I live in the high desert in the Southwest on a 20 acre homestead within a small farm/ranch community of 200 hardy souls. My homestead includes all the typical accouterments of a homestead including wells, septic, gardens, greenhouse, tractor, barn, and animals. I recently installed a 8,000 watt off-grid solar system.
A good-sized county seat town is 20 miles away with WalMart, drug stores, grocery stores, local hardware store, courthouse, and regional hospital within that 20 mile range. An extra five road miles gets me to a Costco and big-box hardware stores. A major city is 100 miles away with all the amenities you can imagine.
My driving habits include around two trips to the county town a week. I used to live in the major city and still have financial interests there that require I go there two times a month. In addition, my kids and grandkids live 1,500 miles away in the southeast and I try to drive there once or twice a year.
With the advent of my new solar system, I thought this would be the best time to invest in an Electric Vehicle (EV) and get all that free fuel. I have not had a new car in over 30 years so this was a big decision for me. Problem: Pure EVs have a limited range between charges, charging can take a long time, and you have to know where all the charging stations are if taking a long trip. Hybrid EVs can go long distances but you can’t charge them except with their gas engine. Solution: The new Pluggable Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) give you the best of both worlds. You can charge them at home for about 40 miles of electric travel or use a combination of electric motor and gas engine to travel long distances at a very good miles per gallon rate.
After many hours investigating and test-driving PHEVs, I finally selected the Kia Sportage. The Sportage was reasonably priced, but more importantly, has their 10-year 100,000-mile warranty. This was the real clincher for me because of the newness and complexity of the PHEV electronic systems. The vehicle is designed to run in several different Modes: Eco, Smart, Sport, and Snow. My typical mode is Eco, since it tries to maximize fuel usage. Smart mode attempts to learn your driving habits and your typical trips then calculate best use of gas and electric to maximize those trips. Sport will primarily use gas at a higher rpm to give you faster starts or punch. It is also the only mode that will keep charging the battery up to 100%. Snow moves from 2-wheel to 4-wheel drive as it senses ice or snow on the road. Otherwise, it is basically Eco-mode.
Eco mode works electronically behind the scenes to give you maximum miles per gallon (mpg). This means it will run on electric until it draws the battery down to 10-15% of charge left, then switches to the 1.5ltr gas engine to power thru all the requested miles per hour (mph). When you take off it will throttle your throttle to make the car slowly increase speed. It will also use the torque of the electric motor to take off from a standing start to about 5-8mph before switching to gas. Any letting off the pedal will immediately kill the gas engine and switch to coast or electric. Eco will also keep the gas revolutions per minute (RPMs) to the lowest possible for the terrain and the pedal commands. It reminds me when I used to have an old Geo Metro; slow no matter how much you press the gas pedal.
Once your desired speed has been attained, if the vehicle senses little resistance (level ground to downhill), it will kill the gas engine and switch to EV or coast mode. Then when resistance increases it will restart the gas engine and continue until resistance changes. While in gas mode, if the battery is low, say 5-12% of charge, it will increase gas engine RPMs to charge the battery while also engaging the wheels at the same time. When braking or going down a significant hill, the gas engine is shut off and the battery is recharged with braking/downhill resistance. All this makes for some really impressive miles per gallon and significant cost savings.
With my EV battery fully charged, I can go to the county town and back at about 200 miles per gallon. And it would be free if I didn’t have to climb 2,000 ft each way because of a significant hill between my little valley and the county town. Going 100 miles to the major city is mostly downhill so I average about 80 mpg. It would be much better but driving 65 to 75 mph with a little 1.5ltr gas engine really eats up the fuel. On the way back up into the mountains I get about 35 mpg. That is still not bad.
The drivetrain actually has two power sources and when steep hill climbing both the gas engine and electric motor can power the drivetrain simultaneously, effectively increasing the vehicle’s horsepower to 240 h.p.. The drivetrain can also run either 2-wheel or 4-wheel drive. This was important to me because my homestead uses a dirt road that can get soft and rutty when rain or snow outside. Also, I like to do off road Sunday drives just for fun. The Kia also allows you to lock in constant 4-wheel drive, but this should only be done on dirt and driving under 20 mph.
Some other cool features that I didn’t know existed since I haven’t had a new car in 30 years: Driver Assist will softly beep if you go near/outside lane lines. If you do it too often it will flash a suggestion that you should take a coffee break! I am sure this is being recorded in the cloud somewhere and who knows in the future it may shut off my vehicle. But for now, it is improving my driving habits and even has helped me when sightseeing too much. Auto Brights is also a very useful feature and I find the car’s Ladar is usually faster than I would be in turning them off and on. GPS Maps has helped me several times when out on a far dirt road on where to go and how to get back to civilization. Backup Assist is annoying because it has the beeping sound — since the car is virtually silent in EV mode. But the camera with its drive lines showing really helps in tight spaces. It also will stop the car if you miss a vehicle or pedestrian while backing up.
Snow-Mode has proved useful because it will run dry surfaces on 2-wheel drive eco-mode then switch to 4-wheel when snow/ice is detected. If vehicle still slips, it will switch to locked 4-wheel drive and help power you thru. I have been on several trips up my mountain to the county town where snow and ice were present. Cars/trucks are along the side or in the road and my little car just keeps on driving up and around them. Sometimes I think I should stop to assist but I know the county traverses our road with plows and assist vehicles and I am getting too old to play around in the snow/ice.
One of the downsides to my PHEV is that the battery is designed to be trickle-charged which means up to 24 hours to charge to full capacity. Since I only drive it twice a week this isn’t a big problem but it would be nice to have it quickly charged and ready to go in case I need it for an emergency or bugout situation. On the plus side, the trickle-charge uses 120v AC so is readily available. During my first trip with my Kia to visit my kids this past Thanksgiving/Christmas, about 3,000 miles round trip, I was only able to use the charger at home and destination. But I still got a respectable 38 mpg for the whole trip.
I formerly drove a big diesel 7.3 liter Ford Bus tricked-out as a Bug Out Vehicle on my trips and I really enjoyed those trips. But now Biden-diesel is so expensive that I decided to switch to using the small SUV for those trips. It is roomy enough to drop the back seat down and sleep on my sleeping pad and blankets which I did both going and return. The gas tank is 10 gallons so you still have to stop about every 350 miles to gas up. It works out that I stop at just about the same locations with the Kia as I did with the bus, except now I spend $20 per stop versus $150, a significant savings.
Overall, I am very pleased with this significant purchase, I believe that I will get much good use out of it. It has forced me to learn the advantages and disadvantages of a new all-electronic/electric vehicle. I fully realize that it may be a boat anchor if an EMP/CME occurs, but if our demise is more political/ economic/supply chain then having an off-grid power source and my PHEV could turn out to be some of my best purchases. I can still use the vehicle when maybe others will run out of fuel, allowing me to help my neighbors.
If Schumer hits the fan, I expect my driving habits to be significantly reduced to our local community and maybe to the county town 20 miles distant. I plan to add a towing package that will allow me to use it more as a farm vehicle [in electric mode] and preserve my gasoline reserves for chainsaws or UTV until it is all used up. I also plan to add a CB radio to improve our communications. The setup is not perfect, but, overall, a good contingency plan.
As a final message, I have no affiliation with the products I mention here, just a satisfied customer.