First Time EV Owner: Live experience report

[cyure]

Ironically, I'm still reserved for a Harvester.

But we'll see as things get closer. Specifically how much experience we have with road tripping, and how that has been going. I know road tripping with it is "possible" right now, but its still a change to how we do our road trips. But also, I know that infrastructure should have improved in another 2-3 years.

Its also possible that now because we have 2 newer vehicles, I may wait a bit before I pull the trigger on a Scout. Because money, and things.

Money! The things I would do….

 

[Dana]

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.

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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.

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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.

With the info you’re tracking you’ll easily figure out how many miles a kWh equals, on average, with your driving style. While my car is 4miles per kWh on paper my driving style is a little over three. It’s helpful when charging.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Coming off of adaptive cruise control was less natural. As after you cancel it, the "2n'd gear in a manual transmission driving 45mph" style deceleration that happens kicks in rather soon, which means to be smooth, your foot needs to be "buried" in the throttle already, and perfectly matching the position. With lower regen levels this matching is easier/almost not important.

A note here: You don’t have to match speed before you turn off the cruise control. You can use the throttle to bump up the speed a touch then turn off cruise; or you can use the cruise down-speed control to slowly lower speed until you feel it’s right. Finally, I believe on the Kias you can use the paddles to switch into the appropriate level of regen before turning off the cruise control and then swap back into 1pd when you feel it’s right.

Overall, the information from the manufacturers suggests that there’s no efficiency differences between modes—once you’re familiar with your preferred mode, you’ll be able to get the maximum efficiency the vehicle can give according to your driving style.

 

[Logan]

First "road trip" experience report:

This last week we drove down to Great Wolf Lodge. ABRP estimated that we'd do the 218 mile round trip, with ~25-26% charge remaining. It was assuming efficiency in the ~2.7 miles/kwh. However, recently on the shorter stretches of highway that we'd driven, we had seen less efficiency. Stuff in the ~2.2 - 2.5 miles/kwh.

On the day of, we got better than expected temperatures for the drive (~50-55f), with no rain, until we hit the last third or so. But then it poured. The sort of rain that has the wipers on max speed, and everyone on the highway dropping ~20mph, where you can feel the rain on your feet (standing water on the road was deep enough you could feel it splash up and hit the floorboards).

I experimented with manually preconditioning the battery before we left, to see if that would help efficiency at all. And, I think it "might" have. But whatever it was, was likely pretty minimal. Perhaps because the temps were so high? And how do I know it was minimal? Well, my buddy who bought an Ioniq 9 of the same trim/different color on the same weekend did the same trip (family water park trip), and he did NOT do preconditioning. And we arrived with exactly the same efficiency, and the SOC being only 1% different (they live ~3-4 miles closer than we do, so that makes sense).

We arrived at our destination with 66% battery. Oh, and climate was set to ~70-73f, give or take.

The return trip was cooler, but still not bad, and a bit more traffic. But ultimately, we made it home with 31% charge. I had planned on trying out public charging (as was worried about lower efficiency due to the shorter trips around our house). But we clearly had enough battery left, and kids were in "we just played at a water park for 2 days" meltdown mode, so we just cruised home.

Here is when we left, with a full actual 100% charge.

Here we are after arriving. Efficiency had been as high as ~3 to 3.2 miles/kwh, but then the weather changed, and we were pushing a bow wave for the last 30 miles , and it dropped to 2.8miles/kwh.

The return trip, was actually fairly similar weather. Although the rain wasn't as bad. And there was worse traffic on the way home (as it was ~5-7pm on a Friday, vs ~1pm on a Wednesday).

So, 4hrs and 22min of highway driving, in ~45-55f temps, and rain with 31% remaining when we returned. Not bad.

Maybe someday I'll public DCFC. But apparently not yet .

And, we finally got enough mileage that we got our first "battery health" report. No idea why the charging speed looks like that (having never fast charged, unless maybe the dealer did it before we bought it). But you can see our SOC is generally fairly high, as we usually keep the battery in the 50-80% range. But our battery temp is fairly low, as our conditions are generally cool around here.

And no idea what "high speed" driving means. But the cutoff must be pretty low, as most of our local driving is on surface streets, and likely below 50mph.

Anyway, sorry for the rambly post. But thought it might be interesting for some, as its the first "real world road trip" we have taken. And while range anxiety was there, we didn't end up needing to charge on the trip.

 

[cyure]

First "road trip" experience report:

This last week we drove down to Great Wolf Lodge. ABRP estimated that we'd do the 218 mile round trip, with ~25-26% charge remaining. It was assuming efficiency in the ~2.7 miles/kwh. However, recently on the shorter stretches of highway that we'd driven, we had seen less efficiency. Stuff in the ~2.2 - 2.5 miles/kwh.

On the day of, we got better than expected temperatures for the drive (~50-55f), with no rain, until we hit the last third or so. But then it poured. The sort of rain that has the wipers on max speed, and everyone on the highway dropping ~20mph, where you can feel the rain on your feet (standing water on the road was deep enough you could feel it splash up and hit the floorboards).

