They were in Yonsei Severance Bldg. And I misspoke- their new office (for Hyundai Heavy Industries, and including the subsidiary I buy from) is not in Gangnam but in Pangyo.
New building (insanely hip):
Yeah Pangyo is technically in Seongnam city and known as a kind of mini Silicon Valley. The new Hyundai headquarters are still 4 or 5 years away from completion so nobody knows who gets to move there but probably all the automotive and heavy industry/construction companies will be there. This was the initial design but rumors are they’re going to split the 105 story building into two shorter buildings to accommodate drone landing zones.
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Drove Accords with 5-speed from a freshman in college (original vintage) for almost 30 years. I understand completely. Can’t wait to see the Honda EV.
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Tesla removed the radar from all its cars as it claims that the camera system is superior. One knock-on effect from this is that the parking sensors no longer work, frustrating owners while they wait for a software update to fix the issue.
Also, this…
The radar-based cars perform so much better (and make it nearly impossible to allow a crash like in the video you posted, even in low visibility situations like fog or heavy precip). But, even in real-world, low risk situations like automated parking, radar is far superior. This video is a perfect example:
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So, I picked up my EV two weeks ago. For reference, my last car was a 12 year old Audi A6 that was stuffed with 1st gen technology like radar-based cruise control and crash avoidance, lane departure capabilities, all-wheel drive with traction and slip control at all 4 wheels, heads up display, etc… and was a supercharged v6 ICE with 445hp and got 36mpg on the highway. I’ll miss it, it was a good car.
I’ll break this up into a few parts since it’ll be very Noe-ish in length. Feel free to hit me up with any ??'s about any of this. Horrible pic of me but that’s ok, y’all are friends:
First impression of the new car is the tech is substantially refined. All that tech in my last car was awesome (helping me to avoid at least 2 minor crashes over it’s 12 year, 170K mile life) but in this new car, it is much more refined. Where the last car had all these safety and performance capabilities, it is all integrated and seamless much better in this iteration, inspiring more confidence on the road. The last car was a rocket, going 0-60 in less than 5 seconds but this new EV is stupid fast, doing the same 0-60 in 3.7 seconds. That’s a 4-door sedan doing what a $500K supercar could barely do just 8 short years ago. There’s a difference though. The EV’s are effortless. They just sling you up to speed with no real drama instead of the raucous cacophony of noise, vibration and sensations that an ICE vehicle needs to deliver the same acceleration. With an ICE vehicle, you get the sense that you can accelerate like that only so many times before things start flying apart. Not so with an EV.
That said, I’m a pretty cautions driver with no crashes and only 2 speeding tickets in over 1M miles driven over the last 35+ years. Which leads me to my other comments. I jumped in with both feet to start. For the first 4 days, I played the normal commuter role, commuting in from my place in MD to downtown DC (a one-way of 28 miles of suburban, crowded highway and city streets) and back each day. The car was easy and intuitive in this world. I got into work and home using only 25% of the battery so could easily go 2-3 days without having to plug up. As a curiosity though, I plugged up with the included charger to an outside 110v outlet at night.
I can see how this might be a chore in the cold and/or rain for those without a garage.
It would charge around 1% of the battery per hour so I’d go from, say, 60% to 72% overnight. One night I did not plug up and instead, stopped at a rapid (150kW) charger near my house. It charged from 58% to 85% in 10 minutes and cost around $3.
I am having a Level 2 charger installed at the house next week so I will be able to fully charge at home overnight. Charging from 5% to 85% (the recommended extents) will take 7-8 hours and cost around $7. If I was doing that commute every day and felt like dropping the battery to 5 or 10%, I’d need to “fill up” every 4 or 5 days depending on the temperature. More on that later.
In Part 2, I’ll cover my first couple of long trips.
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How tall are you? I’ve always felt cramped in Audis, especially the headroom, and I’m almost exactly 6’ tall, not exactly giant.
Looks like you’re off to a show at the 100 Club in about 1979.
That is a sweet-looking ride!
Sounds like a home Level 2 charger is what you need. Also, your battery will probably perform better outside of winter.
I’m 6’-3”. Audis used to be that way in the 1990s but, like most other car manufacturers, have pretty significantly increased their interior sizes over the last couple of decades. I fit just fine in my 2001 A6 and that 2012 A6 at the top of the post as well as the new car. I also fit just fine in my 2002 TT although it looks a little bit like a clown car with big me unfolding out of such a tiny car.
