Hyundai Electric Range

Your budget puts you into some good EVs with decent range including the BYD Seal, Cupra Born, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Polestar 2 (just outside your budget), Tesla Model 3 and others.

Resale value is the big unknown at the moment with many used-car buyers wary of the potential costs of replacing the EV battery sometime in the future.

The future-proofing thing is debatable, too, and experts reckon EV technology is still in its infancy and has a long way to go. If that’s the case, then today’s EVs might seem like Model T Fords in the near future. It all remains to be seen and rests partly on the willingness of the Australian government to get serious about the EV infrastructure necessary for the tech to become viable for more people.

There are three ways of charging the Hyundai Ioniq 6 – two at home methods, and one in public. It is recommended that owners of the Hyundai Ioniq 6 purchase a three-phase 11kW at-home wall charger box. These retail for anywhere from $800 to $2000, depending on the manufacturer and the power supply, with additional charges of 21 to 36 centw per kW, depending on your energy provider. Additional costs can be zero if you’re hooked up to a renewable source such as solar. All up, it will deliver a charge time of five hours for the Standard Range variant and seven hours for the Long Range. The other at-home method is through a conventional 240V powerpoint, which takes about 25 hours on the Standard Range variant and 37 hours on the Long Range variant. A public charging station of 50kW will deliver a zero to 80 per cent charge in one hour for the Standard range, rising to 1.6 hours on the Long Range, while a 350kW charger will see the time it takes drop to 18 minutes on both variants. Cost is dependent on location, whether it is a peak period or not, and what the charger’s capacity is, though as a general rule you should never pay more than $40 for a full charge.

The Ioniq PHEV is not exactly a fast car in terms of its acceleration, but it will comfortably cruise at the legal limit. Certainly there are cars that are better at overtaking than the Hyundai PHEV, but it will still accelerate around slower traffic on the highway.

Overtaking is a bit of a lost art these days with dual-lane freeways and it really doesn’t matter how powerful your car is if you don’t know how to overtake safely. The other thing to consider is that hybrids like the Ioniq are at their best in city and suburban traffic where the harvesting of energy otherwise lost during braking makes them most relevant. If all your driving is over long distances at cruising velocities, a conventional car with a conventional driveline might make more sense.