I experimented with manually preconditioning the battery before we left, to see if that would help efficiency at all. And, I think it "might" have. But whatever it was, was likely pretty minimal. Perhaps because the temps were so high? And how do I know it was minimal? Well, my buddy who bought an Ioniq 9 of the same trim/different color on the same weekend did the same trip (family water park trip), and he did NOT do preconditioning. And we arrived with exactly the same efficiency, and the SOC being only 1% different (they live ~3-4 miles closer than we do, so that makes sense).

We arrived at our destination with 66% battery. Oh, and climate was set to ~70-73f, give or take.

The return trip was cooler, but still not bad, and a bit more traffic. But ultimately, we made it home with 31% charge. I had planned on trying out public charging (as was worried about lower efficiency due to the shorter trips around our house). But we clearly had enough battery left, and kids were in "we just played at a water park for 2 days" meltdown mode, so we just cruised home.

Here is when we left, with a full actual 100% charge.

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Here we are after arriving. Efficiency had been as high as ~3 to 3.2 miles/kwh, but then the weather changed, and we were pushing a bow wave for the last 30 miles , and it dropped to 2.8miles/kwh.

View attachment 11271

The return trip, was actually fairly similar weather. Although the rain wasn't as bad. And there was worse traffic on the way home (as it was ~5-7pm on a Friday, vs ~1pm on a Wednesday).

View attachment 11272

So, 4hrs and 22min of highway driving, in ~45-55f temps, and rain with 31% remaining when we returned. Not bad.

Maybe someday I'll public DCFC. But apparently not yet .

And, we finally got enough mileage that we got our first "battery health" report. No idea why the charging speed looks like that (having never fast charged, unless maybe the dealer did it before we bought it). But you can see our SOC is generally fairly high, as we usually keep the battery in the 50-80% range. But our battery temp is fairly low, as our conditions are generally cool around here.

View attachment 11273

And no idea what "high speed" driving means. But the cutoff must be pretty low, as most of our local driving is on surface streets, and likely below 50mph.

Anyway, sorry for the rambly post. But thought it might be interesting for some, as its the first "real world road trip" we have taken. And while range anxiety was there, we didn't end up needing to charge on the trip.

This is great. Thanks. Our trips to Chicago will be about this length to 260 depending on exactly where we are going and the goal is to be able to do it without charging. It’s helpful to see real world experiences.

 

[oldgeeksguide]

I experimented with manually preconditioning the battery before we left, to see if that would help efficiency at all. And, I think it "might" have. But whatever it was, was likely pretty minimal. Perhaps because the temps were so high? And how do I know it was minimal? Well, my buddy who bought an Ioniq 9 of the same trim/different color on the same weekend did the same trip (family water park trip), and he did NOT do preconditioning. And we arrived with exactly the same efficiency, and the SOC being only 1% different (they live ~3-4 miles closer than we do, so that makes sense).

I thought preconditioning the battery was something you do just before (like half an hour) DC fast charging to get the battery in the right temperature range to maximize how much current it can accept for charging. Am I confused?

 

[Jasco]

I thought preconditioning the battery was something you do just before (like half an hour) DC fast charging to get the battery in the right temperature range to maximize how much current it can accept for charging. Am I confused?

You're not confused. Preconditioning is used in several contexts. The most common is the one you reference above, preparing the battery for an optimial charge (warming or cooling). However, you can also preconditon your battery for improved performance for "cold starts" such as when driving away first thing in the morning. The warmer battery will help with efficiency and allow for regenerative braking when otherwise the battery may be too cold to accept the energy generated. Preconditioning may also used by some to mean heating or cooling the cabin so its comfortable when you get inside.

 

[Logan]

You're not confused. Preconditioning is used in several contexts. The most common is the one you reference above, preparing the battery for an optimial charge (warming or cooling). However, you can also preconditon your battery for improved performance for "cold starts" such as when driving away first thing in the morning. The warmer battery will help with efficiency and allow for regenerative braking when otherwise the battery may be too cold to accept the energy generated. Preconditioning may also used by some to mean heating or cooling the cabin so its comfortable when you get inside.

Yep, exactly this.

It is normally used to get the battery warm enough to charge at its optimal speed.

But I was curious if warming up the battery while on "shore power" would help with the efficiency at all. And, I think it did... to an extent, for like the first 10 miles or so. But after that, it didn't really change anything. I think that battery temp was managed fine as we got into the drive, just from harvested heat from the drive motors pushing the vehicle down the road.

Thats my theory anyway.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

And “preconditioning” is very much dependent on manufacturer UX decisions. Some vehicles will only do thermal management of the battery before a DCFC charge if you input the DCFC as a destination in the vehicle’s mapping application. Some, I believe, give you a “precondition” button for adjusting the battery temperature for charging. Some do not. Some will use 120V/Level 1 shore power for warming/cooling the battery, but some will only do so if you’re on a Level 2/240 volt EVSE.

It’s a very inconsistent set of terminologies and behaviors, unfortunately.