Open Discussion of all Things Electric Vehicle (aka EV) for Those Pro or Con, BE RESPECTFUL!

[Jer]

We don't all have to agree but let's be respectful in our disagreements.

The goal of starting this thread this isn't to "convert" anyone against their will or spread the word of our lord and savior Elon Musk. I wanted to have an open forum where people can ask questions, get answers and challenge what people hold to be true whether that be for or against the segment. This is an emerging tech market and, as such, what may have been true last year or even last month may not be the case today. I want to have a neutral thread where people can have an open discussion about this topic w/o feeling as if they're being forced or convinced of anything.

I've been researching this for a number of years now and have been 100% EV for several years as well. Ask me anything you want and I will do my best to answer your question. If something about it sucks, I will be open and honest. I have no agenda other than making sure that people have as much information as possible before echoing untruths as "facts" or deciding something isn't for them based on these same conversations. I'm not a environmentalist and only drive these cars because they're the best I've ever driven. Prior to that, I too felt they weren't for me and I know lots of people that fit a similar description now. That only happens if you what you think you know as fact is challenged and you're open enough to at least consider it. If you aren't willing to have an unbiased conversation this isn't the thread for you.

Now that more players are coming to the arena I think things are going to start get interesting. This feels like a good time to have this conversation. Lots of cool stuff on the horizon and the consumer will benefit greatly from these advancements even if they stick with ICE vehicles. The bar has been raised and everyone will benefit as competition must adjust or business will be lost to the innovator.

I know this is a highly politically charged topic but let's do our best to keep politics out of it as much as possible. I assure you that I didn't vote Biden just because I drive a Tesla. You'd be surprised who is driving these things these days and their reasons. Here's your chance to get to know them if you're interested.

[Great-Kazoo]

If it was financially, as well as practical for our needs. I'd consider one. Till then, the price point, or limitations are not something i'd buy

[Jer]

If it was financially, as well as practical for our needs. I'd consider one. Till then, the price point, or limitations are not something i'd buy

Out of curiosity, are you talking new? If someone is buying a new car and looking for advice I'm not your guy because that deprecation hit you take is just brutal on ANY brand. If you're buying a new car (given the aforementioned rate of depreciation) you have FAR bigger financial concerns than annual fuel bill versus electricity bill.

That said, if you find a good deal on used one you can find a great car for a fraction of what they cost new. In our case, I've actually bought/sold seven of them used now. Not only do we not lose money but we actually make a few bucks. I realize that not everybody will want to go through this so I'm not suggesting it's for everyone.

I tell people that they can conservatively estimate paying 1/10th in electricity than they do gas to cover the same miles. That delta is even greater now that gas prices are crazy but it's a nice round number that makes mental estimations easy. We save right around $4k per year, per vehicle. I spread sheeted this out years ago when gas prices were $2.18/gal so you can only imagine how much we save now that that price has blown up. We also drive less than average so that savings would also go up relative how many miles you put on your vehicle. Bonus, you never ride that fuel price roller coaster again.

Naturally, whatever you determine to spend on the front end to acquire said vehicle will impact that "savings" figure but it's not nothing. Sock that money away for a "rainy day" and you can have a nice repair account built up by the time the 8-year battery pack and drive motor warranty expires should you need to replace them.

I wouldn't suggest buying an EV strictly for the gas/oil savings but... it's another entry in the "for" column for sure.

[DDT951]

The first pro i saw..

A Tesla roadster at bandimere laying waste to all manner of corvettes, mustangs, Camaros, etc.

When a 12.X pops at bandimere for real street car, that is quick.

[Jer]

The first pro i saw..

A Tesla roadster at bandimere laying waste to all manner of corvettes, mustangs, Camaros, etc.

When a 12.X pops at bandimere for real street car, that is quick.

Roadsters are ancient news. Hell, even my 2017 Model S is an old clapped out turd compared to what they make now. It'll do a respectable 0-60 blast in an eye-watering 2.28 seconds which earned it the fastest 0-60 Motor Trend Magazine had ever tested. Up until the Model S plaid came out last year. The quarter miles happens in 10's and all of those numbers are achievable in just about any condition by just about any driver. Perfectly happy coasting around town in silence too.

