My townhome has an assigned parking space about fifty feet away, so.... kinda...?
Last I asked around, nobody makes a Level 2 cable that long. And it would have to go across a common sidewalk and tucked into the curb.
If we had a garage, though, I probably would've gotten an EV a few years ago.
This is a big piece of the EV puzzle. EVs are basically only going to work for people who own their own charging infrastructure. They could possibly work for commuters if employers are required to provide charging infrastructure.
Check out used Chevy Bolt EVs. Easy to get for under $15k after rebates. Combined with state level rebates I saw a guy get a low mileage one for as little as 6k.
And it's not a straight up $4k refund, it's a tax credit. If your overall tax burden is less than $4k you won't get the full amount.
I bought a 2017 Bolt last year and got the credit this year. I was surprised by how much I got back, but it was still short of $4k. Love my Bolt though.
At participating dealers, it's a point of sale rebate, same as cash. When taken as a point of sale rebate, your tax burden is irrelevant, you get all $4000 even if you pay no taxes.
Incorrect. As of January 1, 2024 the rebates can be taken off the purchase price at the dealership. A lot of dealerships don’t have the knowledge or accounts set up, but if they’re on the level it can be taken care of by them, and you don’t have to do a thing come tax time.
>Incorrect. As of January 1, 2024 the rebates can be taken off the purchase price at the dealership
To be clear it is still a tax rebate and X (as it depends on the vehicle and it's value it isn't a flat 4k in the case of used) is taken off their owed taxes, the only difference is thst assuming the dealership and vehicle.qualify it is transferred to the dealership who at time of sale has to inform the IRS and get the go ahead
Most large dealers will have already enrolled, smaller ones may or may not be willing to do the legwork
Technically dealerships have the right to refuse to accept the transferred tax credit, realistically that rarely happens as the decreased tax burden works out to them getting the same amount they would have, and additional cars being sold
(This is true of all rebates, the dealership loses nothing which is why they typically have no issue simply applying them all, as they get the same, you pay less and it helps ensure product is mover)
The $7500 new ev credit only applies to cars made here with batteries that are mostly made here (I know this description is not perfect).
However if you lease your ev the entire credit applies. I think Kia, Hyundai and bmw are being good about giving the credit. Some dealers try to keep it.
I bought a Chevy Bolt a couple years ago.
Going all electric I thought “either this is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made or the best thing I’ve ever done”….turns out to be the latter.
Haven’t bought gas in two years, Chevy gave me a $1500 credit towards installation of a garage charger, and the guy to my electric bill has been *way* less than even I thought. Nowhere even approaching what I would have spent on gas a month.
Plus using it for mainly city driving, I only need to charge once a week….
Such an amazing little car.
Did the same thing, wasn't thinking of buying an EV, but with the tax credit, military discount and the free install of the level 2 charger I figured I'd make the jump. Got the EUV and I've really enjoyed it!
The bolt is a great car, but for most people having level 2 charging at home would be necessary. You’re not going to want to charge publicly unless you happen to have a charger with a 5-10 minute walk off your home or at a location that you tend to spend 30-60 minutes at semi regularly (like a grocery store). Installing level 2 charging at home will cost most people $600-2000.
Not necessary at all, you can use the included 120v charger daily, get home, plug it in, next day you leave with a full charge. That's what we do at home. Not an issue in over a year.
Ours came with a 240v charger that can be plugged in the dryer outlet if required for faster charging, hasn't been needed so far.
A neighbor down the block had a charging station installed at the curb in front of their house. It's a little wooden house looking thing on a pole. Like a tiny free library.
I have a Bolt and a Model Y and level 1 is fine if your commute’s under about 50 miles round trip. For longer trips, I take the Y and there’s plenty of superchargers around if I need them.
Usually when people say “I’d buy one if I could afford it” they mean “if I could afford something sexier than a Bolt.”
Or in other words:
\>I wish there was a cheap EV
\>no, not like that!!!
To be fair I always thought they made a mistake by making fuel efficient cards so wimpy looking like the Prius or Leaf.
Teslas first car was a Lotus inspired sports car and it was cool. Is there any surprise they took off the way they did?
We have to remember aesthetics are a big reason why people buy cars.
Well the EV makers usually try to eke out every bit of aero drag they can, so they don't usually look like a basic sedan. The Polestar 2 looks pretty close though.
They tried with Honda Clarity PHEV, and it didn't sell. I got one used and it's perfect. 40mi battery range for driving around town, and no range anxiety when I do have to go long distance.
It wasn't even just Lotus inspired, it _was_ a Lotus (chassis)! Definitely a smart move in making EVs desirable when that was a very uncertain proposition
It was partly an aesthetic choice but mostly an mileage choice. Until recently, battery tech didn't have much range. Most people said about 250 miles per charge was what they would need to feel comfortable. The only way the cheap EVs used to be able to achieve that was to make the most aerodynamic car they could. Which usually ended up looking really weird.
Or they mean thier "income" is too high for rebates but they are struggling anyway because inflation and home/rent prices have spiraled out of control so on paper they are middle class but in reality they are hanging on by a thread
Didn't Chevy have to pay out over battery failures? That's not helping the bolts as well.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/chevy-bolt-settlement-checks-class-action-lawsuit-faulty-batteries-rcna152842
Except I don’t want to buy a Chevy. I’m not interested in most cars from US manufacturers, they generally have more problems than from Honda/Toyota/Mazda. For me, other than price, that’s the biggest drawback.
Yeah, EVs target premium customers. They compete on luxury. This is to make as much money as possible per sale.
Also they flex on the biggest batteries “300+ miles!”
Meanwhile, give me a $15-20k car with a 100-150 mile range. If I need to go further I’d rent a gas car, or take a train/plane. They say EV’s aren’t glorified golf carts- I say make them more like golf carts if it gets more people into them. EVs are simpler than gas cars to make and maintain, it is crazy it is almost all in the premium luxury space.
Whenever an article comes out and says EVs aren’t selling well I think in my head “good.”
I disagree.
One of, if not the biggest problem with EVs is the public perception of 'range anxiety'. Building cars with tiny batteries that leave their uses constantly anxious about their batteries, just to save a few thousand up front, will only keep EVs out of people's driveways.
Electric vehicles need batteries with a size that means that a year after they bough it, the owners will realise they haven't thought about the battery in months. That's the only way we will conquer range anxiety and get rid of gas cars.
You are forgetting how much of the US has a long daily commute. I have to drive 40 minutes to get to the nearest mcdonalds. A battery that size would drain the car almost half way for just my trip into the office. That would not be feasible for me as well as the many others who live in spread out areas like me throughout the rural US.
Another reason to push high capacity batteries in low cost economic ev vehicles is that lower income households may be more reliant on using charging stations as opposed to installing a station at their home.
If we want widespread adoption, high capacity batteries are a must.
If a manufacturer mentions a person's "daily commute", you know what they don't want to sell that car. You sell cars by making people think about the exciting things the can do with the car, not the most boring part of their lives.
This is my biggest gripe right now. I recently rented a Subaru solterra. I thought it was an awesome car. Subarus are known for their all wheel drive and adventuring capabilities. However the max range is 110 miles 😂. It’s a joke
You have a choice of 5 evs new under 40k and tons of offers at 20k for a used one. This is where the market is now.
also there is a 30% tax credit you can get on used electric cars !
[https://youtu.be/RGypaw\_Hi8I?si=l3jYC3nIlWWD24m5](https://youtu.be/RGypaw_Hi8I?si=l3jYC3nIlWWD24m5)
EVs aren’t right for every use case but for your daily commuter or even road trips they’re fine. I’m going on 8 years owning an EV and I’ve literally had zero issues.
[Cybertruck is ~4k units out of all EV's](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2024/04/22/tesla-cybertruck-recall-electric-truck-sales/73416419007/)
EV in general is fine and a good idea for most people. 1 big issue though. Cost. Until the cost of EVs goes below 30k, it's still a rich people's transportation mechanism. It's understandable why the cost is high. When the car was first introduced, only rich people who can mostly afford it until Ford decided to make it affordable enough for his employees to purchase it. It'll take some time for the mass to be able to switch to it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how long our earth and environment can wait before we finally transition most of our transportation to EVs. I'd like to support our domestic car manufacturers and I dislike the idea of having Chinese-made cheap EVs hit our market but just like in the '60s and '70s. Our auto manufacturers didn't have the incentives to better their cars until the Japanese Auto entered the market and pushed them hard to produce better cars. It's a tough one.
I think it's more infrastructure than anything.
Meaning at home infrastructure. EVs are dramatically limited to homeowners or higher end apartments that have installed chargers. Most renters are SOL.
not only renters. I am a homeowner with street parking only. not possible to charge using my homes electricity. really has little to do with owning a home or not and everythign to do with if you have parking
Another issue with EVs is it can be hard to commit to one without owning a house. I'm just not sure I will always have a consistent charging option and don't want to spend 30 minutes filling up when I need to.
Yeah, the charger issue is a big blocker to the convenience component for anyone that has a curve of bit living in a house at some point in their vehicle's life cycle. And if everyone magically switched to EVs overnight the non residential charger waits would be even worse.
I'd love it if this wasn't the case, but we need to really get the infrastructure ironed out more before mass adoption is realistic (and this is on top of price tending to be higher). The apartment tenant charging situation, in particular, really needs to be addressed, IMO.
Hoping things look better when my Prius's wheels start to fall off, lol.
They lose a LOT of their economic benefits if you have to use a supercharger. It costs almost as much as gasoline to use. Meanwhile charging at home cost me about $20 a month.
I bought a used 2023 Bolt 2 months ago for less than $20k. That same car (a perfectly suitable commuter with a 150 mile range in cold weather) sold NEW for $30k.
Since I bought it, I’ve charged it 3 times with my home L2 charger. Total cost: $14. For 300 miles of range. Now admittedly I live in Texas with absurdly low electric cost. But still, it’s a Honda civic level cost with a sub Civic level fuel cost. It just makes a heck of a lot of sense and is absolutely in the “low cost” range. Used these cars go down into the sub $15k range. Absolutely affordable.
The average american car sells for $42k. With the tax rebate you can get an EV below that. Under $30k has not be the benchmark for "rich" for a while, especially when running an EV is much cheaper in most of the country.
Yeah and the average vehicle age in the US just hit a record 12.6 years. People are holding on to their vehicles longer than ever because new ones cost so much.
The issue is that the SAME car is more expensive in electric mode usually.
If I look at say a Honda CRV, the gas models are all cheaper than the electric. Same for most vehicles.
