Team-BHP - EV Owners: Will you buy an EV again?

After having bought and used my Ioniq 5 for just over 5 months and nearly 7000 km, the answer is clearly yes. For our use case, as a family car used mainly in the Mumbai Metro Region but also for trips to Lonavala and (once) to Vapi and back, the Ioniq is perfect. I typically run it for about 320 km between charges (20% - 80%) but have done close to 400 km on our Vapi trip.

The more relevant question is whether I would ever buy an ICE car again. When I bought this, that seemed obvious - that I would always want 1 ICE car. But it could well be that I may feel comfortable living with just EVs when the time comes to replace my other cars.

We have owned Nexon EV Max for close to 1.5 years It would be dishonest on my part to say that we were 100% sure of our purchase at the time of booking.

1. I have a decent understanding of Electric motors (our curriculum had both the theory and lab on electric motors), but the entire battery technology was new to me at that time.

2. The only real option at that time was Tata Nexon Max and I was apprehensive of their QC and services particularly in a small town like palakkad.

Besides this there was always the concern of the car being outdated as soon as we purchase. All this flew out of the window so to speak after a test drive. The Tata sales team was really good, I should say much better than the Maruti guys (they seems to be not too interested in selling) when it came to arranging the TD and stuff. Sofar the journey of about 28K kms has been flawless. While we had to stretch our budget quite a bit to accommodate for this, I would say it has been the best purchase that we have done.

I can understand others might not be as lucky to have independent parking with a plug point but
for me there is no going back. I will keep this car as long as possible (hopefully for the next two decades like our zen) and there is no way I will consider buying an ICE car from now on.

Some times I do miss driving the Maruti zen, its mechanical connect, the engine noise (nay music) based rev matching etc but those are irrational emotions of a driving enthusiast not to be taking seriously if we look at hard facts. Objectively, the EV drive train is far superior to the ICE drive train by a fair margin (even discounting the environmental angle).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shreyans_Jain (Post 5760571)

I’d like to hear the views of people who have voted no, for an overwhelming majority seem to be extremely satisfied with their EVs. Did your cars have any reliability issues or was it something else?

Hi Shreyans_Jain - I am not an owner of EV, since I have been struggling to get charging set up in my high rise apartment building in Noida Extension. Our builder and Apartment Owner Association (AOA) unable to provide separate electricity meter for EV charging. Talks are going on with builder & AOA, but it seems they will not be convinced unless there is a law by MoRTH.

Have not voted yes or no since I do not own EV. However, if given an opportunity, I will wait for some time to buy an EV as I am anticipating that EV with 50KW batter will come around 15 lacs ex showroom soon and larger SUV body style EV with 60KW (BYD Atto3 or similar) will be available for around 25 lacs ex showroom.

My thought is to have minimum 250km range from 80% to 20%, which is kind of acceptable for highway drives. Charging from 20% to 80% would generally take about 40 to 50 minutes which is ideal time for a breakfast or lunch break. Anything above 40 to 50 minutes break is waste of time. Even if someone use her / his EV majorly in city, the EV should give realistic range of 375km to 400km from 100% to 20% so that user will have to charge once a week.

If I get EV charging at my parking slot, my next car would be an EV for sure and for this reason I have extended my next car purchase to 2025. I will keep my Honda City VMT iVtech as a second car for occasional long trips (650km or more one way, trip to Manali and other mountain areas where taking EV will be tough when your family is with you)

I've been using Ioniq 5 for a year now, and I would totally buy an EV again. In fact, I might never go for an internal combustion car again. The superior powertrain, fuel at disposal, and negligible ownership costs are the factors in favor.

There are a few changes I would make to my choice while buying the next EV. It has to be a compact and rugged car that can be chucked around without second thoughts. A delicate darling would restrict your usage because once you own an EV, you want to drive it everywhere. If size, turning radius, and low-profile tires were not an issue in my Ioniq 5, I would have easily added another 25 percent to my overall mileage.

