Molly's EV Buying Guide, Part 2
In this installment, we'll cover things you should know when you're shopping for an EV, plus some budget and overall electric car picks.
Welcome to Part 2 of my EV buying guide!
Here’s Part 1 if you missed it, including important caveats such as yes, I am a longtime tech and even car reviewer, and no, I have not personally driven every single car on this list, and yes, this is definitely my opinion, and I recently switched from the Polestar 2 to the BMW i4 E40.
Ok, now that we’re caught up, I’m going to include a few more cars I recommend on this list (thank you for all the questions you’ve sent in!), but this week’s installment is also going to focus primarily on things you should know when you’re shopping for an EV that you didn’t have to know when you were buying ICE (internal combustion engine) cars. There are some key differences that it’s useful to be educated about, including how they drive and what to look for with new carmakers versus legacy companies. So, let’s jump in.
One-pedal driving, WTH
Not all EVs are created equally, and like gas-powered cars, they don’t all drive the same. One notable difference you may have heard about is one-pedal driving. Just as it sounds, this refers to the fact that you use the accelerator pedal to speed up, but when you take your foot off the pedal, the car slows down and can even bring itself to a complete stop without you having to touch the brake pedal.
This is an extension of what’s called regenerative braking, where modern cars can use excess energy while you’re coasting or braking to recharge the car battery, whether the car is an ICE or hybrid vehicle. With an EV, it’s exaggerated, and using one-pedal driving can help extend range by a few miles, recapture energy, and extend the overall life of the battery (which, as I mentioned, is a relatively negligible concern, but why not).
It’s an adjustment from the way cars normally behave, wherein you take your foot off the gas and the car keeps coasting along. It also means that once the car is stopped, it stays stopped, none of that creep that happens in automatic vehicles when you’re not actively braking. Some people really hate it, and I’ve had at least one person tell me his wife refused to get an EV because of it.
Personally, I love it. I find the driving experience much more precise and controlled (don’t move without me, car!), almost a replacement for the engaged driving experience you’d get with a manual transmission, according to some enthusiasts. And because one-pedal driving also means you’re not wearing down your brake pads unnecessarily, it adds to the overall lack of maintenance and unnecessary cost that I already love about EVs. It also makes traffic less stressful—you may be stuck in stop-and-go, but you’re not going to run out of gas, because every time you stop, you recharge a tiny bit!
Yes, it takes a little getting used to, but it’s not that big a deal. That said, however, you can shop accordingly, depending on your preference. In fact, finding cars with the sportiest one-pedal driving capabilities has become kind of a cult obsession.
If you’re in the “hate it” camp, though, don’t fret. First of all, every car that has it as a feature lets you turn it off or on. My i4 does it quite cleverly, in fact, with the shifter; in its normal drive position, there’s no regenerative braking engaged. But notch the shifter left, almost like you would for sport mode and boom. One pedal. With a Tesla, as you might imagine, it’s several layers deep in the touchscreen. My Polestar 2 had nice big touchscreen buttons under the “car” menu, which I appreciated because when I was teaching my son to drive, he didn’t want to mess with one-pedal driving at all.
Many EVs don’t offer it at all—I tried the Volkswagen ID4, which lets you tune up regenerative braking but doesn’t go all the way to one-pedal driving. And honestly, despite the ID4’s overall good reviews, I didn’t care for it, because it also tunes down the EV acceleration to, well, grandma levels.
One important note about one-pedal driving is that while drivers might come to love it, their passengers may not, if said drivers aren’t very good at it. I wrote a whole newsletter about how I wish Tesla Model 3s weren’t becoming the new darling of Uber and Lyft drivers because I get carsick under the best conditions, and Tesla’s particularly aggressive implementation can lead to a jerky-jerky ride that, at least once, had me asking the driver to pull over and let me out.
For that reason, I appreciate the manufacturers that have made it turnkey to turn the feature off or on, either via shifter like the BMW or via steering wheel paddles like the Hyundai Kona Electric and the Chevy Bolt. Maybe it’s fine to have it on if you’re on highways or around town, but if you’re in stop-and-go traffic, the Hokey Pokey feeling of it can turn your riders green. Might be a good time to just coast.
Ground-up or Legacy?
The other big difference in EVs is whether they are, to use housing parlance, a retrofit or a new build. Some EVs are designed to be an all-new, ultramodern, super duper electric-forward tech showcase brand new doodad in the world, like a Lucid or a Rivian or a Tesla. Others are remodeled versions of existing cars with existing-car vibes, like the aforementioned ID4, the Audi E-Tron, the Volvo XC40 Recharge, the Mini, the Hyundai Kona Electric.
There are cars made by legacy carmakers but designed as electric cars from the ground up, like the Hyundai Ioniq line, the Polestar, and the Nissan Leaf. This, much like one-pedal driving, introduces some buying considerations, depending on what you’re into.
And there are some that kind of ride the middle, like the Ford Mach-E and the BMW i4, and then there are the tweeners that come from legacy carmakers but also incorporate high-tech EV elements, like the BMW iX or the Ford Lightning (swoon).
New Builds
All-new, software-first, high-tech EVs like the Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, or even Polestar are likely to please early adopter types, because on top of having speed, silence, charging at home, and the smugness of significantly reducing your carbon footprint, you also get techie delights galore. The Polestar comes equipped with Google Assistant, meaning that you can “hey Google” anytime, for directions or to open Spotify or other apps, and you can load up the home screen with video streaming services and games and download apps and all kinds of fun things. Same with the Tesla, which, as you might imagine, takes the techiness to 11 with a near complete lack of physical buttons, built-in games, media streaming, “camp mode,” “dog mode,” and the ability to turn the horn into a fart.1 (As I have previously stated, this is the one thing about the Tesla that I truly loved, because farts are funny. Don’t at me.)
