We often make trips of four to eight hours of driving over the course of a day, so with a fully electric vehicle will we constantly be concerned about range? Will we be sitting at chargers for hours on end every day draining our phone batteries wishing we had a hybrid or still using a full gas vehicle? What would life actually be like?

We have put a small, refundable deposit on a 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 5. We don’t know when we will get it or if life might get in the way of us actually going through with the whole thing, but we wanted to get our name on a list to get one and have done so. This leads me to wondering what our life will be like driving around with it.

The large battery 2022 Ioniq 5 has a range of around 450 kilometers, which leads me to believe it will have a winter and mid-summer range of around 250 – 300 KM due to the heating and cooling needs of both us and the battery system.

At the lower end with around 250 KM of range, will we be able to visit family and friends or will we be spending hours at chargers wishing we had bought a hybrid or a straight up gas vehicle?

Assuming we stop where we normally stop in either Cobourg or Port Hope, what would our journeys look like?

Note: charge ranges are estimates and were divided in half for summer/winter calculations.

Erin, Ontario ~ 330 KM

• Kingston to Cobourg – 150 KM
• Charge for 60 minutes and get 120 KM range added
• Cobourg to Erin – 180 KM

Spring/Fall Remaining: 240 KM
Summer/Winter Remaining: ( – 20 ) KM

In the summer/winter, we would have to stop in Brampton for a 30 to 60 minute break to further charge the vehicle so that we would have range to get back later on as well as run some errands.

Currently, the only charger in Erin is a single plug, level two charger that I estimate will charge at a rate of around 20 KM per hour of use. This would provide us with some options and flexibility while we are in town.

We would have to make sure we got enough charge to get to a faster charger in Brampton on our way back, otherwise, we’d be experiencing range issues during seasonal temperature extremes.

Georgetown, Ontario ~ 305 KM

• Kingston to Cobourg – 150 KM
• Charge for 45 minutes and get 90 KM range added
• Cobourg to Georgetown – 155 KM

Spring/Fall Remaining: 235 KM
Summer/Winter Remaining: ( – 10 ) KM

Just like with Erin, we would have to either stop longer before going through Toronto or stopping in Brampton to charge more.

Georgetown has a few more charging options, so it probably isn’t as paramount that we stop other places before arriving in town. Right near where my brother-in-law lives is a stadium with free level two chargers, the grocery store has another two chargers, but this time they are paid use. They will all provide around 20 KM of range per hour of use, which should be more than enough to get us set-up for running a few errands or getting charged up to head back to faster chargers in the summer and winter time.

Ancaster, Ontario ~ 365 KM

• Kingston to Cobourg – 150 KM
• Charge for 60 minutes and get 120 KM range added
• Cobourg to Oakville – 155 KM
• Charge for 30 minutes and get 120 KM range added
• Oakville to Hamilton – 40 KM

Spring/Fall Remaining: 344 KM
Summer/Winter Remaining: 25 KM

We would likely have to top up again between Cobourg and where our family live in the Hamilton area during the summer and winter to make sure we have enough range to do the journey, so for this one, I added in a stop in Oakville to get topped up to show what that looks like.

Hamilton does have some level three fast chargers that can charge at a rate of around 100 KM per hour.

While there are faster level three chargers, and Hyundai talks about charging from ten percent to eighty percent in under twenty minutes, but I want to be realistic about charging rates and lean towards slower, more restrictive charge speeds. Still, getting back more than quarter of the battery in an hour isn’t so bad if you have something to do while waiting. There are some level two chargers close to my other brother-in-law’s place where we could easily get topped up when needed.

One of the places that Annie might want to stop to charge along the way is IKEA in Burlington which does have some level two and three chargers, though the website I was reviewing – ChargeHub didn’t list their speeds.

Ottawa, Ontario ~ 200 KM

• Kingston to Kemptville – 140 KM
• Charge for 30 minutes and get 60 KM range added
• Kemptville to Ottawa – 60 KM

Spring/Fall Remaining: 310 KM
Summer/Winter Remaining: 80 KM

Kemptville has level three chargers with a few new ones being added probably before we even get our vehicle. Ottawa has a pretty robust level two and three charging network available at gas stations, malls, event locations and more. It wouldn’t be a problem to keep topped up there, even if deciding to only use level three chargers.

