I own 1 Gas car (Subaru) at a 2nd home (Wyoming) that we have spent a total 1 month so far this year and it has cost me more in gas than owning and charging 2 EV’s (California) full-time.
Please tell me again the advantages of owning a gas car again?
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Well given my Harley FXLRST gets fifty miles to the gallon one would think it had a smidgen of a chance… but it likes premium so $3.60 now and my TM3 drinks electrons that set me back no more than 12c a kWh… and averages better than four miles per.
so putting six thousand miles on the Harley in a year would require me to put, what, nearly fifteen thousand on car to equal out the costs? Both are fun though.
Did you calculate battery degradation?
One word. Convince. I mean you also live in California so you’re in a bit of a bubble already.
The advantage of a gas car was and will be for the next couple of years: access to parts and access to gas stations. There’s a gas station every exit. There isn’t a fast charger every exit is there?
I drive an EV, but the reality of it is that road tripping sucks balls in an EV compared to an ICE. Sure, it’s gotten a lot better, but anyone saying that it’s on par with ICE is tripping. A lot of places just completely lack EV infrastructure.
The number of chargers makes no difference at all if you can reach one before you run out of juice. They can install one on every exit and all it means you will be passing many before you need one. But you still need to exit freeway, find a charger, charge for a long time and then get back on freeway. And you have to do it many more times than if you drive ICE with a range, lets say 500 miles. What matters is the range. If you have the range you don’t need many chargers. That is the right solution.
According to ABRP, I can’t leave my city with my 2012 24kwh Leaf. Even a 40kwh Leaf wouldn’t make it. Has to be the 60+ kwh Leaf to make it.
Charging infrastructure has a long way to go.
Seeing as your car is a technological dead end, it’s probably going to never change for a Chademo Leaf. You should look into adaptors, or realistically, a better car if you need to go between cities.
The Leaf was just a fun experiment that ended up completely changing my outlook on electric cars. I’ll use ICE for longer trips until I can save up enough to buy a newer EV.
The chademo port is dead. Nobody installs them anymore in Europe so leafs are mostly being relegated to intra city driving. CCS2 is everywhere though.
In the 160 miles between my city and the next city, there’s only 1 chademo location. But there’s also only 1 CCS and 2 Supercharger locations. And the 2 superchargers are pretty close to each other. There are 7 gas stations within 1/2 mile of the highway exit that the chargers are at.
They’re still installing them here in Norway. Not as many as the CCS chargers, but there’s at least one or two dual CHADEMO/CCS charger at every location going up. There’s nearly 100K Leafs alone here, and quite a few other EVs that also use CHADEMO.
My 2014 Berlingo has a 22.5KWh battery, and I have no problems getting around. It just takes a bit longer than with other cars if I want to drive far. Which really doesn’t happen all that often.
Cars with CHADEMO may be a small part of traffic, but they stop to charge more often than other EVs. That’s a fact that many suppliers seem to forget.
Don’t worry. Others tried leaving your city, and they had to stop when the surroundings became too pixelated. Your car is just better aligned for the simulation.
Hm. I wonder which movie that was. 13th floor, perhaps?
Road-tripping experience in an EV varies greatly depending on location and EV. Having done several trips from NY to Florida, New England, and Midwest in my Tesla, there has been no ball sucking whatsoever.
lol exactly. All the EV folk complaining about charging and here I am wondering wtf they talking about. Then I realize they’re almost 100% non-Tesla EVs.
I know this sounds snobbish but it is true: Tesla Supercharging makes roadtrips a dream.
Having a Tesla with a CCS charger has been blowing my mind recently.
I drove through the mountains recently in Colorado. I was thinking of where to charge and pulled up plugshare and realized between the superchargers and one-off CCS chargers, I had a charger at every other exit for a 120 mile stretch. That’s actually more frequent than gas stations for that stretch.
The future is coming. Just less quickly if you have a CCS-only car.
Haha CO is getting better. Though if you’re going to the southern part of the state, there’s a pretty big black hole south of Salida with basically zero SC or CCS. It’s fine if you’re road tripping through it, but requires more intensive planning if you’re going in to hit up a trailhead.
What’s with the clickbait title?
Anyway: A vehicle you use for 1 month every year, while it could be electric, do you want to just let it sit and depreciate? Something old that runs on fossil fuels is probably the better pick, for now.
poor people generally can’t afford an EV and charger, and may not have a place to charge it at home (apartment, rental, etc.). So an ICE is vastly superior in that case.
Poor people generally aren’t buying new vehicles if they’re making wise financial decisions. The used market is what needs to catch up, and I’ll say, it seems to be.
