#13 Our Kia EV

Electric Driving Downeast

Jean in her Soul EV

About a year ago my wife, Jean, and I bought a 2018 Kia Soul EV. At only three years old it was one of the newest cars we had ever purchased, and it was surprisingly cheap — only $13,000 at a time when Covid woes had made used cars shockingly dear. I had met a few people who were early pioneers in the EV world, and they were all enthusiastic in spite of the limited range available during the Conestoga era. I think Jean probably did some subtle eye-rolling when I suggested the idea, but she didn’t come at me with a bucket of cold water. After all, we still had our old Prius for backup and long trips.

The 2018 Soul has an advertised range of 111 mile, up from 93 the previous year, but low enough to give me my first twinges of “range anxiety.” The 190 mile trip home from the dealer in southern New Hampshire was a bit like a boat delivery, but we made it with only one minor “learning experience”.

When you first start driving an EV, you can’t help but watch the range readout with a furrowed brow. The number seems so low, and starts going down as you head out the driveway! Charging stations are virtually nonexistent in eastern Maine — you have to make it home! But after a couple of weeks, we knew just how far we could roam, and our glances at the dash became less frequent.

At first it’s hard to overcome the worrying feeling of arriving home on fumes, something you do your best to avoid with a gas car. But with an EV, your home is your primary gas station, usually the most economical place to charge up. For the first six months we used the level 1 charger that came with the car. It plugs into any old 120V outlet and is painfully slow, 30 hours from empty to full. But we found we never arrived home empty, and charging to 80-85% would comfortably get us to our typical destinations.

We do most of our shopping in Blue Hill (13 miles) or Ellsworth (25 miles), but Bangor, at 55 miles is too far for comfort. In the winter, our range goes down to about 95 miles, largely because the heat is derived from the battery. This has made surprisingly little difference in our usage — Ellsworth is still easy and Bangor is still too far. In the fall, we installed a level 2 charger, which is more than three times as fast as our old level 1, but it hasn’t really made any difference in the way we use the car.

Even with its modest range, we can use the Kia for about 90% of our trips, probably 60% of our miles. Jean is now a big fan — she rhapsodizes about the smooth, quiet ride and the very comfy seats. It is by far the zippiest car we have ever owned and I find the prospect of stop light races with big pickups on the Ellsworth strip very tempting.

We still have to exercise the old Prius every couple weeks even if we don’t have a long trip, and we consider ourselves very ill used when we have to stop at a gas station. I suspect we will be outraged at the cost of our next oil change!

We really have the ideal setup for a low range EV — we don’t drive a lot, and our gas car and handle the long trips. But at our point in life it’s hard to justify being a two car family. I often cogitate on what it would take for us to downsize to a single EV. More range, for one thing. A new 2022 Kia Soul has a range of 280 miles — that would do it. More charging infrastructure for another. The buzz is that there will be a big push in charger installations this summer — we’ll be making EV trips to Bangor soon. In the mean time, the setup we have works great!

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One of the most interesting new EVs is the Ford F150 Lightening pickup. Pickup trucks are notorious for their poor fuel economy, and Ford shows how to change one of the most polluting transportation sectors into one of the cleanest. Ford has also paved the way for reversible power — the truck’s battery can be used to power tools at a job site, or provide electricity to a home during a power outage. This technology has huge implications for future power grid management.

• This video is mostly about the F150 Lightening, but the first section has a very clear explanation of all the current charging methods. YouTube

• A fun story of an old motorhead confronting the future of transportation. The New Yorker

Thanks for reading,

Doug Hylan, Brooklin, Maine

“There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” – Marshall McLuhan