Hi just over 12 months ago, I bought a brand new electric car, a 2020 Hyundai Ioniq fully electric. None of that hybrid rubbish. And as promised, after 12 months of owning my first fully electric car, I'd give you my opinion not only on electric car owning an electric car in general, but also, uh, stick around for the end if you want to hear, sort of like a mini review of my thoughts of owning in particular. um, the 2020 model Hyundai Ioniq.

Good and bad. So let me take on a drive, shall we? Let's go. First thing you notice in about electric Car. it's on.

It's sitting here, there's no sound, there's no vibration. It's beautiful. Anyway, I'll put in drive and let's go for a drive around Balcom Hills and I'll let you know what I think of electric cars. So the Tldr of owning an electric car after 12 months.

would I, uh, go. Did I regret my purchase of a fully electric car? And would I go back to an Ice car? an internal combustion engine car? The answer is no, I do not regret it. And no, I would never buy another internal combustion engine car. Geez, I think I've hit peak hour traffic here as soon as we get out of this stupid traffic.

I'll start. I: I shouldn't have started here this one. It's lunch time Norwest Boulevard. Ugh.

Having an electric car can't save you from the traffic. unfortunately. Well, it does. It has some benefits.

Um, in stop start traffic. Electric cars are. well, that's one of the best things for them is stop start traffic. You're not chewing any energy by just sitting here at the roundabout.

That's one of the fantastic things. All right, we're out of here. Let's go. In fact, I'll go straight down here, shall we? Now the first thing about electric car is that it drives like normal.

at least this ionic um does. And I've driven other electric cars Teslas and uh, Leafs as well. And yeah, it just drives and handles like a normal car. You don't know the difference.

except for one of the major things which I mentioned is the lack of sound vibration. uh, pollution as well. So we actually, uh, Mrs. Ev blog calls the other car the internal combustion engine car the stinky car because like you don't realize how much the exhaust in internal combustion engine cars stink.

And by having a fully electric car, you just don't get any of that. There's no sound, there's no vibration, they're completely silent when you stopped at the lights. It's just absolutely fantastic driving experience. And the other thing is, of course, the instant acceleration when you put your foot down.

That's it. Like it just goes instantly. Um, even in one of the wimpiest electric cars on the market behind the Hyundai Ioniq, it's got no shortage of grunt when you put your foot down. even in normal mode.

I just drive it around in normal, not in eco or not in sports mode and it's absolutely great. This was a bad idea coming this way. I should have just started in the back streets and ended in the back streets. and then, yeah, I should have just drove around in circles in the suburbs anyway.

Well, the other great thing about electric cars is that, uh, the region breaking the re you get so used to regen braking. when I take this, I usually leave it in like auto mode. so when I take my foot off the pedal now, it's slowing down. And like in 95 percent of cases, when you take your foot off the pedal, that's what you want to do.

You want to slow down, so why not have the car do it for you and also put energy back into the battery? It's just a winner all round. Regen braking Of course. The other advantage with fully electric cars is that, uh, you can coast as well if you turn off the regen braking. If you take your foot off the pedal, it'll just keep going.

And it's only the rolling resistance of the tires and the air resistance of the car, the coefficient of drag coefficient. That's the only thing that's slowing the car down. So you know, if you're on the highways or you know, out on long stretches or something like that, you probably don't want regen braking on you turn on coasting mode. But um, if they're just regular city driving like I do and I almost always leave the regen on, it's just great.

You get so used to the region coming on, it just feels natural. Actually, coasting mode feels a bit weird when you uh, turn on uh and turn off Regen braking and use your coasting mode. It just just feels kind of strange just to like not have it do anything. So anyway, Regen Braking absolutely love it.

I would not want to be without Regen Braking. Now the other thing people talk about is range anxiety. Have I had any range anxiety owning this thing? Um, the answer is no, Basically none whatsoever because my circumstances actually suit using an electric car and I'll talk about that in a minute. So no range anxiety.

The only time I've had to sort of like want to fill it up in a hurry is when one Sunday we made a decision. Oh, we'd love to go to the you know, beach up the coast and the it was only like a quarter full or something like that. so we couldn't actually get up there. So I drove like 10 15 minutes away to one of the a few in Sydney.

Uh, fast Chargers level three? Uh, 50 kilowatt fast charges and I charged it up. Yeah, I paid. I don't know 15 bucks or something to for that, but that's really the only time that I've ever had to really do that. Um, so yeah.

