Everyday EV Aggravation

As electric vehicles simultaneously proliferate and pile up on dealer lots two competing views of an electrified transportation future have emerged.?One camp is characterized by unbridled enthusiasm citing Tesla’s market gains and China’s EV-driven export boom led by BYD.?The other camp emphasizes ongoing consumer skepticism toward EVs and the sluggish sales of non-Tesla EV makers.

There is a third camp, in which I find myself.?I would describe myself as a non-Tesla-owning EV advocate experiencing real world challenges with my own EV.

The usual complaints regarding EVs – the limited availability of charging stations and the limited range and high purchase prices of the cars themselves – are not my concerns.?(Although I would add to that the sometimes sketchy locations of chargers and lack of protection from the weather.) My EV issues – which do not seem to be widely addressed by EV critics – are twofold: the unreliability of vehicle range estimates and the exaggerated claims for charging speeds.

My concerns result from my Hyundai Ioniq 5 ownership experience.?They were greatly stimulated last week when I left my home for a six mile drive and the car indicated at the outset of the trip that my vehicle’s range was 269 miles. Great news!

When I arrived at my destination, the car indicated my range was now 239 miles – after driving six miles.?Not so great news. When I returned home my range had been magically reduced to 209 miles. Bad news.

This experience reminded me of the early days of embedded navigation, when the likes of Telenav, NNG, HERE, and TomTom were competing with Waze's smartphone-based navigation.?A key metric in comparing the efficacy of different navigation systems was estimated time of arrival (ETA).

At the time, I frequently noted, with my analyst hat on, that traffic analytics was the most important telematics application.?Without a solid understanding of traffic data, the best navigation route could not be selected.?Also, without that data, an accurate ETA could not be rendered.

A battle then ensued between TomTom, HERE, INRIX, SiriusXM, and Waze over which organization had and which organization was capable of or would develop the best traffic data.?To arrive at that leadership position it was widely understood that traffic analytics required an understanding of historical and real-time traffic data because what mattered most for navigation was predictive traffic modelling.

The same applies to battery range.?The range of a vehicle’s battery will be impacted by the state of charge, the age of and historical performance of the battery, weather and temperature, and traffic.

Also, as in the case of traffic, battery range will be based on predictions which are derived from real-time and historical battery performance.?Additionally, performance will be influenced by battery chemistry and architecture.

In the realm of traffic and navigation, Waze ultimately became the runaway market leader with some of the most reliable ETAs – matched, at the time, by Googlemaps.?Google, of course, acquired Waze.

TomTom and HERE had no choice but to develop competitive solutions and, today, are on par with Waze.?TomTom solved the problem by leveraging a partnership with Apple to access its handset-based probe data. ?HERE tapped into connected car probe data to bring its own traffic analytics to a par with Waze.

The struggle to compete with Waze took a toll and shook consumer confidence in embedded navigation systems.?That confidence gap lingers and is reflected in Uber and Lyft drivers who rarely use their embedded navigation systems.?My favorite example was a Lyft driver who had three phones mounted on his dash: one for Uber rides, one for Lyft rides, and one for Waze navigation.

This same experience is playing out in EV predictive range calculations and it poses a competitive threat to Tesla challengers.?According to battery analytics software provider Voltaiq, few organizations have matched the battery performance analytics acumen of Tesla (cars) and Apple (mobile devices).

These two organizations have recognized the management and communication of battery performance as a critical differentiating value proposition of their products. ?I have no doubt that Hyundai is working hard to manage this – but, so far, is falling perilously short in accurately predicting EV driving range.

The second beef I have is charging speed.?I benefit from living a “stone’s throw” from Electrify America’s headquarters in Herndon, Va.?My wife prefers to charge our EV in the parking lot at EA HQ, where “350kw” is literally painted on the pavement next to the charging stations.

Even under the best of circumstances – with the vehicle battery prepared and no other cars sharing any of the other charging stations – the best charging speed we have ever seen has been in the 200kw range.?The charging speed issue is maddening because there doesn’t appear to be anything the user can do to improve the speed – it is a function of the network, the hardware, and the software.

The charging speed is both an issue and a non-issue as the Ioniq 5 charges pretty swiftly – even at the lower speed.?And the charging stations are clearly marked as operating at “up to” 350kw – which is no guarantee.

Still, the issue was sufficiently noisome to cause U.K. advertising authorities to accuse both Toyota and Hyundai of false advertising in connection with claims of 350kw charging.?In the end, it comes down to consumer communications and setting expectations.

For me, unreliable estimates of vehicle range and overly optimistic claims of charging speed are complaints that simply don’t occur for Tesla owners.?Tesla clearly prioritized both its battery performance analytics and its fast-charging capabilities.

In the words of Tal Sholklapper, co-founder of Voltaiq: “For OEMs looking to ensure success on the road to electrification, the time has come to digitize the battery. In this context,?digitizing the battery means creating a comprehensive digital record of every battery in every vehicle you ship. Which cells make up the pack, the supplier, lot number, and constituent materials for every cell, all information about the pack design, assembly, and quality control testing, as well as the full record of the battery’s performance in use. Everything.?Organizations that do this now will build significant competitive advantage across the full product lifecycle.”

Who's to say that Hyundai, the maker of my EV, isn’t already doing this.?My guess is that Hyundai is indeed collecting all of this data.?But room for improvement rests in the final information that is being communicated to me in the car and at the charging point.?There’s a pretty big delta between my expectations and reality.

And one other minor point – and it is one that Hyundai is on record that it intends to correct.?Consumer Reports has highlighted that Hyundai is alone among EV makers in not having its vehicles activate the brake lights when regenerative braking is in use.?I am looking forward to that fix.

These days, the new car consumer tends to be less concerned with minor issues such as range calculations and brake light activations – problems that can be fixed in the field (so to speak) with software updates.?Let’s just say I am looking forward to those updates. I predict great progress from Hyundai and the rest of Tesla's EV competition. Just need to collect the right data and put it to work.