If you can charge at home, they’re an amazing deal. I think the vast majority of households with n >= 2 cars would be best served by [1..n-1] of them being an EV.
Even a ten year old Leaf for $4k is still useful to soak up the around-town driving that an average family does most of their miles in.
> Charging at home is part of the problem. They need to separately meter power for cars and increase the rate and add a road maintenance tax based on vehicle weight
I'm not sure why it was killed because that actually is an issue that has not yet been satisfactorily solved.
Many states pay for road construction and maintenance via a per gallon gasoline tax. Since EVs do not use gasoline they have turned to other ways to get EVs to help pay for the roads, usually by adding a flat annual registration fee.
In my state that flat fee is $150. That is equal to the component of state taxes on gas that go to roads on 270 gallons of gas.
If I had bought an ICE (non-hybrid) earlier this year instead of an EV I would have bought either a Honda CR-V or a Honda Civic.
I mostly do city driving. With the CR-V I'd have to drive 7300 miles to pay $150 toward roads. It would be 8600 miles if I mostly drove highway. With the Civic it would be 8600 city or 11000 highway.
I actually drive under 2000 a year, so if my EV driving patterns end up being the same as my ICE patterns I'm going to be paying a lot more toward roads than I would have had I gone with an ICE car.
It does look like my mileage will go up with the EV, possibly up to 5000 miles a year, but even then I'll be paying more toward roads than if I had bought an ICE.
I'd much prefer to have a mileage based road tax.
I'd be fine if they just looked at my odometer whenever I renew my registration and charge me then, but for a lot of people having to pay their entire share of road fees for their last year of driving at once would be difficult.
Separately metering my home charging and taking care of the road fee there would be great.
Given that you can expect to get well over 200,000 miles and/or 20 years out of a large liquid cooled EV battery, there are some screaming good deals out there.
I know some people who bought one of those little electric "golf cart" like vehicles to drive around the neighborhood.
It seems these cost between $15K and $30K!
I paid $15K for a used Nissan Leaf, with 150 miles of range, and a bit of the factory warranty still in effect.
Personally, I don't see why the Leaf gets such a bad rap. I would like more range than 150 miles, but this much serves all of my typical driving (including freeway, which the golf carts can't do at all).
The EV acceleration (and one-pedal driving) are awesome. No internal combustion vehicle can ever match the performance of an EV.
My expectation is that the overwhelming majority of people drive less than 150 miles the overwhelming majority of the times they leave the house, i.e. they almost never need the gas provided range.
I do still have a gasoline van that I use during long distance travel, but this is once or twice a year.
I think the overwhelming majority of objections only exist between the objector's ears.
I always charge in the driveway, and haven't bought gas in over 6 months.
They are. I’ve had my F150 lightning for about two years. On my old gas F-150 I used to pay about $150 a month in gas. On this one I pay about $18 on my monthly electric bill. I do live in a place with off peak electric prices of $0.07/KWh.
That’s not even talking about how silent they are, the amazing acceleration that makes driving a joy, you can leave them idling when you’re waiting with no toxic emissions/guilt, no oil changes and because of the regen braking the brake pads have to be changed very infrequently.
> With a gas car, between age and mileage you know a lot about that car. In the EV, people have no clue,” said Helveston. Battery health, he explained, is more linked to how the car was used than its age or mileage
Does the same not apply to gas cars? In a different way obviously but the way any car has been driven in its lifetime affects its long term viability and you don’t have a great insight into it at purchase time.
Maybe it's worse with ICE cars--more parts, many considered wear items, that are difficult to get to to inspect. It could be hard to tell if the seller recently changed the oil and filters after never changing them. Transmission, alternator, etc. could have issues only intermittently.
Should be easy to see HV battery health, charge to 100% and check remaining range reported. Drive unit/other battery issues seem pretty rare and I'm not sure they're correlated with driving behavior, though I could be wrong.
I'm not really worried about the traction battery. I'm worried about all the other components unnecessarily packed into the modern car (not exclusive to EVs) that may get damaged or fail and incur significant repair costs. Unfortunately I live in California where the gas savings from an EV aren't that significant.
I have a used (& paid off) Hyundai EV. It’s essentially the same form factor as a Prius. I cannot bring myself to part with it because it is such a smoking good deal. It’s low maintenance, it’s cheap to charge (on off peak), it’s efficient to drive, it can carry anything (9’6 surfboards? kayaks? A Bookcase? No problem).
I calculated it out and if I got a reasonable gas car it would be roughly 3 times more expensive per month to drive. It’s cheaper even than biking and taking the train to work (to be fair the train is expensive where I live).
I think this car will easily last another 150k miles with nothing more than tires and basic maintenance.
That said, I do miss an old stick shift gas car. EVs don’t give a feeling of life.
I think it may just be a personal thing about the feeling of a vehicle. All of my cars felt dead until I got into an EV. Now, I actually get giddy about using it and accelerating. Before it was just emptiness.
Yes! I just bought a dealer-certified three year old Kia Niro with 24k miles for $22k. The current new version of this car has an MSRP more than double that price. There is no world where the difference between these cars is worth $25k. In my head it's more like $10k-$15k max.
