Recently we took a road trip to La Selva Beach, CA to see my aunt and uncle. It was our first longer trip and we wondered how it would go–could we find chargers available when we needed them; how far could we go really; and most importantly, would we make it to their house in time for happy hour? We charged the car to 100% before we left and she showed we had 260 miles of range. It’s good to remember that this assumes driving the car to 0%, which you do not want to do! It also assumes you are going to be driving the way you always drive. In my case that is a mix of highway and in town. In an EV you get better mileage with in town driving, because of the regenerative braking. When you’re on the road, it’s pure highway miles and that takes more juice. To protect an EV’s battery, you shouldn’t take it below 10% and we feel most comfortable not going below 15%.
We traveled about 300 miles each way and went to dinner one night, covering a total of 617 miles. We discovered the Ioniq can go further than we can before we want to stop! The longest we could stand being in the car was about 150 miles. The Ioniq is very comfortable and easy to drive with adaptive cruise control and driver assist–the issue is we get the antsies and have to get out to move! She can go about 175 miles before we start to get range anxiety.
Luckily, in California there’s an Electrify America at regular intervals on the Interstates. We explored some new ones on this trip, stopping at Rocklin on I-80 and Patterson on I-5 on the way down and Davis and Auburn on I-80 on the way home. Rocklin is in a mall parking lot near a Panera and Target, a little difficult to get into and the busiest. Patterson is at a Walmart and easy to access, no one there. We walked in some cute neighborhoods while she charged. Davis is at a Bank of America and in the middle of downtown and a food mecca! We had an amazing lunch. Auburn is at a Motel 6 and we didn’t need much to make it home from there. These stops worked well for us and kept us easily within our range comfort zone. We never went below 29%. So far we have never had a problem finding a charger at an Electrify America. It helps that the app shows you what chargers are available.
We learned that charging goes a lot faster when your battery is lower. Being curious about why, we Googled it while we waited. Turns out that batteries fill up like stadiums. It works like this: when the battery (stadium) is more empty, energy (people) can find a place faster. As the battery (stadium) fills, it takes longer to find a place to land. Who knew? If you want to get the advertised 20%-80% charge in 20 minutes, you need to be at 20% when you start. So it works better to let your battery get lower before you charge. We also learned that there isn’t a lot of difference between a 150 kW and 350 kW charger in the Ioniq. Her max draw is 220 kW, so either charger works, with a 350 being slightly faster. Your charging time can also be impacted by sharing a charger with another car and if the outside temperature is below 40 degrees.
Once we reached my aunt and uncle’s, we plugged in with the Level 1 (110 volt) charger that comes with the car (easily stored in the back under the cargo area). They have a handy outlet at the back of the garage, so we ran the cable under the garage door and plugged it in. It takes a long time to charge to 100% on a Level 1, about a day and a half from 54%. But we stayed for 4 days, so that was easy enough to do.
Both ways took about 7 hours with stops. The way there was longer in distance and we had some detours due to the flooding from the storms. But we did make it in time for happy hour! The way home was shorter, but we made an extra stop to visit Scott’s parents’ graves in Dixon, CA. We also had about an hour lunch stop at Davis.
What do you do when you’re charging? I notice most people seem to be checking emails and texts on their phones. We do that too. Sometimes we check out each others cars, which is really fun! Most of the time, we also use a bathroom in one of the nearby establishments. On the way we ate lunch in the car at Rocklin. We also like to walk when there’s an opportunity, like we did in Patterson. In Davis, we ate a great lunch at Cafe Bernardo. The 12 minutes we spent in Auburn to top up before heading home wasn’t much longer than a gas stop, so we just checked email and texts.
Comparing the Ioniq to the Tucson
So what would have happened if we had taken the Tucson, the Ioniq’s comparable gas car, instead?
Right now we are lucky. We have two years of free charging on the Electrify America network. So taking the Ioniq cost us $0. But what would we have had to pay? We used 142 kW of electricity which would have cost $0.43/kW or $61.
The Tucson gets 26 mpg on the highway. Dividing that into 617 miles, we would have used 24 gallons of gas. Checking gas prices along the way, they averaged $4.25/gallon. So the Tucson would have cost $102.
The difference is about $40 or 40% less to drive the Ioniq vs. the Tucson. If gas prices were at the $6.00 level they were at last time we did this trip, it would have cost $144, which is $83 or about 58% more.
At 20 pounds of CO2 per gallon for 24 gallons of gas, we saved 480 pounds of CO2 from entering our atmosphere by driving the EV. The Tucson gets about the same gas mileage as our old Toyota Highlander Hybrid (29 mpg), so it would have been about the same savings had we been driving it. We are glad we made the change and are loving our Ioniq 5!