We were on a road trip recently and realized that we were near our car’s anniversaries, which led us to reflect on what we think of them after 2 years with the Ioniq and 1 year with the Ariya (preceded by 4 years with the Nissan Leaf). We still love our cars and are thrilled to be driving all-electric vehicles, which are charged off the solar panels on our roof (unless we are charging on the road). Neither of us miss going to gas stations! Both cars are comfortable, fun to drive, have solid safety features, handle well in the snow, offer tons of cargo space, and look really cool! They offer all the features that we like in our cars, though we have found that each car has its advantages in certain areas.

You can look at the past posts in the Driving EV’s theme to see more about the features of our cars and why we chose them, plus what it’s like to go on road trips. Bottom line on road trips is that they work just as well for us as a gas car and we haven’t had any significant problems with charging them. We occasionally have to wait a few minutes for a charger and have had a few minor problems with charging, but never have we been seriously inconvenienced. I should mention that we tend to travel at off times, so we are charging usually in mid-morning/mid-afternoon on weekdays. We have learned that our range for how long we can sit in a car is shorter than the cars’ range before needing a charge! One positive is that it does take a little longer to charge an EV than to get gas, so we walk more, which has actually made road trips healthier for us.

The vast majority of our driving is done around the Reno area and we charge on a Level 2 charger in our garage. Our cable is long enough to reach both cars and we’ve not had any problems with coordinating our charges. Most of our driving is done solo or just the two of us, but occasionally we take others with us. We find that our passengers are comfortable in the back and we’ve spent some time there too. Generally, people prefer the Ioniq’s more spacious back seats that also recline slightly. But the HVAC system is better in the back of the Ariya. I am my mom’s primary driver and she really likes the adjustable passenger seat in the Ioniq. (The Ariya also has that feature.)

Scott still prefers his Ariya and I prefer my Ioniq, so we know we made the right choices! However, we’ve both decided that the Ioniq is the better road car. The driver assist system is superior for mountain driving in the Ioniq and it can take a faster charge while on the road. It also has the more comfortable and cushy ride. But the Ariya is no slouch and is a better choice if we are planning any off roading or need higher clearance. We tend to take the Ariya on shorter, local road trips within a 150-mile radius, and the Ioniq on our longer highway trips over mountain passes.

Service Experiences

We have been pleased with the service through our local Hyundai and Nissan dealers for both cars. We have knowledgeable service techs who have been able to keep our cars running smoothly. We are still on free service for one more year with both cars (3 years with Hyundai and 2 with Nissan). The Ioniq came with the longer service period and longer warranty (5 vs. 3 years). So far the Ioniq has been serviced 7 times in 2 years–4 for recalls/repairs and 3 for regular 5,000-mile services. I expected that there would be recalls and repairs given that this is Hyundai’s first Ioniq EV to come out. Most of the work involves updates to the car’s software systems. I have had problems with a noisy rear hatch, which has been remedied with a cushioning system. I’ve also had problems with the ICCU that controls the 12-volt battery charging system. Recently, my 12-volt battery died and the car had to be towed to the dealer for a recall repair and a new battery. They had it back to me by the next day and offered me a loaner car, but I didn’t need it. I must say it was fascinating to watch the car being towed using a very clever dolly system, which simply lifted it up and carried it off out of my mother’s garage (good place for it to happen!). I also had problems with the car turning off the Level 2 charger due to an overly sensitive heat sensor, fortunately we found a fix for that and it never recurred. Regular services are easy on EV’s and I usually have the car back in a few hours.

Scott has only had to take the Ariya in for one recall for an over-active sensor that could have caused the car to stop suddenly. It was a software update and fortunately it was done before any sudden stops! He recently had his first regular service at 7500 miles and all they did was check the car and rotate the tires.

Would We Do It Again?

Rhonda–Absolutely! I love my Ioniq 5! Still my favorite car I’ve ever driven and I hope she’ll be with me for a long time. I’m also the primary driver for my mother, so I’m glad that my multiple trips across Reno are emissions free and powered by Nevada sunshine.

