Hello
Added 2022-02-21 18:38:37 +0000 UTCThis post comes to you through Low Earth Orbit. There have been many developments!
First of all, I have a backlog of messages to go through and I've tackled some but not all. I usually try to respond to everyone, and I'm working through that slowly but surely.
Secondly, my move is mostly complete! I still have some organizing to do, as well as figuring-out-where-things-are-and-where-to-put-stuff but the big-ticket items are done, and I no longer have to be coordinating various whatever-the-hecks. I had hoped to be back in the swing of things a little earlier, but a major purchase which I wasn't expecting on making until the end of the month ended up happening at the beginning, and that had its own kerfuffles. More on that later.
In a very ironic twist, I now have much better Internet access here at the studio than I do at home. A while ago I finally got an email saying my Starlink kit was ready, and, well, it's here. And it works! Surprisingly well, actually. The trees which I feared would make it largely unusable are so far barely affecting it, and while the connection isn't entirely stable, for most of what I want to do here it's working quite well. I could now actually upload a video in about an hour!
A video on Starlink is certainly going to happen, but it's going to be less about it as a technology or solution and more about its necessity and why my feelings towards it are incredibly mixed. I'm grateful to have it, but also find its necessity (particularly here in the US) pretty frustrating given how we could have many more terrestrial wireless connections than we do but we don't because telecom corporations.
Meanwhile, I don't yet have true internet access at my new home because the ground is frozen and they need to bury a new wire. Hooray. However, that is going to be fiber-to-the-home and I should have a symmetrical gigabit connection for the first time ever. So that's exciting! I was told that should happen sometime before the end of February, and the weather forecast so far makes that look possible, but I'm not holding my breath.
In any case, I'm very happy with the new place and have also (this is that semi-unplanned big purchase) made the trips between home and work more sustainable both in terms of the drain it is on me and its environmental impact by going fully-electric with a new car. I'm now the very-satisfied owner of a Hyundai Ioniq 5, earlier-than-planned! I've had a reservation on one since last year, and rather unexpectedly they've started trickling into Illinois already and I got a call from Hyundai saying "come get it" so I needed to do that. I would advise against a car purchase in the middle of a move, it's a bit juggly!
I'm in the early-planning stages of a road trip with this car that will definitely turn into a video if it happens (would be early-summer). For the unfamiliar, the Ioniq 5 and its Kia sibling are currently among (if not at the top of) the fastest-charging electric cars, and although the infrastructure certainly has a LOT of growth to do, I should be able to make an 18 hour drive to Florida happen with only six 20-minute charging stops. I haven't made any EV content in a long while because every time I do it's a bit frustrating dealing with all the "what-ifs" people pose, and I feel like this new car with its 800V battery pack is approaching the point of refueling parity. If it only adds about 10% to the travel time to a given destination, much of which coincides with breaks you'd want to take anyway, I feel like that's barely a penalty and I'd like to spread the word on that.
But anyway, I'm not here to sell you on a car, I'm here to make videos for you. And that's starting up again real soon! I have a few topics on-deck for immediate production and should have the first ready for you by the month's end.
Thank you all so very much for your continued support! I have a feeling this year is gonna be a lot of fun.
-Alec
Comments
A little over a century ago transportation was transitioning from bio-fuelled horses to Jurassic juice-fuelled automobiles and it took a minute for both attitudes and infrastructure to reach the point of making the change feel inevitable. Same is the case now. I am currently driving a big-ass, fuel-sucking, cushy 2020 Lincoln Navigator and strongly suspect this to be my last combustion engine purchase. Probably the Ford pickup will be my first EV (other than golf carts for my vacation home in Michigan). 20 minute fast charge? Yeah, this is most definitely doable. Once in a while I have to drive 200 miles into boonies and back same day, so if such a quick charge is available along route plus the slow charge for when there's time then I'll have no problem going EV. Hopefully they'll make a cushy SUV EV. Because I'm spoiled. Congrats on your successful move, Alec. These are always stressful even when they go relatively well. Now back to your regularly unscheduled puntificating.
