Hello, Just trying to gain some perspective here as I was at both dealers today and for the first time laid eyes and touched the interior of both the Ioniq 5 and ID4 and I was greatly disappointed with the interior quality of the Ioniq 5 in terms of material choices. Don’t get me wrong, I think the Ioniq looks good, tech is good, and specs are good. It’s pretty much scratchy hard plastic everywhere, even in high touch areas like door armrests. In contrast I checked out 2 ID4s afterwards and was pretty much “blown” away with the materials used - when having just seen the Ioniq 5.
Is this normal? EVs aren’t cheap vehicles and I understand the big part of cost are the electrical components like the battery, but the interior quality alone is greatly steering me towards an ID4 instead of the Ioniq 5… Along with an apparent 3 year wait for the Ioniq 5 AWD in Canada.
Here’s where I think it matters most: throughput.
You can charge 3 EGMP cars (Ioniq 5, Ioniq 6, EV6, etc.) in the time it takes to charge 2 Mustang Mach-Es. Over the course of a 16 hour day from 6 AM to 10 PM, that’s 48 cars charged vs. 32. If your charging station has 4 blocks which can support those peak EGMP charge rates, then that’s 192 vs 128 cars that can be handled.
For an individual, the 5-15 minutes you can save by having the faster charging EV (vs. a fast but not quite as fast charging EV) is probably not that big a deal. Even on the longest travel days–where you could be fast charging 3 or 4 times–that’s no more than an hour of time difference, and probably less. Unless you’re on an unavoidably tight time crunch (a rare conundrum), or have impatient kids in the backseat who can’t be reasoned with because they’re just plain sick of being in car seats, that’s acceptable. But what’s not acceptable is waiting for 1 or more other cars in front of you in the queue to do their entire charge before you can even have your turn to plug in. That’s why I say throughput is where it matters, and is the real benefit of having a higher percentage of the EV fleet being super fast charging.
This throughput issue is, of course, remedied with more charging infrastructure in more places, and so it’s good that not only are charge speeds of the fleet averaging upward, but also that more stations are being built every day!