I'm very happy with, um, the fact that most of my usage cases I can, just, uh, charge this thing at home because you know it's even on a like a big day out. We might do, you know, 50 or 100 kilometers or something like that and you come back at night. You plug it in. it takes two seconds to plug it into the uh, trickle level.

One trickle charger and Bob's your uncle. You wake up in the morning and it it's basically back charged again. So it's It's super convenient. We've never had to visit a petrol station.

I do not miss petrol stations. Let me tell you so. I've had no range anxiety, but your mileage may vary on that. Um, of course, because everyone's needs are different in that regard.

And having said that, really, your decision to buy an electric car all hinges around your lifestyle, where you live, how you park your car. Like for us, we park it in a garage. at home. it's easy to charge, no problems whatsoever.

Um, so we just, uh, like plug it in when we get home. and and that's it. And we've never had to worry about anything at all. you know, on the occasional mode.

oh, we've you know, we forgot to charge it or something. Yeah, we might put it in eco mode just to like, you know, save a little bit just to you know, ensure that we've got the capacity to get back. But at no point in all of owning this have I ever felt oh, we're we're going to run out. You know it's just, it's just not a thing.

So yeah, just plan your trips. It's not a problem. and if you don't have the ability to charge at home, you might have the ability to charge at work. uh, for example, and I've occasionally charged mine at work, and you know it's just fine.

But like, mostly we charge it at home because I've got solar. The excess solar just charges this thing, so it's brilliant so as to cost, I've actually charged this thing 46 times, or roughly thereabouts. Yeah, like, and I'm just taking like four tanks. like we've probably probably plugged it in.

almost certainly plugged it in more than that. But let's just say six to 46 full charges of this thing I've used in the 17 000 kilometers that I've done in this thing in 12 months. But if I do need to charge it with like at night time when there's no solar, then you know it's it cost me about ten dollars. uh, to fill this thing up from empty.

But most of the time we charge it during the day from excess our solar, so it's basically cost us almost nothing apart from the occasional um, you know, when we're out and about uh, and we've had to pay a couple of times to fast charge the thing. But like, apart from that, even if I assume that 10 of those full charges were done at night, that's still like only like a hundred bucks or less. Um, for like over 12 months actually using this thing. So it's It's just incredible.

Like, you know, 12 like 100 bucks in 12 months whereas a normal internal combustion car my previous one, it would have cost me about twenty five hundred dollars. So I'm basically saving two and a half thousand dollars a year just in petrol, uh, costs. So it's a total no-brainer So over the uh, span of like a 10-year ownership. For example, if you own the thing for a decade, then that's 25 000 you've saved just in petrol.

It's it's unbelievable. But even at the most expensive, uh, like level three charging station, I would only be paying. I think about 18 to charge this thing up, which is like less than half the cost of an internal combustion engine car. Sure, it takes longer, like nothing beats an internal combustion engine car on a long road trip.

If you just want to eat up the miles and you won't want to take 5 or 10 minutes to refill like you know, I can be out in my old internal combustion engine car. To be fair, I can be into the petrol station, fill up out, get a couple of snacks in there, and be out clean my windows. and I can do that all in under three minutes and I can be out of there. Yes, I've timed it so internal combustion engine cars still have that advantage in just being able to put the sheer amount of energy refill back into the car.

So yeah, but still. We just plug it into home, takes two seconds, and charges overnight it's ready to go. I've had no problems whatsoever, and as far as other Uh costs go, I'm still on the original Uh tyres. Of course.

I have paid for one service and that was and sixty five dollars. It's like a fixed, uh price thing with Hyundai. Uh, and yeah, 165 bucks and I'll happily pay 165 dollars to maintain this thing every year. It's a 12-month um, service interval.

and for all those people who crap on about oh, you never have to service an electric car. The only difference is there's no engine, but everything else remains the same. You've got the power steering, you've got the uh, suspension systems, you've got the brakes of course. Um, there are times we can talk about the brakes in a minute.

Um, and you've got uh, the like, the cooling systems, the aircon, all these systems. um, and a lot of them have to do with your safety as well. I will happily pay 165 a year. Um, you know for for a mechanic to look over my car and make sure everything's like safe and still okay so you know.

Yeah, sure, you don't have to get a service if you don't want to. but I no, no, I'm going to get mine serviced every year for 165 bucks. Thank you very much. It's bugger all cost.