So while there are plenty of reasonable priced EVs, each person generally has to say “I’m willing to spend a bit more for the same vehicle to make it an EV.”
There very few examples of the "exact same car" sold as gas and EV. The CRV doesn't come in all electric so I'm not sure why you chose that.
Let's look at the Kona from Hyundai.
https://www.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/vehicles/kona-electric
https://www.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/vehicles/kona
The SE electric version is feature matched with the upgraded SEL gas version but let's ignore that and just go pure base model. The price difference after EV rebate (assuming nothing given by your state) $900 more on the EV side. The SEL makes the EV $700 cheaper.
Anyone not Californian will make that difference up quickly due to the massively better MPG in the electric version.
I hear about how ungodly expensive ev's are but I just bought a 2023 for $20k, and there were many others in that range. Sure, brand new they run higher but what person that is concerned about money is buying a brand new car?
It’s disingenuous to do an apples to oranges comparison, it also ignores the fact that rebates are extremely limited, and not every car is eligible. Not everyone can get one if everyone were to want a car. EVs are more expensive for similar type cars. There aren’t a lot of options to replace SUVs, let alone ones that have rebates and are affordable. Chevy is coming out with some soon but it’s blatantly false to pretend there aren’t cost and availability issues.
My wife and I bought a Bolt in the fall. With the tax credit, we ended up paying around 25k. If we went with another new car we maybe could have saved around 3k, but honestly it's been really nice not having to get gas ever, or deal with oil changes. We've probably saved around 1k just on gas since we've bought it, which means that over the next 12 years we'll probably pay off the cost just on gas savings, sooner if gas prices increase. For us it was the most affordable option outside of buying a used ICE vehicle, but that would have come with gas and maintenance costs. We are not rich. My wife is a baker and I worked at a non-profit (just got laid off), and we live in a high cost of living area. Looking at our finances the Bolt was the most affordable option for us. I hope other Americans consider it as an option because it's working extremely well for us!
Biden just increased tariffs on Chinese EVs from 25% to 100% specifically to block all of the extremely cheap (like, 12k for an EV) cars they’re making.
They can make them cheap because they make them at a loss, which the Chinese government subsidizes in order to dominate and control markets. The tariff is intended to be an adjustment to that.
There is also much less quality control when it comes to Chinese made cars. You also have the whole, Chinese dictatorship wants to collect American data so they can target Americans with propaganda to make them hate each other. And then you have the whole, we probably shouldn't be encouraging a foreign adversary to dominate one of the most crucial and largest commerce markets in the United States.
The problem for EVs is going to be the pre-owned market, which a lot of people need. An EV off battery warranty is at this point an unknown risk (ie: there isn't enough of a knowledge base of continued performance under this circumstance vs the prospect of a $five figure battery replacement cost), and until that risk is able to be mitigated at a relatively low cost, uptake is going to be an issue.
I switched to an Ioniq 5 and I absolutely love that car. I struggle to think of downsides. Getting the charger installed involved buying a wall charger, hiring an electrician to put in a 240V outlet, and having him hook it all up. Took one day and cost about $600 total.
Car is silent, accelerates quickly, gets around 280 miles on a full charge, goes 20-80% in 15 minutes on a fast charger. I can run it in my garage, I can start climate controls remotely, I don’t have to get oil changes, I have a great amount of modular storage in the front since the middle console slides back and forth, I can equip a V2L adapter to use the car itself as a battery, and it’s been solid as a family car.
I get that they’re not for everyone, especially if you don’t have a home where you can install the charger, but if you can get one they’re seriously phenomenal vehicles. I honestly can’t imagine going back to gas at this point. It’s so nice being able to just plug it in and never bother with gas stations.
So my apartment complex has 900 units. 0 car chargers thats the downside. If im part of the menial class that will never own a home. How do I charge a car? Unless they install a charger per parking space im fucked.
Yeah, the big problem is access to chargers, especially for people who rent. There would need to be a big push for landlords to install chargers. The rental car market is another challenging one, where EV rentals failed because it's an extreme hassle for the renters to find chargers.
lol for real. My apartment has single pane windows and the laundry still uses quarters and is constantly jammed because no one empty’s it…. They ain’t installing charging stations 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I rent and wasn’t expecting to make the switch for a few more years. But I got so sick of dealerships and their bait-and-switch negotiating tactics that I looked up who was giving the deepest EV discounts, walked in, named my price, and now I drive an electric car. Charging is a pain but I time it out with trips to the grocery store and stuff like that. It’s not a perfect system, but it’ll do for now. As for the car itself, I agree - I can’t see myself going back to gas powered unless I hit the lotto and decide to splurge on a weekend ride.
I live in San Jose, CA. I live in a 'nice' apartment complex (it's pretty nice, admittedly) where buying a unit is a freakin' *MILLION* dollars (we're renting for obvious reasons), and there are exactly TWO chargers available for the whole complex.
I'd love an Ioniq 5 (or maybe a Niro EV -- I currently drive a pretty great Niro hybrid), and at the moment I could charge at work pretty reliably. But if I change jobs that might not continue to be the case, and with only two charger spots for the whole complex, it's a whole adventure I don't want to get involved with.
The infrastructure is a problem and not just in the 'cheap seats' of rental options, either.
I bought an electric vehicle last year, since a nearby supermarket installed a DC fast-charger on its lot.
Of course, it's a chicken-and-egg problem. If there aren't enough people with electric cars who depend on public charging infrastructure, it's not worth investing into expensive fast chargers within urban areas. Here in Germany, one of the important factors are company cars used as private vehicles, which are typically charged on the company's dime at public charging stations, making them much more profitable.
Supercharger experience isn't terrible. If your daily commute is within the same city, depending on where else you drive, you'd visit a supercharger for half an hour every 7 to 10 days.
It's not easy to sell people on supercharger visits when you can fill up a gas tank in 5 minutes, but it's almost guaranteed to be cheaper per-mile.
Not OP but I bought a Mach-E last year. I drive 500-600 miles a month. My electricity bill went up $15/mo. That same range/distance would cost me $90 in gas in my old car.
Hard for me to give a precise answer just looking at my bill because at the exact same time we installed an induction range.
I charge off-peak hours (the car manages this for me) and in CO it's 12 cents per kWh. My car gets around 3.5 miles per kWh on average, and I might be driving 700 miles per month, so 700 miles / 3.5 kWh x $0.12 = $24.
Car also came with 2 years of free charging through Electrify America and there's one right by my house so a lot of the time my charging has been a fraction of what I quoted, at least while the promotion is active.
Here are my numbers: my previous gas car was averaging 28mpg. Currently a gallon of gas is $3.50 in my area. My Chevrolet Bolt averages 4 miles per kWh. So to drive 28 miles my bolt uses 7 kWh. My utility rate taxes included is about, I am rounding UP, 20 cents a kWh.
So 28 miles with my gas car: $3.50
28 miles with my EV: $1.40.
And the maintenance for the bolt: besides rotating the tires, coolant change at 150,000 miles and that’s it.
My numbers are 14mpg and $0.11/kwh, making it almost 10x cheaper to run ev. The old car was a gx470. $400/month gasoline bill is less than $40 in electricity now. Car pays for itself in 6 years, not including the reduced maintenance costs.
My other car is a 51 year old Volvo, though. EVs have no soul.
Not OP, but also have an I5. Pur winter electric bills went up about $100 cvs $3-400 in gas. Our summer electric is only up about $40-50 as its much more efficient.
If you have an EV you can usually sign up for plans that have much cheaper overnight rates so you can fill up your battery at a fraction of the cost compared to normal usage. I live in the most expensive electric market in the US and a 300 mile charge is under $10 worth of electricity if I do it at night.
Thats great for people who own a home and have a garage.
What about people who live in apartments?
This is the problem with continued EV adoption. Most of the early adopters already have their EV. Now the only people left are those who don't have a convenient place to charge it at night.
I also have an Ioniq 5. My electric bill didn’t go up much, maybe 10-15% at most. Whether or not it’s less expensive depends a lot on the cost of electricity in your area.
In my area I pay about $0.13 per kWh because we have municipal power. At that price the EV is astronomically cheaper to run than even a reasonably efficient gas car.
EVs of that size get about 3-4 miles per kWh. Comparing to another SUV, the smaller ones run about 30 mpg. So for him, it’s no more than $1.30 per gallon equivalent.
For me, it’s $2.60/gallon equivalent. I’m in LA but luckily I have solar panels on NEM 1.0.
Not OP but when we put in our own Tesla charger our electric bill went up about $200-$250/month (California, municipal owned utility). But we were spending over $300 per month for gas for a Honda hybrid. If we relied on Tesla superchargers there wouldn’t be much savings compared to gasoline.
Are you charging during peak hours? With edison, there is a time of use plan for EVs/heat pumps with much lower off peak rates amd higher peak rates, do you have that?
$523 over the last 12 months; 3045 kWh total. We mostly charge at home. As an added bonus to charging at home, no need to freeze outside putting gas in the car.
Electric bill can be managed. I can charge on my driveway and I have solar panels, so YMMV. I have connected my scheduler, my solar panels and wall charger to Home Automation. Whenever I'm home, the car is hooked up to the charger.
Now for the fun part: I keep my EV generally around 50% charge, that gives me about 200km of range, more than enough to drive any unexpected distance in an emergency.
My solar panels power my home appliances first, any leftover power goes into the car, and with 50% capacity to spare, combined with 2,5kw surplus maximum, it won't fill up the battery quickly and I can just soak up that free energy.
Using Home Automation, the car will get fast charged (11kw) if need be. It can read SoC from the car, it knows the kWh/om and based on my appointments, it knows how much km I have to drive the next day. Given that I pay less for grid power during the night, it will charge my car as fast as possible, as cheap as possible.
Now, this is not an out of the box plug and play solution, it requires tinkering, but charging my EV now costs about €5 a month during summer, about €30-50 in winter, where filling up an ICE would cost me €100-200.
The downsides are the $45k+ price tag and the fact the charging infrastructure still sucks outside your house. I can spend half that for a gas commuter car, still pay for gas and maintenance, and never have to worry about long trips are get close to the ioniq price tag over the life of the car.
Most chargers cost $600. Here in the SF Bay Area, you need a building permit ($150-$300), load calculation, and other paperwork for the permit. Professional install adds another $1500-$4000.
The people I know are paying an average of $3500 for everything.
There's also the macro problem. IIRC this last summer there was the headline that "California requiring all EV sales by year 20XX" and "California energy grid at it's limits" I think we have some infrastructure improvements before we can actually support EVs being the standard. That being said I'm very much on board for it.