As a happy owner of a Kona Electric and having driven almost 18000 kms in the last 16 months, I would go with an EV again, though I would prefer a slightly longer range of about 500 kms. Driving ease and comfort, cost of ownership, and torque of an electric motor are always boons in city traffic. Charging infrastructure has grown significantly but more cars and better infrastructure would definitely push EV adoption. Of course, battery longevity, resale value, and the charging cost of public chargers are a few hiccups at the moment but should change in the future. Happy EV motoring.

Having driven the Nexon EV Max for around 25,000 km in the past 16 months, out of which 60% of it being on the highway, I would definitely go for another EV. Very happy with the performance of the car and the smoothness it offers. I feel regenerative braking is the USP of EVs, which reduce the wear of physical brakes and helps to improve the overall driving efficiency. Also the possibility of generating your own power to run the car through rooftop solar system is a huge plus point. But I would like to see a couple of changes in my next EV, mainly considering highway driving:

1) A slightly bigger battery :- The Max has a 40.5 kWh battery pack, which is delivering around 270km to 300 km of range on the highway depending on the elevation changes, out of which the last 30km is inconvenient to use as the car's performance gets limited below 10%. Based on my highway driving, I fall short of around 30-40km of range in a single charge to reach the destination in majority of the trips, leaving the last 10% aside. On highways with plenty of chargers, this is not an issue, but is a problem with routes having lesser chargers. So I would buy a car with a bigger pack of say 50 kWh, which can give a proper unrestricted usable range of 300km.

2) Faster charging speeeds :- Considering majority of the chargers on our highways, support speeds ranging from 30kW (Tata Power, BPCL) to 60kW (Zeon, Statiq, Jio BP, Chargezone, Shell, Glida), I would like to have a higher charging speed. The Nexon's charging speed peaks at around 30 kW. So even when the charger is ready to supply higher power, its getting restricted by the car and hence longer wait times.

We bought a Tiago EV (LR) in Feb (I really wanted to buy the Comet, but others disliked its looks). Since, the car has been driven for over 2k kms. The car is mostly driven by my wife or my mother. Apart from charging being a potentially disliked chore by them (which I am more than happy to take care of), they just love everything else about the car, and will never want to buy an ICE car again. My wife's (who is the primary user) most loved feature is continuous use of AC at all times and a silent cabin. As a result and as you can see below, the range we are getting is just 55% of what Tata proclaims. Even so, we don't really care much about the range. As long as we can get by at least 2 days between charge cycles, I don't think the range is going to be much of an issue. For my mom, one pedal driving is a big deal. She also appreciates Tiago's compact dimensions a lot ( previously drove an Etios).

This pic from the Tiago's App shows why this EV makes perfect sense for us and why range is not much of an issue. The green and the shaded area highlights the places the car has been to in the last 2 months or so. Never more than 15 kms away from the house, driven to all known places and multiple short journeys in a day.

EV Owners: Will you buy an EV again?-img_0786.jpg

While my mom and wife are bowled over by the conveniences of an EV, my biggest draw is zero costs - literally. We have another house just across the street, which lies vacant. As wise as the state government is, it gives 300 units free to each and every house every month (stupidity if you ask me). So I mostly charge the car in this other house and end up not being charged a penny! As a compulsive recorder of all car related information, I maintain a G-sheet for the Tiago, and sharing a screen shot of the same. To begin with, I was using an App to save the info, but due to some error in it, my profile got locked and I lost the data for the first 20 days from purchase.

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Having said the above, I am not convinced EV can be a sole car in the household. I like the present combo we have - Tiago EV for exclusive city use and Carnival for exclusive highway use. Secondly, I also yearn for a hatchback EV of the size of Tiago but with much much better interiors. If a manufacturer does end up offering that, I'll happily exchange the Tiago for it, even if priced at a premium.