Scott–If I was making the purchase decision now, I’d buy a Prius Prime Plug-In. I like the looks of this car and it is the greenest car produced in 2024, because of its smaller battery (less heavy metal mining). Given that I’m just driving it around town, I’d probably never use gas. I really like the Ariya and I have no issues with range anxiety, but my main goal was to reduce my carbon footprint, so the Prius Prime would be a better choice today. Plus, it is less expensive with an MSRP of $39,000 for a Premium trim level. This combo would make sense for us as a retired couple-no need to have 2 larger AWD EV’s. However, if I was single and this was my only car, I’d stick with the Ariya for its AWD and cargo space.

R&S–We have loved going all EV and utilizing the benefits of the solar we produce to power our transportation needs. It feels great knowing we no longer emit carbon when we’re driving!

We’ve had the Ariya for about 7 months now. What a great car! We are enjoying getting to know her and wanted to share what we have learned. We’ve been on 7 road trips so far and find that the Ariya is comfortable, dependable, versatile and solid. She handles well in the snow and has higher clearance and a stiffer suspension for off-roading than the Ioniq. The downside of this is that on the highway, the ride is rougher. The Ariya has a larger battery by about 20%, so it as a longer range, which is handy if you have longer gaps between charging stations. The cargo space is a little smaller than the Ioniq, but not much.

Here’s what it looks like when we load up most of our house and go to a rental place:

Charging

The Ariya comes with the EVgo network. Scott tried for a few months to test it out at the station in Reno, but it was never operational. On the road, we have found that EVgo doesn’t have as many fast charging stations as Electrify America, and seems to have more problems with down units. We did find a 350 kW charger in Citrus Heights, CA that we used in November and it worked just as well as Electrify America. Most of the time we use the Electrify America network that we get free with the Ioniq (works for both cars). We’ve had good luck with charging overall, only having to wait a couple of times. But we don’t typically travel at busy times, so that helps. We had one recent incident where for some reason the charger and the app were not communicating and we had to use a credit card. It stopped after a few minutes and we had to restart it again, but then it worked fine. Most of the time, we are charged up and ready to go within 30 minutes. We take that time to stretch our legs, use the bathroom and check our messages; sometimes we check out other people’s EV’s!

When it comes to charging, the only thing we find irritating about the Ariya is that it locks the charger onto the car and sometimes doesn’t want to let go. You have to press lock and unlock on the FOB sometimes more than once to release the cable. It also doesn’t charge as quickly as the Ioniq, but this is compensated for by its larger battery.

Overall, we have not had any problems with charging the Ariya (or the Ioniq) especially using the Electrify America network. We are lucky to have a lot of working stations on the routes we typically drive through northern California. But, the vast majority of the time, we are driving only in the Reno area and are charging at home off our solar panels.

Range

People are always asking us about the range of our cars. That’s an interesting question. It depends on a number of factors: how low you are comfortable going before recharging the battery; your driving style (more aggressive and fast driving uses more power); load (how many passengers, cargo, pulling a trailer); road conditions (flat, downhill, uphill, in-town vs. highway); outside temperature (colder temps decrease battery performance); use of climate control (heat uses more than A/C). EV’s are a different than gas cars in that they use more power on the highway and less in town, due to regenerative braking. This can be a challenge in figuring out how far your EV can go on a road trip, because it’s going to need more power than it uses at home. In general our cars can go from 175-200 miles, leaving us about 15-20% in the battery (our comfort zone). But, here’s the truth, we can only go about 150 miles before we have to get out! So we always say, our range is 150, which is less than our car’s! We plan our road trips around our needs, not the cars.

NOTE: The range quoted by manufacturers includes a mix of city and highway driving, so it will always be higher than you can actually go on a road trip. The EPA estimated combined range on our Ariya is 267 miles. But that would be draining the battery to 0%, which no sane person would ever do! Remember the 267 includes some city driving, so our 200 mile estimate in the table below is more accurate, leaving about 20% in the battery when you reach your destination. This is important if you have any question about finding a charger.

