2degreesofseparation's Blog

Tag: car

  • First 3 months with an EV

    First 3 months with an EV

    It’s been 3 months since we moved from an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) to an EV, so I thought I’d step out the good, the bad, and the ugly of the experience so far, in case you’re thinking about making the change too.

    Road trips

    We’re a family of five, who tends to drive to most of our holidays. So clearly one of the biggest fears I had was the dreaded ‘range anxiety’. Would we be able to load the family into the EV and still head out for a trip down the coast without having to stop to charge?
    The short answer is a resounding ‘yes’. We did multiple trips to Sandy Point (150kms), with varying numbers of people, and with and without a cargo pod on the roof without a problem (in fact just over 50% battery left on some trips). We also did from Warnambool to Melbourne (about 230kms) with 5 people and the pod on the roof and had over 50kms of range left. Portland is about another 80kms, so it will be very interesting to see if we can get there with one charge if the car is in ‘eco’ mode, rather than ‘sport’.

    The boot capacity of the Ioniq 5 is on par with other EV’s, but I was surprised at how little it held compared to the Skoda Superb. To be fair, I was always amazed at how much the Skoda could hold, so this is more a case of our older car being ‘great’ rather than the new car being ‘bad’. But the luggage pod on the roof has been sensational.

    An EV with a Thule cargo pod and a bike mount…we’re pretty much Northern suburbs royalty.

    Additional costs

    If you’ve ever decided to reduce the amount meat in your family meals, or you’ve gone gluten free, or you’ve decided to make more salads from the Yotam Ottolenghi book you were given for Christmas, then you’ll know that feeling of ‘Oh for crying out loud, now I have to buy a whole lot of new things that I’ve never needed before, and learn how to cook them’…I call it ‘the chickpea conundrum’. Of course you’ve always had to buy pasta, or eggs or plain flour…it just somehow feels unfair that now you have to buy new things.
    Similarly, we bought a home charger (so that we could charge it any time…particularly when the solar panels were working), and got a roof-rack fitted, and bought a luggage pod to go on the roof-rack. So that is about $2,800 for the charger, $500 for the roof rack, and $1,500 for the luggage pod.
    It could be argued that this is a pretty poor exchange for not having to go to a service station and fill up with petrol for 3 months…but in the long-term…I think it will make an for an amazing Cauliflower, pomegranate and pistachio salad.

    The driving experience

    Forced induction is a very interesting way of delivering more power, regardless of the number of cylinders…Ok…I think we’ve lost all of the people who don’t have an interest in cars or driving…hopefully they’ve just skipped down to the ‘technology’ section.
    The experience of driving an EV is pretty different to driving an ICE car. The power is immediate and linear (which can be great when you need to overtake…but can also feel like you’re driving a dodgem car). Our car is wider and heavier than any other car I’ve driven, and it has a longer wheel-base (so a wider turning circle). So I would never describe the car as ‘fun’ to drive. In fact, every time I hop in our eldest child’s 2001 Subaru Liberty wagon, with its manual transmission and no form of Apple Play, I’m reminded of how much ‘fun’ it can be when you really have to listen to the car and work with it.
    But with more and more driving being little more than a series of 200m bursts between one lot of traffic and the next, the ‘joy of driving’ and ‘fun’ may be things of the past, and so a comfortable, quiet, sturdy car that can make Punt Rd a pleasant catch-up with your ‘podcast friends’ may not be such a bad thing.

    Technology

    Now I realise that a lot of this technology is available in any new car, so this is not necessarily EV specific…but it has been pretty awesome for the first three months, so I’m going to talk about it.
    On stinking hot Australian days, I can press a button on my phone 10m minutes before we leave and it will start cooling down the car, so that when everyone piles into the car, it’s not a sauna. I am WELL aware of how gauche and unnecessary this sounds…but there have been enough moments in the last three months when this has been an absolute God-send, that I will not be listening to anyone bad-mouthing this feature.
    As someone who regularly parks the car, then 5 minutes later thinks ‘Wait…did I lock the car?!’ the fact that I can now lock the car from my phone any time and anywhere, will hopefully mean a lot fewer grey hairs for me…and a lot less of everyone else having to hear ‘You just keep walking, I’m just going to race back to the car and check something’.
    There is also wireless phone connection, multiple USB-C chargers for phones, a display on the windscreen of how fast I’m going, and a parking camera that shows me an overhead view of the car, which is great for showing how straight I haven’t parked the car.

