I spent about a year or two researching EV’s before purchasing my own in 2022-
What I found was three Ev’s that stood out the most as the ‘best’ in my opinion.
In 1st place we have The Hyundai Ioniq, which has a range of 125~150 (2017-19/20-22) The Ioniq has a very high efficiency, being the #1 record holder for most efficient EV for many years when it came out, only recently losing the title to a newer Tesla model, just barely. This Efficiency has been confirmed to be about 4~6.0 Mi/per Kw/h, making this EV one of the best for someone who not only wants to save money on the purchase of their car, but save even more money on recharging compared to other EV’s. It has a very fast charge to boot, fully charging up it’s relatively small battery of 28 kw/h in just about 20~ minutes from empty. I’ve also found that the Ioniq’s battery seems to hold its health for far far longer than almost every other EV on the market- out of the hundred or so I looked through before buying my own, only 1 had about 20% battery health degradation, with every other one having perfect health. I recommend the ‘17~19’ models since they are generally a few thousand dollars cheaper than the bigger battery models, and despite the claimed range of 125 miles per charge, get 150 miles on average due to their insane efficiency.
In 2nd and 3rd (basically the same ranking to be honest) are the Focus EV and the EV Golf, which have 115 Miles and 120 miles respectively per charge. They both charge at a slower rate of about 40~ minutes for a full charge, and compared to the Ioniq were built as ‘EV Conversions’ meaning they took a gasoline powered car and just slapped a battery and electric engine in it- unlike the Ioniq which was built from the ground up to have an EV model- meaning they are less efficient and especially with the focus built to a lower quality standard in general.
These are still great choices for someone on a budget however, as they are generally much cheaper than an Ioniq and are still quite more affordable to drive than a gasoline powered car. I can’t vouch for the battery health however, due to their rarity, and lack of sources for how the battery holds up (dealerships usually dont advertise it and the dash that tells you the health is fairly hidden, unlike on more EV-specific vehicles)
Cheap EV’s I would recommend against:
The Leaf, I know I know, you can get a leaf for dirt cheap- as cheap as some of the cheapest gas powered cars on the market these days- however, unless you really don’t care about range, looks, battery health and charge speeds- I’d recommend avoiding them, since they have been cursed since their inception to be chained to the ChaDamo charging port- which has always been less popular than the CCS standard and as of about 2020- has basically been declared dead, as almost all the main charge port manufacturers have announced plans to discontinue Chadamo support on their new chargers and will stop repairing broken ones- meaning the days for Chadamo charge port equipped vehicles are numbered. So that means you’ll only be able to charge on slow as molasses Granny plugs at home- over the course of 24 hours or more per charge. So I’d only recommend a leaf if you are REALLY cash strapped and have a home to charge in- otherwise it’s destined to be a dead weight which cant drive anywhere due to its extremely limited range and no charging stations in the near future. Oh and the battery degradation on the Leaf is one of the worst if not the worst in the entire car industry, due to every model until the redesign having absolutely no battery protection- no cooling and no heating whatsoever, along with no buffer either.
Fiat 500 Ev, This little thing is extremely cheap, but the reason for that is it’s pitiful range and lack of a fast charger, meaning you can only go to places within 20~ ish miles of home- and then when you get home you’ll be spending about 16~24 hours recharging before you can go anywhere else, that ontop of it being extremely small makes it uncomfortable to ride in if you are tall and incapable of getting any large amount of groceries whatsoever.
Bolt Ev, This starts out looking like a fantastic deal, doesn’t it? Well bad news, while it looks great on the surface, with a low competitive cost, under the surface is a rot at the core of every Chevy vehicle… First off, the massive range that this ev gets compared to similarly priced cars makes a lot of people immediately want to go and buy this vehicle- however, due to Chevy’s shitty manufacturing quality standards- the Bolts have some of the worst degradation in the entire industry, only being comparable to the Leaf, but most likely worst- since it’s not caused due to just lack of protections on the battery, but caused by a manufacturer error which means every single bolt ever made, was built with broken batteries that at any moment could go from full health to 10% health, or less- I’ve seen bolts with less than 10 miles at a near full charge- being near damn useless. Oh and dont forget, that huge range comes at a price- it’s very inefficient compared to most other ev’s on the market, from what I hear it gets 2~4 miles per kwh, and that huge battery takes quite a long time to charge even on a fast charger- being around 1 hour to fully charge up. That alongside Chevy’s price cutting penny pinching process which is the design philosophy of “how cheaply can we possibly put this together for?” leading to a lot of cheap feeling interior and exterior materials, this EV is a trap- and I’d recommend everyone stay away from it due to those battery issues. Unless you like having to deal with it being at the dealership for recalls on its battery for the rest of your ownership.
Here’s my experience owning eGolf (2016, 22kw) and now Hyundai Ioniq 2020 model. I’m in Norway so fast chargers are everywhere.