We have found it helpful to keep a road trip charging log so we can figure out how many miles we can actually go per % charge we have in the battery. Here’s the Ariya’s log so far for its first year:

At the top of the log, you will see that we have built a table based on the Ariya’s average miles per % in the battery (2.5%/mile), so we know how much of a charge we need to go a certain distance. This is a very helpful thing to know and can be difficult to figure out unless you have a log like this to tell you your average miles per %. For some reason, EV’s show you the mile per kWh which doesn’t really help you on the road. We have noticed that when we are going uphill in cold weather, we use about 25% more energy, so we need more of a charge to pull mountain passes, especially when it’s cold (see Citrus Hts-Reno and Vacaville-Truckee).

You can also see the difference between what it costs to charge the car with electricity vs. what the comparable ICE (Nissan Murano) would have cost in gas. In the three trips where we tracked this difference, there was over $200 savings! (NOTE: We actually didn’t pay for this charging, since we still have free charging for our cars. The only exception was when we had to pay by credit card in Truckee in January.)

Using Highway Driving Assist Systems

The highway driving assist system in the Ariya (ProPILOT 2.0) does a great job on regular highways of lane-keeping, lane changing, smart cruise control (adjusts speed to car in front of you), and allowing some moments of handfree driving (great for stretching your hands and wrists to prevent fatigue). It won’t let you keep your hands off for too long before it alerts you. The Ariya also watches to make sure your eyes are on the road and will alert you when your attention wanders. The Ioniq doesn’t have this feature, but does have all the other features in its HDA 2 system. What we prefer in the Ioniq is that it allows us better control on curvy mountain roads, like I-80. The Ariya tends to slow down, sometimes drastically, going into a curve and we have not been successful in finding a setting that will turn off this feature. The Ioniq does allow us to change this setting so it doesn’t do automatic braking going into a curve, allowing us to control the speed more fluidly. Because of this issue, we have given up on using ProPILOT in the Ariya while driving on mountain roads. Unfortunately, most of our long road trips include this kind of driving.

Future Road Trips

After 7 months with the Ariya and 18 months with the Ioniq, we decided we prefer the Ioniq for longer road trips, particularly those involving mountain passes. The Ioniq has the smoother ride and the better highway driving assist system, plus it charges faster. The Ariya we use for trips around our local area, like going to Graeagle, Lake Tahoe, Carson and Topaz. If we had a trip where we were planning more off-roading, we would definitely take the Ariya. We would also use it for a trip where we had more gaps between charging stations and needed the longer range. Scott prefers the seating and cabin in his Ariya for everyday use, but on a longer road trip he’s decided he would take the Ioniq. Both cars are a great drive overall and we recommend them to anyone interested in owning a quality EV SUV.

The Ariya Completes the Mother of All Road Trips!

An EV adventure couple just completed their Pole-to-Pole road trip in a modified Nissan Ariya! Yes, that is from the North to the South Pole–a trip of over 30,000 kilometers! Read about it here:

https://www.thenissannext.com/en/PoletoPole.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/01/15/electric-car-north-to-south-pole-drive/

Or watch the video:

We traded in our sweet 2016 Nissan LEAF for Scott’s new Nissan Ariya in June after over four years of service. BeeBee, as we called her, was such a cute car and the perfect introduction to driving EV’s. It’s always bittersweet and nostalgic to look back on the life of an old car that’s moved on.

When we bought her used in 2019, we had just installed solar panels and realized how much excess electricity we were producing. We decided it was time to take the plunge and buy an EV. We’d just bought a Toyota Highlander Hybrid for Scott to replace his old 4 Runner, so we didn’t want to spend a lot of money. As luck would have it, 2016-17 LEAF’s coming off leases were incredibly cheap at the time. We saved $6,500 buying her over what it would have cost to buy a 2016 Nissan Juke in 2019 (the comparable gas car to the LEAF). Nissan had released the next generation battery with over 150 miles range and no one wanted the old technology anymore. She only had 23,000 miles on her and was in great condition with all 10 bars of her battery life remaining. In the beginning, she could go over 100 miles on a charge.

