We have just had our Hyundai Ioniq PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) serviced for the second time. It is 2 years old now. We have driven 21,000 kms in that time and most of it has been driven on purely electric energy. All of it from our solar panels. As a plug-in hybrid, it has a petrol engine under the bonnet as well las an electric motor. We hardly ever need to use the petrol engine, as most of our trips fit in the 50 to 70 km range of the battery.

We have been to the petrol station 8 times over the past 2 years, about every two months on average. At first I used to fill the tank, but found that it took us 6 months to use that much fuel ($50). So for the past year I have only been putting $20 in the tank each time, so that the fuel doesn’t go stale. I keep a log book in the glove box and record how much fuel I buy and when, and what the milage is at the time. So far we have spent $350 on fuel in two years, to travel 21,000 km. thats about 0.6 cents per kilometre. That equals $0.60 per 100 km, or 0.5 litres per 100 kms.

The dashboard computer tells me what mileage I’m achieving at at any point in time and provides a summery at the end of the trip when I switch off the engine. Then at the end of each month. I get an email with the monthly averages. During this last year of mostly Covid lockdowns, we have only been travelling locally to the supermarket or hardware shop. So all our travel has been almost exclusively on sunshine from the battery. We have achieved 666 kms per litre one month! That was pretty astounding.

Other months were 550 and 480 kms/litre depending on the month and on whether we drove to Sydney and back, which means returning on petrol. Because its a hybrid, we have no range anxiety. With a full charge and a full tank ($50), the car can go over 1,100 kms.

So far we have not had to use a public charging station. We usually just recharge at home directly off the solar panels, but if we come home late at night, we recharge directly from our stored sunshine in our home battery. It takes about 2.5 hours to recharge, so it is not uncommon to go out in the morning, return home for lunch and plug in, then drive out again in the afternoon with a full charge of live sunshine, then return to recharge on stored sunshine in the afternoon/evening.

Because I only go to the petrol station once every 3 months to put in 20 dollars worth of fuel, my biggest problem that I have encountered with this car is to remember where the switch is for the automatic petrol cap opener below the steering wheel !

Every car has it’s problems!