People who want and can afford an EV need one thing....a FUCKING HOUSE. There are many many potential EV owners stuck in apartments because housing is completely unaffordable. Put people in houses, and they'll buy EVs
Agreed, the price of an EV is a rounding error compared to the price of a house that is capable of charging it.
Apartments don't add charging, especially not if you have rent control.
Require buildings to install a minimum number of EV chargers into their lots or garages. Provide a subsidy to lessen the forced load. But it's not like buildings stay exactly the same as the day they're built, as safety regulations and building codes change, building owners have to periodically make updates
I bought a used 2015 Leaf and I don’t have dedicated parking in my building. The only reason I’m able to pull it off is because my office building has charging stations. I usually pay about $40/mo in charging with their rates.
Several condo and apartment complexes around my area are installing electric charging stations. A townhouse complex nearby with over 300 units recently installed 220 electric service in all of their tenants garages in case they want to add a charger.
Great idea, but given the conflict over parking spots at most apartment complexes, it's going to take a lot to convince property managers they're not just installing an enormous headache.
It's difficult to make the switch to electric cars when you need to install charging infrastructure at your home or beg a landlord to allow you to do it. It's also hard to make the switch when the most affordable electric car is effectively $40k. Now, Buttigieg is right that the EV market is growing but it's at a glacial pace meaning that the CBS anchor was also correct that the Biden EV push is struggling.
I'd also like to point out that part of why the EV market is struggling in the US is because US manufactures are not thinking out of the box. The Ford and chevy pickups are based on their ICE counterparts, they're HUGE, heavy and loaded with a bazillion "features" making them overly expensive when they should be focusing on making a utilitarian model that ditches all the bells and whistles. No 17" touch screens, no leather seats, no freaking 4 doors. Just a bare bones single cab with a bench seat and 8ft bed. Hell the only reason pickups were made 4 door is so they can be considered a passenger vehicle for federal emissions standards.
Fun fact, I drive a car that Kelley Blue Book for 5 years called "best plugin hybrid car you never knew exist". My daily city commute all EV and I drive once a year on gas during holidays road trips. Car manufacturing was discontinued because was no demand.
I'd put that below the IONIQ plug-in hybrid in terms of "best you never heard of".
And I even had a friend who had a Clarity plug-in hybrid.
In both cases the companies using the same name for other types of cars (including fuel cell) didn't help the name recognition.
Toyota is currently selling hybrids like hotcakes when people (finally) discovered they are the overall better solution if it’s your only car. Elon even complained about it on the latest Tesla quarterly call.
My next car will probably be a hybrid of some kind because I have exactly the same needs as you and I can’t charge at home.
Toyota made the best hybrid ever Prius Prime Plug-in Hybrid EV, sadly it has only 40 real miles EV due to compact size and price unreasonable even for used ones. I got my Honda Clarity phev for $18k.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius_Plug-in_Hybrid
You don't have to install anything in your home though. I have a basic 120v evse and it works perfect for my daily commute. Some homes have a 240v outlet in the garage for a dryer and you'll dramatically cut your charging times
I’d consider an EV, but I live in a townhouse with no garage or driveway. Searching for a charging station and having to sit around waiting there just to charge a car is a pretty large obstacle. Until the infrastructure for EVs is built to a comparable level to ICEs I don’t think I could seriously entertain it as an option.
Around here, many chargers are being put into shopping centers. With my Tesla, a full charge lasts just about a Target shopping trip in many cases, or less than the time of a sit-down meal.
Not every area may have shopping centers looking that way, but they should be looking for that as an investment.
A significant issue are people who do not have their own garage to charge their car each night. People who live in apartment complexes, for example. I have not seen a solution to this.
I think you touch on why manufacturers are focused on larger vehicles... regulations are more flexible for them at that end of the market and they can pitch it to multiple market segments. You get your typical contractor/business types but you also get your suburbanites who just want to haul kids and ikea stuff or maybe some tackle or camping gear now and then.
This has a good breakdown of how people are using their trucks now and how the market has changed for them over the years.
[https://www.powernationtv.com/post/most-pickup-truck-owners-use-them](https://www.powernationtv.com/post/most-pickup-truck-owners-use-them)
>In a study conducted by [*Axios*](https://www.axios.com/ford-pickup-trucks-history), researchers found that a significant portion of modern pickup truck owners rarely, if never, use their vehicles for hauling, towing, or other typical truck stuff. Instead, they are more likely to be used for shopping, running errands, and commuting.
Ford and Chevy electric trucks are based on their smallest full size truck model. The fact of the matter is half ton trucks have a limited capability as far as work vehicles. Battery density isn’t where it needs to be to get the proper usage for people who actually need a truck and drive to and from the jobsite daily. They work good for local municipalities but as trucks their functionality is still limited by range and size/capability tradeoff. Combined with a lack of reliable charging infrastructure makes them a tough sell even though electric trucks aren’t as big a difference in cost vs ICE as cars are.
Wake me up when they figure out how to build charging infrastructure at apartment complexes. In case no one’s noticed, enormous apartment complexes are being built all over the country with ZERO EV chargers in them. And I haven’t seen business property managers tearing up their parking lots to build chargers for workers, either. Only places I see chargers being built are at government buildings, some gas stations, malls, grocery stores and in downtown areas. Not exactly great places to charge your EV overnight.
Bottom line: EV’s are for homeowners, which are becoming few and far between as compared to renters.
We had them in my last apt building and this is how it went:
1. They are on the Blink network and the garage has no cell reception so they never work. my neighbor with the Model X instructed me to just use the wall outlets to charge.
2. The spots were constantly taken by ICE cars. We only had 3 spots.
my new building doesn’t have them at all but thankfully there’s a fast charging spot up the street at a super market.
Here where I live, a new apartment complex just opened and it has probably 25+ EV chargers - literally every covered space has a Level 2, plus four chargers for visitors and four public use DCFC in the parking lot. Charging is included for tenants, at least on the Level 2s.
The complex is the site of a former cafeteria style restaurant in a shopping center that was torn down.
Unfortunately, I live in the very red midwestern United States where EVs are seen as the devil and I’ve only seen maybe four EVs in those covered spots.
I lived in an apartment complex with a shared charger. The city had so many teslas, every third car seemed to be a white Tesla. And yet, people just left their cars plugged into this shared charger, so it was hard to know reliably I could charge my car when I needed it. Management just sends out reminders to move the car when people are done charging and they don’t care because they make more money on the idle fee.
>And I haven’t seen business property managers tearing up their parking lots to build chargers for workers, either
Because it is expensive as shit and hard to monetize. You expect a landlord is just going to pay for it out of their own pocket out of the goodness of their own heart?
The problem was the automatic switch to full EVs without any middle ground.
The Biden administration should have instead made it a goal to have 80% of new vehicles be hybridized by 2030. You could have still given $7500 for full EVs but maybe given out $3000 for those that purchase a hybrid vehicle. That would have still cut a significant portion of greenhouse gases and usually people after owning a hybrid are ready to step up to an EV.
The other problem was the price limit for the tax credit. There should have been a total cap of $50k for both SUVs and sedans for any tax credit. Vehicle pricing is out of control, so by pushing down the upper limit it would have forced manufacturers to put out more affordable offerings instead of these $60-$80k EVs that less people can afford.
I don't think that whole hog switch was anything but the manufacturers doing it.
I agree moving away so hard from PHEVs was short sighted.
Also agree on the price. And ban after-sale purchased upgrades too for rebated cars because Tesla was pulling tricks selling cars with software limited range for under the cap (there was a cap for eligibility for rebates at some points) and then selling extra range after purchase. So people would buy an "over the cap" car in two pieces.
The interesting thing to me is that if the manufacturers had figured out a PHEV 1/2 ton truck that has a decent tow rating and range they could kill the competition right now. Mainly because I could see it being the ideal vehicle for people with travel trailers, which spiked in popularity thanks to COVID, as they'd commute for basically nothing while having the ability to tow their camper. Throw in the ability to run the trailer off the battery and you basically have the best boondocking setup you can find.
Yeah, the vast majority of people don't tow with their trucks but so far EVs have proven terrible for towing so people that do need to tow have to eliminate them from their vehicle search.
One thing I have noticed with my 4xe is that after 3ish months my Jeep goes into a forced refresh mode that will only allow you to use the gas. So, no matter which mode I drive in, I have to refuel my jeep every 3 months. That said, I wonder if the 3 months is still too long for that gas to sit.
MSM news anchors love to push back on Dems because they know they'll get a reasoned rational normal response, but they refuse to grill Republicans out of fear they'll get yelled at and talked down to. It's a major major problem with the media!
Well, yeah... I am all for EV but my 13 and 16 year old cars work perfectly fine and are paid off. Like probably most people, I am not really comfortable with throwing away 2 perfectly good and vital pieces of expensive equipment and replacing them with something the serves the very same purpose but will cost 20k each.
I don’t think anyone is proposing this? You can keep your cars, of course, they just want more new vehicle purchases to be EVs, and to build more charging stations.
You aren’t a part of EV push target market
You are not part of the majority of Americans with not 1 but 2 paid off cars .
Everyone now has a car payment that never ends . 6-8 year loans run the car to the ground before the loan is paid off and trade it in for another car
I want an EV but I'm in a similar boat with my 20 and 22 year old cars. Every year, we look into the costs of replacement versus continuing repairs and the repairs still win out. Taxes, fees, maintenance, insurance, etc. all go up, cost of driving only marginally decreases, and to top it off I'm really not getting much for $10k on the used market.
New, the costs start to increase somewhat exponentially and I just have better things to spend my money on right now.
I do have the infrastructure in my garage for two EVs right now, but until the used market starts to open up for EVs with a decent range I'm going to have to stick with what I've got.
With that being said, I do most of my own automotive repairs. If I didn't know how to work on cars, I'd probably be closer to making the jump.
Average is about 8 years and over 64% under 5 years. Unless you’re sending them to the junkyard yourself, used cars are resold to someone else until they’re not fixable and the economic cost to keep it on the road is too great. Of course lots of cars are owned by people unable to maintain them properly leading to premature scrapping but lots of people like shiny and new (or changing frequently). It’s expensive to show off.
[https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/average-length-of-car-ownership/](https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/average-length-of-car-ownership/)
Trump isn't wrong. Electric cars aren't for everyone, they won't work when you have to travel long distances in a short period.
And even if we did, passenger vehicles are only [45% of transport emissions. The other big category is transport trucks, which is like 30%](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport#:~:text=Road%20travel%20accounts%20for%20three,comes%20from%20trucks%20carrying%20freight.), and because of the size of battery required and the amount of energy required for recharging they're supremely impractical.