We fell in love with her zippy speed and cozy interior. We especially loved the heated seats and steering wheel in the winter. She was mostly my car, though we often shared her to save on gas in the Highlander. She was a very reliable car and an easy keeper. We saved a lot of money on repairs and maintenance over my old Subaru Forester, not to mention all the gas savings (see below).

This year her battery lost another bar, down to 7 out of 10 and her range was closer to 80 miles (60 realistically). Scott was needing a car that could go out of the valley if necessary, so it was time to move BeeBee along to a new home. Nissan gave us a good trade-in price for her and one of the employees there ended up buying her. We hope she’ll introduce a new family to the joys of driving EV’s.

Thank you BeeBee for 4 years of fun zipping around town in you, and for helping us get over the EV hump! We’ll miss you!

For the first half of 2023, we drove 1944 miles in the LEAF and saved $318 in gas over what the Juke would have used.

Over the course of her 4+ years with us, BeeBee saved us over $10,000! That’s pretty awesome when you think about it. $6,400 of that savings was from not paying for gas and in the savings of repairs and maintenance over what it would have cost for the comparable gas car. We also saved a lot of money on buying the LEAF ($6,500 over the Juke in 2019), but we gave some of it back on the trade-in ($2,500 less than the Juke in 2023). Still our total savings purchasing the LEAF was $4,000 over the Juke. We also saved about 18,000 tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere by driving the LEAF instead of the Juke.

If you’re thinking about trying an EV, going with an older model that still has life in it is a smart move. As technology moves on, they sell at discounts and then they save you a bunch of money too, not to mention the carbon you don’t put in the atmosphere.

We like the boonies and often seek out remote getaways. On this trip we headed to a favorite spot in the Trinity Alps. We wondered what it would be like and how would charging work? We checked out one of our favorite off-the-beaten-path routes and found that it was outside our 175-mile safe range (nearly 200 miles and mostly pine trees). We decided that would give us the range willies for sure!

So, we charted out a safer route along I-80 and I-5, which have ample Electrify Americas. Along the way we stopped at Auburn Toyota and checked out a BZ4X for Scott (see this post: https://rhondaashurst.com/2023/05/09/the-search-for-our-next-ev/). We traveled 378 miles to Trinity and stopped at Auburn and Anderson to charge. With the test drive, which took at least 30 minutes and two charging stops of 30 minutes each, the trip took just over 8 hours. The nice thing about all those stops is we felt better physically when we arrived, and we also missed the afternoon rainstorm! We did stretch our range limit a bit between Auburn and Anderson (181 vs 175 miles), plus we stopped at a 95% charge at Auburn (it takes forever to get that last 5%). By the time we got to Anderson, we had only 11% left in the battery. We decided we’d charge at Dunnigan if we take this route in the future!

We had permission to charge the car at our cabin, so when we arrived, we pulled out the 110-volt charger and plugged her in. It said it would take 53 hours to go from 28%-100%! Luckily, we had the time as we were staying several days.

While we were there, we took a trip up the pass on a steep and curvy road to snowshoe on the Pacific Crest Trail. What a thrill to drive up a road like that in the Ioniq! It was the first time I’d driven her up and down one of California’s crazy switchback passes and it was a scream! Smooth and effortless sailing all the way up and then coming down, I used Level 3 e-braking. I only had to brake on hairpin turns, which was amazing! The other cool thing is it took 12% of the battery to get up there and we gained 1% coming back!

Here’s a couple of photos of the road and the beautiful waterfall we stopped at:

On the way home we took a different route through Chico. Wow, was that pretty! We took I-5 to highway 99, stopping for lunch at a pretty rest stop south of Redding. We drove through farmland and orchards and arrived in Chico with 51% left in the battery. We charged for 30 minutes and strolled the nearby Chico campus—charming! We left with 97% and headed towards the foothill towns of Grass Valley and Nevada City. The drive from there through the Sierra’s is lovely. We arrived in Reno with 21% left. This will definitely be our preferred route up to Trinity in the future. It took us 7 hours with two 30 minute stops for lunch and charging. We traveled a total of 311 miles on the way home.

