New Car Day
It’s been a week of new things — hot on the heels of a new bike comes a new car!
Our previous car, a Hyundai Kona, was the first brand-new car we’d ever leased, and our first electric car too. To say we loved it would be an understatement. Obviously, the fact that it was new helped — it was quite an upgrade from our previous cars and came with all the modern features: heated seats and steering wheel, parking sensors, reversing camera, blind-spot collision avoidance, cross-traffic alerts, wireless phone charging, adaptive cruise control and much much more.
Falling in Love with Electric
The electric part was a bit of an unknown at first, but that’s what really won us over. Electric cars are just so nice in every way imaginable.
Even if we ignore the running costs, they’re simply better — smoother, faster, quieter, and more pleasant to drive. The idea of going to a petrol station now feels like such a chore. It’s far quicker and more convenient to top up the battery at home while we sleep. No smelly petrol stations, no extra journeys — we just plug in, which takes seconds, and that’s it.
Longer drives haven’t been a problem either. With a range of around 300 miles, the Kona could get us almost anywhere we’d normally go. We usually need a toilet or snack stop by the time we’re down to about 50%, so we just plug in for a short while, grab a coffee, and set off again with a nearly full battery. It’s all surprisingly relaxing.
Small Luxuries That Make a Difference
Features like remote pre-warming and defrosting in winter were brilliant too — no scraping windows or sitting in a cold car. And the one-pedal driving was lovely. We really do love the benefits of an EV.
When our three-year lease was up, we extended it for another year. But that fourth year soon flew by, so it was time to look for a replacement. Having been spoiled by our first EV, it was always going to be hard to beat, especially within our budget.
Why Another Hyundai
In the end, we decided to stick with Hyundai — but this time go for the slightly larger Ioniq 5 instead of the new Kona. We could only afford the base-level spec in the standard colour, so it might be missing a few extras, but the main features are all there.
It’s another EV, of course, so we keep all the electric advantages. We can charge at home rather than visiting petrol stations, and it’s much cheaper — about 7.9p per kWh, so a full battery costs around £5 and gives at least 250 miles of range. The range is a little lower than the Kona’s because the battery is smaller and the car’s a bit larger, but it still does everything we need.
Comfort, Tech, and a Bit Less Speed
It has all the comfort features Anna particularly wanted — heated seats, heated steering wheel, remote climate control — and most of the driver-assistance features I like too. I think it has a few things I particularly liked such as Rear Cross Traffic Alerts and blind-spot collision assistance, but I’ll find out for sure on that last one once we’ve done a motorway run! I’ll have to do without them it they aren’t there. There’s no wireless phone charging either, but it does have wireless CarPlay, and I can always add a wireless charging pad if I want.
It’s not quite as quick, either. On paper, the 0–60 time is only a second or two slower, but it feels much slower. That said, I suspect our old Kona was unusually fast — it definitely seemed capable of doing 0–60 in about five seconds, which it shouldn’t have been able to! The Ioniq 5 isn’t a slouch, though, and has more than enough performance for what we need — it just won’t shock us like the Kona did. It seems a little quiter as well which can’t be a bad thing.
Roomier and Faster to Charge
Other upgrades include more space in the boot and cabin, and much faster charging. That won’t make much difference at home, but it’ll be handy on long trips — it can now charge from 10–80% in just 18 minutes on a fast charger.
I’m sure we’ll discover plenty of other nice touches as we get used to it – the Kona was missing a light in the boot which was an omission, but the Ioniq 5 has one. It has a Froot/Frunk as well so we’ll have to think of something to store in that!! Other than that, it’s a shiny new car to admire on the drive and enjoy on the roads. Those ‘pixelated’ lights are lovely!
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Looks lovely
Out of interest, did you go through the university EV scheme, either for this car or the previous? If so, how did you find the set up process?
No we didn’t. We looked at it as an option, and hoped it would be a good way to go. But, when we did all the calculations, for us, the salary sacrifice scheme worked out slightly more expensive. There wasn’t much in it, but doing it ourselves through a dealer was cheaper and gave us more options/flexibility.