A fair number of the fast DC chargers are at the $15 – $20 per hour range, some with additional connection fees. Fast charging in Ottawa wouldn’t be cheap, but there are certainly a ton of options.

Wasaga Beach, Ontario ~ 375 KM

• Kingston to Cobourg – 150 KM
• Charge for 60 minutes and get 120 KM range added
• Cobourg to Barrie – 200 KM
• Charge for 15 minutes and get 150 KM range added
• Barrie to Wasaga Beach – 40 KM

Spring/Fall Remaining: 330 KM
Summer/Winter Remaining: ( -5 ) KM

As you can see, we had to add a bit of extra driving on this as the optimum route is 375 kilometers but we’d have to go around four hundred due to needing to stop in Barrie to get charged up. In ideal weather, we wouldn’t have to stop anywhere on our journey to Wasaga Beach, but we don’t have ideal weather often in Ontario. So we would probably stop in both Cobourg and Barrie for recharging. During the middle of the summer, we’d need to stay a bit longer in Cobourg and maybe Barrie to be safe with the range we need for this journey.

One of the interesting parts of this whole thing is that there aren’t a lot of 350 kW chargers in most places, but in Barrie there are some 350 kW chargers at the Canadian Tire, so we can recharge a fair bit in a short amount of time. Even if we only get half of the maximum charge speed, we wouldn’t need to stay long to get over one hundred kilometers of range added to the vehicle.

I hope more places add faster DC chargers soon as 50 kW chargers just don’t cut it anymore.

We’d probably stop in Barrie on our way out of the area too, even if it meant extra driving to get to the really fast 350 kW DC fast charging that exists there.

Some Notes

I did notice that often locations aren’t listing their charging speeds or their prices which would make it difficult and most people recommend charging smaller amounts more often keeping the battery in the fifteen to seventy-five percent range of charge and only pushing it outside of that range in emergencies or through slower charging methods when needed.

Most fast chargers using the J1772 Combo connector that the Hyundai Ioniq 5 can use are currently around 50 kW, some are less than that, but very few are faster than that. I was surprised to not be able to easily find more connection options above that 50 kW line as it would greatly improve the charge times of the car.

An annoying thing about electric charging is all of the different companies that are supplying the chargers all with their own accounts systems and memberships and whatnot, making the whole thing feel complicated.

Lastly, did you know some chargers have idle fees? If your vehicle isn’t pulling power but is still plugged in, you can be charged an idle fee as you are basically taking a spot that someone else could use to actively charge their vehicle. It makes sense, but is also another thing to be aware of in this new vehicle ownership experience.

Annie and I definitely want to get a level two charger installed in our garage so we can charge our vehicle at home. It won’t be as fast as most of the chargers out in the world, and it will set us back a further three to four thousand dollars, but I think it’ll be worth it in the long run in terms of saved time and allow us to start most of our trips with a completely full battery.

Faster Charging?

So, I was about to finish this and post it and then I was like “what if we change our first stopping point, could I find a better charging option?”

So I looked at more charger locations along the route and sure enough, in Oshawa there is a 350 kW charger available. So instead of doing 50 kW charging, we could charge between two and seven times faster or for the same kind of times above, we could get back up to around eighty percent of our full battery, making our journeys easier!

For example, we could do the following:

• Kingston to Oshawa
• Charge for 20 – 30 mins and we’d be back to 80% battery
• We’d have 200 or 360 KM range depending on the season

Instead of 45 to 90 minutes of charging each way, we’d be able to get away with around 20 to 45 minutes for most trips! This would be perfect for eating, letting the dog have a washroom break, and taking a washroom break of our own before getting back on the road.

And this doesn’t even take into account the new chargers that are being added all the time, so when we get our vehicle late in 2022 or early in 2023, there might be more super fast DC chargers available which will reduce how long it takes to add more range to our vehicle.

With 150 kW chargers and above, if they were positioned in an ideal way, I could see us taking the Ioniq 5 on a long distance road trip where we take a break every two or three hours of driving to charge for twenty minutes before carrying on.

This would potentially allow us to cover around eight hundred kilometers for every ten hour driving day which would mean going from Kingston, Ontario to Vancouver, British Columbia in around six days, which is only two more days than we took making a similar journey before.

Do you know of better maps or tools to find fast charging locations? Are you interested in a full electric vehicle? What surprised you about this article? Let me know!