Here’s the road trip log:

We noticed we used more energy going up to Trinity than coming back, since there was more uphill and 67 more miles. In the future, we will stop in Chico on the way up and back to charge. If we had driven the Hyundai Tucson (gas comparison car), it would have cost us $100 in gas. Because our charging on Electrify America is free, we saved $100 taking the Ioniq! If we had to pay for our charging, it would have cost $59, so a 40% savings over the Tucson. At 20 pounds of CO2 per gallon for 23 gallons of gas, we saved 460 pounds of CO2 from entering our atmosphere by driving the EV.

We were relieved to see that you can take the Ioniq into the boonies and do just fine with finding charging, as long as you plan out your route ahead of time. We look forward to our next trip to Trinity!

Lately, it has become clear that we need a second longer-range EV. The LEAF works well in town, but is down to about 90 miles of range, which in reality is about 68 miles. (My rule of thumb is to take about 25% off an EV’s range at 100% and that’s your real-world mileage, which accounts for climate control, terrain, temperature, and leaving about 15% in the battery.) We are realizing that in the near future we may both need to drive to the Bay Area to see family, and that won’t work with the LEAF.

So, we’ve been checking out new EV’s! Always one of my favorite activities, not so much Scott’s. We initially thought we’d go with a Tesla Model Y so we could have access to the Tesla Supercharger network. A friend of ours brought over his Model Y and took Scott for a test drive. When he came back, I asked him how it went. He said, “I could live with it.” Not exactly the response I was hoping for.

Next, we visited Nissan and found a Premium Nissan Ariya in the showroom. Wow! What a beautiful car! Scott slid into the driver’s seat and started playing with buttons (embedded in the wood veneer trim with haptic feedback when you press them) and the next thing I saw was a big grin. Ok, now we’re talking! Meanwhile, I’m styling over in the passenger seat, feeling very comfortable and thinking, this is as nice as my car. (I don’t usually have thoughts like that as I am totally in love with my Ioniq 5 and I don’t cheat on her.) Then we took the Ariya out for a test drive, and we were sold! What a comfortable and quiet ride, like the Ioniq. We were in a FWD model, so it didn’t have the power of the AWD, which is still coming off the production line as I write. We hope that one will be available soon for us to test drive, but looking at the YouTube test drives, it sounds like they did an awesome job with the e-4orce AWD model.

Other things we love: roomy and spacious cabin, very comfy and adjustable seats, the blue Nappa leather is beautiful, rear seats are comfortable and can be heated, there’s lots of leg and head room, the HVAC system in the back is better than the Ioniq’s, the panoramic sunroof can be opened above the front seats, the automatic drawer comes out from below the dash and doubles as a storage compartment and a table for your iPad or laptop (the Ariya is billed as a driving lounge, and it is), the console between the front seats can be moved forward and back with the touch of a button, the car has haptic buttons built into wood veneer that disappear when the car is off,  the screen is curved and sits low and long across the dash (not in your face like the Tesla), the heads up display is easy to see, it supports wireless Apple CarPlay, it has driver assists (ProPilot 2.0) and cameras that we are used to in the Ioniq, the ability to use the camera in the rear view mirror if you have the live view blocked by stuff (often the case on our road trips), and the whole overall look and design of the car. Scott particularly liked feeling more snuggled into the driver’s seat in the Ariya. The Ioniq is more open and spacious, which is my preference but not his. Although, I didn’t feel like I was at all constricted in the Ariya. He was also glad to see regular door handles and a less flashy look than the Ioniq.

The Nissan has a little more range than the Ioniq—267 vs. 256, but charges at about ½ the speed (10-80% in 40 minutes vs. 20 minutes). Taking 25% off the Nissan’s 267 advertised range (100% to 0%–who does that anyway?), it has a real-world range for us of about 200, which would leave 15% in the battery. It will be fun to compare these two to each other on road trips! We’ll have to spend more time at chargers with the Ariya, but that just means a longer walk for us and that’s ok. Nissan’s goal is to lengthen battery life, so that will be another interesting experiment over time.

Being human, we then began to second guess how easily this had come. Maybe we are missing something, we thought. We found a Car and Driver article that listed all the EV’s available in 2023. Scott looked through it and decided he’d also like to see a Mustang Mach-E and a Toyota BZ4X (he’s driven Toyotas for over 30 years).

