even well-seasoned EV drivers. Eventually everyone seems to find a way to make it make sense to them. I created a spreadsheet for my partner so she could better understand the various numbers she’s seeing in both the Mustang and the Lightning. Because who can easily divide/multiply by 90 or 130 in their heads? Not many of us.

Here’s a sample for the Lightning. The numbers across the top row are battery state of charge in %. The numbers down the first column are the reported efficiency in miles/kWh. The numbers in the interior of the table are estimated remaining range (in miles), if the efficiency stays the same. Our table goes from 1.0 to 3.5 miles/kWh and includes every 5% instead of 10% battery state of charge.

Battery % Miles/kWh	100	90	80	70	60	50	40	30	20
1.4	183	165	147	128	110	92	73	55	37
1.6	210	189	168	147	126	105	84	63	42
1.8	236	212	189	165	141	118	94	71	47
2	262	236	210	183	157	131	105	79	52
2.2	288	259	231	202	173	144	115	86	58
2.4	314	283	252	220	189	157	126	94	63

My guess is that there will be two standards for the next 20+ years until a better standard takes over both. And even then, we’ll likely still see the odd charging station that only works with older vehicles without an adapter. One of the reasons I think the entire NACS vs CCS1 debate is silly. There are so many more CCS1 plugs out there that putting NACS on the cars isn’t making anything more compatible. In fact, those with NACS will be using adapters more often than those with CCS1. And they’ll still have to have a DC and an AC adapter.

Ah, yes, see, it got me there.

I was mentally saying 4kwh (a capacity/volume), but clearly said "4kw". Akward moment .

The upside of the Ioniq 9, is the battery is 110kwh. Which is close enough to 100, that at least the ballpark math is fairly easy. But I might end up doing a table like that to make the math easier.

And our charger is 7.7kw, which means we can charge 7.7kw into the 110kwh battery in an hour... which mathematically works out to exactly 7% of charge added per hour (7.7/110 == 0.07, or 7%). So that has been helpful for her as well.

Start a thread so us newbies can follow your experience. Please and thank you.

Will do!

Welcome to the fold! (fellow Hyundai Ioniq owner here) I hope the HI9 serves you well for years to come.

Thanks, and here is to hoping our ICCU's stay intact .

 

[Chuckles]

That’s about the only way I can figure it out maybe there will be like a snorkel button you push that cuts off harvester when you get to a water pass or questionable wet areas and once through you hit the but and back to available harvester???

That solution sounds like a nightmare. Too many car owners don't read the manual. People these days can't escape their cars when there's no power despite manual releases being present.

 

[dreamweaver]

That solution sounds like a nightmare. Too many car owners don't read the manual. People these days can't escape their cars when there's no power despite manual releases being present.

That is true. And if all fails we carry a glass breaking hand tool in each of our vehicles.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

That solution sounds like a nightmare. Too many car owners don't read the manual. People these days can't escape their cars when there's no power despite manual releases being present.

If I were designing it, I’d consider a simple float valve that triggers a signal to consider shutting off the Harvester and alerting the driver. However, there are situations that might not work either.

 

[J Alynn]

That solution sounds like a nightmare. Too many car owners don't read the manual. People these days can't escape their cars when there's no power despite manual releases being present.

I don’t disagree but you also know people will see or hear the specs on the BEV then destroy their engine because they are naive. I dont plan heavy off roading but hope those folks pay attention