2000 km journey in my Hyundai Ioniq 5 cost me less than Rs 7,000
As a car, Ioniq 5 is fantastic. If you have the money, you cannot go wrong with this vehicle
BHPian mohanphadnis recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
Just finished a 2000km journey in my Ioniq 5.
I had got delivery of the vehicle in May but never really did a long journey and refrained from writing anything about the vehicle, as the max I sat in the car before this time was just 4 hours at a time (200kms).
So come Diwali and it was time to go home, Unfortunately the flight tickets for 4 people for Raipur and back were already expensive, and when you have a vehicle which costs so less to drive, I decided to just drive. So we were driving, the passengers were me, my wife, and two kids. I had done the same journey in my Kona before and was quite comfortable doing it in a vehicle with way more range.
The plan was as follows:-
Day 1: Leave from Pune in the evening and stay in Aurangabad for the night.
Day 2: Leave early from Aurangabad (Ch Sambhaji Nagar) and reach Nagpur for lunch, get it fast charged, and reach Bhilai by evening.
For the way back, decided to leave Bhilai in the morning, and hopefully get to Nashik by the end of the day.
After a day in Nashik, the last leg was the 200 km journey back to Pune.
Pune-Aurangabad road is a mystery and the time it takes to cover the distance can range from 4 hours to 12 hours depending on traffic. Decided to check traffic when I left Pune and then decide to take the Pune – Sinnar – Aurangabad road or go straight out.
The plan was to charge in Click Hotel in Aurangabad which has a 30kW Tata power charger (Tellus), so booked a couple of rooms in the hotel and we were good to go.
The day of the journey came and as expected the click hotel charger was OOS. Well, there is the Taj Vivanta charger right next to it, but it would cost Rs.28/unit. Decided to rather try the EV pump charger in CIDCO, as it is cheaper (20/unit).
The road showed hardly any jams and we were off from Pune by 4:30 pm. The journey was uneventful and was able to reach Aurangabad by 8:45. The efficiency I got was pretty good (7.6km/kWh) and I was in Aurangabad with a 60% charge still in the battery. As I reached the EV pump charger, it was completely empty. GREAT!!!! Now this place has two DCFCs both from different manufacturers, so I plug in the first charger, and it gives me a pairing error. Next, I tried the other machine, and the handshake went fine but all it was able to give was 1kW.
Decided there were only so many moments in life, and just went to Vivanta.
Plug in the charger, tap the RFID, and the car shows it is charging at 50kW on a 30kW charger!!!! I was on Cloud#9, but the next moment it dropped back to 30kW. SIGH!!
Anyway, had dinner, while the car sipped electrons and after 90 minutes, the battery was at 100%, took out the car, checked in at a click, and slept like a baby.
The journey from Aurangabad – Nagpur is 450 kms using Samruddhi Highway, I was quite confident that I could make this distance in a single charge and hence had charged up to 100%. The day starts, I join Samrudhhi and am cruising at 85kmph (decided to see how the efficiency goes before increasing speed later). On this highway, the ADAS-2 features come on their own, adaptive cruise control + Lane keep assist meant after 5 hours I was in Nagpur. The efficiency I got was lower than expected though (just 6.7km/kWh) and I reached my relative’s place with 6% battery and 25km range left.
Put the car for a charge on Jio BP charger at Hotel Orient Tabiah which gave 60kW steady all the way. And before I could finish the lunch, the car sent me a message saying, the charge was already complete (63kWh in 1 hour, which is 6->90%). Got the car and after some local travel was on my way to Bhilai. Another journey on roads that were less than perfect (Ioniq 5 took the bad roads with aplomb) was in Bhilai by 8 pm (4 hours from Nagpur) again at 7.4km/kWh.
On the way out I got a few pointers:-
1. The Michelin pro pilots are amazing tyres, I had kept the tyre pressure slightly lower at 35psi, but the max they went to while driving was 37psi, I think this lower tyre pressure caused me some efficiency on the samrudhhi. There was 0 heating issue in this tyre, I think if filled with Nitrogen, we can avoid this increase as well.