We went over to the Ford dealer one day and found an ugly yellow Mach-E available for a test drive. We also sat in the high-end model sitting next to it. We instantly disliked the feel of this car. It was like sitting in a race car—low down in the seat which wraps around you more tightly than the Ariya (too much of a good thing for Scott), large center console that makes the leg room area feel boxed in, high and small windows, and challenging to get in and out of compared to the other EV’s we’d driven. We felt claustrophobic in this car. The trim was disappointing, and the screen was in your face like the Tesla, but not nearly as well designed. The drive was ok, and honestly, we can’t recall much because we were so turned off by that point. I imagine this car is a scream if you are on a racetrack or speeding around curvy roads. Oh, and it has a woofer in the back if you like to pump your base while you’re racing. So not our thing! And it was the most expensive car we looked at, plus on back order for about two years according to our salesman.

It took us awhile to find the Toyota BZ4X, which we finally found in Auburn on our way to the Trinity Alps. I had originally wanted this car but changed my mind once I saw it compared to the Ioniq on YouTube. So, I was curious to see it in person. What a disappointment. I liked it even less than I thought I would, but then I’ve been driving the Ioniq for 9 months and there’s really no comparison. But I reminded myself, this is not your car…

Meanwhile, Scott was taking in all the familiar Toyota buttons and finish that he is used to. (We were in a Limited.) He decided he liked the driving screen that sits high up above the steering wheel but didn’t like the way it had been designed. It is Toyota’s answer to heads up driving. The computer screen sits low and forward but had not been set up and was not functioning. This seemed odd to us, like it wasn’t really integrated with the car, but with your smartphone? The salesperson showed us how to adjust things like the driver assist features using buttons on the steering wheel and multiple menus. This should be in the screen. It felt smaller and tighter than the Ariya and had a solid center console, more like the Mach-E. It was not as claustrophobic to us, but definitely not as comfortable as the Ariya. The panoramic roof is split in the center and we couldn’t see why, as it doesn’t open, like the Ariya does. It did have a cover for the pano roof, which is a must in our hot climate (one of the things Scott didn’t like in the Tesla). The BZ4X has a lot of shiny black plastic surfaces inside and out. It throws off glare and I imagine would show dirt and fingerprints. Neither of us liked this. Scott likened the outside of the white car as “looking like a soccer ball.” Good analogy!

Then we took it out on the road. First off, not the kind of acceleration we are used to. Secondly, lots of road noise! Nothing like our Highlander, which was much quieter. This car reminded us of our Subaru Forester which was really noisy on the road. The Limited AWD also has only 222 miles of range, so taking the 25% off, about 167 miles realistically. It is also a slow charger, going from low range to 80% in about an hour. Well, scratch this one off the list. Toyota does hybrids well and I’ve heard good things about their plug-in hybrids. Clearly, this is the niche they are focused on and not the EV, at least not yet.

What We Learned

We are like a cross between the Princess and the Pea, and Goldilocks. We like our cars comfy, luxurious, and spacious and we want that just right feel. We seek a comfortable and quiet ride, stable handling, especially on snow and ice (hence why we are looking at only AWD’s). Speed is fun, but not the main attraction. We want lots of cargo space since we seem to take half our house with us on vacation. We like our driver assists and prefer buttons to screens, but we can work with a screen and prefer it for more advanced settings. We are tickled by cool and thoughtful design features. Our range is about 150 miles before we need to get out of a car and stretch our legs, but we like to have a little more available if necessary. We get range anxiety below 15%, plus it isn’t great on the battery, so we factor that in (included in the 25% we take off a car’s advertised range).  We like big windows and panoramic roofs that can be closed in the hot summer months. We both think the Ariya’s split window with the ability to open over the front seats is very cool. Scott likes his car to be less flashy and more what he’s used to. He has come to terms with the reality that all modern cars have screens and are more helpful than he prefers, but he’s getting used to this after driving the Ioniq.