Al Davis
2022-02-27 18:38:54 +0000 UTCI'm very excited for you on your Hyundai Ioniq 5.My wife and I have decided our next vehicle will likely be all-electric and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 is on the shortlist.
2022-02-27 10:29:38 +0000 UTCAs the owner of a Nissan Leaf, I would be very, VERY interested in your findings regarding fast charging and suitability of the Ioniq as a road trip vehicle. I'm only down in GA and have to use a gas vehicle to get to FL. If I could go full electric and get rid of vehicle fluids, I'd love it.
Dylan Northrup
2022-02-23 22:12:30 +0000 UTCThe whole team at the Transport Evolved YouTube channel (covering EVs and green transportation) are HUGE fans of you and your channel, so if you end up road tripping out west we’d love to connect, whether for some joint content or just to say hi, grab a meal, and geek out with you.
Tashlin Familiy
2022-02-23 19:00:41 +0000 UTCOf course you want to go to Florida as an excuse to test drive/charge your new car! I assume you're jonesin' for a WDW trip! I know the feeling (the WDW part, not the EV part). ;-)
Patrick Bianchi
2022-02-22 22:05:18 +0000 UTCWe've been mighty impressed with the Ioniq 5 & EV6 recently, but then we discovered how many months we'd have to wait for one, so we'll go with a 2nd-hand e-Niro for the time being. Looking forward to your thoughts on it!
Anthony May
2022-02-22 12:38:03 +0000 UTCI'm looking forward to my Starlink as well... I hope your access means mine's coming soon!
2022-02-22 03:46:33 +0000 UTCSounds like things are mostly working out in a favorable fashion which is great to hear. I’ve done plenty of moving in the winter and it’s always such a relief when it’s over. The Ioniq 5 and EV6 seem to the best all around new EVs and I look forward to seeing your report.
Mark Hesse
2022-02-22 02:26:19 +0000 UTCCool update! Really looking forward to the electric car and Starlink videos sometime!
2022-02-22 01:09:02 +0000 UTCGreat to here it all Alec, and looking forward to seeing your next creations. I've got an Ioniq plug-in hybrid but have being eyeing the EV6.
Kevin Tessner
2022-02-22 00:38:31 +0000 UTCThanks for the update! I was thinking it must be close for an update. And what an update
Jim Hooke
2022-02-22 00:01:04 +0000 UTCI've not been in a MY, but I have been in a Mach-E which I'm told was designed to copy the Y in a lot of ways, including its ride. If that's true, I would never want a Y because the ride quality is too sporty. Here's the thing; I am so incredibly done with cars with firm rides. It's fun for a while, then you learn to really get tired of it day-to-day. I am longing for the days of the land-yacht minus the size, because living-room-on-wheels is precisely what I want. The Hyundai isn't that, to be clear, but it's the nicest-riding modern car I've been in. That's one thing I appreciated about my 2013 Volt. It rode very nicely. Coming from a Civic it might as well have been a luxury car. My time with the Bolt (which I can happily report got its new battery pack recently, so my folks are now using it to its full potential once again) was fun, but when I got back to using the Volt day-to-day I realized how much I missed its ride and seats. The Ioniq 5 is easily better than the Volt. By a lot. Seats seem just as good, plus more configurable, *and* the ride soaks up bumps quite well, however it still feels very planted and in-control. Hyundai did a great job to my tastes. So far the only irritating thing about the car is the lack of a rear wiper. The heated seat controls are annoyingly in a touch-screen sub-menu, and I thought that was gonna be a real PITA, but you can program the star button to go back to CarPlay/Android Auto, and the "Warmer" button on the climate control takes you right to that screen. So it's less annoying than I thought. Just press "warmer," make the adjustment, then hit the star. Not a deal-breaker. Also its adaptive cruise and highway driving assist tech is great, as is the heads-up display. It is an amazing highway cruiser. Sure, it doesn't have the Supercharger network, but I'm pretty confident that's going to matter less and less as time goes on. Plus I never truly need fast charging unless I'm road-tripping. I'm sure there are things about it that will bug me as time goes on, but so far I'm not regretting it one bit. It's the closest-to-perfect car I've ever experienced.