    But also…the technology

    In my lifetime, car manufacturers have gone from ‘Here’s a V8 with no ABS…good luck!’ to ‘here’s a car with so many alerts and noises, that it feel less like driving a car and more like living in an Aphex Twin track’.
    If you’re in a driveway with any plants, the car will throw more ‘beeps’ at you than the ‘radio safe’ version of an NWA song in the 90s.
    If you’re travelling towards an intersection with a speed camera, it will turn down your music to let you know about it. If you disable this feature, it will still turn down your music…it just won’t tell you anything.
    If you travel more than 2kms over the speed limit it will beep at you…which on the face of it is a good thing…but it also believes that every school zone is perpetually 40kms/h (even at 10pm at night) and so freaks out at your speed, even though it’s perfectly legal. As you drive past the tram depot on St George’s Rd, it’s convinced that you should be travelling at the 10km/h speed of the tram depot rather than the 70km/h speedl limit of the road you’re on…and is not backward in coming forward to tell you about it.
    If you’re driving somewhere there are roadworks, the lane-assist will quite happily steer you to where it thinks the lane should be, rather than where it temporarily is.
    I realise that car companies now have to design their safety features assuming that drivers are on their phone and angry…but for those of us who are neither, it feels pretty patronising.

    Overall thoughts

    I definitely feel that we’ve had to pay more money to get a car that pollutes less…and that sucks. I also haven’t filled up my tyres at a service station, as I’m suddenly not sure if that’s ‘OK’ with an EV. And I really don’t know how well the car will hold its value with how quickly new technology is being developed.
    But I love this car, and our next car will be an EV as well.

  • Anthropomorphisation

    Anthropomorphisation

    I love the word ‘anthropomorphisation’. It’s big enough to sound impressive, but easy enough to break into smaller parts to make sense of it. Like a Scottish accent, it’s something I can do in my head, but struggle when I have to actually say it out loud. But most of all, the fact that it exists is like someone calmly saying ‘Hey, you know that weird thing you do where you give human characteristics to non-human things? Well, it’s actually so common that we felt the need to create a word for it!’
    Like so many things we do in our own heads, it’s nice to know that you’re not the only one doing it.

    I’m an anthropomorphisationator from way back. In my school years cricket bats and skateboards were spoken to like they were people, successes and failures were shared between us. Every bike I’ve owned has had its own personality that I have worked with and around, and I have a vivid memory of thanking my Cannondale 6 for all its help as I finished the bike leg of the Ironman. After all, it was the bike’s dedication through long training rides, early starts and endless hours on the cycling trainer that got us through…I was, in every sense, just a passenger. That bike is still in our bike shed because I feel like I would be letting the bike down by selling it…but I feel equally guilty about letting it fall into disrepair. It really deserves better.

    Pretty sure I’m smiling because as I head off on my second lap, Luke Bell is about to finish his second.


    When the Crepe Myrtle tree that we bought when Josh was born started to look like it was going to die a few years ago, I had many conversations with it. As if what it somehow needed was a Tony Robbins style inspirational speech and some reassurance….as opposed to more water, and less shade from those gum trees.
    I still have the red ‘Have a Coke and smile’ t-shirt I was wearing the first time I kissed Katie, and take it out of the drawer occasionally to use its talismanic powers to reconnect with the 21 yo who wore it as he embarked on the best part of his life.

    But my guiltiest secret is how much I talk to the cars I’ve owned, as if they were supportive friends. I have quite literally sat in every car and thanked it for all that it’s done to help me when it’s come time to sell or trade in. Which is, of course, completely insane. The car is not choosing to work or not work, it’s not choosing to take me on adventures, it doesn’t see us a team, and it certainly isn’t going to be sad that we’re breaking up. It quite literally can’t give a shit.
    But I can…and do.

    All of this is top of mind, because in the next day or so I will be saying goodbye to our Skoda Superb. I will say to anyone listening, that this is the best car I’ve ever owned. It’s not living and breathing, but it’s been the conduit to so many moments that make living and breathing so great! It’s taken us on roadtrips through Tasmania and NSW. It’s been up in the snow, and down at the beach in the heat of summer. On cold dark nights out taking photos, it’s been the warmth and comfort to return to. On family trips to Sandy Point it’s been the TARDIS that can fit more stuff in the boot than should be possible. It’s taken us to birthdays, weddings and funerals. It’s taught Josh how to drive, and at the end of every mid-winter bike ride, or trail run it has started on cue, played the tunes I wanted to listen to, and its seat warmers have gently warmed our frozen butts.