And The Winner Is…

Scott picked the Ariya. Frankly, he never really looked back once he sat in it for the first time. This car is his “just right.” So, we will keep an eye out for a white Platinum AWD e-4orce and see when it shows up.

The Runners Up

#2. Tesla Model Y. He liked the drive ok, but it “ran away with me.” He couldn’t gauge how fast he was going, and this bothered him. It lacks the luxury and ingenuity he likes in the interior. He didn’t like not being able to close off the pano roof. There’s too much screen and not enough buttons. He doesn’t want to drive a computer, or to have it drive him.

#3 Toyota BZ4X.  A decent EV but lacks the pizzaz of the others and falls short in the range and charging department. He didn’t like the road noise or the exterior look.

#4 Mustang Mach-E. Claustrophobic interior was an instant turnoff. For Scott there is such a thing as too much snuggly, it turns out! This car is probably great fun if you’re into drag racing or performance driving, or you like the feel of what it must be like in a race car, or if you really must have a Mustang.

This table shows the miles we drove in our EV’s (about 5.5 months in the Ioniq), the electricity we used and the miles per kWh. It’s interesting that we get about the same mileage on both our EV’s. If we had to pay for this electricity, it would have only cost $287 to power them. The next two tables show what it would have cost to drive the comparable gas cars–about $2100! The gas prices went up from an average of $4/gallon in 2021 to over $5/gallon in 2022. This really increased our savings in 2022, plus driving a second EV.

We were shocked when we asked our Nissan Tech how much it would have cost to do the 45,000 mile service on a Juke and he said an additional over $800! Ouch! We are definitely at the stage with our LEAF where there are big savings in the repairs and maintenance. The LEAF has become Scott’s ride (it’s amazing what he can fit in that car!). At over 45,000 miles and 7 years old, it still has a range of 85 miles when charged to 100%. This is only a loss of 25 miles or about 23% of what it could do originally. We are down to 7 out of 10 bars on our battery. The LEAF still has plenty of range for around town trips and has had no major mechanical or electrical issues.

The Ioniq is my ride and I LOVE her! Most awesome car I’ve ever driven. She is our road car, so we anticipate we will put more miles on her than our LEAF. So far road tripping has been comfortable and easy. We’ve been able to find chargers whenever we need them. We get two free years from Hyundai at Electrify America, so for now our charging on the road is free! The other thing we love about Electrify America is their power comes from renewable sources. It will be interesting to see how much we save driving the Ioniq for a whole year. We got her in July 2022, so this is only a little over 5 months of driving.

EV’s powered by solar are one of the best ways to reduce both your transportation cost and carbon footprint. We recommend get solar and get EV’s–it’s worth it! If you don’t feel comfortable going all EV, plug-in hybrids are a next best choice, followed by regular hybrids. All these vehicles will save you money, while helping the environment. EV’s and plug-in hybrids assembled mostly in the USA are eligible for a $7,500 tax rebate when purchased new. Used EV’s can qualify for up to $4,000 in tax rebates as well. We like having one newer model and one older, used model. These cars cost $13,700 over their comparable gas cars. I estimate they will save us $3,500/year in gas and R&M. So we’d break even on the extra expense of buying the EV’s in 4 years.

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!

If you think the normal mode packs a punch, try out this baby! Ok, I’m going to confess one of my guilty pleasures: pulling up to a muscle car at a light, shifting to Sport Mode and blowing them away when the light turns green. Then I listen to their engine and transmission grind while they try to catch up. I take my foot off the accelerator which immediately brakes and let them fly by while I wave and smile. Too much fun! It is also fun to give your friends a thrill. I look for a safe, stretch of road, tell them to hang on and punch it. What I have learned is that you probably don’t want to do this with some of your older friends, unless they are like my 87-year-old mom who loves it!

Caution: Have fun out there, but be careful and mindful of where you are and what’s around you when you play with this mode (and who you’re with).

Stats: The Ioniq 5 has been tested against a Tesla Model Y and can reach 0-60 in 4.86 seconds in normal mode and 4.75 in sport mode. Wanna see how it turned out? Here’s the scoop: https://insideevs.com/news/574490/tesla-modely-hyundai-ioniq5-acceleration-compared/.