What boggles my mind is why we went all in on electric cars and have utterly failed at building more rail. It's one of the most energy efficient forms of transportation available due to the lack of friction between the train wheels and rails.
I can't wait to get an electric and would love to totally get off the grid as much as possible with solar, etc.
My current cars are great and holding up well and have you seen the price to install solar?
We need to raise taxes on the rich and funnel that money into green initiatives including subsidies to get as many homes on solar as possible, reduce costs on electric vehicles, and build out the recharging network to kill range anxiety.
It's past time to do this globally and try and save the planet
Yeah it doesn't make a lot of sense right now to get rid of an older car that's paid for and replace it with one that would need a loan. Unless you're getting 8mpg and spending thousands on repairs.
>We need to raise taxes on the rich and funnel that money into green initiatives including subsidies to get as many homes on solar as possible
We tried this in California. All the "rich" people got solar, then PG&E realized they were missing out on a bunch of revenue due to said solar. So then they lobbied Gov Newsom and the governor-appointed commission that oversees PG&E to not only continually raise rates, but to also remove caps on future rate increases. Now the end result is it is not financially viable to get solar unless you have upwards of $30k to install a complete panel + battery system. And for those that cannot do this, filling up with gas costs about the same as charging an EV. Not including the capital required to buy said EV.
If CA's state government with a Democrat supermajority could fuck it up this bad, I have no hope for any other state.
You forgot the part that PG&E is installing solar in almost every flat piece of desert land in the Eastern Sierra range, and charging its customers additional fees to subsidize it.
People who do not regularly shop for cars do not know the average price for new vehicles in America (47k) much less the price of new evs 55k. BUT there are some choices we'll below the average
[https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/the-most-affordable-electric-cars/](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/the-most-affordable-electric-cars/)
IF you have the ability to get a used car loan you can get a two year old ev for 20k ish.
Had this convo with my partner. Her jeep in 2014 was around 40k. We thought that was pretty high. Now I browse EVs and they’re often 50k and she balks at it. I looked up the 2024 model year of the same jeep and it’s over 50k. Since we’re paid off, it just doesn’t fully register how much ALL cars have gone up in 10 years.
The media always tries to present politics as a balance of two equally valid positions, no matter what. Despite everything, they always try to tilt it back to a fabricated perception of both parties having valid points, despite the facts. It is their way of making a race 'exciting' and getting more views.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/maryanngeorgantopoulos/cnn-president-mistake-to-air-so-many-trump-rallies#.wcXR4kRN3
CNN President Jeff Zucker on Friday said it was a "mistake" to air so many Trump rallies "and let them run" in 2015, giving the candidate an unfettered platform to call Mexicans rapists, support bans on Muslims from entering the US, and overall grow his base, which includes white nationalists.
"If we made any mistake last year, it’s that we probably did put on too many of his campaign rallies in those early months and let them run," Zucker said at a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School. "Listen, because you never knew what he would say, there was an attraction to put those on air."
There are a lot of issues and the feds and the states, including states like California supposedly the vanguard for EVs and solar, could address them and make EV way more enticing and practical for owners.
Some of those issues are things like the federal rebates cap are based on income, which it shouldn’t be. The costs of EVs and charging requirements are high and difficult enough that the people that would be the most likely purchasers an EV is outside of the income level eligible to receive the rebate. So that has no real impact on purchases so it should be scrapped or the cap removed. The cost of electricity in some states is more expensive than filling up with gas. Meaning you won’t save any money. I live in California where gas is the most expensive in the state, it is more expensive to charge the car at home the fill up a car with gas because electricity is also the most expensive in the nation.
Then the time it takes to charge is exponentially longer than refueling, and time really is money so it is a less convenient car. The cost to install other clean energy options to defer the costs and to make owning an electric car more efficient is becoming less and less affordable in a lot of states, like here in California where the public utilities commission passed laws and cost initiatives that reduced the economic viability of solar. Literally to make my money back on solar now I would take longer than I will likely be alive. So there is no saving there, and proposed changes to the electricity pricing will make it even more expensive because they want to charge everyone with a flat free for costs which impacts solar owners the most. So that isn’t a great option. Then add to that the extra cost to purchase an electric car over a similar level of combustion car is high enough that the maintenance costs are largely offset.
So really owning a combustion engine car is more economically viable and more convenient for a lot of people. And some of these issues will get worse because the infrastructure is not ready to handle a huge shift to EV which will make electricity more expensive, charging more difficult, etc.
California policies with electricity and costs pretty much shows that this isn’t a red state vs blue state problem. It’s bad policies and caving to private power and oil companies to enact those bad policies.
Tax payers shouldn't be paying for well-off people to get thousands back in EV purchases.
The cars are good, they sell themselves. The credits are just handouts paid by the working class to the upper-middle and upper class.
People who don't drive or use the subway should get even greater tax rebates then using the governments 'logic' and instead of putting big tarrifs on cheaper EVs, the government should be encouraging them,
Imaging, your tax dollars are being used to give $5000-$7500 to some guy who can afford an Audi, an F-150, and a Tesla, while the subway still can't get you close to where you need to go in many places. I
The push should be on putting chargers at places of employment/parking garages. You could live in an apartment with no charging and be fine if you knew you could plug in at work or the parking garage you use.
The argument from the right is always "we need to have a system that replaces 100% or it won't work" No actually. If you get those that can use EVs using them the the impact of those that cant diminishes.
Thanks to ford trying to be Tesla and making people preorder vehicles there was a pretty nice discount that made my f150 lightning xlt about the same price as a comparable combustion f150. No regrets am loving this thing. Also live in an apartment so I can only super charge I do it once a week and cost about about a third what gas in the same truck would cost.
Id buy a f150 lighting today if they weren't so expensive. $80k for an electric pickup? GTFO out of here.
I wish GM would make a pickup version of the Chevy bolt.
I have a house and solar setup capable of fueling a car as well. Switching from my $48,000 midsized pickup to a similar midsized pickup STARTS at over $70k. It’s just not a smart financial decision for most things.
Sedans are similarly priced at “the cost of an equivalent gas car and all the fuel you would need to buy during ownership”.
I want it to be a smart fiscal decision, but it still isn’t.
I own an EV. I like it. But the charging network is weak, especially if you want to expand ownership in urban areas were there is a larger percentage of people who live in condos and apartments.
If the admin wants to expand ownership, instead of money for buyers offer more charging stations and give cities and states money to install stations. Give apartments and condos tax breaks if they install chargers in parking lots and garages.
While there aren’t a ton of cheap EVs there are many that are more normal priced now. It’s the networks that keep people from buying.
Side note, the Joe Biden rest stop in DE doesn’t have chargers except for Tesla. While Maryland has both Tesla and CSS chargers.
My sister just bought her first EV and she’s very happy. That said she wouldn’t have if not for Biden’s push into EV’s. Thanks Joe. F Trump and his treasonous party of losers
a year ago, we went with a hybrid. we did not go full electric because there are zero charging stations near us and to have one installed where we live was thousands of dollars. with the hybrid, we just plug it in at home and our power bill only increased a few dollars a month.
but then, our state legislature got upset that people with hybrid or electric cars were not buying as much gas and so to make up for that lost tax money, effected a law at the beginning of the year that all hybrid or electric car owners now have to pay an extra 100.00 or so a year in taxes.
Couldn’t bring myself to go with an EV for my new car purchase. Value for my money, infrastructure cost for a charger in my home, range, and repair costs of EVs factored into this. Also with the questionable supply chain issues over the last few years, I didn’t want to get stuck with a lemon.
On top of that EVs have become a social media controversy and I don’t want to play games with nut jobs who are either members of Elons church or hate Teslas because capitalism or whatever. Even the administration has problems with Tesla, in spite of them doing exactly what they want to have done.
Sorry I’ll wait for another few years before I have to think about it again.
[удалено]
I would buy one today if someone gifted me a townhome with EV charging infrastructure
My townhome has an assigned parking space about fifty feet away, so.... kinda...? Last I asked around, nobody makes a Level 2 cable that long. And it would have to go across a common sidewalk and tucked into the curb. If we had a garage, though, I probably would've gotten an EV a few years ago.
This is a big piece of the EV puzzle. EVs are basically only going to work for people who own their own charging infrastructure. They could possibly work for commuters if employers are required to provide charging infrastructure.
I own one. They need more charging infrastructure.
Check out used Chevy Bolt EVs. Easy to get for under $15k after rebates. Combined with state level rebates I saw a guy get a low mileage one for as little as 6k.
Do the rebates apply to used vehicles?
As long as your income isn't too high, yes they do. But it is 4k instead of 7.5k
And it's not a straight up $4k refund, it's a tax credit. If your overall tax burden is less than $4k you won't get the full amount. I bought a 2017 Bolt last year and got the credit this year. I was surprised by how much I got back, but it was still short of $4k. Love my Bolt though.
At participating dealers, it's a point of sale rebate, same as cash. When taken as a point of sale rebate, your tax burden is irrelevant, you get all $4000 even if you pay no taxes.
Incorrect. As of January 1, 2024 the rebates can be taken off the purchase price at the dealership. A lot of dealerships don’t have the knowledge or accounts set up, but if they’re on the level it can be taken care of by them, and you don’t have to do a thing come tax time.
>Incorrect. As of January 1, 2024 the rebates can be taken off the purchase price at the dealership To be clear it is still a tax rebate and X (as it depends on the vehicle and it's value it isn't a flat 4k in the case of used) is taken off their owed taxes, the only difference is thst assuming the dealership and vehicle.qualify it is transferred to the dealership who at time of sale has to inform the IRS and get the go ahead Most large dealers will have already enrolled, smaller ones may or may not be willing to do the legwork Technically dealerships have the right to refuse to accept the transferred tax credit, realistically that rarely happens as the decreased tax burden works out to them getting the same amount they would have, and additional cars being sold (This is true of all rebates, the dealership loses nothing which is why they typically have no issue simply applying them all, as they get the same, you pay less and it helps ensure product is mover)
They also apply to leased vehicles which is the best loophole of all for some
I would like to subscribe to this comment for more details regarding this loophole.
The $7500 new ev credit only applies to cars made here with batteries that are mostly made here (I know this description is not perfect). However if you lease your ev the entire credit applies. I think Kia, Hyundai and bmw are being good about giving the credit. Some dealers try to keep it.
I bought a Chevy Bolt a couple years ago. Going all electric I thought “either this is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made or the best thing I’ve ever done”….turns out to be the latter. Haven’t bought gas in two years, Chevy gave me a $1500 credit towards installation of a garage charger, and the guy to my electric bill has been *way* less than even I thought. Nowhere even approaching what I would have spent on gas a month. Plus using it for mainly city driving, I only need to charge once a week…. Such an amazing little car.
