![]() ![]() In fact, in those cars you're actually making your car more efficient when you flick the heater on. Most petrol and diesel vehicles run their heaters off the engine's coolant, so the cabin is warmed up from what is essentially waste heat. Staying warm is an incredibly energy-intensive activity, but it's not something a regular combustion-engined car has to worry about. Once the set temp is reached the energy consumption tapers off, but it's rarely less than 1kW. For reference, when cruising at 60km/h on level ground the Ioniq EV's drive motor burns about 12-13kW, so the heater's consumption could be up to half of the energy that's needed to move the vehicle itself. If the climate control has to heat up a 10-degree cabin up to a more liveable 22 degrees, the car's heater can draw 6kW - or more - to do so. For many commuters, the ability to blast the heater all the way to work is a welcome respite, but doing so in the Ioniq just gives you something else to worry about - diminished range. ![]() Melbourne in winter is melancholy at the best of times, what with brutally cold mornings and frequent rain doing their best to dampen your spirits. The running costs of EVs are already well-known to be cheaper than combustion-powered equivalents, but armed with such data I can properly quantify for you, dear reader, precisely how cheap it is to run an electric car. ![]() Update 4 - 7 May, 2019Īlright, so I promised I’d get a little more scientific with the numbers and measure precisely how much energy the Ioniq was actually consuming. It's a lot less transparent with an EV though, as those costs are built into your electricity bill. At least with a petrol car the costs are quite visible, because they're literally right in front of you on the bowser every time you fill up. Recent political chatter around EVs has got me wondering though - just how much is this car costing me to run? It's hard to tell. Other than that, though, the Ioniq Electric has been pleasingly trouble-free. The remedy for this (at least until I can take it back to Hyundai) is to drive around with the front passenger seatbelt buckled in at all times which, aside from looking a bit weird, also makes me feel like I'm some kind of Uber driver for ghosts. No, it's not because a heavier-than-normal bag has been placed upon the cushion either, the sensor in the seat cushion that detects a passenger's weight must have somehow become permanently closed. The first fault has appeared - the passenger seat belt warning has taken it upon itself to start bonging away even when the front left seat is vacant, which you can no doubt imagine took me a little while to figure out what the source of that noise was. Why wait for hydrogen when the future is already here? Update 3 - 27 April, 2019 It’s a negligible amount, so I guess my fear is unfounded.īut here’s the thing: while hydrogen cars are still very much in their infancy with many technological and infrastructural hurdles ahead of them, electric cars have already arrived. Six grams in a car that would likely carry around five or six kilograms of hydrogen on board. ![]() Which would mean that over five days you’d lose… just six grams of hydrogen to the atmosphere. The actual rate of hydrogen leakage varies, of course, but as an example Ford was targeting 0.05 grams of hydrogen per hour as an ‘acceptable’ rate of tank permeation. Not by a dangerous, explosion-starting amount, mind you, but with hydrogen molecules able to literally slip between the molecules of most other materials, it’s a difficult gas to contain. However, the length of time it would spend sitting idle did get me thinking – would a hydrogen car be problematic on a such a trip?įor those that don’t know, hydrogen cars have a bit of an engineering issue to overcome: the tanks leak. The Ioniq’s battery is more than big enough to get me there and back. But with a full charge and a home-to-airport distance of roughly 40km, the lack of charging infrastructure wasn’t a problem on my visit. ![]()
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