[Great-Kazoo]

Out of curiosity, are you talking new? If someone is buying a new car and looking for advice I'm not your guy because that deprecation hit you take is just brutal on ANY brand. If you're buying a new car (given the aforementioned rate of depreciation) you have FAR bigger financial concerns than annual fuel bill versus electricity bill.

That said, if you find a good deal on used one you can find a great car for a fraction of what they cost new. In our case, I've actually bought/sold seven of them used now. Not only do we not lose money but we actually make a few bucks. I realize that not everybody will want to go through this so I'm not suggesting it's for everyone.

I tell people that they can conservatively estimate paying 1/10th in electricity than they do gas to cover the same miles. That delta is even greater now that gas prices are crazy but it's a nice round number that makes mental estimations easy. We save right around $4k per year, per vehicle. I spread sheeted this out years ago when gas prices were $2.18/gal so you can only imagine how much we save now that that price has blown up. We also drive less than average so that savings would also go up relative how many miles you put on your vehicle. Bonus, you never ride that fuel price roller coaster again.

Naturally, whatever you determine to spend on the front end to acquire said vehicle will impact that "savings" figure but it's not nothing. Sock that money away for a "rainy day" and you can have a nice repair account built up by the time the 8-year battery pack and drive motor warranty expires should you need to replace them.

I wouldn't suggest buying an EV strictly for the gas/oil savings but... it's another entry in the "for" column for sure.

I will never buy a used EV, not when most are up in the mid 75-80K mileage wise, with cost of a replacement battery not worth opening my wallet for. The 2nd reason for not owning 1, leg room. Until a ev mfg makes a very friendly, ADA leg room unit, it can sit on the showroom.
3rd . Those vehicles work for a family of 2, who travel moderately light. For us a mini van with cargo topper is still not enough room, when we rarely return home empty handed.



I'll wait till i'm too old to do my own services & repairs on what we drive, now.

[Jer]

I will never buy a used EV, not when most are up in the mid 75-80K mileage wise, with cost of a replacement battery not worth opening my wallet for. The 2nd reason for not owning 1, leg room. Until a ev mfg makes a very friendly, ADA leg room unit, it can sit on the showroom.
3rd . Those vehicles work for a family of 2, who travel moderately light. For us a mini van with cargo topper is still not enough room, when we rarely return home empty handed.



I'll wait till i'm too old to do my own services & repairs on what we drive, now.

Never is a pretty definitive length of time. I'm curious why you take a stance of "never" on a used EV. You can get used EVs of any year and mileage just like any other car. The more miles, generally speaking, the more you save over what they cost new. Lots of people are terrified of used EVs because of the reasons you mentioned but they fail to factory how much you save by buying used in the first place. With Teslas, for instance, they come with an 8-year warranty that transfers free from owner to owner. I've found a sweet spot in cars that are 4-5 years old or so that still have half of that warranty remaining and some even have some of the bumper-to-bumper warranty remaining as well. So... you're covered for major repairs for several years on a vehicle that cost you a fraction of what they were new. If you buy a used one with 4-5 years left on the warranty and throw that $4-$5k in a savings account until your warranty is expired you'll have enough to buy a new one even at the highest price if it fails the day after the warranty expires. It won't and you also don't HAVE to drop $20k to replace the battery pack. There are lots of 3rd party options out there that can fix your Tesla battery pack for a couple of grand in most cases I've seen. Pretty high tech stuff they do too so I wouldn't sweat it not being a solid solution. In the meantime, that $20k is just building interest rather than burning up (literally) in the form of gas/oil costs.

No idea on the ADA leg room requirements but I know a Model S has lots of leg room. Much more than that of the Model 3 and just more room in general as well. You can educate me on this aspect as I know very little.

As for room, you'd be pretty surprised with how much storage is in a Tesla Model S. It's substantial. People are always amazed by how much crap we can cram into one if need be. Depending on what you plan to haul, it may even offer more/better storage than a minivan. This is more case by case basis but I can tell you that, with the rear seats folded flat, the rear storage area on a Model S is absurd since it's a hatchback even though it looks like a sedan. you also have the lower hatch storage and the frunk area too.

[Great-Kazoo]

Never is a pretty definitive length of time. I'm curious why you take a stance of "never" on a used EV. You can get used EVs of any year and mileage just like any other car. The more miles, generally speaking, the more you save over what they cost new. Lots of people are terrified of used EVs because of the reasons you mentioned but they fail to factory how much you save by buying used in the first place. With Teslas, for instance, they come with an 8-year warranty that transfers free from owner to owner. I've found a sweet spot in cars that are 4-5 years old or so that still have half of that warranty remaining and some even have some of the bumper-to-bumper warranty remaining as well. So... you're covered for major repairs for several years on a vehicle that cost you a fraction of what they were new. If you buy a used one with 4-5 years left on the warranty and throw that $4-$5k in a savings account until your warranty is expired you'll have enough to buy a new one even at the highest price if it fails the day after the warranty expires. It won't and you also don't HAVE to drop $20k to replace the battery pack. There are lots of 3rd party options out there that can fix your Tesla battery pack for a couple of grand in most cases I've seen. Pretty high tech stuff they do too so I wouldn't sweat it not being a solid solution. In the meantime, that $20k is just building interest rather than burning up (literally) in the form of gas/oil costs.

No idea on the ADA leg room requirements but I know a Model S has lots of leg room. Much more than that of the Model 3 and just more room in general as well. You can educate me on this aspect as I know very little.

As for room, you'd be pretty surprised with how much storage is in a Tesla Model S. It's substantial. People are always amazed by how much crap we can cram into one if need be. Depending on what you plan to haul, it may even offer more/better storage than a minivan. This is more case by case basis but I can tell you that, with the rear seats folded flat, the rear storage area on a Model S is absurd since it's a hatchback even though it looks like a sedan. you also have the lower hatch storage and the frunk area too.

Well since you started this "discussion" asking to be respectful


I'll be less than polite when it comes to someone like you. Who for some reason ISN'T TAKING NO FOR AN ANSWER!

I explained why they don't work for me. I then explained it again. Since you seem to be ignoring what i've said. I'll SAY IT ONE MORE TIME. I have no inclination, desire, or even ponder buying an EV. After admitting you "HAVE NO IDEA" on the leg room. You then come back with . Well the Model S has lots of leg room. I'm sure it does for someone WITH 2 LEGS. FFS Jer give it a rest. A normal ICE vehicle with moderate center console doesn't work for someone like me with a full prosthetic.

Yet here you are trying to sell me on something that a person with 2 legs has no clue, why it doesn't work.
So let's wrap this up.

1st question. What happened to that Tacoma, you fawned and preened over a few years ago


2nd question, actually a statement.

From reading your entire thread. It appears the only one who needs convincing how GREAT AN EV IS. Is you. Sounds like you either have buyers remorse, OR so ignorant and tone deaf to those who FOR PERSONAL REASONS could care less about you or your EV's.


That's about as respectful as i can be, without getting a time out.


BUT keep trying to sell me, or question my reasons WHY I WILL NOT BUY ONE AND.......... i'll slam the door on you like those pesky jehovah witness.

Who like you, WILL NOT TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER.

[Martinjmpr]

And then there's the issue of those people who have to drive further than an electric charge can take them, and do so on a regular basis. Unless there's some kind of breakthrough in recharging technology that's always going to be a roadblock to mass EV adoption. For 95% of users, that won't be an issue.

HOWEVER, I think when you look at it that way you are committing the error of assuming that travel with EVs (or should be) exactly the same as travel with ICE vehicles.

There's no reason to think that it will. Nobody is on this board who was alive when horses were the normal means of transportation in the US. But when people went from animal-drawn travel to motor vehicles, they didn't just change what vehicles they used, they changed HOW they traveled.

Take a look at the Western immigrants: The Oregon Trail followed generally along rivers. It had to because they needed the water and the grass for their draft animals, and they needed the route to be relatively flat, as flat as possible. But then when they built the transcontinental railroad, they went straight across the desert. With no draft animals there was no longer any need to follow the river or to stay on flat ground that wagons could roll across.

