This is Technology Bytes, episode 107 for March 23rd, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bites on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So you know a couple of weeks ago that I mentioned that I bought my first electric car, the Kia EV6, and I said the technology in that car is going to drive a number of podcasts for over the next month or so.
And so that’s where we’re at.
And you know last year I took, last year, last week I covered some new Apple products, and this week I’m back on the Kia EV6.
So the one thing I want to talk about this week is the drive modes in that particular vehicle.
Now drive modes are fairly normal in today’s cars.
And so I’m trying to think, you know, I’m obviously not in a lot of different cars, but in the Honda Civic that I had and the VW that my wife drives currently, they have drive modes, and almost all of them are the same.
There’s your normal everyday driving mode.
I don’t know who uses that one.
There’s the eco mode, which is supposed to save you on gas, or in my case battery.
And then there’s the sport mode, which is supposed to be the more fun, more aggressive driving style.
So the interesting thing is that oftentimes when you change those driving modes in a gas vehicle, you may not notice the performance difference.
One of the things that happened in my Honda Civic was if you put it in sport mode, the car didn’t shut off when you came to a complete stop.
And the AC didn’t turn down and a lot of other things like that that didn’t happen.
And so when I did a test that said, okay, if I drive in eco mode where all those things happen, the idea is to save fuel versus sport mode, what was the difference?
And my gas mileage was different.
It was a couple miles per gallon different.
And so almost always I drove my Civic in the economy mode, the eco mode.
And I really tried to get the most out of the fuel that was in my vehicle because that is where the expense was in the everyday nature of that vehicle.
And so while there was a difference in how the car reacted, the difference in pressing on the gas pedal was not super noticeable.
You get some performance improvement, but it wasn’t something that you would go, wow, that’s vastly different.
It really was just in how the car reacted and the other things that went on around the performance of the car, but not in acceleration and other things.
There might’ve been some difference, but it didn’t seem all that significant.
So in the EV6, that is not how things work.
The difference in the different drive modes are quite significant and you really do notice them.
There are things like the AC may work a little bit harder in your normal and sport mode because they figure that you’re not interested in saving battery juice.
But the driving difference in those modes is super significant.
So when you are in, and I almost never drive in normal mode, I think I already covered that.
So mostly I’m going to contrast the eco mode versus the sport mode.
So when I first got the car, I really just thought I’m just going to leave it in eco mode, save my battery and drive more conservatively.
I’m pretty regularly a conservative driver anyway.
And so my wife, when she drove the car said, to make this car go, you really have to push the accelerator pretty hard.
And I said, yeah, I hadn’t really paid attention to that, but now that you mentioned it, you noticed that.
So how the pedals work is different in the different modes.
So in the economy mode to go forward, you have to push the accelerator pedal pretty hard.
And so the idea there is that you’re not accelerating over aggressively.
And so in that instance, you are saving battery power.
In the sport mode, the pedals are very light, just sensitive to the slightest touch makes the car really go.
And what they’ve done, I guess, I never really read anything about how it works.
This is just seat of the pants, what I feel in the vehicle at the time, is they’ve limited the torque to the electric motor when you’re in different driving modes.
And then the unlimited torque is available in the sport mode.
And so you really feel that difference in the drive modes that are available.
So then the question is much like in the gas vehicles where the eco mode can save you miles per gallon, does the same thing happen in the sport mode versus the eco mode in an electric vehicle like the Kia EV6?
I haven’t done an entire test yet to see how those play out.
I guess I really should do that.
But the reality is that in my charging modes, it’s not that significant.
One, because I’m charging for free at the moment at my work.
There’s just free chargers.
So I’m not all that worried about the battery usage in that mode or in that timeframe.
If I’m paying for it at home, maybe I will do something different.
But at the moment, I have changed to sport mode from eco mode because it’s a little more fun to drive and I’m not worried about the cost of the battery depletion or not having enough battery to get to places that I go because of my driving and the distance that I drive, it’s really not an issue.
But the sport mode is, it makes the car fun to drive.
Eco mode makes the car a little bit boring, but it does save you on battery power.
So one thing I noticed is that the vehicle knows that.
So when I’m fully charged at 100% and I choose to use eco mode, my mileage says 320 at 100% battery level.
But if I choose sport mode, my mileage says 270.
So just there, the car thinks that I’m going to get, what, 40 to 50 miles less because I’m using sport mode.
But the one thing that the sport mode does that I really like is it’s very responsive in traffic and often I am driving in traffic.
That’s just the way it works in this world, going to work, coming home, you’re often in traffic.
And so to get out of trouble, to stay out of trouble, to be able to get to places fairly quickly in the sport mode, the reaction is almost instant and it kind of pushes you back into your chair a little bit and that’s kind of fun as well.
In the eco mode, you have to be a little more careful.
That’s the whole point, aggressive driving versus non-aggressive.
And even though I’m not an aggressive driver, having that mode available so that I can get myself out of trouble if someone else does something crazy is very nice to have.
And I have never driven a vehicle where those drive modes make such a significant difference.
And the car knows it.
So I was thinking about it in the eco mode, the one thing that’s in the center lower part of my screen is how many miles per kilowatt hour of battery I’m getting.
When I’m in the sport mode, it shows my torque level.
So it’s like you don’t care about the battery, you just want to know how your electric motor is performing.
So pretty cool to have that available, pretty neat to see the difference in the modes and how the car actually reacts to that.
Very different from any other car I’ve driven to this point.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytesatmarigfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together, taking another bite of technology.
