You overpaid for the EV in the first place.
Also, what will you do when everyone is driving an EV and they decide to jack electricity prices because there is such a monopoly in electricity production and generation? I mean, Obama shuttered over 250 coal plants.
1) My wife and I own two cars: an EV crossover and a gas pickup. That way we don’t have all of our transportation eggs in one basket. If the Dims regulate away gasoline (or make it too expensive to use regularly), we have an EV. If the Dims regulate away power, we have a gas pickup. This is especially a consideration for long trips more than local driving because..
2) We have tons of decentralized solar for our home (all electric). Of the total amount of power our house consumes throughout the year, including charging the EV, only 20% of it has to be pulled from the grid. The remaining 80% is homemade power. That includes charging the EV for 18K of the miles per year (the amount charged at home). My past 12 power bills averaged $72/month, including charging the EV for 1,500 miles per month. No natural gas bill, and almost no gasoline cost (what little we drive the gas pickup).
In Alabama sunshine, with Alabama power consumption habits (ie running the AC a lot in the summer, which is when we get more sun), the end result is that most of the power I pull from the grid is during the 4 wintery weather months November to February. The other 8 months I’ll pull from the grid 0-4 or so days in the month. Again, that includes charging the EV. And the days I pull from the grid it’s for only part of that day’s power.
That is the #1 reason I got the EV: I can make my own power but I can’t make my own gasoline. And I got the EV 4 years ago when my wife’s gas crossover needed replacing anyway. Plus, that was the year I was adding to the solar system after having a smaller one for a year to play with it for all seasons. So the EV charging was part of the math on how much of each solar component to upgrade. If you’re a fellow code jockey you can understand my inverter recording telemetry in 5 minute candles, me importing it into a SQL Express DB, and me querying the stew out of it to generate reports to see how much to upgrade my solar intake, and my inverter capacity, and my battery storage capacity to take advantage of the economies of scale (invest more to increase ROI), but not so much that I fight the law of diminishing returns.
But don’t replicate what I did unless you’re willing to dive deep into the math for your particular climate and your particular driving habits and your particular home energy habits. It’s not a one size fits all project.
True that. Here Obama's EPA forced Alabama Power to close a coal plant and replace it with "clean burning natural gas" fueled power plant. Remember when the Dims were promoting natural gas like it would save our souls from our carbon sins? We had to spend over $1 billion to reroute power lines and relay stations and also close the power plant. That was in Obama's 2nd term. That cost was spread out in our power bills for a handful of years. Then in Brandon's first week in the WH, he issued multiple EO's to make it harder to drill for natural gas. Which made the price of natural gas shoot up. Which also made the price of power shoot up (because the power company adds a rate rider per kWh to offset their fuel costs).
So the Dims forced us to pay to switch to natural gas, then the Dims punished us for using too much natural gas. There's no pleasing them. That got me interested in making my own energy, if feasible. I had a small solar system installed in May 2021 (4 months after Brandon entered the WH). After seeing it track my expectations I converted my two natural gas appliances to electric (variable speed heat pump w electric heat strips, and hybrid water heater with a built-in heat pump). I also did other improvements to the home like added insulation and sealed gaps -- stuff I should have done many years ago anyway. I paid for all of it with a loan that I call my energy project loan. I include the EV costs in it (the costs an EV has that a gas car doesn't have, like the extra cost of the EV payment vs gas car payment and the cost to install the two chargers).
End result: Each month I now make a loan payment + pay a small power bill. This is in place of a sky high power bill + a natural gas bill + gasoline expense. The energy/transportation part of my budget is what it was in year 2019 -- the last Trump year before covid distorted energy prices. To date the energy project has saved $7K in my cash flow (read -- more cash staying in our Roth IRA's growing tax free) than it cost me. When the EV is paid off in a few months, the energy project loan will be paid down much faster, all while my budget feels like it's year 2019 (the energy/transportation part of my budget, obviously not other things like food).
For me it's not an EV vs gas car argument, or a solar power vs coal or natural gas argument. The real power (pardon the pun) is in the word "decentralized". Decentralized solar means I can bring in my own energy and be less dependent on the over-regulated energy market. It'd be cost prohibitive for me to make my solar system so powerful that I can be completely off the grid (fighting the law of diminishing returns). At least at current power rates. But having to buy only 25% or so of our energy from the energy market (the 20% of my power + what little gasoline we buy for the truck for local driving + long trips require us to buy either power or gas, depending on which car we take) means that the Dims' stupid warmageddon cult regulations mess with my energy budget only 25% as much.