Technology Connections
2022-02-21 22:28:22 +0000 UTCSuper news! Excited to see everything you do.
Pensive Primate
2022-02-21 22:23:50 +0000 UTCReally happy things are going well! I really want to know more about the Ioniq 5 and how it works out for you. I have a 2016 Kia Soul EV and a 2018 PHEV Honda Clarity and was really looking at the Model Y to replace one of them but it is just so much money. I'll also +1 on the fiber jealousy :)
2022-02-21 22:16:39 +0000 UTCAlso jealous about the fiber I am in a major metro and Frontier didn't roll fiber in my neighborhood when it was developed about 8 years ago and I have been fighting with them since to try to get service. I do at least have cable but it is VERY expensive and very poor service.
2022-02-21 22:09:39 +0000 UTCI have a few folks who repeatedly tag me on Twitter about certain imagined barriers with EVs, and try as I might I simply cannot get through to them that when you're charging at home, you really don't care if it takes 5 hours or so - and that, once you're used to that, you find the idea of going to a place to refuel to be wasted time. And now that we have real-world fast charge times down to 20 minutes, we're so so close to it not really mattering any more. There's work to do, for sure, and I'll say it a million times that we need to make it much easier for people to access L2 charging at their homes and workplaces so that DC fast charging is only a thing you do rarely, but I think it should be extremely clear at this point that, for those who need to drive, EVs can work *today* and will only get better.
Technology Connections
2022-02-21 21:56:33 +0000 UTCYou've already done more than enough to explain electric cars, but it's bizarre that so many people are so adamantly against them that they apparently spend most of their waking hours trying to find a reason why they are inherent failures ;). People did the same thing with motorized cars when they appeared, so I guess people naturally hate anything new that seems to threaten what they already know.
antibrevity
2022-02-21 21:37:46 +0000 UTCI'm excited for you and your success! Sometime after you've learned to live with the Ionic, I'd love to see a video about it. I have a Kia Niro EV I leased in 2019 and I partially blame you and your Bolt video for it :). The end of my lease is up in about a year and the EV6 is really speaking to me. Not the back end of it, but the rest of it is. It would be great to see how someone as detail oriented as yourself feels about it after a while.
2022-02-21 20:59:22 +0000 UTCThe Ionic 5 is also one of the best looking cars you can buy today. Congratulations.
Milo de Villiers
2022-02-21 20:31:53 +0000 UTCI'm envious that they're burying your fiber. I have AT&T fiber (which is fabulous), but in our neighborhood it's all run from utility poles to the house, which means that our fiber is just... hanging there in the air. We've already had our internet taken down once when a small-ish branch from a neighbor's tree feel and landed across the fiber, ripping it off the side of the house. Oh, what I would give for underground utilities....
Sean Harding
2022-02-21 20:13:48 +0000 UTCSounds good! And trust me.. synchronous 1gbps FTTH is awesome!
Paul Schuur
2022-02-21 20:03:23 +0000 UTCIndeed. I get tired of battling all of the mis-information out there when it comes to EVs. It's hard to compete with the troll-farms.
The 8-Bit Guy
2022-02-21 19:59:40 +0000 UTCI can tell you that right now I'm getting between 170 and 200 miles per charge. The AWD models come with a heat pump, which sealed the deal for me. And apparently they're only selling AWD models around here, at least that's what the salesman told me. Anyway, when the temps are mild I can get above 3 miles per kWh, but it's hovering between 2.4 and 2.7 for highway driving right now. I'm charging to 90% and the 110-or-so mile trip to out here has left me with as much as 39% charge (so used pretty much exactly half) or as little as 24%. Wind seems to be a bigger factor than temps. Also I can report that I find its energy information displays annoying. There's no instantaneous readout of current power use (unless I haven't found it) and while it has something *sort of* similar to the Bolt's guess-o-meter with trend line, it's not clear how it affects range. Basically you get an instant mi/kWh reading with a tick mark at the average, which helps you get a sense of if you might need to slow-down to meet a certain range, but it's unclear how the tick correlated to the projected range number. Certainly I've had no range anxiety at all, and I've tested the DC fast charging on a 150 kW charger and it was pretty impressive. It started out kinda slow probably because the battery was cold but in the end I went from 20% to 60% SOC in about 20 minutes. Which is pretty great if you ask me.
