CHARGING UP AND DOWN I-5
Hyundai Kona EV is an ideal ride between Vancouver and Seattle
This is the first in an occasional series called Power Trips, in which we go on a road trip in an electric vehicle to explore the pros and cons of travelling along the ever-expanding EV highway.
It was out of curiosity, not necessity, that we pulled in to the I-5 rest stop some 10 kilometres south of the Canada-U.S. 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 pair of 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 were 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 (sparkmuseum. org) located in the heart of the university town.
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 devices 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 Kona EV’s maximum voltage generated from the 64-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 overriding 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 hypermiling 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 on-board 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 Van it was 0 C, 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 navigation 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 navigation system: Like most systems circa 2019, it conveys plenty of real-time information, including traffic conditions on the road ahead. But its 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-km 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 will most likely be a gas station at the next offramp. True, there might also be a charging station, but if you need to use it, your day’s planned schedule is most likely thoroughly disrupted. All of which is to say the Kona’s real-time navigation system calculation displaying how far we still needed to travel and how much range we had was reassuring.
Speaking of reassuring, I required perhaps a little too much from the valet outside the Alexis as we unloaded our luggage. The appeal of the hotel, apart from its close-to-everything location and recently renovated rooms, was the fact it has EV charging facilities and offers half-price valet parking costs for EV and hybrid vehicles.
“Many years ago we recognized the importance of hybrid and electric cars and encouraged their use by providing charging stations and financial incentives to our guests,” said Tom Waithe, vice-president of Kimpton Hotels for the Pacific Northwest and mountain regions. “As more people drive these vehicles, we have maintained our offering of these services across the majority of our properties.”
That sentiment clearly has been conveyed to the staff, as the valet was well versed in the importance of ensuring a guest’s EV gets an overnight charge, but he did require me to show him where the Kona’s charge port is (for the record, to the left of the grille). And he was very reassuring that the Kona would get plugged into the hotel’s Blink rapid-charging unit.
That certainly proved the case the next morning when we had the car brought up for a short drive to one of Seattle’s most electrifying businesses, Western Neon (westernneon.com). When we’d arrived the previous day, we had 152 km of range left, and now it was back to 434 km. Pulling up to Western Neon in an industrial area near Seattle’s pro sport stadiums, I was wondering if we had the right place. The signage said we were, but looking at the building it seemed difficult to believe it.
But as we quickly found out, thanks to a personal tour by Western Neon’s creative director Dylan Neuwirth, looks can be deceiving. We learned about the history of neon and the four ‘noble’ gases that combine to make the light in the art; we saw the work benches where glass tubes are infused with these gases; we checked out the area where students learn the basics of shaping these tubes (making a neon ‘E’ the initial project); and we were amazed at the mainfloor gallery of completed works, some commercial signage and some pure and imaginative art sculptures. Seattle and the Pacific Northwest are renowned for neon signage, and if you see one in the city, chances are it came out of this amazing place. Neuwirth is also the creative director of the school, called the Western Neon School of Art (wnsaseattle. org) and his passion for all things neon was, well, incandescent. Like the Spark Museum, it was a fitting attraction during our electric vehicle road trip.
Heading home the next day, with just over 400 km of range, we headed north of downtown on State Route 99 over the Aurora Bridge and into the Northlake neighbourhood with one final photo op in mind. And while we couldn’t manage to get the Kona EV right up beside the post-industrial architecture of Gas Works Park, we did get it near enough to get some of the amazing gas works in the background. The 19-acre park is on the site of the former Seattle Gas Light Co. gasification plant and is rightfully on the National Register of Historic Places. The plant operated from 1906 to 1956, and the rusted works of towers, pipes and tanks are the sole remaining remnants of a coal gasification plant in the U.S.
With the photo taken, we jumped back into our zero-emission ride, feeling very much a part of the 21st century.