u/davidjamesonuk

Bear with me on this, it’s a little bit thinky.

Until recently I drove a 250hp ICE car. My fuel economy was 40mpg on a good day, 32 on a bad. How I approached driving was entirely based on how much it was likely to cost me to fill up. When the various fuel price shocks have hit over the past few years, I’ve been more careful and less of a hooligan with my right foot.

I’m about 3 weeks in to running a Hyundai Ioniq 5. It’s the 63kWh battery RWD and I have found myself totally changing how I drive. I coast and cruise a lot more than I did, use the regen paddles to brake a lot of the time and am getting about 4 miles/kWh across a mix of local and longer distance drives.

I’m treating my battery percentage like a precious, finite resource, cautious not to run it too low. I’m being careful with usage, switching off AC when I don’t need it and monitoring my economy to be sure I’m not using too much energy.

I used to treat petrol as an infinitely replenishing energy source that I could refill without consequence and my only concern was the cost.

I’m finding it ironic (ironiq?) that in switching to electricity (which could genuinely be renewable and infinite) that I now drive how it makes sense to when using the finite resource that is oil.

And when I want to I can still plant the right foot, get pinned into my seat and see the world go by without much concern beyond knowing I need to charge up soon and maybe buy new rear tyres.

I took this photo on my second day of EV ownership where I went to my local fast(ish) charger and parked up next to a 6 for my first charge up.

I always liked the look of the 6 but my dog wouldn’t appreciate the boot!

Time to say farewell to a dear, dear friend.

I’ve had my V90 CC T5 from new, a few weeks before Covid. It’s seen me safe through a rough 6 years, wafting me and my family on long journeys with ease and comfort, swallowing whole event set-ups for my coffee business and even making my pulse race a little after I added the PSE earlier this year.

It’s cost me a bit here and there, but I’d hoped to grow old with this car and put a cricket score of miles on it.

Sadly the world had other ideas for us and I’m cashing in and switching to an EV. A like for like replacement was neither available nor affordable.

I’ll be back though. Not my last Volvo.