Last January, as our RAV4 hybrid car began showing its age, I began investigating the latest plug-in hybrids that were available. Consumer Reports rated the RAV4 PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electrical Vehicle) near the top of all electric vehicles. To sweeten the potential purchase potential, there were subsidies available for buying this electric vehicle. Bravely, I put in an order for a plug-in hybrid RAV4, as there was a substantial waiting list but a money-back guarantee if I should change my mind.

Discussions with my wife, who is the chief environmental officer (CEO) within our household, went in a direction I hadn’t anticipated. It became painfully obvious that the “collective we” should be looking to be more environmentally responsible. This meant that if we were going electric, it had to be fully electric. Recognizing that there was really no alternative, (but secretly feeling good that a new car had been agreed upon), I started to investigate electric vehicles on the market. Sadly for me, a long-time Toyota owner, the fully electric Toyota was poorly rated. The KIA Niro was highly rated and considerably more affordable than most electric vehicles (but even with the subsidy, it was expensive). So I visited a KIA dealer to begin the uncomfortable purchase process.

While the bargaining became a marathon battle of frustration, we’re now the proud owners of a car that has changed the way we drive, live and even think about energy.

I thought it might be useful to write about my first experiences and surprises with this KIA Niro. (Before I begin, let me say it was all I could do to purchase this car, for as we all know, it was the Roman emperor Nero who “fiddled while Rome burned”. And one of my grandson’s scout leaders indicated she would never buy a KIA because the acronym stood for “killed in action”. Needless to say, the car name and the difficult dealer gave bad vibes to potential owners like me).

My first impression? Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence”. This is an astonishingly quiet car – quieter than my RAV4 hybrid, quieter than almost every other vehicle I have driven. And then the surprise: this thing goes fast. I have no trouble accelerating off the exit ramps onto the highway. I can pass muscle cars like they’re standing still. My grandson loves it, “Opa, drive faster, faster”.

My second happy surprise? Regenerative breaking. I’d never heard of this before I got this car. This is what I would have called “gearing down”, something I used to have with my standard transmission. When I take my foot off the accelerator the car reverses torque and starts to make the engine power in reverse. At the same time it uses the electricity created to charge the battery. I really didn’t pay attention when the sales person gave me a demo drive and talked about it. I do recall asking him how to reduce that annoying uncomfortable breaking when I took my foot off the accelerator. And that is the first feeling you get when you have never had regenerative breaking.

But I have learned to love regenerative breaking. It seems to know exactly how to decelerate to a stop sign or traffic signal. And when I have to slow down, the response is quick. The amazing thing is that it does this without me having to touch the brake pedal. Obviously its better for the brakes, and it generates electricity to improve range.

Let me tell you about another of the unique positive features of this vehicle. It’s called Vehicle to Load (V2L). You may have seen those Ford Lightning truck commercials in which they simply plug the truck into their household circuit box and re-power their entire house when the electrical grid power is lost. (Incidentally it’s really not that easy and you require several things, not the least of which is an expensive transfer switch. But that is another subject). I’m not sure how long they re-powered the entire house in the commercial, but they used something that I now know is called V2L or in that case, perhaps V2H – Vehicle to Home.

I have V2L in my KIA Niro, with obviously less power potential then the truck application. To use V2L, I simply plug my Level 1 connector into the car and connect the other end to the male three pronged plug of an appliance – for simplicity, say a lamp. I can then use the lamp running on my car’s battery power.

Living in a rural area, I am always concerned about power outages. Recently I bought a small EcoFlow electric generator to help offset food spoilage potential in the event of a power failure. That unit is capable of powering a fridge and freezer for up to seven hours before it needs to be recharged. It takes less than an hour to recharge it. If the power goes off now, I use the EcoFlow until it needs to be recharged. If a recharge is necessary, I can top up the generator with V2L running for less than an hour, and then the EcoFlow can continue powering the fridge and freezer. The car itself requires very little electrical power to charge that small generator. If I was camping or had an electric cooler for chilling beer, V2L would be perfect.

