OT: Talking Cars Tuesday, Electric Addition
Borrowing Jeepin Ben's byline today. I've asked many questions on these threads over the past couple of years about electric cars. My husband and I finally got one. A Mini SE. Here's my brief review (this was my first time driving an electric car, btw):
We just moved back to the city (Chicago) so a small electric car seemed right for the time. The Mini ticked all the boxes except for range. But we figured with the way we drive, and since we're putting a charger in the garage, the range wouldn't be a deal breaker.
The car is super fun to drive. It's like a souped up golf cart with much better handling. The one pedal regenerative braking takes some getting used to but if I can learn how to drive a stick, I can learn how to drive with one pedal. We have a second car, a small SUV, so we probably won't drive the Mini in the snow -- it's really not geared towards that. But all in all, we're happy we finally bit the bullet. As my husband said after his first drive, "It feels like I'm driving the future."
I've been driving a 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid for a couple of years now and really enjoy it. I would love to get a plug-in hybrid suv but new car prices + interest rates just make it impossible. I can't afford an $800/month car payment.
Addition =/= Edition
Ha, thanks for noticing. Where's spell check when you need it? (Though it could be addition, too, since this is an addition to our one car fleet)
I work on EV electronics (the chargers and DC/DC converters, specifically), so my next vehicle will definitely be electric. I commute only 2x a week and less than 30 miles round trip, wife only makes short trips for kids and groceries around town, so an EV is pretty ideal. Plus my work has free charging, so I'd only pay to charge the car very seldomly. For longer trips, we'll keep our other gas car and possibly rent when it comes time to get a second car. I wish there were more plug in hybrids and/or EVs with range extenders, but it seems like no one wants to make a car with two powertrains. A lot of my co-workers have made the jump, plus a few family and friends, and the feedback is almost universally positive.
Welcome to the club! Wife and I both joined this year too!
That’s really an ideal setup - one EV for the daily stuff, one ICE for when range/infrastructure is an issue.
I suppose renting when needed could be a sufficient backup for those of us in 1 vehicle households, but ngl it makes me nervous to rely on something like that.
Will probably never buy another ICE car as we love our i3 and the convenience and ease of owning an all electric car.
Was about to replace wife's SUV with Cadillac Lyriq, but she hated the bubble butt so looking at other options. But I loved that car. Super luxurious interior and smoothest drive train I ever tried. Really impressive.
As a gear head and someone who just bought the opposite of an EV (V8 manual transmission sports car), the gearless electric motor just doesn’t do it for me the way the roar of a naturally aspirated engine & banging through gears does. I have access to a second more practical car for longer drives, winter driving, and other situations where my car would be inconvenient but I wouldn’t trade that for an EV since I tend to drive long distances often and charging would be inconvenient. Also, EVs are just expensive and I wouldn’t buy one until they’re at parity with ICE cars.
As a gear head who has owned several very fact ICE cars, some standard, some automatic (5.0 Mustang, BMW Z4 among them), I'm now an electric convert as we all will be one day. Battery anxiety is real, but will be vanquished in the next ten years when charging stations are everywhere.
In my experience, I can assure that electric is exceptionally satisfying. In many ways its combo of silence and exceptional torque is really special. Helps too that my electric (Jag I Pace) sticks to the pavement.
I have a PHEV and love it. Aside from it being cool tech and more environmentally friendly, I save a ton driving electric vs. gas. By the time this car dies in hopefully 10-15 years, I'm excited to see what kind of EVs are available. It feels like the technology has finally 'caught' and now you're gonna see the tech advance rapidly as more and more investment dollars pour in
Genuine question - can anyone point me to articles/studies showing that the transition to EVs will result in an overall decrease in fossil fuel consumption? I understand the reduction for the fleet of vehicles, but my concern has always been whether this is going to simply turn out to be a sleight of hand - instead of cars consuming fossil fuels, we're going to charge EVs at stations that are going to be powered by ... power plants that consume fossil fuels. Coupled with increased strain on the power grid infrastructure, will the end result be an overall decrease in use, or just a shift from many small sources to a few large?
no, because despite thousands of proclamations to the contrary, predicting the future is impossible. sure, some lucky person gets to say “told ya so” because they guessed right, but no one knows.
im sure there’s publications out there claiming that using trends and statistical modeling, but take for what it is. an educated guess
On the very surface level, the energy conversion of an electric car is more efficient than an internal combustion car. So that efficiency alone means even if we don't transition the grid, they're still better for the environment and for reducing fossil fuel consumption. There's a great graphic here:
Some folks are concerned about the energy it takes to produce the batteries, and this requires more assumptions but plenty of trusty academics have concluded that over their lifetime EV's still have less impact on the environemnt. Here are some of the articles I found.
