Today's drive

My wife worked for a bank. Their culture was very much about rules. When she had to start working, what she should wear, when she could finish, when to eat lunch or have a day off or a holiday.
On the contrary, the environment I inhabited was always the total opposite. No one cared where you were or when, or what time you started or finished, or what you chose to wear while doing it, or whatever. If you wanted a day off or a holiday or something you just did that. The only metric you were measured by was your results.
At certain times of the year it was necessary to work 7 days a week for long hours a day, but then there were other times when a few hours a week would more than cover it. Just the way it was. I much preferred that arrangement to being controlled by anyone. If there was stuff to deal with and you felt up for it, you just cracked on, if you were tired, you stopped and checked into a hotel or went home.

It's like software engineering and effective project management, anyone can do it. Ha.

Anyway, I’m off to ride my bike in a forest now. Enjoy your day!
😎

Good plan. Meanwhile, I’ve got a piano problem to solve.

Yes, the iX 40 and the iX3 use the same battery but with different motor sets, one in the iX3 and two in the iX. One motor and a little less weight make the iX3 go a little farther (by about 8 percent) but the iX has better aerodynamics and faster acceleration.

It’s a toss-up. Comb through my posts here and you’ll see me saying I want a smaller car (than the CLS) that isn’t an SUV and has only one motor. We know how that turned out. But the efficiency is pretty decent (and seems consistent so far) and makes the smaller (and lighter) battery viable because it can go farther and recover range faster than, say, a Q8 Etron or an iPace.

I still occasionally wonder if I really needed anything so big — especially when the iX3 has a bigger boot — but it’s a bit late to worry about that.

You’re doing well to get 4mi/kWh out of a hefty bus like the Ioniq 5. Again, I suspect it’s the modern EV architecture and motors that help

To York yesterday for the summer’s final set of graduation festivities, via a lunch stop (and 8 kWh that turned out to be free) on the edge of Coventry. Heavy traffic most of the way up the M1, and an unseen mishap on the A1(M) that gave us an entertaining diversion through the wilds around Goole and Selby. That, along with taking the A423 instead of the M40 from Banbury to Coventry, made it a bit more of a drive and less of a trundle.

The iX seemed to like it, though. It recorded 217 miles and 61.0 kWh, or better than 3.5 mi/kwh; pretty much its WLTP figure. It would have made it comfortably in one hop if required, with about 15 percent to spare. My overall consumption is now, apparently, on a par with the rest of the reporting iX community. Well done, me!

It was warm yesterday, 28°C most of the way. That will have helped the battery but it meant the AC had some work to do, even in the Efficient mode I’ve settled on for long journeys, but I found it was doing too much. My usual 19°C setting was uncomfortably chilly, and I ended up setting it to 22.5°C. Not something I’ve noticed before, but maybe the computer adjusts for having three people in the car on a warm day and occasionally overcompensates.

Closest thing to a problem was getting into our lodgings, which requires a right turn from a narrow street into an even narrower archway. The CLS did it easily last year but the iX requires an undignified reverse-and-realign manoeuvre, with much bonging from its various proximity alarms. I’ve no idea how I’d have parked it among the pillars at the place we stayed at in March.