4000km Road Trip in an IONIQ 5 EV: The Journey East

this is the hyundai ioniq 5 an electric vehicle that will be taking us 2 000 kilometers east from toronto ontario all the way to halifax nova scotia and back along the way we'll be testing everything from charging infrastructure and range to driving dynamics and comfort and we'll be pushing the car to the absolute limits in the harsh climate of the canadian winter this trip might have a thousand and one challenges to throw at us over the next three weeks but i guarantee it'll also be a lot of fun with tons of new experiences to make and laughs to share along the way this is charging east [Music] every successful road trip starts out with a well thought out plan and that's what i'm doing right now in a gas powered car you can get away with very little planning since gas stations are ubiquitous they're pretty much everywhere if your tank's starting to get a little bit low on your trip you just stop in the nearest town and you fill er up with an electric vehicle things are a little bit more complicated than that ev charging stations are popping up all over the place here in canada but they still aren't nearly as prevalent as gas stations yet so you need to make sure that wherever you're going has charging stations all along the way evs also don't have as much range as most gas cars the ionic 5 ultimate or limited trim as it's called in the us has an epa estimated range of 412 kilometers or 256 miles add in the fact that range drops off a little bit in the cold and you've got a bit of a recipe for a headache when it comes to planning thankfully there are tools that take away most of the pain to plan my 4 000 kilometer trip i'm using something called a better route planner it's basically google maps but specifically designed for evs once i enter my start and end points it will map out the best routes with all of the charging stops along the way the trip starts out in toronto the biggest city here in canada from there i'll be heading up to ottawa to pick up a friend of mine and then we'll be pretty much making a beeline straight to halifax nova scotia after that we'll be turning around and driving back hitting all the fun touristy destinations along the way the whole trip is about 4 000 kilometers or 2 500 miles and we'll be doing it in the canadian winter this will be fun all right it is 4am i am all packed up ready to go let's get the show on the road [Music] this flight marked the first time since the start of the pandemic that i traveled anywhere significant and as eager as i was to get the trip underway i was also extremely tired from such an early rise nevertheless after a four hour flight from st john's to toronto and a quick commute across the city i picked up the ioniq 5 and immediately set out east [Music] the goal for the first day of travel after my flight was to make it to ottawa a four and a half hour drive where i would be picking up my friend justin the next day the first 100 or so kilometers of the trip took place on the highways on the outskirts of toronto it was about minus 10 celsius outside and i drove at the 110 km speed limit for most of the way so efficiency was bound to suffer after about an hour the highway ended and then the b roads took over as i drove into the more rural ontario [Music] first stop of the day was inside a friendly little town called norwood while the car's batteries still had plenty of charge left in them i thought it was worthwhile to just stop for a little while to take a quick break and grab something to eat okay the first leg of the trip is now finished we are here at a charging station in norwood ontario and i just took the car directly from toronto straight to this charging station because i wanted to get out of the city i wanted to get more comfortable with the car and that sort of thing so i didn't set up any filming gear or anything like that but i do have some information for you based on the efficiency and whatnot so we went 178 kilometers and we've got 118 kilometers left so you're looking at about 290 ish kilometers of range on the highway in minus 10 weather that's the big thing this efficiency would be much higher if it were much warmer outside but we're in the middle of the winter and it's cold i'm gonna plug the car in and then go eat something i think there's a family restaurant called jacks around here somewhere that i'm super excited to eat at because i have not eaten since like five o'clock this morning or something they gave me food on the plane but let me plug the car in and i'll get back to you so that's what i did i plugged the car in with a little bit of difficulty since it was my first time and then i headed over to jax to order a delicious chicken sandwich it has been a very long time since i've eaten by myself at a restaurant i think it's probably been at least seven or eight years but at least the food's good it took just over an hour to charge up at that 50 kilowatt charger and while that might annoy some of you it was nice to take a bit of a break to relax and eat then it was time to hit the road again heading for the next charging station once the roads sped up a little bit on the outside of town i took the opportunity to try out the lane keep assists built into the car now i wasn't expecting much but i