It's a complete no-brainer This is a one and a half ton lethal projectile. I'd like to keep it uh, you know, relatively safe. Thank you very much. And as far as our daily use on this thing, I only charge the battery to 80.

That's a software limit in here. Um, and it just like increased the life of the battery. We only charge it to 100. We know we're going to go on a long trip and I've only done that like a handful of times.

Um, that I've owned it. So yeah. 80? Um, like I get 270 kilometers. uh from it.

And it it just it does the business for all my driving needs, going up to the mountains and back. Yeah so the range is not an issue with this thing now. Um, we have used when we're going out like a really big trips. We have done like weekends away family trips in this thing.

but like our one like big yearly trip where we go away for several weeks and we take the bikes and we take you know everything and we take the kitchen sink. Um then this car is just not suitable for that. It's not because of the range, it's because this is a physically smaller car and we can't fit everything in it. If we could fit everything in it.

If this was like an Suv sized electric car, then yeah, we would have. I would happily take this on a road trip. You just have to plan a bit better generally, especially with kids like we are not going to do more than like, you know, three or four hundred kilometers in a day anyway. So you just like plan your uh trips around that and once again, your mileage may vary.

But you know, with uh, two young kids in the car we're we're not gonna be doing any more than what this thing can do in a day 315 or we might like fast charge it halfway. We might do. You know what might want to do four or even 500, but we can. You know there's fast charge points at various locations along the Um, you know the highways and trips that we want to do, so it's not really a problem.

Yeah, so really, I would not want to buy an internal combustion engine car again. So I've had practically zero downsides from owning a fully electric car. I I can't really think of any major downside, but that's for my usage scenario. As I said, your mileage may vary.

like if you live in a densely populated area and you don't have a garage where you can readily charge it up, you're gonna, you know, park your car on the street or whatever and you don't have the ability to charge it at work or whatever. Then yeah, in electric cars, probably not for you. They are not for everyone at the moment. Um, until fast charging stations everywhere.

They're then fairly rare here in um, Sydney and Australia in uh, general. So you know, if you can't charge it at home or at work, you probably shouldn't be buying an electric car. You'd really have to think hard. But for everyone else, anyone who can charge it at home or at work, it's complete no brainer.

There's there's no reason to buy an internal combustion engine car. I just love the complete silence that I've stopped here now and there's no exhaust whatsoever and the instant acceleration. and it's just everything about an electric car feels fantastic. The regen braking just knowing that you're putting uh, energy back in the car.

No brake maintenance, for example. I I actually did a video showing um, how it showed. like I actually took my wheel off because I did actually get a flat in this thing and I took my wheel off and there's no brake dust whatsoever after 12 months none. So you never virtually never have to change the brake pads in this thing because most of the time I've got this flappy paddle, uh, region, uh, braking.

Although even if I put my foot on the brake, um, on the brake pedal, it's still going to use the regen braking until it has to like, really suddenly stop And it determines that. Oh no, I can't. Uh, you know, I've really got to apply the disc, uh, brakes to slow down. The Regen's not going to do it, but um, I, I've felt that happen.

you know, a handful of times. But generally the Regen break-in handles absolutely everything. And I if you can, highly recommend getting the flappy paddles. but I, um, tend to look.

I'm slowing down now. Oh, I had to put the brake on at the end for a bit more regen. but that I believe that was almost all Regen there. Um, stop.

You know, stopping fairly suddenly at those uh, lights there? So yeah, I just I love everything about the electric car and it saved me like 2 500 bucks a year in cost. So it's a it's pretty much a no-brainer So they're my thoughts on owning an electric car. Um, yeah, highly recommend it if your circumstances and your budget allow. Obviously, they're a lot more expensive.

um, than a regular, um, internal combustion engine car. Like here in Australia? Like at least double the price for an equivalent. um, like you know, size and handling and equipped car between a fully electric and an internal combustion engine car. But yeah, I I just.

I I love my electric car. I, I don't know a single electric car owner who would say otherwise. They all say the same thing. Yep, Love it.

Never going back to an internal combustion engine car It's just yeah. Absolute no-brainer All right, I'm going to give you my thoughts on the 2020 model: Hyundai Ioniq, Electric Elite. That's the model I've got now that, uh, premium rubbish. So I don't have to level lever seats or the sunroof or whatever it came with.

I don't know. um. but yeah it. I really like it.

It handles like a real car. It's It's the best handling car.