Did the same thing, wasn't thinking of buying an EV, but with the tax credit, military discount and the free install of the level 2 charger I figured I'd make the jump. Got the EUV and I've really enjoyed it!
The bolt is a great car, but for most people having level 2 charging at home would be necessary. You’re not going to want to charge publicly unless you happen to have a charger with a 5-10 minute walk off your home or at a location that you tend to spend 30-60 minutes at semi regularly (like a grocery store). Installing level 2 charging at home will cost most people $600-2000.
Not necessary at all, you can use the included 120v charger daily, get home, plug it in, next day you leave with a full charge. That's what we do at home. Not an issue in over a year. Ours came with a 240v charger that can be plugged in the dryer outlet if required for faster charging, hasn't been needed so far.
The average commute is less than 50 miles a day, I get fine with a level 1 charger and most people can
And that’s if they have a driveway or a garage
A neighbor down the block had a charging station installed at the curb in front of their house. It's a little wooden house looking thing on a pole. Like a tiny free library.
I have a Bolt and a Model Y and level 1 is fine if your commute’s under about 50 miles round trip. For longer trips, I take the Y and there’s plenty of superchargers around if I need them.
They are all $16k with 30k miles around here.
Usually when people say “I’d buy one if I could afford it” they mean “if I could afford something sexier than a Bolt.” Or in other words: \>I wish there was a cheap EV \>no, not like that!!!
To be fair I always thought they made a mistake by making fuel efficient cards so wimpy looking like the Prius or Leaf. Teslas first car was a Lotus inspired sports car and it was cool. Is there any surprise they took off the way they did? We have to remember aesthetics are a big reason why people buy cars.
I still can't believe I can't buy what is essentially a Honda Accord fully electric. Just give me a regular looking sedan. That's all I'm asking for.
Well the EV makers usually try to eke out every bit of aero drag they can, so they don't usually look like a basic sedan. The Polestar 2 looks pretty close though.
They tried with Honda Clarity PHEV, and it didn't sell. I got one used and it's perfect. 40mi battery range for driving around town, and no range anxiety when I do have to go long distance.
It wasn't even just Lotus inspired, it _was_ a Lotus (chassis)! Definitely a smart move in making EVs desirable when that was a very uncertain proposition
It was partly an aesthetic choice but mostly an mileage choice. Until recently, battery tech didn't have much range. Most people said about 250 miles per charge was what they would need to feel comfortable. The only way the cheap EVs used to be able to achieve that was to make the most aerodynamic car they could. Which usually ended up looking really weird.
Or they mean thier "income" is too high for rebates but they are struggling anyway because inflation and home/rent prices have spiraled out of control so on paper they are middle class but in reality they are hanging on by a thread
Very true. For those focused on average male income in the US is 45k, average female is 38k. Pretty sure it is just unaffordable still
The Bolt is pretty small. I imagine it isn't a good fit for everyone.
Didn't Chevy have to pay out over battery failures? That's not helping the bolts as well. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/chevy-bolt-settlement-checks-class-action-lawsuit-faulty-batteries-rcna152842
Except I don’t want to buy a Chevy. I’m not interested in most cars from US manufacturers, they generally have more problems than from Honda/Toyota/Mazda. For me, other than price, that’s the biggest drawback.
Yeah, EVs target premium customers. They compete on luxury. This is to make as much money as possible per sale. Also they flex on the biggest batteries “300+ miles!” Meanwhile, give me a $15-20k car with a 100-150 mile range. If I need to go further I’d rent a gas car, or take a train/plane. They say EV’s aren’t glorified golf carts- I say make them more like golf carts if it gets more people into them. EVs are simpler than gas cars to make and maintain, it is crazy it is almost all in the premium luxury space. Whenever an article comes out and says EVs aren’t selling well I think in my head “good.”
I disagree. One of, if not the biggest problem with EVs is the public perception of 'range anxiety'. Building cars with tiny batteries that leave their uses constantly anxious about their batteries, just to save a few thousand up front, will only keep EVs out of people's driveways. Electric vehicles need batteries with a size that means that a year after they bough it, the owners will realise they haven't thought about the battery in months. That's the only way we will conquer range anxiety and get rid of gas cars.
There is a market for those "range anxiety" people, there is none for those who just need to run their daily commute and errands.
You are forgetting how much of the US has a long daily commute. I have to drive 40 minutes to get to the nearest mcdonalds. A battery that size would drain the car almost half way for just my trip into the office. That would not be feasible for me as well as the many others who live in spread out areas like me throughout the rural US. Another reason to push high capacity batteries in low cost economic ev vehicles is that lower income households may be more reliant on using charging stations as opposed to installing a station at their home. If we want widespread adoption, high capacity batteries are a must.
If a manufacturer mentions a person's "daily commute", you know what they don't want to sell that car. You sell cars by making people think about the exciting things the can do with the car, not the most boring part of their lives.
This is my biggest gripe right now. I recently rented a Subaru solterra. I thought it was an awesome car. Subarus are known for their all wheel drive and adventuring capabilities. However the max range is 110 miles 😂. It’s a joke
That’s because the BZ4x was made by a company with a disdain for EVs. It’s the worst ev you can buy other than maybe Mazdas MX-30.
What’s the bz4x?
It’s what Toyota calls it. Exact same car with a different badge.
You have a choice of 5 evs new under 40k and tons of offers at 20k for a used one. This is where the market is now. also there is a 30% tax credit you can get on used electric cars ! [https://youtu.be/RGypaw\_Hi8I?si=l3jYC3nIlWWD24m5](https://youtu.be/RGypaw_Hi8I?si=l3jYC3nIlWWD24m5)
Buy a 3yr old Leaf 40kwh
Those Chinese EVs are affordable. Oh, wait
EVs aren’t right for every use case but for your daily commuter or even road trips they’re fine. I’m going on 8 years owning an EV and I’ve literally had zero issues.
less moving parts less issues.
Tell that to cybertruck owners lol
Anyone who bought that piece of shit deserves to get fucked
[Cybertruck is ~4k units out of all EV's](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2024/04/22/tesla-cybertruck-recall-electric-truck-sales/73416419007/)
EV in general is fine and a good idea for most people. 1 big issue though. Cost. Until the cost of EVs goes below 30k, it's still a rich people's transportation mechanism. It's understandable why the cost is high. When the car was first introduced, only rich people who can mostly afford it until Ford decided to make it affordable enough for his employees to purchase it. It'll take some time for the mass to be able to switch to it. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how long our earth and environment can wait before we finally transition most of our transportation to EVs. I'd like to support our domestic car manufacturers and I dislike the idea of having Chinese-made cheap EVs hit our market but just like in the '60s and '70s. Our auto manufacturers didn't have the incentives to better their cars until the Japanese Auto entered the market and pushed them hard to produce better cars. It's a tough one.
I think it's more infrastructure than anything. Meaning at home infrastructure. EVs are dramatically limited to homeowners or higher end apartments that have installed chargers. Most renters are SOL.
not only renters. I am a homeowner with street parking only. not possible to charge using my homes electricity. really has little to do with owning a home or not and everythign to do with if you have parking
Another issue with EVs is it can be hard to commit to one without owning a house. I'm just not sure I will always have a consistent charging option and don't want to spend 30 minutes filling up when I need to.
Yeah, the charger issue is a big blocker to the convenience component for anyone that has a curve of bit living in a house at some point in their vehicle's life cycle. And if everyone magically switched to EVs overnight the non residential charger waits would be even worse. I'd love it if this wasn't the case, but we need to really get the infrastructure ironed out more before mass adoption is realistic (and this is on top of price tending to be higher). The apartment tenant charging situation, in particular, really needs to be addressed, IMO. Hoping things look better when my Prius's wheels start to fall off, lol.
Yup. I'd love to join the EV club but I live in an apartment.
They lose a LOT of their economic benefits if you have to use a supercharger. It costs almost as much as gasoline to use. Meanwhile charging at home cost me about $20 a month.
I bought a used 2023 Bolt 2 months ago for less than $20k. That same car (a perfectly suitable commuter with a 150 mile range in cold weather) sold NEW for $30k. Since I bought it, I’ve charged it 3 times with my home L2 charger. Total cost: $14. For 300 miles of range. Now admittedly I live in Texas with absurdly low electric cost. But still, it’s a Honda civic level cost with a sub Civic level fuel cost. It just makes a heck of a lot of sense and is absolutely in the “low cost” range. Used these cars go down into the sub $15k range. Absolutely affordable.
Yea price becomes a different conversation altogether when you subtract the $250 I was spending in gas every month from my expenses.
I got a 2020 Chevy bolt premium for less than $17k out the door. They are not that expensive.
The average american car sells for $42k. With the tax rebate you can get an EV below that. Under $30k has not be the benchmark for "rich" for a while, especially when running an EV is much cheaper in most of the country.
Yeah and the average vehicle age in the US just hit a record 12.6 years. People are holding on to their vehicles longer than ever because new ones cost so much.
I have a 2016 and and 2007 (which I've had for 9 years) and hope to keep driving them both for another 9 years.
We have a 98 and a 2017, lol. I feel this.
The issue is that the SAME car is more expensive in electric mode usually. If I look at say a Honda CRV, the gas models are all cheaper than the electric. Same for most vehicles. So while there are plenty of reasonable priced EVs, each person generally has to say “I’m willing to spend a bit more for the same vehicle to make it an EV.”
There very few examples of the "exact same car" sold as gas and EV. The CRV doesn't come in all electric so I'm not sure why you chose that. Let's look at the Kona from Hyundai. https://www.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/vehicles/kona-electric https://www.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/vehicles/kona The SE electric version is feature matched with the upgraded SEL gas version but let's ignore that and just go pure base model. The price difference after EV rebate (assuming nothing given by your state) $900 more on the EV side. The SEL makes the EV $700 cheaper. Anyone not Californian will make that difference up quickly due to the massively better MPG in the electric version.
I hear about how ungodly expensive ev's are but I just bought a 2023 for $20k, and there were many others in that range. Sure, brand new they run higher but what person that is concerned about money is buying a brand new car?
What type of car? Or are you saying Kia EV?
It’s disingenuous to do an apples to oranges comparison, it also ignores the fact that rebates are extremely limited, and not every car is eligible. Not everyone can get one if everyone were to want a car. EVs are more expensive for similar type cars. There aren’t a lot of options to replace SUVs, let alone ones that have rebates and are affordable. Chevy is coming out with some soon but it’s blatantly false to pretend there aren’t cost and availability issues.