I can foresee a few different ways around the long-distance issue. We may see, for example, a resurgence of rail travel where people put their electric vehicles onto a train and ride there, unloading when they get to their destination. This was actually not an uncommon way of traveling in the early part of the 20th century when the modern road system didn't exist and roads between cities were often impassable, especially in bad weather.

Or, we may see it become common that there will be fleets of ICE or hybrid long distance vehicles that people can rent when they need to do a long distance trip.

Finally, people may simply plan longer trips to have shorter "legs" so they can recharge along the way.

My point is that a major shift in technology like this often requires us to consider that it's not just one technological thing (the automobile) that is changing; rather the whole WAY in which we think of personal vehicle travel will likely change as well.

[Jer]

In order to jump start things over here, I "borrowed" a post from the older thread that sort of turned into the main EV discussion thread that I wanted to address.

I think the "not practical" is a valid argument when.

1. Weather is very cold (lithium batteries are stored cold when they want to put batteries into "hibernation")
2. Long distance driving involved
3. Trailer towing or heavy loads (especially with long distances).

Gasoline / Diesel definitely has the advantage over batteries with 1) amount of energy that can be carried on a vehicle and 2) speed at which the energy can be replaced.

What I envision in my future (not immediate) is there will probably be mix of electric and hydrocarbon fueled vehicles. I could see keeping my pickup for the reasons listed above, but for a "city car" or "daily driver" electric would probably be really good.

I wouldn't say it's not valid but it's far less valid than some believe. Your points go on to speak to exactly this:

1. While it's true Lithium Ion batteries don't like cold, that doesn't mean that engineering can't overcome this shortcoming for using them in vehicles. As a result, some of the cars handle it far better than others so a common mistake a lot of people make is "well EVs this or that" and lump them all into one category. I can tell you that I wouldn't go back to owning an ICE car in Colorado, especially in the winter. If you get an EV that has provisions for BMS that regulates the cell's temperature (for both hot and cold) to keep them at am optimal state this is really a non-issue other than slightly decreased range in the winter. This last fact is far less impactful one some vehicles than others and overall, far less impactful than some would have you believe. Being able to open an app on my phone and have my cabin be 70 degrees (or whatever temperature I want) within 2-3 minutes in any ambient temp is priceless. Never waiting for an engine to heat up to make heat or pre-heating a vehicle is priceless. The cars we have are the best winter car we've ever owned for many more reasons than just that.

2. See my other posts about this topic exactly. My wife and I take regular road trips all over the country in the summer months. This is a direct result of having Teslas as we rarely did it prior to owning them and certainly didn't do it for fun. This is a continually improving metric so between ranges going up and charge rates going up along with rapidly expanding Supercharger network this has become a pretty minimal difference unless you are the type of person who pulls a horse trailer, drives 2,000 miles in a single day and pisses in bottles versus stopping. This isn't how I choose to travel though, especially since having blood clots in my lungs a while back. Getting out for bio breaks and stretching every 2-3 hours isn't a bad thing IMO. But yeah, if I just described you then an EV probably isn't practical.

3. I agree with this. Hell, even Elon aka "King battery guy" says that BEV isn't the right technology for this use. He's gone on record several times saying that it's not the right tech for long-haul truckers. Nobody is making anything else though and Tesla is a battery company so... BEV semi! lol I tend to agree though that this isn't the way but there's got to be a better way than what we currently do. Even hydrogen (once we find a way to lower the cost of production and lots of other variables to make it viable) is probably a better solution for that use. It can be done with EVs (especially the newer ones coming out engineered for it) but it's not the ideal solution for most and viability varies based on many factors.

There are also lots of negatives to your pros of gas/diesel over EV so if you weighed them out you'd probably be surprised. That said, I know your list wasn't meant to be exhaustive so it wouldn't be fair for me to start addressing it as such.

In summary, I will say that EVs being "not practical" is a common misconception as they are not only practical but offer a significant improvement over ICE vehicles for most these days. I think lots of people checked out on them years ago based on what was true then but hasn't been for years now and kind of checked out. I'm often times guilty of the same thing though.