Rock… and Roll (Click to enlarge)

Rocinante’s 1st Year Anniversary! January 19, 2025

It has been one year to the day since we took delivery of our Hyundai Ioniq 5. The year has been fun, memorable, joyous, completely free of the disconcerting, erratic, even dangerous “Tourette Syndrome” in our previous EV. We couldn’t be happier with Rocinante. It is a quiet, comfortable, reliable, nimble, economical car that drives like a dream and turns heads. I often get many compliments and inquiries about the car from passersby.

The new 2025 model is now being sold, with a few touted “improvements,” but few of those changes are truly significant, and I wouldn’t even want some of them. Yes, it sports a rear window wiper, but the digital rear view mirror in ours renders that unnecessary. It also has an 84kW battery instead of the 77.4kW in ours, but those extra kW only adds another 9 miles to the EPA range for our AWD version. Its center console now has some easily reachable buttons for a few features that we access through the touchscreen, but it also changed the side-by-side cupholders to a front-to-back configuration —which is one of my biggest pet peeves in cars. It has a J3400 charging port to plug in at Superchargers, but our A2Z adapter will allow us to do that as soon as Tesla gives all Hyundai EVs the green light. In short, I have NO “buyer’s remorse” with our 2024 Ioniq 5. I would choose it over the 2025 anyway.

To date, we have put this many miles on Rocinante’s odometer:

As the readout shows, we drove those 11,334 miles with an average of 3.5 miles-per-kWh of electricity. The EPA rates our Ioniq 5 at 2.94 miles-per-kWh, so we are happy that it exceeds that predicted level of efficiency. No complaints from me!

In truth, however, Rocinante is not as efficient as our previous EVs. During the 6 years we drove our LEAF, it achieved an average of 5.18 miles-per-kWh, much higher than its EPA rating of also 2.94. Of course, with its much smaller battery and range, we never took the LEAF on long distance roadtrips, so its level of efficiency only reflected local driving on city streets.

We did take the Model 3 on numerous roadtrips, and over nearly 6 years it averaged 4.14 miles-per-kWh, also higher than its EPA rating of 3.85. I doesn’t surprise me that Rocinante is not as energy efficient, for it is a boxy SUV hatchback like the LEAF, not an aerodynamic sport sedan like the Model 3. Nonetheless, no gasoline vehicle could ever hope to match its efficiency. The EPA states on all the webpages linked above that the energy in a gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 33.7 kWh.

3.5 miles-per-kWh x 33.7 kWh-per-gallon = 118 MPG equivalent

Here is a table with more stats compiled over the first year of ownership:

I’m sure readers have noticed that, during the last few years, there has been a blitz of anti-EV articles, videos, and comments on the internet, disseminated by pe’trolls who work for the greedy fossil fools. Obviously, the purpose of their campaign is to discourage consumers from buying EVs and encourage them to just keep burning their dirty, polluting gasoline to pile up more and more profits —no matter the consequence to people and planet. Among their arguments is that EVs pollute as much as gas cars by shifting their emissions to a “long tailpipe” at the power plant. They also claim that fueling EVs costs just as much as gasoline. The following graphics for Rocinante over the first year clearly debunk such myths:

As these graphs clearly show, most of the kWh came from our clean, green rooftop solar at home. Moreover, because Rocinante came with two years of free 30-minute charges from Electrify America, even our roadtrips have been pollution free:

I feel a modicum of pride for installing our solar array years ago to help mitigate the climate crisis, but I also feel guilt for having ignorantly exacerbated the problem for decades. And to think that naysayers, fossil fools, pe’trolls always try to tell me that my Ioniq 5 is just as dirty as an average gasoline car. Math doesn’t lie!

As for the costs, there was one time in Las Vegas when our charging session exceeded the 30-minute window because some anti-EV jerk had cut off the cable on one side of the charger which significantly reduced the rate for the remaining cable. We thus had to pay $20 for that electricity.

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Also, on our roadtrip to Moab, Rocky Mountain Power charged us $1.09 each time we plugged in at its office parking lot. We did so 5 times on that trip, so this first year we have ended up paying $25.46 to drive 11,334 miles. Can’t beat that!

The naysayers also claim that EV batteries deteriorate so quickly that owners need to replace them for a hefty price after only 5 years. That’s a barefaced lie! I use the CarScan app via my OBD port to measure the battery capacity in Rocinante every month. Here is a graph that I have plotted to the end of Hyundai’s 10-year battery warranty with the results for the first year:

As you can see, the battery pack is still at 100% capacity. As a matter of fact, just last night I measured it again, and you can see the pack’s State-of-Health (SOH) highlighted in green in this screen shot:

One of the most salient concerns that consumers have about EVs is their total range. Rocinante is rated at 260 miles of range from a 100% charge, but our experience is that it could actually drive farther than that. I surmise that the EPA is being cautious with its ratings, knowing full well that range depends upon factors like speed, the use of climate control, the number of passengers, the car’s load, headwinds, tailwinds, temperature, road conditions, elevation changes. In other words, YMMV (Your-Mileage-May-Vary).