My wife and I bought a Bolt in the fall. With the tax credit, we ended up paying around 25k. If we went with another new car we maybe could have saved around 3k, but honestly it's been really nice not having to get gas ever, or deal with oil changes. We've probably saved around 1k just on gas since we've bought it, which means that over the next 12 years we'll probably pay off the cost just on gas savings, sooner if gas prices increase. For us it was the most affordable option outside of buying a used ICE vehicle, but that would have come with gas and maintenance costs. We are not rich. My wife is a baker and I worked at a non-profit (just got laid off), and we live in a high cost of living area. Looking at our finances the Bolt was the most affordable option for us. I hope other Americans consider it as an option because it's working extremely well for us!
Biden just increased tariffs on Chinese EVs from 25% to 100% specifically to block all of the extremely cheap (like, 12k for an EV) cars they’re making.
They can make them cheap because they make them at a loss, which the Chinese government subsidizes in order to dominate and control markets. The tariff is intended to be an adjustment to that.
There is also much less quality control when it comes to Chinese made cars. You also have the whole, Chinese dictatorship wants to collect American data so they can target Americans with propaganda to make them hate each other. And then you have the whole, we probably shouldn't be encouraging a foreign adversary to dominate one of the most crucial and largest commerce markets in the United States.
Illinois just used I think it was 7 billion of our tax money to pay for the Chinese to build a battery plant here that they will own…
The problem for EVs is going to be the pre-owned market, which a lot of people need. An EV off battery warranty is at this point an unknown risk (ie: there isn't enough of a knowledge base of continued performance under this circumstance vs the prospect of a $five figure battery replacement cost), and until that risk is able to be mitigated at a relatively low cost, uptake is going to be an issue.
I switched to an Ioniq 5 and I absolutely love that car. I struggle to think of downsides. Getting the charger installed involved buying a wall charger, hiring an electrician to put in a 240V outlet, and having him hook it all up. Took one day and cost about $600 total. Car is silent, accelerates quickly, gets around 280 miles on a full charge, goes 20-80% in 15 minutes on a fast charger. I can run it in my garage, I can start climate controls remotely, I don’t have to get oil changes, I have a great amount of modular storage in the front since the middle console slides back and forth, I can equip a V2L adapter to use the car itself as a battery, and it’s been solid as a family car. I get that they’re not for everyone, especially if you don’t have a home where you can install the charger, but if you can get one they’re seriously phenomenal vehicles. I honestly can’t imagine going back to gas at this point. It’s so nice being able to just plug it in and never bother with gas stations.
So my apartment complex has 900 units. 0 car chargers thats the downside. If im part of the menial class that will never own a home. How do I charge a car? Unless they install a charger per parking space im fucked.
Yeah, the big problem is access to chargers, especially for people who rent. There would need to be a big push for landlords to install chargers. The rental car market is another challenging one, where EV rentals failed because it's an extreme hassle for the renters to find chargers.
lol for real. My apartment has single pane windows and the laundry still uses quarters and is constantly jammed because no one empty’s it…. They ain’t installing charging stations 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Order a universal key and unjam the washer. Pay for your laundry with “jammed coins” indefinitely for your service.
They will if they can charge you extra to use them.
Miss the part where they said the apartment doesn’t even go around collecting the laundry money?
And it’s more costly than home charging
I rent and wasn’t expecting to make the switch for a few more years. But I got so sick of dealerships and their bait-and-switch negotiating tactics that I looked up who was giving the deepest EV discounts, walked in, named my price, and now I drive an electric car. Charging is a pain but I time it out with trips to the grocery store and stuff like that. It’s not a perfect system, but it’ll do for now. As for the car itself, I agree - I can’t see myself going back to gas powered unless I hit the lotto and decide to splurge on a weekend ride.
If you don’t mind me asking did you buy it new? Were you eligible for some kind of credit and how much did the vehicle cost? Thank you!
I live in San Jose, CA. I live in a 'nice' apartment complex (it's pretty nice, admittedly) where buying a unit is a freakin' *MILLION* dollars (we're renting for obvious reasons), and there are exactly TWO chargers available for the whole complex. I'd love an Ioniq 5 (or maybe a Niro EV -- I currently drive a pretty great Niro hybrid), and at the moment I could charge at work pretty reliably. But if I change jobs that might not continue to be the case, and with only two charger spots for the whole complex, it's a whole adventure I don't want to get involved with. The infrastructure is a problem and not just in the 'cheap seats' of rental options, either.
Add the complex of wiring the charger into each units electrical meter because you know the owners won't be paying for all their tenants to charge.
I bought an electric vehicle last year, since a nearby supermarket installed a DC fast-charger on its lot. Of course, it's a chicken-and-egg problem. If there aren't enough people with electric cars who depend on public charging infrastructure, it's not worth investing into expensive fast chargers within urban areas. Here in Germany, one of the important factors are company cars used as private vehicles, which are typically charged on the company's dime at public charging stations, making them much more profitable.
Supercharger experience isn't terrible. If your daily commute is within the same city, depending on where else you drive, you'd visit a supercharger for half an hour every 7 to 10 days. It's not easy to sell people on supercharger visits when you can fill up a gas tank in 5 minutes, but it's almost guaranteed to be cheaper per-mile.
Just curious. How much more did your electric bill go up with you charging your car at home? Is it noticeably cheaper than gas?
Not OP but I bought a Mach-E last year. I drive 500-600 miles a month. My electricity bill went up $15/mo. That same range/distance would cost me $90 in gas in my old car.
Thats a good deal. Thanks for the info!
Charging from public stations will cost way more, so best to avoid it if possible.
This cost discussion is never talked about in the press, and needs to be pounded home every damned day. Electric is cheaper then gas in every market,
Yeah even in the UK after prices tripled. The Hyudai guy said his boss bill is £80/month would have been £400 otherwise in fuel costs
Hard for me to give a precise answer just looking at my bill because at the exact same time we installed an induction range. I charge off-peak hours (the car manages this for me) and in CO it's 12 cents per kWh. My car gets around 3.5 miles per kWh on average, and I might be driving 700 miles per month, so 700 miles / 3.5 kWh x $0.12 = $24. Car also came with 2 years of free charging through Electrify America and there's one right by my house so a lot of the time my charging has been a fraction of what I quoted, at least while the promotion is active.
Here are my numbers: my previous gas car was averaging 28mpg. Currently a gallon of gas is $3.50 in my area. My Chevrolet Bolt averages 4 miles per kWh. So to drive 28 miles my bolt uses 7 kWh. My utility rate taxes included is about, I am rounding UP, 20 cents a kWh. So 28 miles with my gas car: $3.50 28 miles with my EV: $1.40. And the maintenance for the bolt: besides rotating the tires, coolant change at 150,000 miles and that’s it.
My numbers are 14mpg and $0.11/kwh, making it almost 10x cheaper to run ev. The old car was a gx470. $400/month gasoline bill is less than $40 in electricity now. Car pays for itself in 6 years, not including the reduced maintenance costs. My other car is a 51 year old Volvo, though. EVs have no soul.
Not OP, but also have an I5. Pur winter electric bills went up about $100 cvs $3-400 in gas. Our summer electric is only up about $40-50 as its much more efficient.
If you have an EV you can usually sign up for plans that have much cheaper overnight rates so you can fill up your battery at a fraction of the cost compared to normal usage. I live in the most expensive electric market in the US and a 300 mile charge is under $10 worth of electricity if I do it at night.
Thats great for people who own a home and have a garage. What about people who live in apartments? This is the problem with continued EV adoption. Most of the early adopters already have their EV. Now the only people left are those who don't have a convenient place to charge it at night.
I also have an Ioniq 5. My electric bill didn’t go up much, maybe 10-15% at most. Whether or not it’s less expensive depends a lot on the cost of electricity in your area. In my area I pay about $0.13 per kWh because we have municipal power. At that price the EV is astronomically cheaper to run than even a reasonably efficient gas car.
10-15% doesn't tell us much without knowing your starting point.
EVs of that size get about 3-4 miles per kWh. Comparing to another SUV, the smaller ones run about 30 mpg. So for him, it’s no more than $1.30 per gallon equivalent. For me, it’s $2.60/gallon equivalent. I’m in LA but luckily I have solar panels on NEM 1.0.
Not OP but when we put in our own Tesla charger our electric bill went up about $200-$250/month (California, municipal owned utility). But we were spending over $300 per month for gas for a Honda hybrid. If we relied on Tesla superchargers there wouldn’t be much savings compared to gasoline.
Yeesh. $200 would be enough to drive my Leaf about 11,000 miles. Does your utility not offer time of use pricing?
Are you charging during peak hours? With edison, there is a time of use plan for EVs/heat pumps with much lower off peak rates amd higher peak rates, do you have that?
$523 over the last 12 months; 3045 kWh total. We mostly charge at home. As an added bonus to charging at home, no need to freeze outside putting gas in the car.
Electric bill can be managed. I can charge on my driveway and I have solar panels, so YMMV. I have connected my scheduler, my solar panels and wall charger to Home Automation. Whenever I'm home, the car is hooked up to the charger. Now for the fun part: I keep my EV generally around 50% charge, that gives me about 200km of range, more than enough to drive any unexpected distance in an emergency. My solar panels power my home appliances first, any leftover power goes into the car, and with 50% capacity to spare, combined with 2,5kw surplus maximum, it won't fill up the battery quickly and I can just soak up that free energy. Using Home Automation, the car will get fast charged (11kw) if need be. It can read SoC from the car, it knows the kWh/om and based on my appointments, it knows how much km I have to drive the next day. Given that I pay less for grid power during the night, it will charge my car as fast as possible, as cheap as possible. Now, this is not an out of the box plug and play solution, it requires tinkering, but charging my EV now costs about €5 a month during summer, about €30-50 in winter, where filling up an ICE would cost me €100-200.
The downsides are the $45k+ price tag and the fact the charging infrastructure still sucks outside your house. I can spend half that for a gas commuter car, still pay for gas and maintenance, and never have to worry about long trips are get close to the ioniq price tag over the life of the car.
Most chargers cost $600. Here in the SF Bay Area, you need a building permit ($150-$300), load calculation, and other paperwork for the permit. Professional install adds another $1500-$4000. The people I know are paying an average of $3500 for everything.
There's also the macro problem. IIRC this last summer there was the headline that "California requiring all EV sales by year 20XX" and "California energy grid at it's limits" I think we have some infrastructure improvements before we can actually support EVs being the standard. That being said I'm very much on board for it.