    A very muddy day on the trails at Westerfolds Park

    The only reason we’re selling it, is so that we can get an EV, and when the EV arrived, after 6 years of never missing a mechanical beat, the Skoda suddenly needed new front suspension…then yesterday, it just wouldn’t start and needed a new battery. It’s very hard not to see the Skoda as a spurned lover, looking at the car who replaced it and screaming ‘HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!!’
    But on the bright side, I’ve sold the car to my Dad, because the best thing you can do when you break up with someone, is manufacture a situation where you continue to see them at every family function!

    As advances in AI blur the line further between animate and inanimate objects, perhaps anthropomorphism will become a thing of the past. But in the next few days I’ll be taking the time to have a chat with the Skoda and thank it for everything it’s done for me…and I’ll be secretly glad that it can’t talk back.

  • Entering a new Territory

    Entering a new Territory

    In the past, the prospect of getting a new car was enough to leave me so excited I couldn’t sleep at night. The thrill of the hunt, the ridiculous levels of research, that moment when the car was all yours to drive! But we are about to get a new car, and I can honestly say I’m more excited about getting some new headphones I’ve ordered. ‘Why?’ I don’t hear you ask…well because this is going to be the car that clearly lets me know that I am currently leaving ‘Youngpersonsville pop. 18million. Thanks for visiting’ and entering ‘Themusickidslistentoistooloud Town. pop. way too many. Enjoy the decline.’ In other words, we’re getting a people mover.

    Not just any people mover, an SUV…an automatic diesel one. Which is pretty much the equivalent of walking into a pub, ordering a shandy, demanding a straw to drink it with…then putting Enya on the jukebox.

    But why Chris?

    The baffling logic appears to be, that if we get this new car, we will be able to spend more time taking other people’s children to things. Which, I think you’ll agree, is a pretty sweet sales pitch. Plus I believe that it negates the need to get a vasectomy, as you no longer have testicles. Look at the money you’re sort of saving!!!

    For those of you who don’t know, our current car is a modified Subaru Forester. It looks awesome, it handles beautifully and it goes ‘Waaapshtt’ on each gear change. Admittedly it was a purchase made solely to please me…and a rather sad attempt to show that I was still fun and interesting despite having three kids in the backseat (in truth, the only real difference between me driving this car, and some sad middle aged lump driving a convertible sports car, was that the two year old in the backseat of my car meant that at least I had had sex in the last 2 years.)
    On top of that, the brushes on the lowered suspension have to be replaced regularly as a result of having to deal with things like driveways and speed humps, if we get more than 350kms out of a tank of Premium unleaded we feel like somehow cheated Saudi Arabia, and it does draw a fair bit of attention from the boy-racer types (we also once had someone yell ‘The Fast and the Furious!’ at us in the car park of the Ballet Centre…clearly no-one involved in that situation was going to see the ballet). It’s also freaking expensive to insure. Every little unusual sound could be the start of a very expensive problem…and you live in constant fear of a policeman pulling you over and having a look under the bonnet.

    The joy of driving

    Perhaps the biggest reason for me realising that it’s time to let go of my fun car and learn to the love the beige, is that I’ve lost the love of driving. I used to view people who said ‘A car is just something to get me from A to B’ with the same level of contempt I reserved for people who said ‘Why would you eat that foreign stuff when there’s a Maccas just down the road?’ But sadly I’m starting to see it from their point of view (not the Maccas people…they are worse than Satan). After all when was the last time I went for a drive just for the fun of it? When was the last time I pushed my limits as a driver? When was the last time I went for a drive and thought ‘Well the people I’m sharing the road with are all clearly focused on what they’re doing and so I should just enjoy my driving, rather than spending the entire time in cat-like anticipation waiting to respond to their stupidity? (for those playing at home the answers are, ‘2002’, ‘At a track day at Calder Park’ and ‘Not in living memory’). So what’s the point of having a ‘driver’s car’…if your current driving experiences are at best sporadic and uninspiring?

    What’s more, this new car will probably have a stereo you can hear over the road noise, it will have crazy mod cons like USB and Bluetooth and GPS…it will even have a DVD player built in so that I can become one of those people I hate with DVD players in their car! And who knows, maybe getting an automatic transmission won’t be the first step on a slippery slope towards becoming one of those people in Wall-e who just sit in floating chairs while machines do everything for them.

    I think that this is the hardest part about this new car. A Territory makes so much more sense than the car we have now. But it is just such a clear indication that I’m slowly sinking into that comfortable arm-chair called ‘middle age’…and while my early 20’s self looks on in horror at what I’ve become, instead of raging against the machine and fighting for my right to party… I just turn to the salesman and ask how much more would come out of my pay every fortnight if I got the arm-chair in leather.