ended up actually being a little bit shocked at how well it worked the car steered perfectly between the lines without any input whatsoever for well over a minute and if the car hadn't you know prompted me to put my hands back on the steering wheel i'm sure it could have kept going for even longer eventually the trees gave way to the town of carleton place a small place on the outskirts of ottawa where i'd be charging up next okay final charge of the day is happening right now we are in carleton place just outside of ottawa uh this is just a quick top-up basically because i don't want to get to justin's and only have like 20 or 30 percent of my battery left and then have to immediately get up the next morning and go straight to a charger so i'm going to top it off real quick since he doesn't have a level 2 ev station at his house and then we'll be on our way one thing i did want to mention while we are charging up at the 50 kilowatt charger here is that our average consumption is quite a bit lower for this trip between these two chargers it's 20.4 whereas the last trip i believe was around 25 and the reason for that is well number one the temperature did go up by two degrees but that didn't make a huge difference the biggest difference is that i drove between 85 and 95 kilometers an hour as opposed to around 110 and the average consumption went down by quite a bit it is much more efficient at lower speeds this ioniq 5. after about half an hour the charging speed slowed to about 43 kilowatts so i waited a little while longer and then unplugged hitting the road one last time before staying in the city of ottawa for the night [Music] good morning it is now 7 10 a.m and it is minus 13 outside and as you can probably see we've got a little bit of snow going on here right now so i am here at justin's justin's gonna hop in the front seat and uh we're gonna drive around a little bit and get his first impressions of the car and then we're gonna pick up another one of my friends derek who also lives here in ottawa and then we're gonna head straight to our destination which is riviere dulu i think it's about 635 kilometers from here so we're gonna have to stop at least twice probably three times to charge up but it should be a fun day it's uh it's a long day but it should be fun welcome to the ionic five it was very pretty it is very pretty on the website but the sunroof is completely blocked i mean it is winter it is winter yeah do you remember what derek's address is 82 something 72 i thought it was 65. do you know what the street's called no okay well i know how to get there you ever been in an eb before um no i have not where are we going this way left all right no right we're going right the gps doesn't change its mind yeah well i'm better i adapt after stopping to get some tim hortons for breakfast and then giving derrick the grand tour of the car we hopped on the road east heading straight for riviera de lou it was over 600 kilometers away so to be safe we picked three different charging stations along the route that avoided going through montreal it's a lovely city but it's very prone to traffic jams even on the outskirt highways which you'll see in just a minute the first charging stop of the day was in castleman and it was here that we hit our first minor speed bump a mustang machi was charging up at the only usable ev charger in town and since it was only a 50 kilowatt hour charger we had some time to kill it took 45 minutes worth of smash bros before the mustang left and it was finally our turn to charge one problem i ran into here while trying to reverse into the charging station was that all the sensors around the back of the ioniq 5 were getting covered up with snow and when that happens it starts beeping like crazy because it thinks that you're gonna hit something the car also has the ability to like emergency stop on its own too so as i was reversing into the spot the car thought i was gonna hit something and then just pound it on the brakes really quickly halfway into the parking spot oh yeah and the fact that this car doesn't have a rear wiper can really be a pain for reasons that should now be plainly obvious while waiting for the ioniq 5 to charge we decided to head into the a w next door for some lunch and then we were back on the road where the weather hadn't really got any nicer on the plus side i did get to see how the ionic 5 performed in the snow and unsurprisingly for a modern four-wheel drive suv it did fantastically despite the snowy and slushy conditions i never felt unsafe the car was nice and confident on the road all the way to our next destination all right we have arrived just outside of montreal and we're on a 100 kilowatt charger here now with the ioniq 5 all plugged in and ready to go so far we've been on only 50 kilowatt chargers so it's going to be nice to charge up at a little bit faster we only need a quick top up here i think uh probably go to about 80 85 ish and then we'll head along to our next destination which is only about 230 240 kilometers away which is just outside of quebec city all right given the fact that we've just started charging we're only at 62 kilowatts right now but that should ramp up fairly quickly since we're on a 100 kilowatt charger and indeed it did after about 10 to 15 