There are a number of EV choices on the marketplace today. From the Chevrolet Bolt on up to the Tesla Model X, you have a range of options. Each one boasting plenty of range for your daily commute. Beyond the new EV market, you’ll find a healthy used space as well. The Fiat 500e can be had for a great price, and it’s the best driving version of that particular car when compared against its gas-drinking siblings.
http://hooniverse.info/2018/07/26/audi-e-tron-all-electric-suv-is-ready-for-your-deposit-this-september/
An electric vehicle doesn’t make sense for everyone, of course. If you live in a rural area, need a pickup for work, or live in an apartment with no access to a plug, then an EV isn’t on your radar. For others though, the time might be ripe to clear space in the garage for an electric vehicle.
If I had a larger garage, an EV presents itself as a perfect Southern California commuter vehicle. The HOV lane is now always accessible and our expensive gas stations fade into the rearview mirror.
So any of you out there thinking of adding an EV addition to your fleet? Those that have done it, how’s it going?
Hooniverse Asks: When will you buy an electric car?
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60 responses to “Hooniverse Asks: When will you buy an electric car?”
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I have had an i3 for a year and a half now and I love it. Most of my commute is 15 minutes each way and I have free charging at work. It’s beset by a lot of random electrical gremlins but it has never left me stranded (knock on sustainably harvested wood).
California is ending the HOV lane perk for us starting January 1, 2019.-
WELCOME BACK TO TRAFFIC CITY FRIEND
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The question is why?
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As soon as I can afford a new car. EVs depreciate worse than equivalent ICE vehicles here (Norway), so a mildly used EV is always the worse option for my current vehicular needs.
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So you’d rather catch a falling knife at the top of its arc?
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I don’t quite understand how things would fall in arcs, but I do understand that my post can be misunderstood: I meant “worse” from a buyer’s perspective, i.e. the used EVs are overpriced.
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Aha, I had read “depreciated worse” as depreciated more, which would be the case in other countries due to the higher original price of EVs. I assume that the reverse case exists in Norway, or is there an ongoing advantage too?
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Originally, they set a cap at 50000 EVs sold for a review on free save-the-world-goodies. Darn politicians didn’t expect the EV lobby to organize and now nobody wants to mess with them. But some unaffordable advantages are on their way out – island communities where everyone bought EVs for example are having to undo some of the free ferrying ideas.
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I would think that people would soon/eventually want a return to user pays particularly for the things that actually cost money even at a lost opportunity cost (parking)
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I can’t understand how the pain of buying a rapidly depreciating vehicle is eased by buying new but I have not followed EV values. Is there a point a couple of years in where depreciation accelerates? I can see where concern over battery life might drive that.
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Example:
New, the eGolf is as expensive as the base ICE Golf, and is arguably the better car in terms of features and driving fun (85hp from a 1.2L turbo). A 2015 model has either lost 30% (EV) or 50% (ICE) by today.
My train of thought is, that when I have the 40kUSD for a new car I will safe quite a bit due to incentives (parking, tolls, no fuel taxes) and can sell it for a couple of thousand dollars more after a few years.
Your point of ageing batteries, plus the local peculiarity of lower depreciation, adds to my unwillingness to buy a used EV.
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Next vehicle in line for replacement is the pickup – soooooooooo, unless someone builds a HD crew cab, 4 wheel drive with at minimum 400 mile range – while towing and have a real, usable box, my personal answer is not for a long, long time. I’m not opposed to the idea though – I just don’t foresee my needs being met.
I already have several Power Wheels vehicles in the garage. They’re somewhat impractical for commuting, though, since even the hot-rodded ones won’t keep up with freeway traffic, there is no weather protection, and I’m physically beyond the design specifications.
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I’ll go ahead and call that an adequate user experience.
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Your child however is deeply enthusiastic about the technology and the freedom of mobility.
As soon as someone offers a manual-transmission, RWD electric vehicle, I’ll consider it. But that’s not going to happen. ICEs will die, and true manuals will die, but hopefully I’ll die before they do.
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I sort of get it, but considering all current EV’s are essentially single-speed, what would a manual transmission bring to the table? The power is instant, you can get plenty of motor braking, personally my objections to automatic transmissions are moot in this case. What do you see as missing?
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And even on the old conversions where someone takes a forklift motor and attaches it to a Ranger or S10 (powered by a bank of batteries in the bed), those are usually built from manual transmission donor vehicles, with high gear the only one used.
