Scout-people
Like many here, I've been EV-curious for a while. And after months of research (and admittedly, indecision), we took the plunge yesterday due to a variety of factors. But for us, it was primarily that the family getting larger combined with the federal tax credit going away, huge incentives from manufacturers to move product before the deadline, the likelihood of vehicle prices continuing to rise over the next few years.
This week we took the plunge, and grabbed a Hyundai Ioniq 9 for the family. We got an astounding ~24.85% off of MSRP.
This thread is for me to share my thoughts/findings as a brand new EV owner. The hickups, successes, failures, whatever. This is where I'll put it.
If anyone else joins in, thats fine by me as well
.
Background/Why we went EV:
My family bought a 2022 Hyundai Tucson PHEV brand new, and installed an L2 charger at home for its use about a week after we got it (our home already had a Nema 14-50 plug in the garage, so the install cost was just buying the EVSE). After 3 years of ownership, we've gotten quite used to using the PHEV, as an EV with tiny range. Most of our driving is local, short trips. And we've been able to get as much as 2385 miles of range, on one tank of gas (11 gallon tank).
At the beginning of the PHEV ownership my wife was somewhat skeptical, and wasn't sure she'd want an EV for a long while. But in the 3 years we've had it, she went from "aint happening" to "I would prefer to have an EV for the family vehicle". Most of the reasons she wanted a full EV, had to do with the lower operating costs, and day to day convenience.
For reference, we live where electricity is quite cheap ($0.106/KWh), and where gas is fairly expensive ($4.30-5/gallon). So the cost savings here are quite noticeable. The math shows that compared to a normal gasoline (non-hybrid) 3row SUV, over the course of 5 years, we'll be saving ~$12-14k in just gas alone. And compared to the hybrid models out there, its saving ~$7-8k in the same period.
Initial earnings:
Keep in mind we've had the thing for under 24hours so far...
1) Do you "need" an L2 charger?
I want to say that if you have the ability to have them, the L2 charger is wonderful, and may be "required" for some use cases.
But also don't feel you need to have one right away/before you buy the vehicle, because the likelihood is that unless you drive a lot, you can actually do more with a L1 charger than you might think.
I have a friend who bought the same type of car the same weekend that I did (for the same reasons, and deal), who doesn't have an L2 charger at his house, is currently working to install one. But even then, despite L1 being slow, they're slowly increasing their charge (ie, their net daily use of running kids around/etc is lower than their ability to charge, so their SOC is slowly increasing).
So yes, charging is slow. But, also, if you ever have a weekend at home... that is a lot of hours of charging. It might not be as bad as you think.
FWIW, I actually think that L2 chargers are more important for people with PHEV's, if they're actually wanting to drive them primarily as EV's. With our PHEV, we would sometimes charge 2-3 times in a day (running to drop kids off at things, coming home, charging, back out to get them, back and charging, then to soccer practice, back, etc, etc). With an L1 charger, we'd only have 1 charge a day, so the L2 helped us get way better efficiency from it (our best avg mpg over 10,000 miles, was 206mpg).
*Fun fact, our PHEV has saved us over $5k in gas in only 3 years compared to our old vehicle (2005 Mazda 6), which got about ~20-24mpg. That is including charging costs and fuel for the PHEV.
2) L2 Charging speed:
Unless you have a realllly big battery, or drive quite a lot, I wouldn't stress too much about the speed of your L2 charger if you get one.
I have a relatively medium-ish L2 charger, at only 7.7kw. Which means my Ioniq 9 will take me a bit over 14hrs to charge from 0-100%.
But, thats still basically "overnight", and I am struggling to think of a situation where I somehow return from a road trip with near 0% charge, and then have to turn around and immediately go somewhere else. So the Ioniq 9 supports a higher charging speed of 11kw, I don't think I'll bother upgrading the wiring/circuit breaker for my L2 charger, as I really don't think that it would functionally change anything for me. YMMV of course though.
3) 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/100 miles, liters/100km, etc.
EV's also have a lot of different ways they express range, 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 quite fully grasped what these terms are, and its taking some time to wrap her head around it. So if I said "we gained 4kwh at this charger", she'd say things like "how many percentage is that" or "how far can I drive with that". Which I get, as I had the same struggle when I was doing a bunch of research.
This isn't a bad thing, just but pointing out that understanding and familiarity with the units involved will likely 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).
4) Adapters:
My friend without the L2 charger at his house yet, went to the local safeway to try to get some charging while shopping (it has free L2 charging for 2 hours). But they tried and failed.
Turns out, they were using the wrong charging adapter. A CCS > NACS adapter was being used at first 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.
