General vehicle thread

[ray1970]

I refuse to go electric because I don't want to wear sandals year round and have to start buying Starbucks.

[Gman]

Not sure where you got your info from but they're installing all over the country at a pretty rapid rate these days. I know plenty of folks in Colorado with multiple Powerwalls in their solar setup.

I meant to type "...had only been available...". When I initially looked at solar, it was available in California almost exclusively. Wasn't an option here at all.

[Great-Kazoo]

I meant to type "...had only been available...". When I initially looked at solar, it was available in California almost exclusively. Wasn't an option here at all.

Affordable, is the key word.
It's not affordable nor worth it to invest thousands of dollars to save maybe pennies per month, at this time.
We've crunched numbers many times. Unless there's a program where the cost per month was less than $50 per month, i see no benefit .

However that's for a 2 person household who uses NG or propane for everything besides lights and ac. Even the solar reps said, yeah you're really not going to save anything. Which is a bummer for the potential that's here or coming.

[Gman]

Agreed. The payoff is far enough out that the degradation of the panels has to be a real concern. If you decide to lease the equipment, you're paying them instead of the local utility.

[ChickNorris]

I refuse to go electric because I don't want to wear sandals year round and have to start buying Starbucks.

Insidiousness

[Irving]

2020 Corolla hybrid to get Prius mileage without looking like a Prius.

https://jalopnik.com/the-2020-toyota...1832722601/amp

[Jer]

I refuse to go electric because I don't want to wear sandals year round and have to start buying Starbucks.

Why do people still assume a certain type of person owns EV cars? Are you really that worried about what others think of you?

[Jer]

Affordable, is the key word.
It's not affordable nor worth it to invest thousands of dollars to save maybe pennies per month, at this time.
We've crunched numbers many times. Unless there's a program where the cost per month was less than $50 per month, i see no benefit .

However that's for a 2 person household who uses NG or propane for everything besides lights and ac. Even the solar reps said, yeah you're really not going to save anything. Which is a bummer for the potential that's here or coming.

Program? What program? Are you talking about he companies who install and lease them back to you? Those are set up to the benefit of the company installing and NOT the homeowner. Tesla discontinued this program once it acquired Solar City and simply sells/installs the panels and Powerwalls now. Up to you to pay cash or finance.

IMO it's a good time to go solar if you can pay cash. Financing doesn't make as much sense since you'll be paying a bank interest which is going to eat into your break even date and push it back. We've finally got to the point where you can break even well under 10 years in most cases (even less if you drive an EV or two and are using more electricity regularly like us) which makes this more and more of viable solution with every year that passes. It's pretty easy math if you pay for the initial investment in less than 10 years (some reporting in the 7 year range now) and the warranty on the panels is 90% efficiency by 20 years. At least I think that's how the warranty reads. It's been a bit since I dug that deep but I know they were saying that most likely one could get 35 years out of the panels they're installing these days.

Sounds like your needs are low enough that you may not see a break-even of 10 years though so maybe it's not worth your initial investment. This would skew earlier if you switched to EV driving and the #'s may make more sense. Dunno. I know it's not for everyone and it has everything to do with the #'s and nothing to do with the opinions and feelings that too many people make their primary deciding factor. If they #'s make sense go for it. If they #'s don't make sense don't. Not sure why people are so passionate to fight over math. (not saying you are of course, just a general statement of what I've witnessed)

[Jer]

Agreed. The payoff is far enough out that the degradation of the panels has to be a real concern. If you decide to lease the equipment, you're paying them instead of the local utility.

I would never lease solar as that's not designed to benefit the homeowner if you look at the numbers hard enough. Regardless of the sales pitch none of them are trying to make clean electricity production a reality for all income levels. They're just trying to profit off of anyone willing to sign the dotted line. It's the used car industry of the 2000's.

I will say, though, that while your first point was true say 10+ years ago we're seeing advancements now that the focus has been shifted to solar that have slowly been bringing that break-even deadline down drastically. I know at one point about 15-20 years ago you could install solar but you'd never break even based on the life expectancy of the panel. That's not the case anymore and the panels have got more and more efficient to the point where it makes financial sense or a lot more people in 2019 than it would have even in 2010. I'm going to sit on the sideline just a little bit longer but I can't wait to see the #'s on the solar shingles once those are made available to the general public. They've been testing them for years in California and it sounds like they're the cat's pajamas. I'm sure they'll be cost prohibitive initially but I like the idea of replacing our asphalt shingles with those the next time we need a new roof if it's not ungodly expensive. Most likely it will be just adding a few panels as the price on those should continue going down (more so once the solar shingles come out) and the efficiency will continue rising.

I think we're getting a bit off topic though as this thread was created as a general car discussion topic so I don't want to run too far off topic since this portion of the conversation only applies to a select type of vehicles and even then isn't a requirement. It's an interesting enough conversation to warrant another dedicated thread though IMHO.

[Jer]

2020 Corolla hybrid to get Prius mileage without looking like a Prius.

https://jalopnik.com/the-2020-toyota...1832722601/amp

Having owned a Camry Hybrid when they first came out I will say that I think Hybrids are the WORST of both worlds. You sacrifice range to budget room & weight for an ICE plus you have BOTH of the potential failure points of BOTH technologies. I think you miss the point of EV whenever you go hybrid as the simplicity of no maintenance or moving parts isn't realized in a Hybrid. You just have more things that can go wrong. I think you should either go full EV or stay ICE but I made the mistake of going Hybrid once and I won't make that mistake again. While our hybrid experience was worry-free (saved from all of the scheduled maintenance you have with an ICE vehicle) we bought new and traded in at 80k so I'm sure the next person couldn't say the same. I think that hybrids had their place but continuing to push that as a step between the two is doing a disservice to the average consumer.