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What’s missing for me in EVs are driver involvement and experience. I want sound. I want feel. I want to have a ROLE.
Driving an EV, in my opinion, is like using the microwave oven. You start it, you walk away, you come back. (You start it, you reach your destination, you get out.) My wife views her car strictly as an appliance. She doesn’t care about anything but its function. She’d be completely happy with an EV.
Yes, EVs can be fast, but I don’t get off on speed. Yes, they’re quiet, but I’m not trying to watch a movie while “driving”. I want to be involved in making the noise that makes it go, and I want to control the gears that get me there. I agree that EVs are efficient, but I could appreciate that fact more if they weren’t so damned plug-and-(not)-play.-
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It can be a different type of fun-to-drive though. I drove a Kia Soul EV with 4 big dogs in the back, and on the freeway on-ramp I could power past BMW “ultimate driving machines” as if they were standing still. Slow car fast in a toaster-shaped vehicle.
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Brammo/Victory/whatevertheyrecallednow had an electric sports bike with a six speed manual transmission, the idea was that with a small motor you could get both accelerative punch and a high top speed. Don’t see why the idea couldn’t be applied to a small sports car.
Suzuki – Zappucino, make it happen,
I toyed with the idea. I am retired now, and I live in an urban/suburban area. I put roughly 8,000 miles a years on my main vehicle; we have two others. Almost all of my driving is local and range anxiety would not be an issue. I have a garage so installing a charger wouldn’t be a big deal. I’m an ideal candidate in many ways.
Having said that, an electric car would merely be a vanity purchase for me, with no substantive benefits that I can see. I don’t drive enough miles in a year for gasoline savings to be meaningful at my income level. Parking is simply not a big issue in the areas of the city I tend to frequent. I probably parallel park three or four times a year. I have been leasing my cars for some years now and I prefer BMWs which have all their maintenance included for three years (the length of my leases) so there would be no maintenance savings. When I price leasing an I3 BMW for three years, the cost of a 10,000 mile a year lease comes out within about $20 a month of leasing a BMW 5 Series (which I generally do).
I just can’t see giving up my 5 Series for a very small car.
Sure, there’s a Tesla 3 but as far as I can tell at the moment there’s no provision for leasing one available. I don’t want to buy. Next a base model Tesla 3 is almost exactly the cost of a base 5 Series, and there’s the cost of a garage charger to be considered, so there’s zero incentive there, and the gasoline cost savings, as discussed above, is negligible. For my driving, the autopilot is not a big benefit. Finally, and perhaps this is petty, but the base Tesla 3 is only available in Black/Black.
Since I live in a city which frequently tops 100 degrees F (38c) that’s not my preference. A white car from Tesla is an extra $2,000 which would more than wipe out any gasoline cost savings.
So, other than indulging myself with a cool toy since I can afford it, I can’t see any reason to get one.
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Interesting how electric cars cannot compete with your particular needs, especially regarding incentives. Here in Norway, various purchase taxes add about 100% to the price of new fossil cars, while electric cars are not taxed. Free charging, parking, toll roads and ferries add up, in addition to our electricity being among Europe’s cheapest, too.
Being a lazy bottomscraper when it comes to cars, I run the crap out of…crap. That makes my cars very cheap, measured in cost/distance. Even compared to that, an electric car could be viable, if it wasn’t for capital cost. Oddly, I have real issues with lying on society’s purse this way though, letting private consumption be financed by the public. Most people though don’t think like that; in this region, EVs make up more than 50% of new car sales.
When it comes to the selection, I’d want a seven seater and the Nissan NV200 is the only choice. I’m not throwing money after a Nissan again though.-
The difference in our perspectives regarding public policy his stark. You see private consumption being finance by the public in the case of electric, I see government intrusively penalizing petrol motorists.
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Great point. Our socialist harmony is so dependent on state meddling and intrusion that this is pretty much accepted. I would be glad if the same funds were set aside for house insulation or other longer lasting projects, but EV subsidies do only provide an infrastructure incentive for society, otherwise it’s about local reduction of air pollution. That’s it. To my mind, there is a lot of efficiency lacking in this.