The Rivians have all kinds of cool outdoorsy extras like slide-out tables, a built-in flashlight accessory, and rooftop power. The Lucid Air, like the Tesla, dumps all the interior buttons and throws in Amazon Alexa for operating features like navigation and interior temperature.
All of this is neat and lovely if you are willing to be an early adopter. There will be a learning curve (and there will be times when your Polestar screen just … doesn’t come on, or the sound doesn’t work that day). Some features are improvements that are also initially confusing: for example, many of these EV-first cars don’t have any kind of on-off button, aka a good old-fashioned “ignition switch.” This makes logical sense—why should they? They’re just big batteries on wheels.
But when I first got my Tesla Model Y I had no idea what to do when I parked somewhere. My brother and I sat there goofing off with the touch screen trying to figure out if we were missing something. We finally just walked away and after about 25 feet, the doors locked, and we called it good. The Polestar doesn’t have an on-off button either, you just put the car in gear, and you drive away. Once you get used to it, it’s awesome, and you realize that the button is a weird artifact that just doesn’t need to be there. Which leads me to …
Retrofits
The argument for the retrofits is a solid one. People are already figuring out charging, range anxiety, maybe having some new electrical work done—you might as well make the transition easy and keep the interior, the driving experience, and the controls as familiar as possible. After all, you already know you like the Mini, the fact that it’s electric is just gravy! Cars that are doing this well:
Then there are …
The Tweeners
The tweeners are cars from existing car companies but that are taking tech-forward risks, redesigning their interiors, maybe switching up the shape of the steering wheel, or, in the case of the Hyundai Ioniq and Kia EV lines, completely reinventing the brand and speeding from behind to capture hearts, minds, and car reviewer accolades.
The Ford Mustang Mach-E, for example, is a totally new design, features a single-screen center console, and also offers nods to how normal cars should act, like a physical volume button that I simultaneously laughed at, and adored. Here’s a real quick walkthrough from when I borrowed a Mach-E GT back in 2022.
Cars like the universally adored Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq5 take their parent companies’ knowledge of making cars and add high-tech interiors, daring design, and a few perks you’d never even know you wanted. For example, you know how practically every car you’ve ever been in has a hump on the floor in the backseat where the driveshaft passes through? Well, the Kia and the Hyundai don’t—nor does the Tesla and a handful of other EVs.
I didn’t even know to be annoyed by this until a friend pointed it out, and now I’m irritated that my BMW does have a floor hump because, presumably, they’re just using the mass-produced car floor they use in all their other cars. But if you’ve got a few kids or frequent passengers, scooting on over is certainly a lot easier, and boy do people get worked up on the topic.
Another thing your tweener might have or lack depending on how many risks the legacy automaker is willing to take: a frunk. Again, in an EV, there’s no engine in the front of the car, so you can use that space as a front-trunk, a frunk, to carry extra cargo. (Porsches and other sports cars with rear-mounted engines also have frunks, this wasn’t invented with EVs).
Some tweeners have frunks—Kia, Hyundai, Ford F-150 Lightning (swoon), Mustang Mach-E. Some, frustratingly, do not—Cadillac Lyriq, Volkswagen ID4, BMW i4 and iX (seriously, it’s a good thing the i4 drives so nice), and Nissan Ariya. So if Costco runs or road trip bags or other storage is super important to you, check under the hood when you’re EV shopping.
All right, at the risk of writing more words than you can possibly digest, I’m going to call it here. In part 3, we’ll talk about charging considerations—speed to recharge, bidirectional charging (my obsession) and, counterintuitively, I’ll talk about EVs you should probably wait for. But before I leave you, here’s this week’s budget pick:
The Hyundai Kona is perfectly fine. It’s got acceptable range (around 260 miles), it won’t blow the doors off in terms of acceleration, but it’s a practical hatchback with good, if not attention-grabbing looks. But at this exact moment, Hyundai is offering lease deals as low as $169 a month before tax. That’s … a no-brainer, especially if you’re looking for a second car, a teen car, or your first EV. It’s also a wild change from a few years ago when you couldn’t even get your hands on this car. The public’s fickle attentions are our hot deals!
Bonus pick: the Kona’s twin, the Kia Niro, is also a great little car at a decent value, but the budget move here is to find a used one for sub-$20,000, which is bananas.
Enjoy, keep sending in thoughts and feedback and questions, and see you back here next week for Part 3!
Actually, almost every EV with an app has “dog mode,” since you can, in most cases, remotely set the car’s internal temperature and walk away. Tesla just did it very cleverly by displaying a message on the center screen noting that the dog owner was away, but the internal temperature was comfy for critters. It wasn’t foolproof, but it was kind of cool.
This is great! My friends and I have had many of these same discussions around “which EV?” and “why switch now?”
I bought a used 2018 BMW i3 (in 2019) it’s a great little car for getting around an urban environment. Why did you not mention this was part of BMWs design and learning process? I wonder if your i4 benefited from the feedback of i3 owners and some of the mistakes they made there.
Thanks again!!
love the ev content! my wife has the audi q4 e-tron which I believe is same car as the vw id4 and the grandma comment checks out