minutes we were getting between 88 and 90 kilowatts of power meaning we were able to get going again in just under an hour this time i let justin take the wheel to try out the ioniq 5 for the first time and his first impressions were good he said and i quote it drives like a nice car which is about the highest praise i think i've ever heard him give anything soon enough we hit the dreaded traffic jams of montreal the highway was just completely backed up in one direction but thankfully it wasn't our direction eventually we hit the exit for the auto route 20 which took us towards quebec city and the traffic sped up once again we were enjoying ourselves for the most part just cruising along listening to podcasts and music but before long it was night time and we hit our next charging stop a 350 kilowatt petro canada charger outside of quebec city there was just one problem we weren't getting 350 kilowatts all right we are here at the last charging stop this is just outside of quebec city before we hit riviera dulu where we're staying tonight and we are at a petro canada charger and we're supposed to be getting around 350 kilowatts we're actually getting somewhere around 90 to 100. so it's not ramped up the full charging speed yet we've been here for about 20-ish minutes but it's very cold it's like minus 11 so obviously it's going to take a while for that to ramp up once the batteries warm up we should be getting 350 kilowatts so i'll check in in a sec unfortunately we never did hit that magical 350 kilowatt speed the closeness we got was like 92 kilowatts after 20 to 30 minutes of charging the universe did have a stroke of luck to send our way though so funny story we just finished charging at uh it was about 92 ish kilowatts so we didn't get the full 350 but a stroke of good luck the charger actually didn't prompt us to pay and we went inside and we told the nice lady inside about it and she said it's okay we'll tell our boss about it but it's apparently the second time it's happened this day so uh we just got a free charge over at petro canada slower charging or not free is always good in my book so we took our free electrons and we ran making for riviera dulu and the hotel we'd be staying at for the rest of the night i'm such a good friend that i even let justin drive through the horrible weather for the remainder of the evening all right we have made it to our final destination here in riviera dulu we're just trying to figure out some some charging issues with the level 2 charger that's here hopefully we can get it working so that we can charge up overnight and we don't have to go to somewhere else later on but if we don't i mean it's not the end of the world the car did wonderfully in the snow in the rain in the sleet in everything we had it is now however a new color it's not atlas white anymore it's more like a brown so we're gonna get a good night's sleep get up eat some breakfast possibly have to charge up again tomorrow morning if this charger ends up not working but other than that yeah i'll see you in the morning later all right quick update here we just finished loading up the ionic five in the morning unfortunately the charger that was here at hotel universal just did not work overnight so uh we left the car with 14 state of charge and we woke up with 14 state of charge so maybe it was maintaining the battery a little bit because we didn't have any battery drain so that's a plus side but we're just gonna have to get up and go straight to a 350 kilowatt charger that's just down the road and uh grab something to eat so let's hop in get going it was time for 350 kilowatt charging round two and this time at a different petro canada can you guess what happened next [Music] so one thing i've noticed about these uh 350 kilowatt hour chargers on the ionic 5 is that it starts off at uh around 120 kilowatts and then it slowly ramps down to about 60. so i'm not sure if it's a software issue or a hardware issue but we're not getting the full 350 kilowatts ever so that is unfortunate according to the little bit of research that i did online it looks like a bit of a widespread problem with petro canada chargers and this car we went to an electrified canada charger later on in this trip and got much faster speeds so i'm fairly certain it's not an issue on hyundai side of things petrocanada just might need to update their charging software to fix the issue but i'm not an engineer so i have no idea just speculation on my part day three was fairly uneventful overall we crossed the border between quebec and new brunswick we charged at a petro canada station and got the same low charging speeds had a meal at exit 153 that i think all three of us can agree was absolutely fantastic and then headed into the beautiful capital city of new brunswick called fredericton [Music] okay so we've made it to our hotel here in fredericton we are plugged in and charging this charger actually works and we're allowed to leave it there overnight so we're good to go it's charging at like 9.8 kilowatts we're gonna head over to a board game cafe and uh just chill for the rest of the night and that's exactly what we did we walked around downtown fredericton a little and took in the sights with all the historic stone buildings and then we went straight into a