We haven’t bought new in almost twenty years.
Seeing the Bolt new / plus trade in - for about what we last paid for a new car, does intrigue me. We still do some commuting- so a plus to switch to EV or hybrid.
But, hope to do some group road tripping, & haulstuff and pets, etc., so a plus for old minivan.
Still,we may keep minivan couple more years then look at used hybrid at our price point.
Or, as @ucbalumnus suggest, there are some five year old hybrid minivans at a good price point.
That’s great. I’ve been seeing a lot of Bolts around town. My area seems to embrace alternative fuel vehicles lots of Teslas and back in the day when the Prius was new lots of Prius drivers.
This may be true for some. For us, we regularly drive to a second home that is ~250 miles away in one straight shot, no stop. Adding a stop, particular for more than a few minutes, would be a major bummer for that commute. And even a 300 mile rated vehicle would be lucky to get the full 250 in the winter. Which is why 300 is my minimum threshold. It’s true we wouldn’t need this range 90% of the time. But hat 10% matters. Since we have more than 1 vehicle, it’s not.a big deal for the first car, but we would never have 2 EV’s unless one had both a 300+ mile plus more storage and seating capacity that most of the EVs available today. The Rivian rS1 may be the only example currently.
For those unfamiliar with the Merritt Parkway, it is a very old road with very small lots at the rest areas. I would estimate that there are about 20 parking spaces at each one. They have installed ev chargers at several of them taking away some of these spaces. So what’s a driver to do when they really need to use the facilities and the only open spaces are at an EV charger. This happened to me once. Luckily the time it did, there was an out of service sign over one of the chargers so I figured no one was going to be using it anyway and parked there. If you take away scarce parking spaces to install chargers you have to know this is going to happen. It’s not like the person had a choice.
this happens a lot. Were the charging stations adjacent to the front door? (Many inconsiderate people park in an adjacent handicapped spot, ‘just for a minute’ bcos they are lazy and can’t walk a few extra steps. And many of them could use the excercise!)
Most Tesla chargers I’ve been to are located on the outer perimeter of the lot. Less traffic and fewer reasons for lazy folks to park there.
Seems like they are now realizing that Tesla building its own charging network was one of its main market advantages in that it makes road tripping in a Tesla at least tolerable for many people*, compared to road tripping in some other EV trying to use the Chargepoint, EVgo, Electrify America, etc. stations that seem to be less well placed and less reliably working.
*Yes, some people do have large bladder capacity and no want/need to stretch out every so often, but that does not seem to describe everyone.
The upside is that there is little reason, beyond a long line for the restroom, to spend much time at any of those rest stops, so hopefully, the ICE cars moved on quickly!
They are way behind the times. By the time they get a functioning, practical network in place, Tesla’s will have expanded further and been way more user friendly
Had a very nice beach vacation this week in my EV. About 400 miles roundtrip. Charged when we got there, but no need to stop on the way. Looking forward to helping my D22 move back in at college, too. It’s just 140 miles away so an easy drive w/o stops (although my friend whose daughter also goes to the same school always stops to pee). Hoping to get back up to the mountains soon too, about 165 miles away, no need to stop to charge. Those are our usual kinds of yearly trips.
I would love to take my Bolt EV cross country. That’s a big dream of mine. I have driven from NC to CA several times in my youth, but that’s been eons ago. I’ve flown out more recently, but I think I’ve got a few more epic road trips in me, but life circumstances make it hard to find 3 weeks or a month for the trip and I would want a big chunk of time. I’ve done it there and back in a week or 10 days and it’s just not that much fun.
I purchased a Chevy Bolt EUV in early June, and I’m confident my next car will also be electric.
I couldn’t be happier. I’m consistently getting significantly better mileage than advertised, at times getting over 300 miles on a charge as opposed to the advertised 247.
Mileage is really a function of speed. I get significantly better mileage in a traffic jam than at freeway speed. If I were to drive at a constant 20 mph I believe I’d go about 500 miles on a charge, but only half that at 70 mph.
But even at 70 mph my energy cost is very low. For $5.00, or roughly the cost of a gallon of gas, I can drive about 180 miles. It helps that we have cheap electricity here, about 10 cents/kWh, and the fact that it’s almost all hydroelectric power makes me feel I’m socially responsible (I try not to think about what it took to create the battery).
The crazy thing is that dealers are making them up thousands of dollars over MSRP, but with a little sleuthing you can avoid the markup. If anyone in the Seattle area wants one, let me know, I’ll point you in the right direction.