2. I think concrete has higher rolling resistance and hence I got far lower efficiency than tar.
3. The car is very comfortable, there is so much room in the vehicle’s backseat that the kids were super comfortable.
4. ADAS is a dream on samrudhhi mahamarg. the car almost drives itself with hardly any inputs, which is basically putting slight pressure on Steering regularly, so that the ADAS will know I have hands on the steering.
On the way back, decided to leave from Bhilai in the morning but got the news the night before that the Jio BP at Orient Tabiah is OOS, which meant on reaching Nagpur I had to charge on MSEB’s charger which was giving only 27kW, this meant I had to wait almost 90 minutes in Nagpur till the battery reached 100%(I had reached Nagpur with 52% battery remaining). But god MSEB is a cheap CPO, at only Rs.13.25/kWh
With the Jio BP, this time could have been reduced to about 45 minutes.
My parents gave me a lot of stuff so I was carrying about 70kgs extra luggage back, and rather than coming down 200 mtrs, I would be climbing the same. So decided that I would do a short charge in Buti Bori (thus reducing the distance to Aurangabad to 420kms) and then start up at a speed of just 80kmph, did not want to get off the samrudhi at Jalna and then come on the Aurangabad-Jalna road for 55 kms.
So after the quick 15-minute charge at Buti-Bori which took charge back to 100% (from 95%), we were on the way. I started up at 80kmph, but now I was getting an efficiency of about 7.4km/Kwh. After about 150kms we had sped up to 85kmph, in some time 90 and finally just as we were reaching Aurangabad, we were cruising at 100kmph. After leaving Buti Bori at 2 pm, we were able to reach Aurangabad by 7:30 pm, with a short stop on the highway.
Saw this peculiar sight on Samrudhi, the only real case of traffic violation, but it is a wonder how such people think they would survive stupidity.
Again the stop was at Vivanta where a 90-minute charge took the car to 70% from 12%. Left Aurangabad at 9:30 pm and started cruising on Mahamrg at 100kmph, but near Shirdi, I thought I saw a shape cross the road, and slowed down to take a look, found out it was a black dog and decided to slow down to 90kmph. Upon reaching Nashik had to leave the next day so decided to do a quick charge in Nashik as well.
Went to the MSEB substation to charge, but just as I put the car in for charge the charger stopped in 3-4 minutes, at exactly 6:00 pm. I have a hunch the employees shut down the charger so that people would leave and they could go home.
Anyway, decided to go to Chargezone at the car mall and was getting 30kW here. took the car to 70% and was in Pune with a 30% charge left in the car.
The chargezone auto charge worked like a dream and the charger was also working very well.
I have decided to stay away from the small CPOs now and will stick to the big guys like Zeon or Tata Power going forward. The money stuck in the wallet is not worth the pennies one saves in per unit costs. The car ran fantastically well. This is a proper cruiser.
The final stats for the journey are:- 2100 kms in 37 hours final efficiency came to 6.7km/Kwh.
Charging costs:- Rs. 4299.08
Toll Charges:- 2610
Total cost:- 6910 for a 2100 km journey.
From my early days of driving kona long distance, this has come a long way, I was able to do 900+kms in a day in an EV in India. The charging points are coming up pretty quickly and fast now. I have found Tata Power/Zeon to be quite reliable as well. I had earlier written that doing long road trips in EVs is doable.
With Ioniq 5, they are no different from any other ICE vehicle.
As a car, the Ioniq 5 is fantastic. If you have the money, you cannot go wrong with this vehicle. Enough power, lots of space, decent suspension, good GC (never scraped on the entire journey) and I had to drive on some pretty atrocious road near Sakoli, as there was an accident on the highway and I had to take unpaved village roads to get around it. Very comfortable vehicle with lots of room to store bibs and bobs.
If two kids can survive in the back seat entire day, one can imagine it is a comfortable backseat
I cannot really find a fault in this vehicle after 6 months.
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