Month: August 2023

Climbing the learning curve

One of the reasons I liked the EV-6 when I test drove it is that driving it isn’t markedly different than driving other cars: the speedometer is in front of you, not on the right; there are knobs and buttons to do things, not just menus and joysticks; CarPlay works.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot to learn.

The EV-6 is a few inches bigger in all dimensions than the Subaru. That makes it a little harder to get in to and out of the garage, but not impossibly so – but it does mean that the Parking Distance Warning system goes crazy because there isn’t a lot of room to spare. Today I found out how to shut off the system (it’s a button right by the gearshift) and now I can get in and out of the garage in peace.

The garage door is barely tall enough to clear the trunk lid when it’s fully opened, and if I’m not careful in lining up the car, the lid would hit the door hardware when it opens on its own. But I just discovered how to limit how far the lid opens, which should solve that problem.

I am very glad we got the Technology Package, including front and side cameras and visible blind spot monitoring. The visibility on the driver’s left rear is not good; the camera makes all the difference. And the other cameras are a great help in parking, especially backing into a narrow spot (like the garage).

I wanted to try charging the car before I actually needed to fill it up, so I stopped at the EVgo charger near me. I couldn’t get it to work – and neither could the person trying to use the adjacent charger. But I did discover two interesting things about EVgo: they have time-of-day pricing in California, so charging the car between 4-9pm costs a good bit more than it does at other times. I also found out that AAA provides a free membership in EVgo’s plan, which means I won’t have to pay their per-session pay-as-you-go charge or a credit card surcharge.

Later, we went to an Electrify America charger to take advantage of Kia’s deal with them for 1000 free kilowatt hours; it took 18 minutes to add 30 kWh to the car (bringing it from 52% to 90%) and would have cost $14.75 without the deal. That’s enough energy to drive about 120 miles; the Subaru would have burned between 4 and 5 gallons of gas to drive that distance, or $20-$25. Electrify America doesn’t seem to have time-of-day pricing, either.

So much to learn!

In with the new!

We’ve spent most of the last couple of days buying our new Kia EV-6. I spent most of yesterday talking, texting, and emailing with dealers who had responded to our request through the Consumer Reports Build and Buy Service as well as a couple I contacted directly. Stevens Creek Kia had the best prices by a fairly good margin; Dublin Kia wasn’t far behind but was far less convenient.

Our preferred car was a Yacht Blue Wind RWD with the Technology Package and a grey interior; unfortunately, that combination doesn’t seem to exist. We did find exactly one Yacht Blue Wind RWD with the Technology Package and a black interior; it was at Putnam Kia in Burlingame. I asked for their best price and it was a couple of thousand more than the price for a similar model in Gravity Blue at Stevens Creek Kia. Putnam claimed they’d match a written offer from Stevens Creek but wouldn’t accept the web page pricing as a “written offer” so I decided to go with Stevens Creek…only to discover that they’d sold the car I was looking at. They did have a Wind RWD with the Tech package, but its exterior paint was Glacier, which we didn’t like.

Capitol Kia had Yacht Blue cars, but none with the Tech package, and they didn’t expect to get one this month.

And that’s where I left things last night, too tired to write.

This morning, I went back to the web and discovered that Stevens Creek had a Wind AWD with the Tech package, Interstellar Grey paint and a grey interior; it cost a bit more than the RWD trim, but we decided to go for it and gave the dealership a call when they opened. They confirmed that the car was available, so we drove straight there to take a final test drive.

We liked it and said “we’ll take it”. Three hours later, we were the proud owners(*) of a bouncing baby EV-6. The finance guy did try to sell us an extended warranty, but that was the only attempt to upsell us – no rustproofing, VIN etching, or other nonsense.

Why the asterisk? We had to finance the car through Kia to get all the offered discounts (which turned out to be slightly better than the tax credit on a lease); there’s no pre-payment penalty, so we can pay the car off any time.

We didn’t take the car home right away, though. I’d driven the Subaru to the dealership in hopes that their trade-in offer would be close to the one I’d gotten from Carvana; it wasn’t, so we had to get the Subaru home – but we definitely wanted to drive home together on that first drive in the EV-6. So we drove the Subaru home for lunch (it was nearly 2pm by now), which also gave the dealership time to charge the battery in our car before we picked it up (their Level 3 charger is broken, so they couldn’t do it while we waited).

We took a Lyft back after dinner and picked up the car, which only took about 20 minutes (mostly getting registered in the Kia app for the car). It drives nicely, but it’s going to take a while for me to be comfortable getting it into the garage next to the Prius.

Kia doesn’t provide a portable charger with the EV-6 (boo, hiss!), so we couldn’t plug it in at home – not as much of a loss as you might think, since we only have a 110V outlet in the garage which charges the car at roughly 2% per hour. I have an electrician coming out Thursday for a second estimate of the cost to run two 220-volt circuits to the garage (one for the car and one for the water heater); it wasn’t urgent when I scheduled the visit, but it is now!

And there’s homework to be done, too.