little board game cafe called unplugged ironic i know given the nature of our trip here we played some board games ate some food and then we headed to bed so that we could get up early for our trip to the final destination the next morning or so we thought all right it is now morning we are at 100 state of charge we just unplugged and loaded up and we're ready to go the day started off great we had clear skies and snow free roads but as we got closer and closer to nova scotia that began to change [Music] all right we have stopped here in owlak new brunswick which is like just outside of the nova scotia new brunswick border we're on our way to halifax but we're just going to charge up at this 50 kilowatt charger here uh in an irving big stop we're gonna head inside grab some lunch and then we'll be on our way once again i think we arrived at just under 10 state of charge so it's perfect it'll probably take maybe like an hour and a half to charge to about 80 which is what we need to get to our next uh stop and then we'll be on our way while enjoying our meal in that big stop the winds picked up and the snow began to fall and before long the highways were just covered in a fresh blanket of snow and after checking the weather we decided it was best to bail out and get off the highway in truo about halfway to our destination in halifax looks like this poor guy decided to do the same but he went a little bit more off the highway than he intended we posted up in a hotel there that evening and to make the most of it we went to see a movie that night [Music] the weather was much more cooperative the next day but just to be safe we decided to hit up another petrol canada charging station before continuing on to halifax this is where we hit the biggest problem yet all right so just a quick update we ran into our first actual uh electric charger problem this petrol canada station neither of the chargers are actually working we've plugged in we got about um i think maybe a kilowatt hour out of these chargers and they just completely cut off so they go up to a ramp up to about 30 kilowatts and then they just completely cut off so um we do thankfully have just enough charge to make it to our final destination we might drive a little bit slowly to make sure we get there it's very very cold out here it's i think with the windchill it's like minus 26 degrees celsius so it's very cold um but these chargers still should work there's no excuse so we're gonna head on to halifax and hopefully we make it there [Music] and make it there we did after another hour of driving we found ourselves in downtown halifax the city we would be staying in for the next couple of days and the final destination before turning around and heading back to where we came from it wasn't exactly a pain-free road to get here but it was worth it the halifax waterfront and the surrounding downtown atmosphere was both relaxing and refreshing after a long 2000 kilometer trip after charging the car at our hotel's level 2 charging station we took it to peggy's cove an iconic small town right on the east coast of nova scotia it reminded me a lot of my home in newfoundland about a thousand kilometers east across the ocean from where we stood after a local lunch in peggy's cove we headed back to the city where we would spend the rest of the day exploring and eating great food until our time in the east had come to an end okay as of march 4th 2022 we have finally reached our destination here for charging east this is halifax nova scotia so overall after 2 000 kilometers with this thing i'm very impressed with it it's been almost virtually indistinguishable from an ice car which is a great thing for all of you people that are new to evs or you haven't driven an ev before you're going to feel very at home it's very quiet in here especially with the the double laminated windows and the fact that you've got no motor noise or engine noise but other than that it feels very much similar to a regular ice car to drive i mean yes we are getting slower charging speeds that's to be expected the infrastructure is not fully there yet to have 350 kilowatt chargers everywhere so we aren't charging at optimal speeds but other than that i've been very impressed with this so far i'm super happy to continue driving it and i cannot wait to turn around and drive it to kilometers back because we've got so much more to do we basically just made a beeline straight here but on the way back justin and i are going to hit all the cool touristy destinations we're going to be hitting up you know old quebec and quebec city and just a bunch of other cool destinations along the way we're gonna see the ice hotel stuff like that and uh i'm super excited so get ready for part two of charging east it's gonna be a lot of fun hope you guys join me see you soon [Music]

Channel: Mark Spurrell

Views: 371,663

Keywords: ioniq 5, hyundai ioniq 5, ioniq 5 ultimate, ioniq 5 limited, ioniq 5 review, ioniq 5 road trip, ioniq 5 charging speed, ioniq 5 white, hyundai ioniq 5 review, ioniq 5 ultimate review, ioniq 5 limited review, best ev, best electric vehicle, ioniq 5 2022, hyundai ioniq 5 2022, mark spurrell, review, hyundai, ev

Id: ND3rPuMMA_0

Length: 20min 33sec (1233 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 26 2022