If you can charge at home, a used EV could easily have a lower cost of ownership.
Used Bolts/Leafs are in the $15k range. With the new tax credit, you will be able to save up to $4k which puts them in the $10k or less range. Factor in fuel and maintenance savings over an ICE and it’s like getting a car for a few thousand dollars.
I would be in favor of requiring landlords to install chargers if requested by their tenants. And I say this as a landlord.
As seems a law of nature, there is nothing more expensive than being poor.
I concour, I live in an apartment and my car is a 2010 italian shitbox (which I love), but there is absolutely no way I could presently own an EV. I am lucky to be able to bike/use public transit for my commute though. I guess the tram is an EV too!
I own a 24 Grand Highlander as a 22 M3P. The Tesla is a fine daily, but the Highlander is just a much nicer vehicle no matter the cost of gas. When Toyota makes a PHEV, I’d switch to that.
I don’t know how you like the suspension in the Grand Highlander. My sister in law has one and it bounces so much it makes me motion sick. I can’t wait to get back in my car every time I’m riding in that thing.
That is interesting. I went from a 2010 Prius to a 2015 Highlander to a 2024 Grand Highlander, never thought of them as bouncy. I used to drive from Florida to Vermont straight a few times a year.
I guess we all sense motion differently.
Toyota has the Prius Prime and RAV4 Prime PHEVs
Sorry should have mentioned Highlander. They have hybrid and hybrid plus right now. Hopefully a PHEV soon. I have a large family.
The amount you spend on gas and electric highly depends on the car and where you drive. In Texas, gas is under $2 a gallon. You need to pay $0.20 per KWh or less to match it. But if you go on a long trip and charge on a Supercharger or Electrify America at $0.48 per KW, it would be equal to paying $5-6 per gallon if you had a good hybrid car. And you would not have to stop frequently to charge, wasting time and money. And be able to go where no EV can without planning ahead or sticking to the planned route. That is why I bought Rav4 Prime. I drive around town for free on electricity because I have solar and I have overproduction. But if I go on a long trip, I use Hybrid mode and save money and time that way.
You can buy a car that gets 400+ miles on a tank of gas for $10k
Road trips.
Towing.
Overlanding.
EVs are still a luxury item, but I don’t think that registers with someone who has a second house. Let’s not be elitist pricks about things and realize the majority of people can’t afford the current crop of BEVs. When the second-hand market gets saturated, then a lot more people can afford BEVs and things might change, but we ain’t there yet.
do you optimize your charging using TOU plan?
mind sharing how you do?
Only advantage is if you own one of the super long (600+) mile range hybrid ice vehicles. With those you can drive way out into the middle of nowhere desert, camp for days and then make it back out. That’s the only advantage I can think of.
Tesla or another EV?
If you have kids sleeping in the car you can’t stop. So range of 500 miles comes in handy. In NJ where you can get 20 degree weather + headwind can make your range drop by 50% or more.
Unreliable chargers, apartment complex without chargers, expensive vs ice car, easy to total & harder to find shops to work on it, insurance rates might be higher.
Lack of good 3 row SUV’s.
My sister stops all the time with her kids. They just get into the car when she says, and out when she says.
Sorry but this is BS. California in most areas (under PG&E) pays .28/kwh on a time of use plan. That’s equivalent to about 50mpg in a gas car. Unless you never pay to charge at home and only use free work chargers and/or have unlimited free supercharging, your Subaru is roughly 50% of the cost of charging an EV. Your statement is akin to saying “I spent more on food in one month on vacation than I did at work the rest of the year.” When you work at Google and get free meals.
We have an Outlander PHEV.
As an experiment, we did a fast DC charge at a CHaDMO station, which was $15CAD for a 65 km charge.
After running the numbers, that’s twice as much as the same distance on gas.
It’s the home charging (and short trips) that makes the EV part work. As soon as you outdistance the electricity that came out of your house, gas is half as expensive.
Which is why I think the hybrid is the way to go if you ever have to go any real distance.
My experience has been that charging at public chargers is about 3x as much as gas per mile driven. But this gets eaten up by larger cars and brings the number down closer, and battery efficiency isn’t really there yet. But a BMW X is 2x value for me.
This is meaningless without knowing miles driven, cost per gallon and kwh.
Generally EV’s fuel costs are less than gas in CA but not an order of magnitude less.
E.g. a 30mpg car will cost 16c / mile in fuel in CA at $5/gallon. In Wyoming gas looks to be $3/gallon so 10c / mile. An EV getting 4 m/kwh will cost maybe 5-10c per mile depending on your plan in CA. It’s significantly better but not as much as implied by the OP.
Off peak times for me can get down to 2c a mile.