One other feature has been a pleasant surprise to me: the battery placement creates a low centre of gravity for the car. As a result, if I’m driving around curves, I feel more stable. That extra stability is particularly valuable if you’re driving country roads where there’s nothing really around. It also helps specifically with my KIA Niro which is a front wheel drive vehicle. The lower centre of gravity provides greater stability in winter and offers less chance of getting stuck in snow.

Charging an EV means learning a whole new language and fueling process: kilowatt hours, Km/kWh, etc. These terms are really unfamiliar for me. Raised on miles per gallon, it took me several years to learn what litres per 100 kilometres meant. This new vocabulary of measuring fuel or power usage and the amount of fuel left in the battery has created a confusing adjustment in understanding the meaning and subtleties of the operating jargon.

So lets get to the basics. How do you put the electricity power into the car? The best part is you can do it at home. But I found that I needed the same kind of power receptacle for charging my car in my garage that I use for my clothes dryer, or kitchen electrical stove – I call them 240v outlets, although the electricians will probably tell you that is not exactly correct. Simply stated, they are the big outlets (Level 2), not the little receptacles (Level 1) you find on the walls.

Unlike the V2L connector, my car does not have a male plug to go into these larger outlets, though. Another unit is required. That unit, called a charger, either plugs into the “dryer-type” home electrical receptacle, or is hard wired to it. This connector has an external (male) plug that goes into the (female) car charging outlet – mine is on the front of the car just below the hood. I actually have two outlets there. Neither are the standard three pronged plugs we’re generally familiar with.

My car needs a J1772 (Level 2-240v) connector plug to provide alternating current connections (This alternating current is what we use for outlets in our house). A higher power CCS1 connector outlet is also there to provide (fast) direct current charging, the kind you see at charging stations along highways (Tesla “super chargers” use a different very high power capable NAC format). The CCS1 connection is much faster to “top up” or “fuel” than my J1772 connector. It takes about 40-45 minutes for a full (80%) charge. I have tried it once. My car has both types of receptacles (J1772 and CCS1) but the direct current fuelling is recommended only for occasional use as using it too often may overheat the battery.

At home, I use a car connection device with a male J1772 connector built by Autel. It is a box that is hardwired to the 240v circuit terminating on my electrical panel in the basement. It includes an app. What would the world be without an app? The app keeps track of the amount of power that is provided to the car and information related to time and date of charging. You can also input hydro utility rate information to estimate the cost of electricity added. The Autel unit stops charging when the car reaches the maximum charge you prescribe, generally 80% of maximum capacity as recommended by KIA.

It’s like everything else these days. Always some extra charges for something. First, I had to pay for the car. Then I had to pay for the electrical connection by an electrician who hooked the charging circuit up to my basement circuit board and to the Autel unit. All of this cost me just under $2000.

So having purchased the necessary fuelling devices, I was ready to drive the car. If you think about it, I now have my own “electricity station” in my garage. And I save a lot of money doing that. A combustion engine car requires a trip to the gas station to fill up. Given the large number of gas stations available, it’s a real advantage, but now I charge it up at my home station, or if necessary, at a commercial outlet.

My RAV4 cost me about $2500 a year in gasoline travelling about 25,000 km per year. My EV now costs me about $50-$60 a month -about $700 a year. So, the fuel savings probably pay for the electrical hook up expense needed to get up and running. Of course, I could have avoided that expense if I really didn’t drive much. I could’ve used the standard (Level 1) plug-in that came with the car, hooking it up to a regular wall receptacle. It would take almost two days to charge the car from empty to full. The Level 2 device I use allows me to go from 0-100% in just over 6 hours. Its actually much less time than that for me to wait, though, because I never start from zero.

