Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: Red Badger

My wife is considering an EV since our son likes his so much. The two places my wife travels any distance are both about 300 miles away. While charging stations are available along the routes, I estimate charging will add about an hour to the trip both ways. Both our current vehicles get well above 30 mpg and can easily make these trips without stopping for gas, but we choose to make one stop on these trips to top off our gas tank and make a bathroom break. Both can easily be accomplished in less than 15 minutes. Our son claims he can top off his EV in 20 minutes where he stops on his way to work, but charging times vary a lot depending on the charger and of course weather conditions make a difference too. I would be very wary of making these trips in below zero temperatures and would have apprehension on very hot days when temperature extremes affect both battery charge and recharging times. Adding a home charger is a $3,000+ expense and may require an expensive upgrade of your electrical service. EVs have many hidden costs.


26 posted on 02/20/2024 6:44:01 AM PST by The Great RJ ( )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: The Great RJ
My tips on whether or not to get an EV. This is from a free market perspective as an EV owner who hates the Dims' stupid warmageddedon cult energy polices. But at the same time, I see some use cases for EV's in a free market.

1) Don't get an EV unless you need two cars anyway (i.e. married) and one of them is a gas/ICE car.
2) If you have a pickup, it has to be the ICE. EV pickups won't do some of the chores I every now and then use my pickup for without stopping too often to charge.
3) Don't get an EV or any car if both of your cars are working fine anyway. Wait until you need to replace one of your cars.
4) Don't get an EV unless you have a place to set up charging at home.
5) Don't get an EV unless you plan to drive it at least 12K or maybe 14K miles per year of home charged miles to save enough on gas to be worth it. For all the talk on FR posts about EV's being good only for urban driving, IMHO that's incorrect. It's better to be an EV owner in a somewhat rural area like I live where we have to drive a lot of miles just to get to town and back. LOL
6) Don't get an EV before doing research on most of the road trips you'd take to make sure that the EV has plenty of fast chargers for that trip. This assumes that the EV will be your new car and, therefore, be the one you want to make most of your trips in. During road trips my wife wants to stop every 150-200 miles and walk around for 10-15 minutes regardless of which car we take. Thus our road trip driving habits are conducive to taking the EV. We drove it all the way from Alabama into the northeast U.S. and east Canada and back with no problems charging. But that would probably not be the case if we decided to take a road trip through sparsely populated west Texas or Wyoming (which we don't plan to do, but if that happens we have the ICE pickup).
7) Don't get an EV if you plan to use it for long trip driving in harsh cold. Again, we live in Alabama where that's not an issue. And even if you live up north it's probably no problem having an EV for local driving in the cold AS LONG AS YOU CAN CHARGE IT AT HOME. But if cold driving will be somewhat regular where you live, then perhaps the 12K mile threshold in bullet point #5 above should be 14K or 16K miles per year to handle the fact that cold weather makes the EV operate less efficiently. Again, if you can charge at home you should have no problems getting from point A to point B for local driving. But you use up a lot more power doing so and reduce the odds that getting an EV saves enough gas to be worth other costs that come with an EV (unless you drive a lot of miles).
8) Before getting an EV look at the weight increase and assume it'll increase your tire replacement costs proportionally. Our EV crossover weighs about 10% more than the ICE crossover it replaced (but about 10% less than our ICE pickup). I had to replace the tires on it at about 27K miles, but those replacement tires still look new at 44K miles (17K-ish miles on the "new" tires). So maybe the first set didn't last long because they were factory tires. We'll see. However, even with some tire replacement increase, that's probably offset by lowering how often you need brake repairs, with most braking done by regen braking. So far that seems to be the case.

My wife and I had to replace her ICE crossover anyway. I replaced it with an EV crossover. We drive it 26K miles per year, with 16K of those miles charged at home, in the south, and 80% of the power in our home is free from solar. If you have tons of solar making most of your power free like I do, then the threshold of miles for step 5 is probably more like 8K per year to be worth it. Obviously for us it's way worth it. But it works like that if you and your wife quit saying "her car" and "his car". We say "the EV" and "the truck" with the understanding that if either of us has to drive somewhere that day, it's in the EV to save gas. If we have to split up and take 2 cars that day, whoever drives the most takes the EV (unless it involves pickup chores).

30 posted on 02/20/2024 7:30:18 AM PST by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson