New York International Auto Show - All of the Electric Vehicles!

 I went to the NY Auto Show last wee, specifically to see the various EV's that are now for sale.... And I have t say, I was very surprised at the number that are currently available in the US! I consider myself pretty knowledgeable in this space, but it was great to see (almost) every new EV currently available, as well as a few that are hopefully 'coming soon'. This disappointment stems from the LACK of EV's from some of the large manufacturers of popular cars, but I'll discuss that a little later.

First, here are the ones you can order and/or buy now, in no particular order....

First up is Ford, with 2 vehicles there (as well as a Transit E-Van) - the Lightning Pickup and the Mach-E - they had several of each, and were doing a little Mach-E ride-along... First time I had the chance to see the Lightning up close and it's impressive - certainly full-sized, and with a massive frunk that opens up right down to the bumper. I'm guessing Red Bull is a sponsor...

Ford F150 Lightning 

Ford Mustang Mach-E

Next up was Chevy with several up-coming cars (some of which I believe you can pre-order now) - 

First up is the Equinox, which Chevy has been touting as starting at around $30,000. I imagine the one on display is a top-of-the-line model, but it looks pretty sharp.

Chevy also had the Blazer EV which seems to be a similar size as the Equinox but I imagine will be a bit more up-market as it's starting price is supposed to be around $45,000.

Silverado EV Pick-Up

Subaru showed up with their version of the Toyota bZ4X, the Solterra, It's a poor effort, just like the bZ4X. Hopefully the Japanese manufacturers (Toyota, Honda, Subaru mainly) start to take EV's seriously at some point, as they could certainly make them at a high level if they actually cared. Not all of the fingerprints on the 'piano black' console cover. No one really uses PB any longer for this exact reason.

Stellantis was the next stop, they have no current modern EV's, only the Fiat 500e which is admittedly cool, but not really useful in the real world if you drive a lot of daily miles. They did have a 'future' vehicle, the Chrysler Airflow, the Challenger EV and a weird 2-seat golf-cart kind of thingy that serves no purpose, but was kind of cool none-the-less.

Chrysler Airflow

?

FIAT 500e

Challenger EV 

Next up were the real stars of the show, in my view - Kia and Hyundai. They have really bought in to the idea of EV's and are making some really good ones - both in design and in features and capabilities.

Kia EV9 - a full-sized, 3-row SUV

EV6 in GT guise

Niro EV

Hyundai Ioniq 6 - gorgeous!

This is actually a beautiful dark green

Ioniq 5

 

Hyundai's version of the Niro, the Kona

Genesis, which is Hyundai's luxury division (see: Lexus) had a couple of EV's as well. The GV60 is the SUV and the G80 is a large sedan, which they called by the awkward name of 'Electrified'. But their paint is incredible.

GV60

G80 Electrified

BMW showed 2 of their EV's. The German companies are making a bit of noise in this space, which is nice to see - although BMW has completely lost their way styling-wise. Fortunately, when driving one, you don't have to look at the hideous front end... Unfortunately, they were roped off with no one there, so you could only stare in dismay at the front of the cars.

BMW iX

i4

Ram showed off their upcoming full-sized truck EV, the RAM EVO. They have taken a page from Ford in that the vehicle is very 'trucky' with a few EV hints. Hopefully it does as well as the F150 Lightning...

VW is another company getting ready to make a big move into EV's, although they only had 2 on display - the ID.4 which has been on sale for a couple of years, and the ID.Buzz, their VW Van remake - which was very cool...

'Split' ID.4

ID.Buzz - could not get inside as there was a line right after I took these pics...

ID.4 dashboard - ID.Buzz is the same

Finally, Nissan had several of their new Ariya cross-over EV's. The interior is very nice although the overall specs are a little underwhelming.

Some no shows: Mercedes which was a bit of a surprise - they are rolling out a new EV every couple of months, it seems. Also, Volvo was a no-show as well. Polestar and Audi were in a roped off section. The former only had one Polestar 2, along with a Polestar 1 hybrid. Audi had an e-tron Sportback which I would have liked to have sat in. Their loss. No Porsche. No Honda, who amazingly doesn't make an EV for US consumption.... And there were no Rivians, Lucids or Teslas on the main floor (although I heard later on that there was a Rivian pick-up in the aftermarket area - missed it. 

Overall, it's really encouraging to see all of the new EV's that are out there or coming very soon! It's a great time to be an EV enthusiast - more choices are always better, and the technology is only going to get better, more efficient and less costly..

Supercharger Visits

 I recently came across a site that lets you log in your Supercharger visits and create a map of where you have charged while on the road. Here is mine (although I have done a couple more since, but no new ones) -

These are 'unique' visits - many of these I have visited multiple times. I've never had to wait, and I've run into broken or unavailable Superchargers only twice. Hopefully this continues to be the case when they start to open up to non-Tesla EV's.

I hope to expand this in 2023!

Tesla Full Self-Driving Preview!

 After a couple of attempts, I was finally able to get access to the Full Self-Driving 'Autosteer on City Streets' beta (otherwise known as FSD beta). Here's what you need to do to get FSD and then the beta -

1) Subscribe to FSD through the app - it's currently $200/month. Or, you can purchased FSD outright - currently, that will set you back $15k....

2) Once it's active, you get access to 6 of the 7 capabilities that are part of FSD -

- Navigate on Autopilot (ability for the car to self-drive from on-ramp to off -ramp on highways).

- AutoPark - car can park itself is parallel or curb parking spots.

- Summon - car can back itself out of, or pull into, a garage.

- Smart Summon - car can autonomously drive to you in a mall parking lot.

- Auto Lane Change - car will initiate and make lane changes automatically when you signal.