The range gauge in Rocinante is like the one we had in our LEAF, more of a “guess-o-meter” than an accurate readout of how far the car can drive on a single charge. I almost always charge to 80%, record the predicted range after every charge, and then extrapolate the range for a 100% charge. As you can see in the following graph, the guess-o-meter has made some fairly extravagant predictions over the year, which rise and fall according to our most recent driving patterns. If we’ve been driving locally, the range is extremely high. If we’ve been on roadtrips, it drops lower. Even still, these range “guesses” are more often that not well above the EPA 260-mile estimate shown in the green line:

Another question people often ask is how much it costs to own an EV. In reality, the maintenance costs have been nil. Rocinante came with 3 years of free maintenance, and I have only had one checkup performed that merely rotated the tires. I should state, however, that Hyundai issued several proactive recalls over this past year to fix a problem with the ICCU (Integrated Charging Control Unit). Apparently about 1% of owners have had the 12V battery die on them, which is needed to start the car and power some auxiliary components like the stereo system when parked. I have not had any such problems with Rocinante, but I have taken it to the dealership to have them perform those recalls once, twice, a third time —just to be on the safe side. The last time I also had them fix a small rattle in the hatchback lid that was identified in a Technical Service Bulletin. In all these instances, I had to pay zero, zip, zilch, nada for the services.

I have to admit, nonethless, that I have spent a considerable amount on Rocinante this first year, basically to equip the car with several accessories. Of course, these types of expenses are fairly common when purchasing a new car. I spent comparable amounts when we bought the LEAF, and again after we took delivery of the Model 3. The good news is that, now that Rocinante is well equipped, I don’t anticipate spending much for such items in the coming years, perhaps just to… replace the tires when they wear thin. Here are the accessory expenses during this first year of ownership, which total $6,671.87:

At the bottom of the 6th-month report, I identified a few of my dislikes with the car. I still frown on some of them. For example, having grown accustomed to using one-pedal driving in my previous two EVs, I always prefer to drive using i-Pedal in Rocinante. Unfortunately, I cannot designate that setting to remain engaged the next time I start the car. I always have to reset it every time, which irks me. Just let me always have my preferred one-pedal driving, Hyundai!

I also dislike still not being able to use my A2Z Typhoon PRO adapter to plug in at Superchargers. Since the 2025 Ioniq 5 can now do so, I suspected that perhaps all Hyundai models could and decided to conduct an experiment. I attempted it just the other day at our local Supercharger, and the experiment failed. What is even more irritating is that, while there, I discovered that a Kia EV6 can plug in by fooling the network with the “fake” ID of a 2024 Ioniq 5, yet Tesla still rejects my legitimate 2024 Ioniq 5. Nor will it work if I also use a “fake” ID of a 2025 Ioniq 5.

Welp… I can only assume that this obstacle will be overcome over the next few months. We’ll see. In reality, however, I plan to only use Superchargers in a real emergency, when no other DCFC stations are available. I like being able to charge much faster from 350kW chargers. We have also found that, contrary to what I reported in my 6th-month report, the Electrify America sites are much easier to find if you plan your route carefully. Moreover, on our most recent roadtrips, we always managed to find those high-powered 350kW chargers, often as the only EV plugged in at the site.

Finally, I wish Hyundai would issue an OTA update to make it easier to engage a bona fide “Pet Mode” in the car. Yes, it is possible to do so via Rocinante’s “Utility Mode,” as I demonstrate in this video, but it shouldn’t be so cumbersome and inconvenient to keep a pet safe and comfortable in the car.

I have posted below a slide show of our adventures in Rocinante since the 6th-month report. During these last 6 months, we have driven to the Sacramento area to visit Tamara’s family, taken several day trips, and also visited the National Parks near Moab. Enjoy the scenery!

We’ll undoubtedly be taking more roadtrips over the next year. We already plan to visit Tamara’s family again, possibly next month. I hope to drive to my eldest daughter’s home in San Antonio, TX, at the end of April. I really hope we can again visit my sister in Telluride, CO, over the summer. Now that I have installed a trailer hitch on Rocinante, I also look forward to towing our small camping trailer to campgrounds in this area. Stay tuned for more posts on those adventures!