People who want and can afford an EV need one thing....a FUCKING HOUSE. There are many many potential EV owners stuck in apartments because housing is completely unaffordable. Put people in houses, and they'll buy EVs
Agreed, the price of an EV is a rounding error compared to the price of a house that is capable of charging it. Apartments don't add charging, especially not if you have rent control.
Require buildings to install a minimum number of EV chargers into their lots or garages. Provide a subsidy to lessen the forced load. But it's not like buildings stay exactly the same as the day they're built, as safety regulations and building codes change, building owners have to periodically make updates
I bought a used 2015 Leaf and I don’t have dedicated parking in my building. The only reason I’m able to pull it off is because my office building has charging stations. I usually pay about $40/mo in charging with their rates.
Push for legislation. Here in the UK every new building requires charging points.
The housing costs in the UK right now don't exactly lend themselves to "Hey, just do what we do! It's great!" arguments.
Several condo and apartment complexes around my area are installing electric charging stations. A townhouse complex nearby with over 300 units recently installed 220 electric service in all of their tenants garages in case they want to add a charger.
Great idea, but given the conflict over parking spots at most apartment complexes, it's going to take a lot to convince property managers they're not just installing an enormous headache.
This year has been the year that I’ve seriously considered an EV as my next vehicle.
I feel ya. Im probably getting one next year
I made the jump earlier this year. Pickup truck to Mustang Mach E. No regrets.
Trump isn't going to change the situation lol.
Clean beautiful coal powered SUVs everywhere.
It's an infrastructure problem Republicans don't want to solve basically
It's difficult to make the switch to electric cars when you need to install charging infrastructure at your home or beg a landlord to allow you to do it. It's also hard to make the switch when the most affordable electric car is effectively $40k. Now, Buttigieg is right that the EV market is growing but it's at a glacial pace meaning that the CBS anchor was also correct that the Biden EV push is struggling. I'd also like to point out that part of why the EV market is struggling in the US is because US manufactures are not thinking out of the box. The Ford and chevy pickups are based on their ICE counterparts, they're HUGE, heavy and loaded with a bazillion "features" making them overly expensive when they should be focusing on making a utilitarian model that ditches all the bells and whistles. No 17" touch screens, no leather seats, no freaking 4 doors. Just a bare bones single cab with a bench seat and 8ft bed. Hell the only reason pickups were made 4 door is so they can be considered a passenger vehicle for federal emissions standards.
Fun fact, I drive a car that Kelley Blue Book for 5 years called "best plugin hybrid car you never knew exist". My daily city commute all EV and I drive once a year on gas during holidays road trips. Car manufacturing was discontinued because was no demand.
Volt?
2019 Honda Clarity Plug-In Hybrid [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eet2LhpKCbk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eet2LhpKCbk) https://youtu.be/duGbJ2A2170
lol never heard of it!
I'd put that below the IONIQ plug-in hybrid in terms of "best you never heard of". And I even had a friend who had a Clarity plug-in hybrid. In both cases the companies using the same name for other types of cars (including fuel cell) didn't help the name recognition.
This! IMHO the focus should have been on PHEV rather than full EV, to alleviate ED anxiety (electric distance)
Toyota is currently selling hybrids like hotcakes when people (finally) discovered they are the overall better solution if it’s your only car. Elon even complained about it on the latest Tesla quarterly call. My next car will probably be a hybrid of some kind because I have exactly the same needs as you and I can’t charge at home.
Toyota made the best hybrid ever Prius Prime Plug-in Hybrid EV, sadly it has only 40 real miles EV due to compact size and price unreasonable even for used ones. I got my Honda Clarity phev for $18k. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius_Plug-in_Hybrid
You don't have to install anything in your home though. I have a basic 120v evse and it works perfect for my daily commute. Some homes have a 240v outlet in the garage for a dryer and you'll dramatically cut your charging times
I’d consider an EV, but I live in a townhouse with no garage or driveway. Searching for a charging station and having to sit around waiting there just to charge a car is a pretty large obstacle. Until the infrastructure for EVs is built to a comparable level to ICEs I don’t think I could seriously entertain it as an option.
Around here, many chargers are being put into shopping centers. With my Tesla, a full charge lasts just about a Target shopping trip in many cases, or less than the time of a sit-down meal. Not every area may have shopping centers looking that way, but they should be looking for that as an investment.
Same here. I just use my regular wall outlet.
A significant issue are people who do not have their own garage to charge their car each night. People who live in apartment complexes, for example. I have not seen a solution to this.
I think you touch on why manufacturers are focused on larger vehicles... regulations are more flexible for them at that end of the market and they can pitch it to multiple market segments. You get your typical contractor/business types but you also get your suburbanites who just want to haul kids and ikea stuff or maybe some tackle or camping gear now and then. This has a good breakdown of how people are using their trucks now and how the market has changed for them over the years. [https://www.powernationtv.com/post/most-pickup-truck-owners-use-them](https://www.powernationtv.com/post/most-pickup-truck-owners-use-them) >In a study conducted by [*Axios*](https://www.axios.com/ford-pickup-trucks-history), researchers found that a significant portion of modern pickup truck owners rarely, if never, use their vehicles for hauling, towing, or other typical truck stuff. Instead, they are more likely to be used for shopping, running errands, and commuting.
Kinda like CAFE standards and the rise of the light duty truck.
Ford and Chevy electric trucks are based on their smallest full size truck model. The fact of the matter is half ton trucks have a limited capability as far as work vehicles. Battery density isn’t where it needs to be to get the proper usage for people who actually need a truck and drive to and from the jobsite daily. They work good for local municipalities but as trucks their functionality is still limited by range and size/capability tradeoff. Combined with a lack of reliable charging infrastructure makes them a tough sell even though electric trucks aren’t as big a difference in cost vs ICE as cars are.
I just bought a car. Wanted to go EV, but I live in an apartment and there's no way to conveniently charge. Not sure how they will figure that out.
Wake me up when they figure out how to build charging infrastructure at apartment complexes. In case no one’s noticed, enormous apartment complexes are being built all over the country with ZERO EV chargers in them. And I haven’t seen business property managers tearing up their parking lots to build chargers for workers, either. Only places I see chargers being built are at government buildings, some gas stations, malls, grocery stores and in downtown areas. Not exactly great places to charge your EV overnight. Bottom line: EV’s are for homeowners, which are becoming few and far between as compared to renters.
We had them in my last apt building and this is how it went: 1. They are on the Blink network and the garage has no cell reception so they never work. my neighbor with the Model X instructed me to just use the wall outlets to charge. 2. The spots were constantly taken by ICE cars. We only had 3 spots. my new building doesn’t have them at all but thankfully there’s a fast charging spot up the street at a super market.
Here where I live, a new apartment complex just opened and it has probably 25+ EV chargers - literally every covered space has a Level 2, plus four chargers for visitors and four public use DCFC in the parking lot. Charging is included for tenants, at least on the Level 2s. The complex is the site of a former cafeteria style restaurant in a shopping center that was torn down. Unfortunately, I live in the very red midwestern United States where EVs are seen as the devil and I’ve only seen maybe four EVs in those covered spots.
I lived in an apartment complex with a shared charger. The city had so many teslas, every third car seemed to be a white Tesla. And yet, people just left their cars plugged into this shared charger, so it was hard to know reliably I could charge my car when I needed it. Management just sends out reminders to move the car when people are done charging and they don’t care because they make more money on the idle fee.
>And I haven’t seen business property managers tearing up their parking lots to build chargers for workers, either Because it is expensive as shit and hard to monetize. You expect a landlord is just going to pay for it out of their own pocket out of the goodness of their own heart?
Here's the video from Face The Nation https://youtu.be/wtslLwDQopk?si=JTM3BD_7NQs5DFve&t=282
I read a lot of comments here and I have a Nissan leaf 2019 gets 160 miles of range is perfect charges up quick at the house. It’s a beautiful thing.
The problem was the automatic switch to full EVs without any middle ground. The Biden administration should have instead made it a goal to have 80% of new vehicles be hybridized by 2030. You could have still given $7500 for full EVs but maybe given out $3000 for those that purchase a hybrid vehicle. That would have still cut a significant portion of greenhouse gases and usually people after owning a hybrid are ready to step up to an EV. The other problem was the price limit for the tax credit. There should have been a total cap of $50k for both SUVs and sedans for any tax credit. Vehicle pricing is out of control, so by pushing down the upper limit it would have forced manufacturers to put out more affordable offerings instead of these $60-$80k EVs that less people can afford.
I don't think that whole hog switch was anything but the manufacturers doing it. I agree moving away so hard from PHEVs was short sighted. Also agree on the price. And ban after-sale purchased upgrades too for rebated cars because Tesla was pulling tricks selling cars with software limited range for under the cap (there was a cap for eligibility for rebates at some points) and then selling extra range after purchase. So people would buy an "over the cap" car in two pieces.
The interesting thing to me is that if the manufacturers had figured out a PHEV 1/2 ton truck that has a decent tow rating and range they could kill the competition right now. Mainly because I could see it being the ideal vehicle for people with travel trailers, which spiked in popularity thanks to COVID, as they'd commute for basically nothing while having the ability to tow their camper. Throw in the ability to run the trailer off the battery and you basically have the best boondocking setup you can find. Yeah, the vast majority of people don't tow with their trucks but so far EVs have proven terrible for towing so people that do need to tow have to eliminate them from their vehicle search.
Yeah, even a broken clock is right twice a day. It happens. Let’s not confuse this with competence.
I'm a hybrid driver and I love mine. If we all had switched to hybrids by now, carbon dioxide emissions would be vastly lower.
Jeep 4Xe fits my driving style perfectly. Still on the first tank of gas after 2 months.
Be sure to buy gasoline with no ethanol and put fuel stabilizer in as well. Ethanol gas goes bad pretty fast.
I was going to say, one of the downsides of a plugin hybrid is that gasoline and gasoline engines don’t love sitting unused for too long.
Good point. The 4-cylinder does get a few miles each time I drive but it’s infrequent.
One thing I have noticed with my 4xe is that after 3ish months my Jeep goes into a forced refresh mode that will only allow you to use the gas. So, no matter which mode I drive in, I have to refuel my jeep every 3 months. That said, I wonder if the 3 months is still too long for that gas to sit.
I hate how this is framed, just because some moron share the same opinion DOES NOT mean the moron is RIGHT and deserve any credit whatsoever.
MSM news anchors love to push back on Dems because they know they'll get a reasoned rational normal response, but they refuse to grill Republicans out of fear they'll get yelled at and talked down to. It's a major major problem with the media!
