A electrifying road trip to the Emerald City
Hyundai Kona EV an ideal vehicle to charge up and down the I-5 from Vancouver to Seattle
It was out of curiosity, not necessity that we pulled into the I-5 rest stop some 10 kilometres south of the Canada-USA border.
We’d left North Vancouver an hour earlier with 422 kilometres of range in the 2019
Hyundai Kona EV, and as we pulled up to the rest stop’s two Level Two Webasto charging stations, the readout showed a robust 368 kilometres still remaining, more than enough to cover the 167 kilometres to our weekend destination, the
Kimpton Alexis Hotel in downtown Seattle. But I was curious to see if anyone was plugged in, and sure enough a Kia Soul was getting a charge while its owner sat in the driver’s seat reading a newspaper and drinking a coffee. The other station was not in use.
Back on the road, we we’re quickly up to speed — that limit, incidentally, being 112.65 km/h, or 70 m.p.h. — with a museum visit and lunch in Bellingham next on the travel itinerary. Less than a half-hour later, we pulled into a parking spot right in front of the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention located in the heart of the university town. (www.sparkmuseum.org)
Again, no need to look for a charging station, so into the museum we went to check out the incredible collection of electrical innovations and device from the past 100-plus years. In particular were some true Holy Grails from the technology, including Thomas Edison’s first successful electric light bulb and a section of Edison’s DC power cable installed in New York City in 1883 and unearthed following the World Trade Center terrorist attack in 2001.
These priceless artifacts are part of the War of the Currents exhibit, which chronicles the battle between three of the world’s greatest engineers — Edison, George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla — to determine the electric technology that would power the world — AC or DC. That story is told in the Hollywood movie The Current War, which opened in October. Another “electrifying” exhibit is the nine-foot Tesla Coil that emits four million volts of lightning. That’s some 3,999,644 more volts than the Niro EV’s maximum voltage generated from the 64.0 kWh lithium-ion polymer battery.
After visiting the Spark Museum and driving off in the Kona EV, it was difficult not to feel a stronger connection, and certainly a more profound understanding, of the 21st Century technology Hyundai engineers have packed into the tidy crossover. Try as we might, we couldn’t find a Bellingham restaurant with an over-riding electric theme, so we opted for our favourite local haunt, the Boundary Bay Brew Pub.
Fuelled on a bowl of beef stew — and still no need for a charge up — we were back on I-5 for the final push to the Emerald City, a 140-kilometre straight shot south along the Pacific coast. It should be noted here that there was no hyper-miling involved in this road trip — nor will there ever be in our Power Trips series — as speed limits were maintained, and admittedly exceeded during some highway sections — “I was just keeping up with the traffic flow, officer.” Likewise, the onboard systems — from navigation to sound system to climate control — were all used with no thought to their effect on battery range. To that last function, when we left North Vancouver it was zero degrees centigrade, so the heat was blasting and the heated seats and heated steering wheel were turned up all the way.
Traffic was surprisingly light for Black Friday, and in less than two hours, the Kona’s Nav system had us pulling up to the Kimpton Alexis Hotel, just a couple of blocks south of the iconic Pike Place Market.
One note on that Nav system: like most systems circa 2019, it conveys plenty of real time information, including traffic conditions on the road ahead. But it’s real appeal comes from the EV-related information, including nearby charging station icons displayed on the map and your current range in relation to the destination you have inputted into the system. I’ve been driving EVs on a very regular basis now for almost a decade, and I still fret over range, often checking out current battery charge and doing quick calculations to ensure all is well.
Of course, with most new model EVs touching, some cresting, a 400-kilometre full charge range, this seems quite illogical and unnecessary. After all, how often do you look at your current range when driving a gasoline-powered vehicle? But, the fact remains that if you run dangerously low in gas, there’ll most likely be a gas station at the next off-ramp.
After visiting the Spark Museum and driving off in the Kona EV, it was difficult not to feel a stronger connection.”