What's indisputable is that the greenest way to travel is absolutely to take the bus and the train. Nobody will argue that. It's often also the cheapest way to travel. But unfortunately, it's not a viable option for many, if not most Americans. With the reality that most of us need access to a car, I'd highly recommend checking out EVs and seeing if they work for you, if you're in the market.
It seems part of the issue is the enormous variation in how electricity is generated (i.e. coal vs hydropower). I found this to be a good discussion (with footnotes to articles/studies if you have database access).
I easily could've gotten stuck in the molasses of all the information out there. I'm not STEM-inclined like many here so my understanding of this is very rudimentary. I went back and forth on the battery issue -- the mining of the materials and whether that's less damaging to the environment than ICE's. Lots of differing opinions out there. I looked at this the way I look at my induction cooktop. There have been studies that say cooking with gas is bad for our health and the environment and that may well be true but I switched to induction cooking because I really enjoy the experience and to my knowledge, it's not worse for the environment than cooking with gas. If it's better for the environment, great. If the Mini had been lousy to drive, I probably wouldn't have done it, to be honest. But it's fun to drive and hopefully ultimately better than a gas engine for the environment.
Generally producing energy at the fossil fuel power plant will be more efficient than using a lot of dispursed tiny power plants under the hood of your car. Not to mention that with an ICE you are using a 100% fossil fuels, while the grid includes energy from other sources. So there's pretty much no way we could end up burning more fossil fuel by going to EVs.
I had a Prius for 9 years and loved it. But then I took the leap to EV about 2.5 years ago. I love my EV and will never go back. Accelerates like crazy, and the quiet, smooth ride eases my driving stress levels. The one issue I’ve had was caused by supply chain issues in Germany — my next EV will be assembled in the USA so it won’t take 2 months to get a replacement part!
I wish EV’s were more popular right now. I live in an area where everyone who owns a truck thinks they need to have an aftermarket muffler that is as loud as possible. Can’t wait for the days when traffic noise is nearly nonexistent.
Sounds like where I live: West "by god" Virginia.
My wife and I went electric 5 years ago and haven't looked back. Fun to drive and the vast Tesla charging network means almost no range anxiety. We have never been stranded, that is for sure. Once the Tesla charging network is opened up to other cars, we will probably buy a different brand, but for now we are enjoying our Tesla Model 3 and Model Y.
Drive an EV and you will never want to go back to ICE.
I got my model 3 Sr a couple months ago right after they got qualified for the full rebate and they were running inventory specials. Absolutely love it. For 32k really hard to find a new car with Simlar trim level.
That said I wish I waited a few weeks and cross researched an ionic 5 or 6. I think the charging network holds back non teslas too much but the lease deals on the make sense even if you buy it out in a few years when financing rates come back down to ground compared to me buying a Tesla now.
Bolt is stupid cheap. I don't think it compares feature wise as well to a Tesla but I think it's a quality comuter option.
I'm soon to have my Fisker Ocean One delivered, but believe that hybrids are the way to go.
Hello fellow Chicagoan! If our ICE car was something like a truck or an SUV, I'd be pretty happy with a shorter-range EV for around-town trips. Taking our dog to day care every day, and my occasional commute to work, would probably total 100ish miles every week, so no problems there.
But we need one single do-everything car, which includes 6-8 longer drives per year. Until the charging of an electric vehicle is as convenient as filling up at a gas station, I'm leaning towards a hybrid as our next car.
Recently bought a 2017 Kia Optima plug-in hybrid with about 44k miles. The electric-only part only gets about 25 miles per charge before it goes to a regular hybrid, but that's pretty much all I need for our short trips (taking kids to school, sports practice, going to the grocery store, etc.). The first full tank in that car gave me over 800 miles before I had to refill.
August 2nd, 2023 at 12:56 PM ^
That Blazer SSev is very tempting.