electric blue

Earlier this month we upgraded to a new electric car!  Since we are a one-car household with a very tight parking space, we had a lot of constraints.

• 4 wheel drive
• all-electric with a good range
• not much bigger than the RAV4
• turning radius similar to the RAV4
• rear-hatch that works under the overhang of our house
• comfortable for tall people

We considered Teslas and the Polestar but they didn't fit our parking constraints so we ended up with the well-reviewed Hyundai Ioniq 5.  Although we never planned to buy a new car, the dearth of used cars pushed us towards this surprisingly big purchase.   Jack saw one or two used but the price was basically the same as the new cars and they were in far flung locations.  Even buying a new one was tricky as there are not very many yet and they are sold before they arrive at dealerships.     

On a Monday morning, Jack got a text from a dealership in Edmonds about a car someone had changed their mind about so we dropped everything and went to check it out.   We actually bought it without driving it ourselves first because we didn't have enough insurance.   After that is was several hours of paperwork and phone work to unfreeze Jack's credit, upgrade our insurance and trade in our old car.   Thankfully we had Jack's mom babysitting that evening already so getting home late was ok.

The trunk capacity is similar to the RAV4 but it's more horizontal so it holds a Costco load more nicely.   Camping or weekend trips will push the car to the limit, but that's just a fact of life and a trade off we're accepting.

The 2014 RAV4 was a great car that we bought out of necessity before Dd was born in 2018 (https://aglie.blogspot.com/2018/08/vroooooom.html).   I think if we'd had more funds available at that time we would have bought a slightly newer hybrid version of the same car.   Hopefully this Ioniq lasts us for many, many gas-free years.  

I should note that we know electricity still isn't totally carbon free and we thought a lot about how we use the car, what we need and what it means to replace a functional car with one that had to be built out of raw materials.    Here's what our Seattle City Light electricity sources look like: