E cars makes a great new topic in the cafe! I’m going to be spinning it off. Please use the new thread to discuss. Thank you.
We head home today. 4-4.5 hr trip. Charged up to about 80% yesterday (hotel has a few chargers but couldn’t guarantee they’d be available so we went to a supercharger yesterday. DH picked up sushi for lunch for us while I charged. There were I believe 16 chargers and they were all full!!! I charged from about 15% to about 90% and it cost a little over $12. Gas prices cannot beat that.
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To me, cost savings isn’t a compelling reason to get an EV or PHEV. Whether you ever break even depends on where you live and how you use your vehicle, but in many cases you don’t or you barely do after years. And the equation may change against you in that time – gas could get cyclically cheaper and local power rates could go up.
But even without a cost savings, I would assign decent utility value to the convenience of passive home charging for the typical person’s routine driving distances. I’ve read many PHEV owners who need to exceed their charging range of their hybrids so infrequently that they worry about the gas aging in their tanks.
And there’s still a thrill in the quick, effortless acceleration of a car using its electric motors. And for the full EV, the major convenience of less maintenance. Among other pros.
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Also, I agree with your prices payback post about the electric cars. What people don’t seem to factor in is the increased cost of purchasing something like a Tesla. Let’s just say, we have never spent that much on any car. The payback for us would have to include the extra cost too.
But as you say…the payback isn’t what’s important. We have solar panels, and we will never break even on the cost. That’s not why we did it.
Oh, we definitely went EV for the zero emissions. I love all the other things about it, but it’s really nice to not be driving a pollution machine like the other cars we have had.
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Short answer as requested - nope.
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Seems lucky to have six people who can reliably go >3 hours (in sync with each other) between stops needed to empty their bladders and/or stretch their legs, and not take too long doing so.
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As per the original question: hybrid, probably, EV, not yet (infrastructure’s gotta get much better)
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True - to their credit, my kids are pretty good about that. They know the drill. It helps that we generally drive overnight, starting after dinner. So we eat dinner at home. After that, there is limited food/drink in the car. And for one stop, everyone except me is unconscious, so it’s a quick stop for gas and then onto the next three-hour, 225-mile segment.
I’m headed down to school with my son next week. We may go 400 miles before we stop. I’ll look for EV chargers.
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It also helps in your case that you are able and willing to be a red-eye / graveyard shift driver.
I guess you don’t serve soup for dinner just before the trip.
Just want to thank everyone for sharing their concerns, their challenges, and their solutions. This thread is clarifying my thinking around this. We do occasional longer drives - to visit family or to get to a second home - but other than that, generally drive under 60 miles a day. With the ability to charge at home (and at work!), it’s really those trips to consider as well as the need for a charger at the second home.
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If you don’t drive a lot at your second home you can just charge on the regular 110. We are getting ready to go to the beach for a week and that’s what we do there.
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This is how most of the people I know made the transition. Bought an EV as an around town commuter, kept ICE for comfort of availability for longer trips.
In most cases, once they got used to the EV they ditched the ICE when it was time for the next car and adapted their driving habits for longer trips. That’s what we did and we enjoy longer drives a lot more now.
As far as efficiency: there seems to be a widespread view that “progress” in EV development is correlated with increased range. I don’t think that’ll necessarily be the case. The 200+ range of most newer EVs is probably sufficient for the majority of people in most regions, even for longer trips. Charging speed will probably be more important than marginal range above 250ish miles. And of course, charger availability (which is pretty good in many areas). Not sure the weight/cost of additional battery range will be profitable; consumers will likely prefer lower cost, better efficiency during most driving. That’ll likely come with changes to driving habits which most won’t mind.
Anyway, enjoy the new EV when it arrives!
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I hope that is the case. There are very few cars (even ICEs) that can comfortably fit six people with room for their luggage behind the third row. That is a hurdle for me before even getting to the EV versus ICE discussion.
Agree that it is all about charging speed. We can live with only going 225 miles at a time. But I need to be able to do five of those segments in pretty rapid succession.
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Right now, we have 2 cars. We have my hybrid 4 seater and H’s aging ICE 5 seater. We would like to replace H’s car with something that can seat 5 or preferably 6 people. H looks and then stops. We don’t drive much and he hasn’t found anything he likes as much as his old ICE car. He’s thinking of a non-plug hybrid, but not looking very hard.
We still have range anxiety and aren’t ready for full electric at this time. My hybrid works great for us and only daintily sips gas.
Does anyone own a 10 year old EV? I keep my cars a very long time.
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