Fun fact though is how tax policy had spurned people to buy diesel only a few years ago – less nominal fuel consumption was supposed to save the environment. Particulate research was available, but ignored. Politicians turned and diesels are penalised colossaly right now. That creates very little predictability for the customer. The used car marked says my next car should be a diesel – amazing deals – but I just don’t like the more complicated engines and the agricultural sound.-
The high taxes on vehicles is particularly obtrusive in view of your country’s oil production.
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A 100% up-tax??? Damn.
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Let’s take the marked king, the VW Golf. Starts at 315300 NOK / 33000 € in Norway, e-Golf at 327500 NOK / 34200 €. The German prices (including 19% VAT) are 18075 € and 35900 €. There are slight differences between markeds (all Norwegian cars have engine and seat heat etc), but that discrepancy accelerates with indicators like displacement, CO2-emissions etc. A Cayenne can be taxed to the tune of 150%.
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Ouch. Seems a very inefficient tax collection strategy, at best. At worst, well, politics…
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Fun fact: That “owner changing fee” (it’s not a tax, technically) also applies for used cars. The state makes more money from that than from fuel taxes.
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Does a Chevy Volt count? If so, about 2 years ago, I bought a 2014 used with 17k miles. It replaced a leased Nissan Leaf. I’m still kicking myself for not buying outright my Leaf. They offered me $6,400 OTD with 3 months left on the lease. A EV works great for my wife, she takes my daughter to school (private school), round trip drive is about 30 miles. She can take her in the mornings, plug the Volt into the Level 2 charger (cheap $220 plug model off Amazon that plugs into a dryer outlet) and be fully charged to pick her up in the afternoon. The gas savings make up The Leaf worked for her too, just wish I had gotten the level 2 charger then. Still wouldn’t buy a pure EV, unless it is a dirt cheap used one. Wish there were more PHEV options.
I will buy an electric car if/when it provides better transportation value than an ICE car.
This means:
Comparable purchase price
Comparable resale value
Comparable insurance costs
Comparable range
Comparable refueling options
I commute 52 miles a day, take children to sports/band practice many evenings a week, and monthly drive 400 miles each way to visit my elderly father over a weekend. I am not aware of any electric car which can accommodate my driving needs.
Pretty simple, really.
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I wonder if there could be an add-on battery system that would allow a 200 mile range daily driver to become useful for a 500 mile road trip?
Like you, an electric vehicle can’t do what I want from a vehicle, and replacing one with two is not very practical. -
I like EVs plenty, and the current specs largely meet my uses. That said, I’m a condo dweller (so the fight with the board to get a charger in my parking space doesn’t seem worth it), my current car has an easy decade of life left in it (and because I bought knew, I feel compelled to drive it as long as possible to justify the initial expense), and on my current career path, I’ll likely start getting a company car around the time the current car is due for replacement (and I don’t see my organization springing for EVs any time soon). On top of that, I’m in Ontario, where we had a recent regime change that is much less enthusiastic to environmental initiatives, so we’ve lost the generous tax credit (I could justify a $25k car probably, but not a $40k one), and I’m sure it’s a matter of time until the HOV access is revoked as well.
On a tangential note, I got to take a 30-second spin in a Jag I-Pace over the weekend, and there’s something weird about doing semi-AutoX in near-silence. Also, it’s quick, and the limits are plenty high enough, but I felt less smooth than normal (perhaps on account of having one less distraction from my own flaws).
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The condo aspect is interesting; when EV ownership rates are high enough, I’d expect new developments to cater for charging infrastructure which will put pressure on older buildings to compete. While current demand falls within the existing supply capacity it shouldn’t be unfeasible, assuming middle of the night charging or perhaps even middle of the day when most people are at work.
I commute with a Volt I bought used a couple of years ago. It’s a glorified appliance without a ton of soul (the chassis is decent, but asking for spritely acceleration above 30 mph is a big ask) but I’m quite happy to give up some soul to not have to fill it up very much, especially in the warmer months. Best tank of gas so far is 2000+ miles. Costs me about $1/day to fill the battery at home. Depending what the incentive picture looks like in a few years when it’s time to replace my wife’s car, we may do a Bolt, since she does the bulk of the short runs.
I put a few tanks of gas through the SS this weekend… and while it’s hugely more fun to drive and a great distance car, $60+ every time I fill it, which is often, adds up fast.
Price wise, they aren’t there yet as others have pointed out. One would work pretty well for about 80% of my driving, but I would need a cost benefit to compromise on the other 20% that would require me to either have another car or make other arrangements. As it sits now, I would have to pay a premium to deal with those compromises.