If pegged jeans and Doc Martens looked ok for 1980’s me then they look just fine for 55 year old me as well. It helps that my girls are all in their mid 20’s to keep me stylin’ as I get older…
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Not enough stickers on the back.
That’s a sweet looking ride.
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Part 2: After spending the first 4 days as a commuter in the car, I then drove from MD to VT, a 500 mile trip. The trip took me from the MD suburbs of DC up through rural central MD, into the industrial SE PA, up through the rural heart of PA, into rural central NY, over to the Capital region of NY and then into (largely) rural VT. A couple of notes about this: 1) Rural PA and VT are largely charging deserts and certainly rapid-charger deserts and 2) the high capacity charging infrastructure in suburban MD and, surprisingly, even rural and Capital Region NY is very good with many choices along the way. As an aside, I get 3 years free charging on Electrify America, a growing charging network of high-speed charging locations largely funded by VW diesel-gate scandal fines so I choose those first if available. Regarding range, the car’s EPA-rated range is 232 miles on a full charge. In classic/typical german reporting, all german brands underestimate their range (vs. the typical american manufacturer habit of overestimating range based on largely unattainable lab environments) and independent 3rd party testing (edmunds.com) places the real-world range of the car at 285 miles. In warmer months, people typically achieve 320 or so miles of range.
I started out the trip with a 100% charge and a nice, toasty pre-warmed interior but it was 22ºF with snow on the doorstep. Snow started to fall 15 minutes into the drive and, for anyone that knows about warm-advection snows, I was under a band of moderate to heavy snow for effectively the whole trip as the band basically matched my speed heading north east.
The trip planner had me stopping at rapid chargers in Scranton, PA and again just outside of Albany, NY and reaching my destination with 30% charge remaining. In my ICE vehicles, I can make the trip in 8h45m if I am determined to get there fast and there is no or little traffic. That’s with one gas and bio-break and it kills my back from sitting for so long. Normal travel gets me there in 9h30m, allowing a couple of stops to grab food, gas up and walk around a bit. The EV travel planner had me arriving in 9h50m with those two charging stops added. Here’s the deal though. The cold and snow matter. Not only because snow-slowed traffic slowed things down but also because cold decreases the effective utility of batteries. When I got in the car, it told me that my first destination charger in Scranton would leave me with only 10 miles of range. Snow on the road, especially slushy snow, significantly increases the rolling resistance of tires on the road, decreasing the vehicle efficiency. In an ICE vehicle, you don’t think twice about this, knowing there are gas stations on most routes at logical intervals that make it a non-thinking decision to be pushed off until needed. (Although, I have friends out west that drive ICE vehicles and they are always thinking about this kind of thing due to the gas station deserts out there). As I made my way up the road, it became increasingly apparent that I would not make it to the rapid-charger in Scranton. This led to my first mistake. I assumed I’d find an alternate charger closer than Scranton and just charge there instead of actively looking. If I had, I would have noticed that central PA is indeed a charging desert. When I was down to around 60 miles of range, I started looking around on various charging company apps and a couple of conglomerated apps like plugshare.com. There was not much out there and what was was far off the main road and had slow charging capabilities. This is where I stumbled across my two first positive surprises. 1) There are free chargers everywhere. And, 2) there is a community of people and businesses that support this emergent infrastructure that are really chill and nice. When I expanded my search for chargers to all types (not just rapid chargers), the maps lit up and revealed tons of slow but mostly free chargers. Just about every dealership has one. Same for just about every library or police station. Many stores do as do tons of motels and B&B’s. Most are free except the hotels but even then, many of those are low cost or free if you are staying there. Since I only needed about 30 miles of range added to get to the fast charger in Scranton, I found a local Dodge/Jeep dealership that had a 15kW charger and pulled off the highway and drove the 4 miles to get to it:
It took me 30 minutes to get across the street and get some fast food and to walk back and by then, I had the 30 miles (well, 50) that I needed. I felt a little weird pulling up to a Jeep dealership in an Audi and just plugging up but that’s how it works. When I came back, a service tech popped out as did a sales guy and they chatted me up about the car. They said they were happy to see someone using the charger and, even, if I called ahead next time, they’d run the charging cable from their fast charger out from the garage for me to use so i could “fill up” faster. I’ve stopped at 4 dealerships in the first two weeks of having the car and 3 out of the 4 have offered the same thing and the one that didn’t had their fast charger outside already so I just plugged up. Each time, with a wave from the sales people inside. Same with the few times I charged up at a library, police department or business. Just a casual wave and they go about their business.