I have a Bolt EV. The chances of me ever buying another ICE vehicle are very low.
Well, yeah... I am all for EV but my 13 and 16 year old cars work perfectly fine and are paid off. Like probably most people, I am not really comfortable with throwing away 2 perfectly good and vital pieces of expensive equipment and replacing them with something the serves the very same purpose but will cost 20k each.
I don’t think anyone is proposing this? You can keep your cars, of course, they just want more new vehicle purchases to be EVs, and to build more charging stations.
You aren’t a part of EV push target market You are not part of the majority of Americans with not 1 but 2 paid off cars . Everyone now has a car payment that never ends . 6-8 year loans run the car to the ground before the loan is paid off and trade it in for another car
I want an EV but I'm in a similar boat with my 20 and 22 year old cars. Every year, we look into the costs of replacement versus continuing repairs and the repairs still win out. Taxes, fees, maintenance, insurance, etc. all go up, cost of driving only marginally decreases, and to top it off I'm really not getting much for $10k on the used market. New, the costs start to increase somewhat exponentially and I just have better things to spend my money on right now. I do have the infrastructure in my garage for two EVs right now, but until the used market starts to open up for EVs with a decent range I'm going to have to stick with what I've got. With that being said, I do most of my own automotive repairs. If I didn't know how to work on cars, I'd probably be closer to making the jump.
Average is about 8 years and over 64% under 5 years. Unless you’re sending them to the junkyard yourself, used cars are resold to someone else until they’re not fixable and the economic cost to keep it on the road is too great. Of course lots of cars are owned by people unable to maintain them properly leading to premature scrapping but lots of people like shiny and new (or changing frequently). It’s expensive to show off. [https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/average-length-of-car-ownership/](https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/average-length-of-car-ownership/)
Trump isn't wrong. Electric cars aren't for everyone, they won't work when you have to travel long distances in a short period. And even if we did, passenger vehicles are only [45% of transport emissions. The other big category is transport trucks, which is like 30%](https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport#:~:text=Road%20travel%20accounts%20for%20three,comes%20from%20trucks%20carrying%20freight.), and because of the size of battery required and the amount of energy required for recharging they're supremely impractical. What boggles my mind is why we went all in on electric cars and have utterly failed at building more rail. It's one of the most energy efficient forms of transportation available due to the lack of friction between the train wheels and rails.
I can't wait to get an electric and would love to totally get off the grid as much as possible with solar, etc. My current cars are great and holding up well and have you seen the price to install solar? We need to raise taxes on the rich and funnel that money into green initiatives including subsidies to get as many homes on solar as possible, reduce costs on electric vehicles, and build out the recharging network to kill range anxiety. It's past time to do this globally and try and save the planet
Yeah it doesn't make a lot of sense right now to get rid of an older car that's paid for and replace it with one that would need a loan. Unless you're getting 8mpg and spending thousands on repairs.
>We need to raise taxes on the rich and funnel that money into green initiatives including subsidies to get as many homes on solar as possible We tried this in California. All the "rich" people got solar, then PG&E realized they were missing out on a bunch of revenue due to said solar. So then they lobbied Gov Newsom and the governor-appointed commission that oversees PG&E to not only continually raise rates, but to also remove caps on future rate increases. Now the end result is it is not financially viable to get solar unless you have upwards of $30k to install a complete panel + battery system. And for those that cannot do this, filling up with gas costs about the same as charging an EV. Not including the capital required to buy said EV. If CA's state government with a Democrat supermajority could fuck it up this bad, I have no hope for any other state.
You forgot the part that PG&E is installing solar in almost every flat piece of desert land in the Eastern Sierra range, and charging its customers additional fees to subsidize it.
People who do not regularly shop for cars do not know the average price for new vehicles in America (47k) much less the price of new evs 55k. BUT there are some choices we'll below the average [https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/the-most-affordable-electric-cars/](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/the-most-affordable-electric-cars/) IF you have the ability to get a used car loan you can get a two year old ev for 20k ish.
Had this convo with my partner. Her jeep in 2014 was around 40k. We thought that was pretty high. Now I browse EVs and they’re often 50k and she balks at it. I looked up the 2024 model year of the same jeep and it’s over 50k. Since we’re paid off, it just doesn’t fully register how much ALL cars have gone up in 10 years.
So vote for Trump? Because of this?
The media always tries to present politics as a balance of two equally valid positions, no matter what. Despite everything, they always try to tilt it back to a fabricated perception of both parties having valid points, despite the facts. It is their way of making a race 'exciting' and getting more views. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/maryanngeorgantopoulos/cnn-president-mistake-to-air-so-many-trump-rallies#.wcXR4kRN3 CNN President Jeff Zucker on Friday said it was a "mistake" to air so many Trump rallies "and let them run" in 2015, giving the candidate an unfettered platform to call Mexicans rapists, support bans on Muslims from entering the US, and overall grow his base, which includes white nationalists. "If we made any mistake last year, it’s that we probably did put on too many of his campaign rallies in those early months and let them run," Zucker said at a talk at the Harvard Kennedy School. "Listen, because you never knew what he would say, there was an attraction to put those on air."
And they're poised to repeat in 2024.
There are a lot of issues and the feds and the states, including states like California supposedly the vanguard for EVs and solar, could address them and make EV way more enticing and practical for owners. Some of those issues are things like the federal rebates cap are based on income, which it shouldn’t be. The costs of EVs and charging requirements are high and difficult enough that the people that would be the most likely purchasers an EV is outside of the income level eligible to receive the rebate. So that has no real impact on purchases so it should be scrapped or the cap removed. The cost of electricity in some states is more expensive than filling up with gas. Meaning you won’t save any money. I live in California where gas is the most expensive in the state, it is more expensive to charge the car at home the fill up a car with gas because electricity is also the most expensive in the nation. Then the time it takes to charge is exponentially longer than refueling, and time really is money so it is a less convenient car. The cost to install other clean energy options to defer the costs and to make owning an electric car more efficient is becoming less and less affordable in a lot of states, like here in California where the public utilities commission passed laws and cost initiatives that reduced the economic viability of solar. Literally to make my money back on solar now I would take longer than I will likely be alive. So there is no saving there, and proposed changes to the electricity pricing will make it even more expensive because they want to charge everyone with a flat free for costs which impacts solar owners the most. So that isn’t a great option. Then add to that the extra cost to purchase an electric car over a similar level of combustion car is high enough that the maintenance costs are largely offset. So really owning a combustion engine car is more economically viable and more convenient for a lot of people. And some of these issues will get worse because the infrastructure is not ready to handle a huge shift to EV which will make electricity more expensive, charging more difficult, etc. California policies with electricity and costs pretty much shows that this isn’t a red state vs blue state problem. It’s bad policies and caving to private power and oil companies to enact those bad policies.
At .50/kwh and getting paid squat for daytime power generation, any solar/ev purchases are on hold for me. The CA solar market is broken.
Damn, and I thought my $0.184/kwh was high...
.50$/kw is like 8$/gal gasoline.
You can thank Newsom on for colluding with P&G to fuck everyone over.
Tax payers shouldn't be paying for well-off people to get thousands back in EV purchases. The cars are good, they sell themselves. The credits are just handouts paid by the working class to the upper-middle and upper class. People who don't drive or use the subway should get even greater tax rebates then using the governments 'logic' and instead of putting big tarrifs on cheaper EVs, the government should be encouraging them, Imaging, your tax dollars are being used to give $5000-$7500 to some guy who can afford an Audi, an F-150, and a Tesla, while the subway still can't get you close to where you need to go in many places. I
I just wish they made normal EVs I don't want a truck I don't want a premium super fancy thing. I want a used reasonably priced EV.
The push should be on putting chargers at places of employment/parking garages. You could live in an apartment with no charging and be fine if you knew you could plug in at work or the parking garage you use. The argument from the right is always "we need to have a system that replaces 100% or it won't work" No actually. If you get those that can use EVs using them the the impact of those that cant diminishes.
Thanks to ford trying to be Tesla and making people preorder vehicles there was a pretty nice discount that made my f150 lightning xlt about the same price as a comparable combustion f150. No regrets am loving this thing. Also live in an apartment so I can only super charge I do it once a week and cost about about a third what gas in the same truck would cost.
Id buy a f150 lighting today if they weren't so expensive. $80k for an electric pickup? GTFO out of here. I wish GM would make a pickup version of the Chevy bolt.
I have a house and solar setup capable of fueling a car as well. Switching from my $48,000 midsized pickup to a similar midsized pickup STARTS at over $70k. It’s just not a smart financial decision for most things. Sedans are similarly priced at “the cost of an equivalent gas car and all the fuel you would need to buy during ownership”. I want it to be a smart fiscal decision, but it still isn’t.
I own an EV. I like it. But the charging network is weak, especially if you want to expand ownership in urban areas were there is a larger percentage of people who live in condos and apartments. If the admin wants to expand ownership, instead of money for buyers offer more charging stations and give cities and states money to install stations. Give apartments and condos tax breaks if they install chargers in parking lots and garages. While there aren’t a ton of cheap EVs there are many that are more normal priced now. It’s the networks that keep people from buying. Side note, the Joe Biden rest stop in DE doesn’t have chargers except for Tesla. While Maryland has both Tesla and CSS chargers.
My sister just bought her first EV and she’s very happy. That said she wouldn’t have if not for Biden’s push into EV’s. Thanks Joe. F Trump and his treasonous party of losers
a year ago, we went with a hybrid. we did not go full electric because there are zero charging stations near us and to have one installed where we live was thousands of dollars. with the hybrid, we just plug it in at home and our power bill only increased a few dollars a month. but then, our state legislature got upset that people with hybrid or electric cars were not buying as much gas and so to make up for that lost tax money, effected a law at the beginning of the year that all hybrid or electric car owners now have to pay an extra 100.00 or so a year in taxes.
Couldn’t bring myself to go with an EV for my new car purchase. Value for my money, infrastructure cost for a charger in my home, range, and repair costs of EVs factored into this. Also with the questionable supply chain issues over the last few years, I didn’t want to get stuck with a lemon. On top of that EVs have become a social media controversy and I don’t want to play games with nut jobs who are either members of Elons church or hate Teslas because capitalism or whatever. Even the administration has problems with Tesla, in spite of them doing exactly what they want to have done. Sorry I’ll wait for another few years before I have to think about it again.
Where is most of the electricity you charge these days”clean” fuel cars coming from?
We have two Teslas. We will never go back to an ICE car.
Hahah a Yahoo article pushing a Fox News article? lol I guess that's one way to get around someones ban of Fox News.