I started to do some testing to see whether off-peak pricing would give me even lower costs. We live in rural Eastern Ontario where we have a flat electricity rate. This turns out to be more convenient for me as I can simply plug the charger into the car at any time of the day or night. Even though off-peak pricing is now available, it makes very little difference to me in total annual costs. My friends who live in the city and have off-peak pricing can benefit from the much lower night time rates. They have to set either their car or their Autel-type app to charge at the right time. Being a rural customer, my total charges for electricity, including for the car, are lower than the best rates my friends get in the city.

In addition to the electricity charges, there are more savings with an EV. I don’t need to do tuneups or change the spark plugs or put in a new exhaust system. I believe there are many other maintenance cost savings. The lack of manufacturer-specified maintenance requirements for my KIA, though, is somewhat unnerving, as I am used to regular frequently specified maintenance times. The user manual for my KIA says (basic) maintenance should be done every 13,000 km. All they do for that maintenance is check the brakes, replace the cabin filter and rotate the tires. (There must be something missing?). I’ve even phoned the dealer to see if there is some kind of additional maintenance need. They tell me no. For this modern vehicle I receive a monthly email detailing functional checks it has remotely done on my car through the KIA app. I should be pleased so little maintenance is required, but I bought an extended warranty to feel more confident.

My Kia Niro is a Korean car. I have to bow to my friends in tech friendly Korea. I think they expect me to be equally tech savvy, though. When it comes to icons and acronyms –  my car has many – I don’t understand the meaning of half of them. The worst part for me is the 500 page owner’s manual which I diligently read when I first got the car. The icons in the manual are very small, and in black-and-white. To be honest, I cannot distinguish them. Thankfully, though, I downloaded the manual. It’s in colour and there are fewer icons. And there are recognizable pictures that I can expand on my telephone screen for my aging eyes. If I was giving any advice to prospective Niro owners, I would say: forget your paper manual-use it as a library adornment – but make sure you download the e-manual and look at the coloured pictures to find out how the car really works.

On that subject, this is a new technology. Who would have thought that I would be considered an “early adapter”. But what I didn’t expect was that the dealers and the service people maintaining the EVs seem to understand electric vehicles only marginally better than I. I’ve communicated with several dealers, so it’s not a case of one dealer being better than the other one. The reality is that only a few people seem to understand the car’s workings very well. I believe they’re learning as they go along. And that should be a concern to any prospective owners.

I had a recent experience that should underline this point. On a recent grocery trip driving on a city street, the car suddenly would go no faster than 30 km/h – my accelerator foot was useless. The dash screen read “limit 30 kph”. Sitting alongside that busy  street, 45 km from home, I phoned several KIA dealers and not one of them could even give me a hint as to why this was happening. “Bring it in”, they all offered. C’mon! Fortunately for me, I was with my wife who is less than technology literate but has a solution that works almost every time.  “Turn off the car and then turn it on again”, she said. Surprise, surprise, that did it. I wonder how many of the tech gurus with KIA would have been able to figure that one out. And maybe it would have been easier for them if they had had the benefit, as I had later that day, of using artificial intelligence (ai). I simply described the events to ai and it quickly came back and told me to reset (turn off) the car because somehow I must’ve accidentally pushed a wrong button. Oh my!

Enough with the quirks. This was my only unhappy surprise experience so far with this car.

There are some things that I’ve learned that I believe would benefit anyone looking at an EV car purchase and living in a rural area. This is what I might call the myths and realities of EV ownership.

First, most people think EV‘s are expensive. Even though there are no subsidies available today for EV purchases in our province, there are  many EV‘s available today because our friends south of the border have decided that anything designed to satisfy environmental concerns is superfluous . As a result US auto manufacturers have been looking to Canada as a potential market for off loading their extra EVs. There is, of course, also a Chinese glut of EV‘s. At some point in time these EVs are going to be available at a much lower price.