Golf was a superbly comfortable, beautiful and elegant car with excellent user interface and materials. It was a bit small in back seat but okay for family of 5. Range was not great, but that wasn’t a problem for me. What was a big problem, is the HORRIBLY EXPENSIVE REPAIRS! Within warranty had to fix driver side door handle cause it would randomly unlock or lock car in rain, front DRL died, Aircon stopped cooling (known issue with valve that cost $1000+ to fix). After warranty ran out, charger port solenoid got stuck, keeping charging cable locked to car: $2200 to fix. Heater stopped working middle of winter, luckily “only” $500 to fix and final straw was that car stopped charging normally, only CCS worked. Another $2500 fix that I didn’t go for and sold the car to dealership.
My experience with Hyundai Ioniq is nothing but positive. Compared to e-golf, it’s simpler, less comfortable and feels less premium, but it’s also bigger inside, more legroom and width in back, far superior durability, more than double range, completely free and excellent app control and surprising level of auto pilot when you engage cruise control. I changed all interior halogen bulbs with white LEDs and got new battery from dealer when buying (bought mine last year, 2 years old). Only real issue I have is the gear selector buttons, that don’t beep when pressed and are easy to press wrong button. A selector knob or dial would be much better option. Last issue is the forward parking sensors that don’t come on automatically! You have to either reverse (so all sensors come online) or press the nearly hidden button on central console every single time you want to use them. On Golf the sensor were active automatically when driving at slow speeds.
Thanks for the review, yeah German vehicles have a reputation for being quite expensive to repair- I’ve only had my Ioniq (2017) for about a year now, but basically nothing has had to be done maintenance wise whatsoever and that’s saying something because the previous owner obviously had absolutely no respect or care for this car whatsoever.
They smoked like a chimney in the vehicle and it took months of multiple hours long cleaning sessions, replaced air filters and ripping the ac/air blower out of the dash to clean them to get it to the point where you could ride in the car without it being unbearable to breath the air without the windows down. They had scraped the car across multiple side swipes, curbs and the front end into a few parking lot slabs- and looks like they rear ended a few lightpoles as well. They also had apparently wired up their own subwoofer system which they had ripped out before selling it to the dealership I got it from- while inspecting the leftover wires it seems they melted some of the fuse box where it was wired into… so that was pretty cool. Oh and of course, its full of random scratches and mauled buttons in the dash and window controls for some reason.
I saved quite a pretty penny on the car due to all these superficial dents, scratches and what not of course- and since the car still drives, charges and retains its batteries absolutely perfectly, I cant really complain. I actually spend less money on the monthly payment + higher insurance than I was paying monthly in gas & oil in my falling apart 90’s volvo, probably one of the best financial decisions I’ve made in my entire life was to upgrade to this Ioniq Ev.
You made a good deal on it then and also probably saved it from going to junk yard. I really like how Hyundai have thought about possible failures and included things like manual charging port and cable release. No such thing is modern VW’s.
Yeah, got it for 13,900$ in the peak of the car crisis in 2022, where the same exact car with no superficial problems was going for about 25~30,000$ and the newer models were like 30~39,000$- definitely worth taking the visual hit imo.
The monthly payments + insurance is like 250$ compared to my monthly gas bill of about 290$ + a bottle of oil for my old 90’s volvo, not to mention the thousands of dollars dropped over the years in keeping it running and street legal and regular maintenance, and comparatively this thing is such a dream to drive- the volvo rattled so loudly that going on the highway/freeway was basically torture to the point where your ears would physically start to hurt after 10~ minutes of driving, and it was so underpowered that the thing struggled to go up hills, on a particularly steep incline once the car literally came to a crawl and I had to stop, pull over on someone’s driveway half way up the hill and let the car cool down for a good 30~ minutes and refill the oil just to make it up the rest of the hill- and afterwards ever since that day the engine had been making new horrible screeching noises whenever the gas was stepped on particularly hard.
The Ioniq in comparison is just lovely to drive, absolutely no complaints, very quiet, extremely good acceleration for such low horse power( I never even feel a lack of it tbh ) and the handling is extremely good, its easily the best car I’ve ever driven.
Sounds like you got a good deal. I made a bargain on mine last winter, when EV prices were crazy high locally. Mines a 2020, near perfect condition with 70000km (rather high for such new car) but with Hyundai Promise extended warranty until 2027, new winter wheels and it cost me less than $15k with trade in of a defective eGolf (that was valued between $7500-9000).
I’m very happy with the 200-250 miles of range in my used Bolt, and haven’t run into any issues outside the seats not being the most comfortable on long trips. It fast charges slower then most current EVs, but i charge at home and haven’t used a fast charger in over a year. I wouldn’t recommend for colder climates because of the lack of heat pump, but in SoCal it’s been an amazingly affordable EV. Not the ideal roadtrip vehicle, but it gets the job done. Your mileage may vary.
Yeah I have a post recall EUV and have had zero issues.
this is my exact experience. mileage is great, but yeah it’s a budget car. the “fast” charging is slow but it’s not a road trip vehicle (that’s a great way to turn an 8 hour drive into an 11 hour drive - don’t ask me how I know).
if anything the battery issues should push it up the list. each of those cars battery warranty restarts once the battery swap has been completed so you get a fresh 8 years/100,000 miles.