Like many here, I've been EV-curious for a while. And after months of research (and admittedly, indecision), we took the plunge yesterday due to a variety of factors. But for us, it was primarily that the family getting larger combined with the federal tax credit going away, huge incentives from manufacturers to move product before the deadline, the likelihood of vehicle prices continuing to rise over the next few years.
This week we took the plunge, and grabbed a Hyundai Ioniq 9 for the family. We got an astounding ~24.85% off of MSRP.
This thread is for me to share my thoughts/findings as a brand new EV owner. The hickups, successes, failures, whatever. This is where I'll put it.
If anyone else joins in, thats fine by me as well
.Background/Why we went EV:
My family bought a 2022 Hyundai Tucson PHEV brand new, and installed an L2 charger at home for its use about a week after we got it (our home already had a Nema 14-50 plug in the garage, so the install cost was just buying the EVSE). After 3 years of ownership, we've gotten quite used to using the PHEV, as an EV with tiny range. Most of our driving is local, short trips. And we've been able to get as much as 2385 miles of range, on one tank of gas (11 gallon tank).
At the beginning of the PHEV ownership my wife was somewhat skeptical, and wasn't sure she'd want an EV for a long while. But in the 3 years we've had it, she went from "aint happening" to "I would prefer to have an EV for the family vehicle". Most of the reasons she wanted a full EV, had to do with the lower operating costs, and day to day convenience.
For reference, we live where electricity is quite cheap ($0.106/KWh), and where gas is fairly expensive ($4.30-5/gallon). So the cost savings here are quite noticeable. The math shows that compared to a normal gasoline (non-hybrid) 3row SUV, over the course of 5 years, we'll be saving ~$12-14k in just gas alone. And compared to the hybrid models out there, its saving ~$7-8k in the same period.
Initial earnings:
Keep in mind we've had the thing for under 24hours so far...
1) Do you "need" an L2 charger?
I want to say that if you have the ability to have them, the L2 charger is wonderful, and may be "required" for some use cases.
But also don't feel you need to have one right away/before you buy the vehicle, because the likelihood is that unless you drive a lot, you can actually do more with a L1 charger than you might think.
I have a friend who bought the same type of car the same weekend that I did (for the same reasons, and deal), who doesn't have an L2 charger at his house, is currently working to install one. But even then, despite L1 being slow, they're slowly increasing their charge (ie, their net daily use of running kids around/etc is lower than their ability to charge, so their SOC is slowly increasing).
So yes, charging is slow. But, also, if you ever have a weekend at home... that is a lot of hours of charging. It might not be as bad as you think.
FWIW, I actually think that L2 chargers are more important for people with PHEV's, if they're actually wanting to drive them primarily as EV's. With our PHEV, we would sometimes charge 2-3 times in a day (running to drop kids off at things, coming home, charging, back out to get them, back and charging, then to soccer practice, back, etc, etc). With an L1 charger, we'd only have 1 charge a day, so the L2 helped us get way better efficiency from it (our best avg mpg over 10,000 miles, was 206mpg).
*Fun fact, our PHEV has saved us over $5k in gas in only 3 years compared to our old vehicle (2005 Mazda 6), which got about ~20-24mpg. That is including charging costs and fuel for the PHEV.
2) L2 Charging speed:
Unless you have a realllly big battery, or drive quite a lot, I wouldn't stress too much about the speed of your L2 charger if you get one.
I have a relatively medium-ish L2 charger, at only 7.7kw. Which means my Ioniq 9 will take me a bit over 14hrs to charge from 0-100%.
But, thats still basically "overnight", and I am struggling to think of a situation where I somehow return from a road trip with near 0% charge, and then have to turn around and immediately go somewhere else. So the Ioniq 9 supports a higher charging speed of 11kw, I don't think I'll bother upgrading the wiring/circuit breaker for my L2 charger, as I really don't think that it would functionally change anything for me. YMMV of course though.
3) 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/100 miles, liters/100km, etc.
EV's also have a lot of different ways they express range, 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 quite fully grasped what these terms are, and its taking some time to wrap her head around it. So if I said "we gained 4kwh at this charger", she'd say things like "how many percentage is that" or "how far can I drive with that". Which I get, as I had the same struggle when I was doing a bunch of research.
This isn't a bad thing, just but pointing out that understanding and familiarity with the units involved will likely 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).
4) Adapters:
My friend without the L2 charger at his house yet, went to the local safeway to try to get some charging while shopping (it has free L2 charging for 2 hours). But they tried and failed.
Turns out, they were using the wrong charging adapter. A CCS > NACS adapter was being used at first 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.