Many people believe that EVs take hours to charge. In fact they do, on my home charger. But if I really need charging, I can get it from a commercial high power charger. My car can accept direct current charging, fully charging it in 30 to 45 minutes, thereby extending my range from 20% to 80%. This means I can literally stop at a McDonald’s near a charger, have a hamburger, and come back to a fully charged vehicle. For someone experiencing time pressures, this is not a good solution. For me, it is something I can easily accommodate. The time required is really not that long and therefore I don’t believe that the concern about how much time is required to charge is a deal breaker for EVs.

Despite my rural location, commercial chargers are available within 15 minutes of my home and many more are available in nearby larger urban locations. The car actually identifies where those locations are, but sadly there are several companies offering commercial service and most use a prepaid funding app. I have set up a few of these prepaid arrangements – just in case – looking at the various companies offering commercial service in the area where I could potentially go. This is something you learn to do, but it is not what I would see as convenient. Gas stations for combustion engines are everywhere and they all accept credit cards. I believe that this awkward situation for EV charge payments will begin to change soon as the market matures.

Another “myth” is that EVs have a short range. I’m not sure what that means exactly but in the summer my car gets about 390 km range, which is more than enough to get me back-and-forth to Ottawa several times. This range limit may be somewhat problematic if I’m planning to drive much longer distances, but as I mentioned, I can use commercial chargers to get me on my way. For those folks who are travelling to areas where commercial chargers are in short supply, an EV may create “range anxiety”. In this case, a plug-in hybrid may be a more comfortable solution, as the combination of EV power supplemented by combustion engine power may be a good solution. But I believe that in the near future commercial charging is going to be more universally available and battery range will continue to grow. I can envision commercial chargers replacing or supplementing existing gas stations as EV ownership increases. I can also see the battery range increasing to distances equivalent to combustion engine range. The PHEV may only be a stop gap solution.

Battery range maximum is an important consideration in the Canadian context. We do have cold winters. And that affects the power and strength of the battery. My vehicle has a battery warmer. If I turn the car on before I leave in the morning, the warmer will keep that battery warm throughout the day, and give me much greater range. There is no doubt, though, that I have less range in the winter. I would say I get anywhere between 330 to 350 km on a full charge, but I never really give it a full charge because the KIA recommended charge is about 80%. KIA does indicate, however, that if you know you’re going a longer distance, it doesn’t hurt to every now and then go up to 100% charge.

There are a lot of people that think EVs are going to drain our electrical resources. Certainly they use electricity, but of course they’re not using carbon producing oil and gas. They are much cleaner for the planet, that’s for sure. And governments are encouraging greater use of electricity, often with renewable sources of electrical generation.

Another very interesting part of this story is that these batteries are almost totally recyclable, so they have a second life potential. If you look at the Chinese, they’re using batteries like those that you put in your flashlight – take the old battery out and put in a new one. But they are designed to require little work to make this happen. After you take the batteries out, recharge them, replace a few non-working cells, then put them back in the market again. North American automakers need to look at this replacement concept, as battery changes are very expensive (even though they are guaranteed to last a decade).

As I look at this purchase, overall, I think it was a good choice. We are helping the planet, there’s no doubt about it. Our CEO is happy. I am too. I have instant torque. I have regenerative breaking. I have V2L, and my car is incredibly stable and quiet. It has changed the way that I feel about driving. Quiet confidence perhaps.

Range anxiety is still there in the back of my mind. But I’ve learned it’s not really that big a deal, as I always seem to make it back home with lots of range left. If I happen to be driving to Toronto for example, I think it will be important to figure out where I’m going to have to stop and where those EV chargers are going to be. And if forever reason I am planning to drive in the Northwest Territories or other areas where commercial charging is not easily accessible, well, maybe I should rent a gas powered car.

An EV is good for me and our family. I hope it can be good for you too. Maybe my wife is right. We’ll all save the planet.

If you’re interested in finding out more information on the personal experience that I’ve had with EV’s, you may wish to go to my YouTube website. Follow the link attached here: https://www.youtube.com/@MainstreetRob