OP - where are you seeing these bolts reporting “full” with only 10% battery capacity? first time I’ve heard of this.
I’ve read the consoles on about 50~100 old bolts on Kelly bluebook, car gurus and other used car sites and they’ll say they are fully charged while saying they’ll only go about 7~25 miles- thats how I know that batteries dying on them is a major problem. (Out of all of them I’d say nearly 75% of them had a noticeable amount of degradation with maybe 20% of them having massive range loss with less than like 40 miles of range left on a full charge)
Maybe the recall fully fixes the problem and those I saw on car sales were examples of those which never had their battery recall fixed, but there’s no real way of me checking that now.
this might be an extraordinarily dumb question but what is the KBB console? like a forum?
Oh no, I meant the consoles of the cars themselves- you know the dashboard’s information console?
Kelly bluebook is just a car sales site, like car gurus, and others- its just where I found the cars to look at their consoles.
ah, gotcha. thanks for the clarification
The old Ioniq really is a pretty impressive car. What I’ve read even fairly high mileage ones have essentially no battery degradation and there aren’t many components that wear out or break.
Only big issues I’ve heard of are the 12v battery going flat. That may have been a software bug with a fix. And there was some similar problem with the wrong coolant being used and crystallizing. Also fixed by using the right fluid.
The range is not huge, but CCS charging should be quick on the road. I think they don’t look half bad either. Most importantly it looks like an actual car and not some freakish micro box or a high roof lumbering senior mobile.
It really is nice, simple and just works- The range is kinda small, but it’s always enough to make it to another charger and enough that you can drive for hours without needing to recharge, and when you do it’s fairly quick since it’s such a small battery & relatively fast compared to other cars of it’s day (mine charges at 60kw/h at max speed) and yeah the batteries seem to be some of the best in the industry- the battery reliability of them is extremely impressive, I’ve yet to see any other car with similar lack of degradation. (besides the Kona ev, which uses the same batteries irc)
Mine is 110,000 miles, nearly 6 years old and still goes 25 miles further than it’s advertised 125 miles per charge.
I have 2020 Ioniq with app support and heat pump. Advertise range is 311km but I’ve seen mine show 302km after driving 35km, and 200km after 130km, so real range is closer to 330km.
CCS is kind of slow on my car, usually between 30-50kW.
Well, the advertised charging speed is 40 kw/h, and its natural for the charge speed to slowdown as your battery closes in on 100% charge, to protect the battery from overcharging.
Essentially no (lithium or most others) battery charges at constant power throughout. Chemistry doesn’t work like that. It’s not car or battery specific, but a feature of reality
We have a LEAF, and yeah, if you want a car that can do road trips, this isn’t it. We use it exclusively for driving around town (take kids to school, groceries, library, etc) and for that it works really well.
At the time we bought (2013) pickings we’re pretty slim. I know there are a bunch more versatile options now. But at the time, we knew it wasn’t for big distances so we didn’t even spring for the Chademo option, heh.
But that said, you definitely can charge at home a lot faster than L1. We have L2 at 6.6kW (240V), so it would fully charge in about four hours. Those of us with EVs also know that it’s pretty rare to be at 0% and need to get to 100% quickly.
Glad to see options increasing and more folks going electric!
Back in 2011~2015 The leaf was probably the most economical car choice you could possibly make at the time, with only a used Prius being possibly a challenger in any way.
The leaf, for all its faults- was still one of the best cars you could own in a financial sense back then- when the only other real ev option was a Tesla which costed anywhere from triple to quadruple the leaf’s cost.
But- after the introduction of competition from other manufacturers, the Leaf has been extremely outdated- and Nissan really has dropped the ball massively on their huge headstart in the EV game- from refusing to update the Leaf to a CCS charger, and refusing to implement any battery protection for many years after it was massively apparent that the lack of said protections were leading to massive battery degradation losses, especially in extremely hot climates- where I’ve seen Leaf’s with a total of 10 miles per charge on the odometer… The only other EV’s I’ve ever seen with such bad degradation is the Bolt, which have broken faulty batteries that fail if they weren’t fixed in the recalls that seem to never end.
It’s a shame really, the Leaf was great when it came out but Nissan’s refusal to improve upon it over the years has left it in the dust of nearly every other EV on the market these days.
Good to know! I wouldn’t be caught dead in a Fiat of my own after driving a rental rattle-trap 500L several years ago.
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If you’re in Europe, Asia, or Australasia, you don’t really need to look beyond MG. They’re pretty much all you need for the money, on a budget of course. In these markets, the next step up would be from Tesla, and from there, there’s quite a few options for luxury electric vehicles.
Wish we had MG here, I also would have loved to have the choice of a Renault or Dacia in America…
I’ve driven them, they’re surprisingly good for the money. BYD is pushing it with their overseas pricing. And Ora, they’re not very good at all despite the media hype.
People hype the Ora cat just because of its looks & name, its otherwise nothing special.
