Why did you buy a plug in and not an electric car.

The EV range is about perfect for me, 28 on average. So my daily commute is about 40.6 miles, but my boss lets me charge at the office. When we need to go anywhere far, I still can use my Prime. The GF has a Chevy Bolt with about 238 mile range. Pretty much anywhere within 90 miles out is perfectly fine in that car, but anything longer does give me range anxiety.

 

Some background. We are a retired couple, so no commute. The wife has a 2000 Lexus ES300 with about 60K miles on it. My daily driver was a 2009 Miata GT with about 12K miles and I have a 1999 Toyota Tacoma with about 75K miles. We didn't need a new car, but after a few two hour trips in Seattle area gridlock I decided to finally get a car with an automatic transmission. I subscribe to about five auto magazines, so I am aware of what is out there. The Prime sounded interesting, so I went to my local Toyota dealer to test drive one. They said that they weren't being imported to Washington State. That made me want one more. Did a search and found that there were three in the Seattle area. The closest dealer had one in the color and options that I wanted, so I traded in the Miata and have enjoyed the comfort and safety conveniences of my Prime since March. If the Tesla Model 3 had been readily available, I might have bought it, as we could use the Lexus for trips of more than 150 miles, which are fairly rare with us.

 

Next car will be a PHEV, but that will be to supplement the BEV and many HEVs we have.

Most everything I have read in this thread are excuses from people who have obviously not driven a BEV full time. You don't need 600mi range, you don't need charging in 5 minutes, etc. My 1st gen Leaf is charged with an L1 EVSE, meaning it plugs into a normal outlet, no special hardware required. Every now and then a DCQC with CHAdeMO, but very rare. It is almost always fully charged in the morning and if not, it gets charged up while it is parked elsewhere. If it is parked, it charges.

If you want to travel larger distances, rent a car or fly. More efficient use of time and resources.

 

I can appreciate some can live with just a BEV but we often find ‘closeted’ garage hybrids with gas/diesel in the garage. Nothing wrong with that but when the garage cars have the same weight and payload it makes one wonder.

Rather than call them “excuses”, they look like requirements which are driven by something more than disdain for the challenges faced by others.

Bob Wilson

 

hang on, next car will be a phev, but you think most here should have bought a bev instead?

 

Eloquently phrased, Uncle Bob!

Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

most of us don't have 10 cars in the stable. renting a car is a pain and not something i would ask anyone to do in place of going out their door to their own car,

 

I love the thread title.

 

Yes. Wife's primary car which is currently a full gasser will become a PHEV, most likey a Panamera. The BEV is mostly mine. Most of the "reasons" explained here, are simple excuses. I do not believe that everyone should drive a BEV. However I do believe that it works for most people. And most in this thread, it would also work for. But those with 100+ miles a day, or 600mi trips one a week, etc then sure don't get a BEV. But the majority of people it works just fine for.

When was the last time you rented a car? It's not a pain at all. Book online, walk into the lot, get in the car, drive to the exit gate where you show your ID and within a minute you are driving away in a rental. The rental is always 0-2 years old usually with less than a few K miles on the odometer. And you can even rent a Prius!

 

2012 in san jose, it was a pia.

 

Simple - I can refuel it almost anywhere in less time than it takes to go to the bathroom. High speed Ev charging infrastructure is still slow (10 minutes will get you 50 miles of range versus 600) and sparse (hundreds of locations in the country versus hundreds of thousands). When I'm on an out of town driving trip I don't have the time to delay and/or divert to charge and I'm not going to limit where I can go based on where charging infrastructure is available.

 

I think this is an admission that a BEV is reasonable if you have a Hybrid or a few Hybrids backing it up. I would agree with that statement. Many of my trips would be fine with a full EV car but many would not so I think we agree pure-EV is not reasonable as the only mode of transportation.

