As of last Thursday, we are owners of a Hyundai Ioniq plug in hybrid. I don’t really want to admit just how much I enjoy watching the fuel efficiency gauge creep over 100 MPG while we’re driving, and I love plugging it in at the end of the day (as do the kids!). The story of how we decided on this particular car is long. I’m going to tell it Aaron Sorkin style by starting at the end. While I’d like to say this stylistic choice is artistic, the decision actually stems from my crazy December, which involved an epic month at my day job, grading 13 papers for my adjunct faculty gig, buying the car, hosting my dad for two weeks, and getting ready for our trip to Spain.
(In the interest of full disclosure, it’s Christmas Eve and we’re on the plane to Madrid. I’m pretty sure this blog is insufficient to offset the carbon, but I’m also fairly sure the trees I paid to have planted will. More on that later.)
I’m four days into owning a plug-in hybrid, and my biggest takeaway is less about the car itself and more about how effective and ingrained the marketing that led to our earlier purchase of the Kia Sportage (an SUV that got 20 miles to the gallon and that we traded in for the Ioniq) is. I felt a smidge nostalgic as we turned it in, but so far there’s been nothing practical I miss about it. In fact, I can’t even remember why we decided on an SUV in the first place.
Or do I? I think the main argument was that we always felt cramped in our little Honda Civic. But, I can’t say the SUV improved our situation that much. It certainly didn’t seem that way, at least, when I was wedged between the two car seats in the back trying to keep my daughter’s armrest from puncturing my kidney. And, while there was a bit more trunk space, we could still hardly see out the back on camping trips, or needed a rooftop rack, which we can also add to our Ioniq. (As an aside, research suggests mounting the storage unit on the back is better for fuel economy.)
I suppose there might’ve been a safety rationale? I’m not positive, but the SUV is probably slightly better in collisions due to its mass. However, hybrids are pretty darn safe too, especially with their batteries, which are quite heavy (our sales person said they’re solid in the snow as well because of the extra weight, veracity of that claim TBD).
So, why did we buy the Sportage? There was some logit, to be sure, but not sufficient to justify a fuel economy that’s 80 MPG below that of the Ioniq. When I’m honest with myself, we bought the SUV because…well..that’s what people in our stage of life are supposed to do. The image we all have in our heads as overprivileged Americans is loading our kids into a beast of a vehicle on the way to a skiing trip.
Yes, sadly, my biggest takeaway from getting the hybrid is that we’re fighting a war against image, culture, marketing, and the fundamentals of American economics. One of my biggest preoccupations of late is thinking about how to make the market work in our favor beyond cap and trade policies. Those musing at a later date…
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