- Traffic and Stop Sign Control - when using Autopilot, the car will stop for red lights and stop signs.

The big feature, and the one that everyone talks about, is Autosteer on City Streets. This is currently available as a beta feature so essentially, when you get this, you become a tester for Tesla. Data from your usage is fed back to Tesla to increase the knowledge base in their network. It is still very much a work in progress, as numerous Tesla testers have shown. My own experience after a couple of weeks has shown the same.

To get access to the FSD beta, once you have subscribed or purchased FSD, you then click a button on the car's screen requested access to the beta. Then you have to do a couple of things -

1) Drive 100 miles on Autopilot (which is the Traffic-Aware Cruise Control and Autosteer) - this should be done on a highway.

2) Maintain a decent Safety Score. The SS pops up on the Tesla phone app when you hit that request button on the screen, and monitors your driving habits - specifically, Forward Collision Warnings, Hard Barking, Aggressive Turning, Following Too Closely and Autopilot Disengagements. You typically need to be above an 80 to get access to beta. You have to maintain a score for about 7 days before getting beta access.

So, once you do those 2 things, based on current timeframes, you should get into the beta, and the fun begins!

The first chance I had to try it out was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Here are a couple of videos that I took that day -

This first one is just a straight shot down a divided 4-lane road in our town -

The second video is further down the road, preparing to make a turn onto another divided 4-lane -

The final video is making a left-hand turn into my neighborhood. The car in front of me actually did a U-turn which seemed to confuse the car as it basically stopped. I took over as I had traffic behind me.

So that's the initial look. I've done some other tests without videos, but will do some more videos shortly. My subscription ends at the end of December so I have some time. Stay tuned!

EV's in the Comics

 

Came across this a couple of weeks ago - thought it was funny!

Stay tuned for some new entries - sorry that I haven't been very good about updating this. But I have a lot of material to post!

Battery Usage While Stuck

 

The recent incident with hundreds of cars stuck on I-95 in Virginia during the snowstorm has raised a lot of questions regarding EV vs ICE vehicles - what happens if you're stuck like that in an EV? Won't the battery die quickly if you have to use the HVAC to stay warm?

The short answer is that you'd probably be better off in an EV than a gas-powered vehicle, assuming to have similar level of energy available to power the car. That is, you can't compare an ICE vehicle with, say 3/4 of a tank of gas to an EV with, say, 20% of charge. But assuming both have a similar percentage of their total tank/battery filled, the EV is actually better.

The main reason for this has to do with the engine and motor, respectively, of the ICE vehicle and the EV. The engine in an ICE vehicle is CONSTANTLY running (let's put aside those stop/start systems for a second) - when you start the car until you turn it off. Idle, high-speed, city driving - the engine is always using gas. With an EV, OTOH, the motor(s) is only using energy from the main high-voltage battery when the car is moving under power - that is, accelerating or maintaining speed. Unlike an ICE vehicle, when you remove your foot from the accelerator, the motors do not use energy and actually, through regenerative braking, put some energy back into the battery. So, the major source of energy usage for an EV, the motor, is basically using zero energy when you are stopped. 

So take the situation down in Virginia a couple of weeks ago. You have an ICE vehicle and an EV sitting side-by-side on the highway. The ICE vehicle is idling to keep the heat running - and therefore using gas (and also polluting but that's another story). The EV's motor is using no energy. Depending on the car and the HVAC settings, some energy is used to heat the car, but so little that it could literally take days to deplete the battery from a high state of charge to the point where you'd start to get concerned. This is especially true if you have an EV (like a later Tesla) that has a heat pump. They use less energy from the battery to heat the cabin, just like the heat pump in a home. See the Texas power outage in February 2021 as a great example - here is a link to just one story that discusses how people used their Teslas (in their garage) to survive - 

https://electrek.co/2021/03/05/electric-cars-texas-blackout/

How about a personal example? On Tuesday, my wife had oral surgery and due to Covid regulations I could not wait in the office (I didn't want to anyway). The temperature outside was 19 degrees. I waited for slightly over 2 hours in my car, the heat was set at 70 degrees and I had the seat heater on (probably overkill). I was also watching YouTube videos on the car's screen. My battery SOC went from 81% to 79% in that time frame. Extrapolating that, I could have sat there for another 79 hours before my battery would reach a 0% SOC! And I could extend that time period by lowering the temperature, or turning the heat off altogether and just using the seat heaters. Realistically, when the sun went down, the car would use some energy to keep the battery warm, so 79 hours is probably unrealistic. But the point is that the EV has several advantages over an ICE vehicle that MUST run to provide heat to the cabin.

Ok, so how long can an ICE car idle and provide some heat? Here is an interesting article that can help you calculate for your particular vehicle. 

https://www.autotrader.ca/newsfeatures/20190201/how-long-can-you-stay-warm-on-a-tank-of-gas/

The main example they use - a Ford Explorer - comes out to about 33 hours on a full tank of gas. You can certainly extend that by shutting off the car from time to time, but you'd have no cabin heat and when you restart, the engine is now cold and therefor less efficient. Just like in the EV, you can certainly use the heated seats - but now they are running off of the 12v battery, which you need to restart the car. And you don't want to use the radio when the car is off, as it would further deplete the 12v battery. 

So, the bottom line is that being in an EV might actually be a better choice if you're stuck in a storm. You should certainly take the precautions you would with an ICE vehicle - make sure you have sufficient fuel if you're traveling during inclement weather, have a safety kit, etc. But don't sweat it out in your Tesla, ID.4, Mustang Mach-E or whatever. Just make sure to offer a warm space to those stuck in their gas cars. 😃