I bought my Kia EV6 at probably the worst time (fall 2022). EVs were in high demand, dealers were adding markups, and my credit was still reeling from just buying a house. As a result, I owe way more than I could buy it used lol. Not that I would (and ignoring the ramifications), but it would cost me less money to just let it get repossessed and go hunt it down and buy it from the used dealer that buys it at auction.
My EV6 is right at 60k miles, and I don't see any issues with it that would keep it from going another 60000+. Used, it's probably $22k-25k, which to me would be an amazing deal.
I just had solar installed at my property and am producing more than I can store in the grid (rural lines restricting how many kW).
I was considering picking up an old leaf (or 2) as some buffer storage, so I can continue to feed excess energy into the grid during low solar periods.
Does anyone have experience of using a leaf in this way? Anything I should look out for when sourcing one?
I just made the decision to buy a car, my 2005 CRV was starting to require a lot of upkeep.
I strongly considered used EVs, but reliability concerns scared me. I like to keep cars a long time, and the idea of a battery or motor going out in a 9 year old car was a consideration.
I ended up going with a Corolla hybrid, getting 50+ mpg with every tank. Maybe next time I’ll buy electric.
17 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 35.7 ms ] threadEven a ten year old Leaf for $4k is still useful to soak up the around-town driving that an average family does most of their miles in.
> Charging at home is part of the problem. They need to separately meter power for cars and increase the rate and add a road maintenance tax based on vehicle weight
I'm not sure why it was killed because that actually is an issue that has not yet been satisfactorily solved.
Many states pay for road construction and maintenance via a per gallon gasoline tax. Since EVs do not use gasoline they have turned to other ways to get EVs to help pay for the roads, usually by adding a flat annual registration fee.
In my state that flat fee is $150. That is equal to the component of state taxes on gas that go to roads on 270 gallons of gas.
If I had bought an ICE (non-hybrid) earlier this year instead of an EV I would have bought either a Honda CR-V or a Honda Civic.
I mostly do city driving. With the CR-V I'd have to drive 7300 miles to pay $150 toward roads. It would be 8600 miles if I mostly drove highway. With the Civic it would be 8600 city or 11000 highway.
I actually drive under 2000 a year, so if my EV driving patterns end up being the same as my ICE patterns I'm going to be paying a lot more toward roads than I would have had I gone with an ICE car.
It does look like my mileage will go up with the EV, possibly up to 5000 miles a year, but even then I'll be paying more toward roads than if I had bought an ICE.
I'd much prefer to have a mileage based road tax.
I'd be fine if they just looked at my odometer whenever I renew my registration and charge me then, but for a lot of people having to pay their entire share of road fees for their last year of driving at once would be difficult.
Separately metering my home charging and taking care of the road fee there would be great.
Given that you can expect to get well over 200,000 miles and/or 20 years out of a large liquid cooled EV battery, there are some screaming good deals out there.
I know some people who bought one of those little electric "golf cart" like vehicles to drive around the neighborhood.
It seems these cost between $15K and $30K!
I paid $15K for a used Nissan Leaf, with 150 miles of range, and a bit of the factory warranty still in effect.
Personally, I don't see why the Leaf gets such a bad rap. I would like more range than 150 miles, but this much serves all of my typical driving (including freeway, which the golf carts can't do at all).
The EV acceleration (and one-pedal driving) are awesome. No internal combustion vehicle can ever match the performance of an EV.
My expectation is that the overwhelming majority of people drive less than 150 miles the overwhelming majority of the times they leave the house, i.e. they almost never need the gas provided range.
I do still have a gasoline van that I use during long distance travel, but this is once or twice a year.
I think the overwhelming majority of objections only exist between the objector's ears.
I always charge in the driveway, and haven't bought gas in over 6 months.
Try it, you'll like it...
That’s not even talking about how silent they are, the amazing acceleration that makes driving a joy, you can leave them idling when you’re waiting with no toxic emissions/guilt, no oil changes and because of the regen braking the brake pads have to be changed very infrequently.
Does the same not apply to gas cars? In a different way obviously but the way any car has been driven in its lifetime affects its long term viability and you don’t have a great insight into it at purchase time.
Should be easy to see HV battery health, charge to 100% and check remaining range reported. Drive unit/other battery issues seem pretty rare and I'm not sure they're correlated with driving behavior, though I could be wrong.
Gas savings is oxymoron. You are getting a vehicle that drives at least 10x better. Can’t price that.
I calculated it out and if I got a reasonable gas car it would be roughly 3 times more expensive per month to drive. It’s cheaper even than biking and taking the train to work (to be fair the train is expensive where I live).
I think this car will easily last another 150k miles with nothing more than tires and basic maintenance.
That said, I do miss an old stick shift gas car. EVs don’t give a feeling of life.
I was considering picking up an old leaf (or 2) as some buffer storage, so I can continue to feed excess energy into the grid during low solar periods.
Does anyone have experience of using a leaf in this way? Anything I should look out for when sourcing one?
I strongly considered used EVs, but reliability concerns scared me. I like to keep cars a long time, and the idea of a battery or motor going out in a 9 year old car was a consideration.
I ended up going with a Corolla hybrid, getting 50+ mpg with every tank. Maybe next time I’ll buy electric.