One year of EV ownership
Month: June 2023
Kia EV6 range on 4000km road trip
I have just completed a month-long road trip from Melbourne, Australia to various destinations in South Australia. The fun we had while we were there is covered elsewhere, this is really about the Kia EV6 range and charging experience.
Some quick background – prior to Covid, my wife and I have spent many Australian winters cruising around the roads of Europe, mainly in France and UK. I joked recently that I’m sure that I’ve done more driving in LHD vehicles over the last 10 years (even in the UK). All done in petrol driven Peugeot’s.
We don’t travel light, we often take our own coffee machine with us, and I typically drive at or slightly over the speed limit. On this trip we had a third adult and a third large suitcase for much of the time.
Since I’ve had the Kia AWD GT Line EV6, I enjoy passing more than ever. For a variety of reasons, mainly safety, we seldom drive more than 2.5 hours between stops (even in ICE cars).
We used ‘normal’ mode and the heating / aircon whenever we wanted and never tried to minimise energy consumption.
The above shot shows the dashboard on leaving. You can see that I tend to drive in auto regen mode and back of envelope average 30 kmph (17230/567). This is not the first road trip but most of my driving has been in the city. I’ve had times when the range has hit 550km, and 528km was not unusual.
You can see how the range varied on the road trip – at times as low as around 360km. These are the figures that are displayed on the dash – important but I was more curious about what we achieved.
I have attached my travel log is below, it looks messy but let me try and explain. At the top we left home with it saying 528km and arrived at ‘checkpoint’ and it said 367km. We started at 528km and we had only done 110km, it SHOULD have said 418km but it said 367km…or 51km short.
This is NOT wrong – I’d been flicking along at 110kmph most of the time and to be fair, I certainly didn’t expect to get 528km at those speeds.
Now my thinking is that I really only care if the range is significantly less than predicted and it is a surprise. Cast your eyes down to 19069km item – range was predicted to be 399km and it turned out 67km short. As you can see, I used the heated seats that day. I can also add that it was a day when it was all highway driving and a maximum of 11 degrees. The slightly unusual thing was that at the end of the day, the display said 115km of range but 32% battery. So that suggests a range of more like 360km. I guess it is being careful and expecting a full day of heated seats?
Similar experience on one of the last few days with heated seats being used. My lesson – if you are worried about range then use the heated seats carefully.
Bottom line for me – predictor is good enough and conservative, except when heavily using the heated seats. It won’t impact me, I’ll keep using them and charging when I need.
My overall charging experience was great. Highway stops were sufficiently quick that we usually had to move the car as we hadn’t finished our food / toilet stop. We had a couple of episodes where we had to try the charger a couple of times before it worked properly. No big drama to me.
Charging at our various accommodation places was generally granny charging. That was adding roughly 100km overnight which suited us fine because most places we stayed a week and seldom averaged more than 100km a day. We needed a long extension cord and sometimes needed to leave a window open to a bathroom or laundry. We told all owners what we were doing and explained the dollars.
Another observation that I didn’t expect was that sometimes the range predictor changed between when it was fully charged in the evening and when I got up in the morning. Charge was the same percentage but the range was sometimes higher, sometimes lower. When it dropped by 31km, the temperature had dropped, may explain it. One day the range increased by 27km in an hour of sitting and the temperature had not changed. Odd?
The shot below was not quite at the end (I forgot). You can see that the lifetime average has gone from 16.7 to 17.3. I think the trip average speed was about 55kmph but we probably did more sitting car with it running that distorts things a bit. Still that is double the normal average speed.
Costs?
The total cost for charging was $182, add the Vic EV tax of $105 = $287
Rough petrol equiv = 10 litres / 100km and $1.80 per litre @ 400 litres = $720
Screen shots
The file below has lots of screen shots and notes. You can see a bit more info. Hopefully not too many arithmetic errors 🙂
I hope people find this useful
Gary and Sandy's Travel Blog 