As others have said, it’s probably still too expensive . . . but we are getting closer to a true “road trip” car. The Chevy version of this must be not too far out in the future.
That would be horrible for wear and tear on our roads I think weight-wise?
This is along the lines of what Toyota did with their hybrid Tundra: instead of boosting the mileage, it turned it into a 20 miles per gallon behemoth. At least Tundra is a truck… so there is some excuse.
I don’t want a vehicle that heavy—or that expensive!
Going on the road next week. 12 hours drive one day. Then 4 more next to move child 1 to college. Next day after that 6 more hours to drop child 2 at college. Then 10 hours to get home…Toyota Sienna is my husband’s preferred mode of transportation
We are doing that 10 hour trip to college and back for last 3 years twice a year… There is no way EV car will work for us.
So you all share one car? Do you live in the city? There’s a lot of people with only one car where the EV isn’t a good option yet. But for multi-car families, there’s no reason every car has to be the road trip warrior. Our first EV will probably be for the family member who does the most local errands and driving and we’ll stick with our ICE SUV for the road trips.
We are a one car - Model X - family, and we live in the suburbs (we have an old rusted truck just for trips to the bark yard and the dump). That works for us because we don’t go on massive road trips, just a 600-800- mile RT here and there, and we charge at home. When an EV maker comes out with a truck without an extended cab but with a full-sized bed, our junker will be replaced. So far, the EV trucks are not meeting this standard.
We don’t, but this isn’t solely an EV Issue. It’s a love for giant vehicles issue. The ICE Ford Expedition was close to 8k lbs.
You probably mean the discontinued Excursion, which was over 7,000 pounds empty.
There are some roads with signs that say “no trucks over 3 tons gross” (meaning loaded weight). Since the Excursion weighs more than that empty, do drivers of such know to stay off of those roads?
That’s the one. The largest version was 7,688 lb.
Re: Batteries make the car heavier, thereby decreasing tire life; as an example, my 2023 Chevy Bolt EUV weighs 3600 lbs., while a reasonably comparable Mazda 3 Hatchback weighs 3400. But add in a full tank of gas and difference shrinks to less than 100 lbs.
Personally, I drive strive to push the limits of my electric car, but not the limits of acceleration, etc., but rather the limits of how economically I can operate it. I drive slowly on the backroads and am getting incredible mileage. I’m sure my tires will last many miles.
I think this is fairly common. The fancy graphics on energy use and recharge effectively gamify efficiency.
This was last year. Since then Ford said they will join the Superchargers network.
That page says that “There’s an “electric ghost” that eats battery power at night. We had 42 miles of range one night when going to bed; when we woke up we had 29 miles.” Probably because they turned on something keeps the car on all night (Teslas have a Sentry Mode that records video around the car that could be the reason for this if turned on).
Yes, sentry mode eats a mile an hour in our experience.
Getting closer to getting an EV SUV so I called GEICO (our existing insurance company) to quote how much to add different models to our existing cars. The results were somewhat surprising. I called later and got a different agent and quoted them a second time to make sure there was no mistake, and there wasn’t. Curious what others have experienced. Since rates vary wildly from area, I’ll use relative scale below.
Costs from low to high for 1 year of very comprehensive coverage:
– Cost to insure our existing 8 year old Volvo XC90
– Cost to insure the Kia EV 9 or the Hyundai Ionic 5 (Hyundai was slightly cheaper of the two)
– Cost to inquire our 10 year old Honda Odyssey or 15 year old Honda Pilot. Both cost more than insuring the Kia or Hyundai.
All of those are within $100 of each other from low to high
– The Rivian r1s (which costs almost $100K to buy and is worth probably 10-20x the residual value of the Pilot or Odyssey) is only about 15% more than them. Also strange because the Rivian is notorious for extremely expensive repairs right now do to the complexity of its build and limited parts and qualified shops.
– The BMW iX is about 25% more than the cost to insure the Rivian. Both have similar price tags though the BMW has more service support and lower average repair costs.
– The Tesla Model Y cost more than double the insurance rate of the Kia or Hyundai. Despite all 3 competing in a similar price range.
– The Tesla Model X costs only 10% more to insurance than the Model Y despite costing ~$40+K more to purchase and was the highest of any quoted, almost double the cost of the Rivian which is roughly similar in price.
– They couldn’t even quote the Ford Mustang Mach-E without a specific VIN because they don’t have it in their system as a model – I had them literally read every single model they list under Ford and they had nothing resembling it. They had the Mustang sportscar only.
I was expecting the EVs to be more to insure in general and new cars that would cost the insurance company many times as much to total to be more to insure. There seems to be no logical pattern here at all other than Tesla’s being very expensive to insure compared to almost everything else. It’s weird to me to you can get a new BMW ix that costs $100K or a Rivian that cost $100K and pay way less than the Tesla Model Y that costs $60K.
Are you looking at the total coverage or the breakdown of liability, collision, and comprehensive coverages? Our 23 yr old junk truck and 6 yr old X cost about the same to insure… but the liability on the truck is way more than X.
Total cost of coverage.
Hmm, we didn’t get a quote for getting insurance for my Prius Prije hybrid but it didn’t seem to increase our premiums much more than any other ICE used car. It’s still pretty reasonable to insure.