Aside from the snow for the entirety of the trip, the rest was uneventful. The charge in Scranton was fast (a 150kW charger) and only took around 25 minutes to charge up to 80%. The following rapid charger was a thing of beauty. The car knew it was my destination so it pre-conditioned the battery and suggested I pull up to one of the 350kW chargers to charge. There were 8 chargers in this charging plaza outside of a Walmart near Albany. 7 of 8 bays were full and, as I was pulling up to the one open slot, one of the drivers waved to get my attention, rolled down her window and asked if my car was “one of the new 800v cars”. When I said yes, she offered for me to jump into her 350kW slot and she would take the 150kW slot I was about to pull into saying “my 400v car can’t take the full load and yours can so let’s swap”. That’s the kind of “etiquette” that exists at these stations. People are pretty aware and polite to one another, everywhere I go. Remember, this was in NY. Let that sink in. When I plugged up, it was a revelation:
That 253kW charging speed was not even the max. It topped out at 283kW. For perspective, I charged from 5% battery to 85% in 17 1/2 minutes, adding 260 miles of range. When Audi did the math to see how big they should make the battery in the car (and what charging architecture to use, ie., 800v vs. 400v), they analyzed the average gas station stop for european drivers over a 3 year period and found that it was 18 minutes to gas up, hit the bathrooms and maybe grab a snack. Then built the car around that. ICE apologists say “I can gas up in 5 minutes or less” but practically speaking, when on a road trip, how often is that the reality? Never. And, for around town where you live, you never have to gas up if you have a charger installed in your garage or driveway. It’s just always full when you start your day.
The following weekend, I did a 400 mi. round trip jaunt to a B&B in the Berkshires with my wife and it was a big nothingburger. Drove there, plugged up at the B&B charger overnight and drove home the next day after driving to a park for a morning hike, grabbing breakfast back in town and running over to the Norman Rockwell museum and running around town a bit before leaving. Each place had a charger and I plugged up moreso out of curiosity than need since they were free and so I would feel comfortable setting the climate timer for the cabin and seats on “toasty” for my return after each stop since it would do so off of the charger instead of the battery and it was frigid there in Western MA.
Ok, Part 3 will come tomorrow. That’ll cover typical around town driving vs. trips and commuting.
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I wonder what the extra weight means for tire wear. Has anybody given you any idea about that?
What I have heard is that tire wear - as you suggested - is higher. However, this is offset by the lower fuel costs, near-zero maintenance (oil changes etc.) and much slower brake wear due to regenerative braking.
Do they make tires specifically for EVs?
The extra weight over comparable-sized ICE cars means that EVs have always needed heavier duty tires. But I think manufacturers are now working on EV-specific tires that can deal with the weight (without being truck tires) while aiding the aerodynamics.
@austro , @Waldo , The extra weight can indeed lead to extra wear. That is offset a bit byEV specific tires having a LRR (low rolling resistant) designation. Tires with this designation, have a modified tread pattern and a different compound that rolls down the road easier and, as a byproduct, last a little bit longer because there’s less road friction and the compounds are usually a little bit harder. The trade-off there is performance. I had a knowledgeable person tell me that the top performing tires that have this designation are about equivalent to the top performing tires from five years ago, regarding handling and stopping performance. Tires are rapidly advancing and leapfrogging each other and capability every season. It’s a fascinating, science-based arms race. There are indeed EV specific tires out there that have three main characteristics: they are designed for heavier weight loads, they have that low rolling resistant design, and they usually have a lining inside the tire that looks and feels like felt designed to decrease road noise since the heavier weight of the vehicle can make things sound like a truck without it. This has been especially “problematic” for EV drivers since the normal road noise that is drowned out by an internal combustion engine is easily heard in the quiet of an electric engine. Hence manufacturers putting in sound deadening materials in the tires these days. @Limey is right about the other reduced costs. For example, the brakes on the car are expected to last 80,000 miles before needing rotors and pads changed and if you get the carbon ceramic brakes, they last the life of the vehicle. Normal brake changes are 20k for pads and then 40K for pads+rotors.
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Very cool.