Sorry but I'm going to have to bucket this into the ridiculous category. At least today. As the range of EVs increase, the need for alternate forms of transportation (hybrids, rentals, planes, trains, etc.) will decrease. I think we all get that. The question here is what would the capabilities need to be before we would be happy with pure-EV being the only thing in the driveway.

Need and want are different things. I don't want a car that lacks those types of attributes. It is true that I might not absolutely need them but I have no intention of adapting my lifestyle around the car...It serves me, not the other way around.

I'm still really interested in the discussion about why a BEV is so desirable over a HEV. Many people on this forum are already driving most of their miles in EV mode and every one of them has the ability to easily go several hundred more miles for only a few dollars of readily available fuel. Why is removing the Hybrid functionality advantageous? I doubt I'll even spend over $300 in fuel this year so it can't be about saving money and for some here electricity isn't actually less expensive than gas.

Don't get me wrong, I like driving electric...I just don't get why I wouldn't want to have the hybrid capability there for when I need more.

 

I agree with everything here...It's a good set of reasons why Hybrid is a good solution.
Now, let's hear why electric-only is a better solution...

 

One of the reasons we traded nothing in to get the Leaf is that I figured just like I hear in this thread. I had the exact same predispositions and figured I needed something with an engine in it for when the BEV wouldn't work. In the 4+ years I have had the Leaf, there hasn't been a reason to use an ICE vehicle. The Leaf with its minimal range (but it does have CHAdeMO, because like I said I "needed" that when I bought it, or so I thought) has done everything needed of it. I drive and travel much more than the average person. I also drive the Leaf on the highway at 80mph+ and the mountains are everywhere and steep. Pretty much worst case scenario for a BEV.

But no I don't think there should be a 100% EV mandate.

I rely on the availability of something with an engine when I travel. And once you start looking at it like that, it is not a lifestyle change at all. Everything about it, is a benefit. Why wouldn't you want to take a rental vehicle on a road trip with its brand new everything, meticulous maintenance, and not having to worry at all about the depreciation or damage.

We stopped doing "trips" with cars years ago. Completely pointless when you can hop on a plane and go anywhere you want. The only long distance trip is to the airport.

Without actually going full BEV for a while, most people just won't get it. I didn't get it until I bought one. The fact that most people drive the Prius Prime in EV mode most of the time pretty much drives that home even more. Even with barely any range, it covers most people's driving most of the time. Quadruple that range to something like a 1st gen Leaf and now pretty much everything can be covered in EV mode only except maybe the once a year roadtrip people love to dream of taking but rarely do.

Some people I know but won't name have giant Suburbans. Why? Because they need the space for their cross country roadtrips with the kids. Ok. How many road trips have they taken? They take a single 4 hour trip every 2 years. Meaning they bought a vehicle to satisfy a once a year requirement that turned into a once a 2 year requirement which is really 8 hours total of car time. Just doesn't make any sense.

Buy the best tool for the job 99% of the time if getting 100% of the requirement has other larger sacrifices for the 99% of the time you don't need that 1%.

All the maintenance required for having the engine there, the huge weight disadvantage for having it there, and then when you add in the ICE you generally have to reduce the battery part to keep the weight/range in-line.

I totally get both sides of the argument. I have tons of HEVs, some ICE-onlys, a BEV, and am looking to buy a PHEV next year. But almost everyone I know of who has made the switch to a full BEV find all their previous excuses were BS. Including me!

I own a 1st gen Leaf with a L3 DC quick charge port, purchased at a time when there was only 1 CHAdeMO station in the entire state over 150 miles away (out of Leaf range!). The whole reason I have that port is because I had all the same excuses I read here.

I believe there are lots of perfectly viable reasons for not owning a BEV. But most of the reasons expressed here, are not them.

 

As I said earlier in this thread, I had a BEV as my only vehicle for two years. Worked OK for us, but we did limit our radius to about 35miles. That doesn’t sound like very far, but it worked for us. We traded for the Prime so that longer road trips will be possible, but we still haven’t gone more than about 60 from home in the past 6 weeks. I imagine we will go further when the weather improves.