Technology Connections
2022-02-21 19:50:09 +0000 UTC> pretty frustrating given how we could have many more terrestrial wireless connections than we do but we don't because telecom corporations. Can confirm. Am terrestrial wireless connection provider, nonetheless. 😁
Jesse Thompson
2022-02-21 19:27:54 +0000 UTCCongratulations on the EV and nearing the end of the moving process. I actually messaged you on Discord a few days ago asking how the move was going, and now, I have my answer.
Mike Chimeri
2022-02-21 19:21:08 +0000 UTCDouble congratulations :) I look forward to the rant video on car ergonomics any day now.
Seth Arnold
2022-02-21 19:09:44 +0000 UTCThanks for the great update, seems like things are going well and I'm happy for you 🥰 I had to move unexpectedly and buy my first house in 2021 (thanks to skyrocketing rent) and boy howdy I don't want to go through that process again for a very long time... Just hearing someone talk about moving brings up residual anxiety!! Hope it all went smoothly for you and you're thriving in your new environment.
Becka Pitts
2022-02-21 19:06:20 +0000 UTCAll great news! Glad everything is going well for you. Looking forward to videos, but don't rush on our account. You work so hard and deserve some time to focus on your life and to relax a bit!
Nathaniel Kren
2022-02-21 18:59:29 +0000 UTCCongrats on both the car and the move!!! Looking forward to the videos on the car, and I've been curious about Starlink but reluctant to really look into because of... well, you know who.
2022-02-21 18:49:57 +0000 UTCI’m so happy for you and a bit jealous that you are getting fiber-to-the-home, when my house has been built I was 10 years old so I didn’t know that they put the tubing in the wrong direction so today it would cost too expensive to do it… Furthermore all project of fiber in Switzerland are frozen due to a change in the way fibers has been installed at some people recently.
Rémy DG
2022-02-21 18:49:42 +0000 UTCWelcome to the EV side of The Force™, we have electrons. Nice to hear you've made lots of progress on the move and your connectivity. Take your time with getting back to content, we can wait. Make sure you have everything sorted with your move and a bit of R&R.
Thomas Ruecker
2022-02-21 18:49:25 +0000 UTCWelcome back! Cool to hear about the Ioniq 5, I'm very interested in that car...
Luke Hogan
2022-02-21 18:45:33 +0000 UTCCongratulations on the mostly complete move and the new wheels! I’m a massive fan of the Ioniq 5 and have been toying with the idea of getting one myself when it comes time to change so it would be great to see a proper, real-world test
2022-02-21 18:45:29 +0000 UTCCongrats! Moving is a big effort, a chore and very exciting at the same time! Glad to hear about the car! Ask The 8-Bit Guy for EV tips, he’s been at it for a long time as you know. 🤓
Anders Enger Jensen
2022-02-21 18:45:04 +0000 UTCPics? The dude has two YT channels, video tour or it didn't happen!
Xyon of Calhoun
2022-02-21 18:43:26 +0000 UTCYay for all the things! I’m pleased that everything is working out.
2022-02-21 18:42:44 +0000 UTCGlad to hear things are getting sorted on your end -- thanks for keeping us in the loop! Can't wait to see what you've got in store. Good luck with the rest of your move!
Steets
2022-02-21 18:42:30 +0000 UTCThanks for everything you do Alec. This channel brings me complete joy and for that I will always be grateful!
2022-02-21 18:42:22 +0000 UTCI am going to use a phrase as old as internet: pics or it didn’t happen!
William M
2022-02-21 18:42:07 +0000 UTC