If an actual automaker that I trust to be around for a while comes up with something along the lines of the Tesla Model 3, I could see going that route in a few years and retaining the pickup for weekend, family and road trip duty.
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Replying to myself to add, after looking at the e-tron, I like it a lot, but it’s still too expensive. Once there’s a Ford equivalent, maybe I’ll be there.
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Personally, I prefer the Chevy Bolt to the Model 3: similar range and price, but a hatchback so far more useful than a tiny trunk lid sedan.
Alternatively a used model S, which can come with a lifetime of free charging at Tesla stations if you get one of the older ones.
And of course all three options allow for using the carpool lanes regardless of how many people are aboard.
GM will likely outlast Tesla unless Tesla starts acting less like Musk’s toy and more like a mass manufacturer (platform sharing etc). Then again, GM could do more here too (why isn’t there a Bolt-based delivery van?).
Ford unfortunately seems to have lost the plot on electric cars for now. Maybe one day they’ll develop an EV with a range greater than 80 miles, but I haven’t heard much yet. Meanwhile much smaller formerly-Ford owned Jaguar is bringing out the iPace.
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The answer is either a few years ago, or a few months ago, or not yet, depending on how generously one wishes to define “car” or, indeed, “vehicle.” So far the results have been suboptimal.
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3880/15208031272_a25d669ab0.jpg
https://farm1.staticflickr.com/815/41442798171_50d5d2c1ac.jpg
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Looks like they are about the same level of sophistication, just one has better weather protection?
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More or less. The other difference is that after approximately four decades the Lyman is still operational whereas after approximately one the Zap! is not. As far as weather protection goes, this Lyman in the Route 66 EV Museum still has its optional top:
http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6099/6371875575_ee09408272.jpg-
Newer usually is more difficult to maintain, eg even if you get a new PCB made will it fit in the same space?
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I’m beginning to think my best bet for the Zap! is to remove the electrical system and replace it with a conventional motorcycle powertrain. Having driven the ToyoHog, I’m inclined towards simplifying some matters while complicating others by going with a Hondamatic.
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One decade past the end of production sounds entirely too new for you, and that pictured trailer is hitched to an actual truck. I will immediately inform your students that you have been replaced by an impostor.
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Yesterdays future tomorrow!
I live in a rural area and my fiance and I like road trips, so I need enough range that I can take a day trip 200kms away or possibly go on a vacation where I can go 1,000kms in a day (if I have to take a break to charge, so be it, but making that distance in a day is still needed.) I have a job where I don’t make much money, so I need something under $30,000.
Will consider one when one exists that meets those requirements.
I kind of want to buy a wrecked Leaf or Bolt, and swap the whole mess into the front of an SW20 MR2 as an AWD hybrid commuter.
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Or put it in the back of a small FWD hatch and take out the back seats, kind of like an eco-mod Shogun/Renault 5 Turbo
I’m sort of stuck on charging at this point. The garage at my current house is detached and it has only a single 20a 110v circuit. So I’d have to run new wire and I don’t know if the current wire is in a conduit the whole way or if it is large enough to put in the proper sized wire to put in a sub-panel. Get me a ~300mi range rating and then maybe I’ll pull some wire.
Simple question. Simple answer: never.
I’m old. And cranky. Given my expiration date, there will always be a real car for me to drive.
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Yep.
Probably when I need to replace the Mazda 2 and decent ones are sub €20k new (bearing in mind that just about gets you a fiesta sized hatchback here). EVs suit our daily use, all suburban driving, short distance, engine barely gets warmed up, it would be zippier to drive and I wouldn’t need to remember to go to the petrol station.
For fun, I think I’ll hang on to the Cappucino, Elon Musk calling the Roadster (with more imaginative performance figures than the average 70s Italian manufacturer press release) a smackdown to internal combustion shows how much he misunderstands what’s truly great about enthusiast ICE cars. Call me when you’ve got something sub 800kg and can do an entire trackday with only 10 minute pauses between stints of 4-5 laps.
When I have a use case and the money, right now we have one car and where we live you have to be able to go at least 200 miles on a tank of gas or a battery charge
I like the idea of an electric or plug in but currently need either more range or more space (truck).
I already want/can afford an i3, albeit with the generator in the trunk. But, without anywhere to plug it in, it’s a car with a 26hp moped engine.
The only elec car I’ll drive is the scooter around the old folks home.
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