Electric cars.

[Chippy_Tea]

Looking forward to hearing how you get on Jocky.

 

[Larse]

I will be picking up a 2021 64kWh Hyundai Kona this week.

Already planning stops for the Christmas drive to family. Going to be interesting.

Get yourself ABRP (A Better Route Planner). You can set all kinds of criteria in it for your trip, like normal starting SOC, target SOC for charging on the road (this to optimise charge speed) and other criteria like DC only or lowest charge rate chargers (eg no lower than 50kW) etc. Manufacturers usually recommend not charging to 100% except for the odd long journey. They usually recommend charging to 80 or 90% on a day to day basis to preserve battery life.

The Kona has a max charge rate of 77kW, so it's going to be close enough to 1kW a minute. Charge curve is >50kW up to 70% SOC, so that's really where you would stop when charging on the road as it falls off a cliff after that.

EV Database page for it is here.

 

[JockyBrewer]

Get yourself ABRP (A Better Route Planner). You can set all kinds of criteria in it for your trip, like normal starting SOC, target SOC for charging on the road (this to optimise charge speed) and other criteria like DC only or lowest charge rate chargers (eg no lower than 50kW) etc. Manufacturers usually recommend not charging to 100% except for the odd long journey. They usually recommend charging to 80 or 90% on a day to day basis to preserve battery life.

The Kona has a max charge rate of 77kW, so it's going to be close enough to 1kW a minute. Charge curve is >50kW up to 70% SOC, so that's really where you would stop when charging on the road as it falls off a cliff after that.

EV Database page for it is here.

Thanks, I'll take a look at that. Have been looking at Zapmap, but it tends to just recommend you to stop at a certain charge % rather than give you options along the way.

Most of the time I'll only be charging up to 80% at home as we tend to only do 60 miles per week normally, and we'll charge to 100% before the occasional longer trips we do that can be up to 250 miles.

 

[Nicks90]

Thanks, I'll take a look at that. Have been looking at Zapmap, but it tends to just recommend you to stop at a certain charge % rather than give you options along the way.

Most of the time I'll only be charging up to 80% at home as we tend to only do 60 miles per week normally, and we'll charge to 100% before the occasional longer trips we do that can be up to 250 miles.

Check what type of battery you have as lfp batteries like to be charged to 100% on a regular basis. It's only the older cobalt batteries that preferred 80% max charge.
Although if you are only doing such small mileage, I'd just run it till you are down to 20% then fully recharge that night and be done with it.

There are plenty of high mileage EVs out there that have done fully charge always or only max 80% charge and the results are pretty comparible so I wouldn't lose sleep over it

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I've also seen ABRP recommended as an alternative for those BMWs etc where they try to charge you for using the satnav etc...

Be interested to see how Jocky gets on as from memory your pattern is similar to my own, rather suboptimal-for-EVs pattern of driving (and I'm in no hurry to replace my ICE as I tend to drive them into the ground and my current one has lots of life in it still)

 

[Laner]

I will be picking up a 2021 64kWh Hyundai Kona this week.

Already planning stops for the Christmas drive to family. Going to be interesting.

I get 298 motorway miles per charge on my 2024 Kona if I stick to 65mph and 286 miles if I go over 70mph for the journey.

 

[JockyBrewer]

I've also seen ABRP recommended as an alternative for those BMWs etc where they try to charge you for using the satnav etc...

Be interested to see how Jocky gets on as from memory your pattern is similar to my own, rather suboptimal-for-EVs pattern of driving (and I'm in no hurry to replace my ICE as I tend to drive them into the ground and my current one has lots of life in it still)

Indeed I am not ideal for EV as my driving is not high mileage - about 5000-6000 miles per year, where a third of that can be longer journeys.

Unfortunately my ICE car has had a few minor problems recently, and the root cause of them has been age, so time to get rid before it becomes a liability.

I've gone to EV because I like the technology and it will still be cheaper to run. A plug in hybrid might have been more practical, but the engineer in my brain just screams at me that carrying around both an ICE engine and an electric battery/motor is a daft compromise.

 

[Larse]

A plug in hybrid might have been more practical, but the engineer in my brain just screams at me that carrying around both an ICE engine and an electric battery/motor is a daft compromise.

Exactly. A solution looking for a problem but with the capacity to create more problems. Really never saw the point in them. If your use case means you can't have an EV, buy an ICE and be done with it. A friend of mine bought a Kona hybrid (against my advice) and subsequently admitted that it was a pointless purchase.

 

[JockyBrewer]

Exactly. A solution looking for a problem but with the capacity to create more problems. Really never saw the point in them. If your use case means you can't have an EV, buy an ICE and be done with it. A friend of mine bought a Kona hybrid (against my advice) and subsequently admitted that it was a pointless purchase.

A friend of mine is very anti EV. He says that they're too expensive, too heavy, too complicated and need 'special tyres'. He was telling me all this while we were driving along in his BMW X3 Plugin Hybrid that weighs 2 tons, I'm pretty sure has eye wateringly expensive run flat tyres and he can get a glorious 12 miles on a single charge.

As for being complicated, when I recently looked under the bonnet of an EV I wondered where they put all the stuff. Then I realised how complex an ICE engine is - you're pumping around air, fuel, oil and coolant and you never want any of the latter three to meet or unintentionally escape.