The thing that “bothers” me is knowing I’m dragging around this gas engine that I’m rarely using. Am I going to change the oil, and do other engine maintenance, if I only put on 1,500 - 2,000 gas miles a year? The first REAL maintenance scheduled for the BEV Fiat 500e (other than tires, inspection, and cabin air filters) was coolant change at 10 years / 10,000 miles.

I wish I had a need for two cars! I’d have the Prime for the family / trips, and possibly a Smart Cabio EV for my enjoyment.

 

I don't need 600 miles, yeah. I live in hurricane country on the coast, I may have to bug out, you ever been through an evac? No place to charge and you have to go far to get somewhere where you can stay. Name one EV that can handle that situation. Flying or rentals are out too because everyone else is bugging out too.

As for the charging, I don't like to wait and that's a very valid complaint. (and I occasionally have better things to do!)

fwiw, only a third of my commute is fully EV, and yes, I do like driving that third more than HEV, but I'm not limited by that. I also only have space for one car, so no, I don't have a big highway cruiser sitting in the garage. And yes, my daily commute could be covered by a number of EV's -- it's the other times that drove my purchase more than anything. I really do need a car that covers whatever I might need to do at the time. No charging infrastructure around here either...

 

Literally the very first trip I took in my Prime was a 300 mile round trip to visit family at a destination where there's no charging to speak of.

Because it's a monumental hassle, you never get a car you like, and it's expensive. I looked into it for a road trip last year and it was going to be over $1,000 for a rental and I couldn't guarantee which car I'd get.

I recently took four trips that either would be impossible or totally impractical to take on a plane. And they're better because we didn't try to take a plane. If I had taken a plane to Kansas City for a wedding I would have missed going to the Hutchinson Cosmosphere (one of the coolest places anywhere, in my opinion) which was on the way in the car. I took a trip last year that went like this - Denver, Hutchinson, Kansas City, Champaign, IL for a model airplane meet, Chicago for a three day family vacation, Dayton, OH for one day at the USAF museum, back to Kansas City for a family reunion, back home. Pretty much impossible in a plane. And we recently went from Denver to Custer SD for three days (takes longer to get there on a plane than it does to drive), then to Glenrock, WY (no airport) for the eclipse. We recently went Denver, Carlsbad Caverns NM, Roswell NM for the art museum and Goddard Lab, Pueblo Colorado for Thanksgiving day, Denver for day after Thanksgiving then home. Again, pretty much impossible in a plane.

Arranging a plane trip is such a hassle and so expensive that I've cut my air travel by a factor of four and I'm thrilled that I did. It takes three hours to get from my door to leaving the gate so any trip of less than about 6 hours in a car is faster in the car than a plane anyway.

I know 14 people with Leaf's. All of them have gas cars to take out of town.

In town only.

I've had my Prime 8 months and I've gone on 5 trips (2 300 mile round trips, one 1,450 mile round trip, one 950 mile round trip and one 1,250 mile round trip) you couldn't take in a Leaf.

To take one of those 5 trips I mentioned, I'd have needed a 620 mile range for one of the legs.

I just counted them up. I took 8 out of town road trips in 2016 and 9 in 2017. They ranged in round-trip distance from 200 miles to 3,000 miles.

Which is virtually nothing.

But smaller than the weight disadvantage of a long-range battery (by far).

 

That pretty well covers everything.

When there are at least as many chargers as gas stations, and quick charging then people will really get interested in Pips/ Bevs. Range fear on Bevs is a given, with the Pips one is much more adaptable.

I thought everybody in the US had 120 VAC in their house, basic cable and charging ability comes with the car. Did the Utility cut off your electricity?

 

I think they meant that their parking was not local or secure. If they live in the top floor apartment without parking they will have no way to charge.


iPhone ?

 

TY I think they should say what they mean. Not ours to second guess. otherwise one gets second answers.