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As an EV owner (not Tesla), here’s my math/algorithm for if an EV is practical. If you can set up charging at home, drive at least 12K miles/year on home charged miles, have a second car (like a lot of married couples) to be the gas car for times an EV won’t do. Also, assuming the EV is the newer of the two cars and therefore is the one you want to take on most trips, research before buying the number of fast chargers on the trips you most often take. And don’t do trips up north in the winter if you want to charge in 10-15 minutes.

The above number (12K miles) is based on Alabama gas prices, home power prices, and Alabama’s extra annual $200 fee for EV owners (to pay for road maintenance since we don’t pay gas taxes). It’s also based on price differences between gas vs hybrid vs BEV prices of crossover cars in 2022. I’m not hip to price changes since then.

How it works for us. My wife and I no longer say “her car” or “his truck”. It’s “the EV” and “the truck” with the idea that whoever drives the most that day takes the EV and saves on gas (unless that day involves pickup chores). We drove ours 26K miles last year, with 16K of those charged at home. Plus, we have tons of home solar, my wife is retired and I’m quasi-retired, working from home a lot. In other words, when we charge it, it’s usually during the day when the sun is out.

It cost about $2K hiring an electrician to install two charging circuits with NEMA 14-50 outlets (dryer outlets) into the garage. That’s not including the other things I had him do while he was there. I used a HELOC to pay for that work plus tons of other work like making the house more energy efficient, installing solar, and after being happy with a small solar system I upgraded it and converted my two natural gas appliances to electric (hybrid water heater, variable speed heat pump with heat strips when it’s too cold for the heat pump). I now have energy costs of only $86/month power bill, plus the HELOC payment (since it paid for the energy equipment), plus a little bit of gasoline (what little we drive the gas pickup), plus whatever we spend on trips (either power or gas, depending on which car we take). This is instead of paying a high power bill plus high natural gas bill plus lots of gasoline at the pump.

But all of that works only if you first tediously look at your energy consumption habits, your driving habits, your climate, etc. to make sure some or all of what I did would work for you without changing your driving or home habits.

I’m curious as to what the EV cost, what the solar setup cost, and other things you had done that was connected to the purchase, charging and maintenance of the EV. Then compare that to the price of a high mileage gas car and the cost of the gas for that. Seems like a lot of money up front to save a little. How long do the batteries last in your EV? I hear between 5 - 10 years depending on the model. One of our cars is our “beater car” that is 13 years old, has 195k miles on it and gets 40 mpg, runs fine.