5 Reasons for and against an EV, hybrid, or ICE

if you're looking for a local runabout, and have home charging ability, pick up a used bolt with low mileage, a new battery and warranty for around 15k.
if you want to travel, stick with a used tesla. i'm sure you can dind a decent m3 a few years old for a good price.

 

I'm swapping over to snows on a tesla 3 right now, and we washed/waxed it and cleaned the interior. I've "sorta" come to grips with the completely divergent interface. One thing though, when doing the interior, any time you open a door the car wakes up, rip-snorting AC starts up.: is there a "comatose" mode? I've looked online, suspect there isn't.

(wife relays she was getting frostbite, while mopping up the kombucha in the cup holders.)

 

what if you turn the temp up? i didn't notice anything during my test drive

 

Here you go: Used Cars for Sale - Hertz Certified | Hertz Car Sales

All of them got a new battery pack, because of the NTSB recall. If your not sure, try here: Check for Recalls: Vehicle, Car Seat, Tire, Equipment | NHTSA

 

Figured it out, in the screen menu: H/V section, turn off AC and the ON/OFF switch. Blessed quiet now, apart from a few minor hums.

 

Good video Bob; that guy is very thorough as always. Kinda like Project Farm guy, but he's cut back on the coffee.

One thing he didn't touch on, the dashboard, interfaces, controls, whatever you want to call it these days. My take, just rolling a Model 3 a few feet, doing a clean up and tire swap, it's definitely started with "fresh sheet of paper" for better or worse. I found for pretty much everything I needed to do, I had to talk to Mr. Google, and that gets old.

 

i wonder what percentage of tesla owners do their own maintenance? there are quite a few at bolt.org, but maintenance is pretty minimal

 

Tire swaps got interesting: there's no front or rear jacking points. The mind-set when they designed it appears to be 4-point, pro-garage style lift, and nothing but. There's four holes, at the four corners of the rocker panels, and you're supposed to use a proprietary hockey puck gizmo, with with protrusion on the top with an o-ring. I picked that up at Canadian Tire for about $6 CDN, just one.

Figuring to take it one corner at a time, which is doable, since I'm swapping in snow tires, NOT just rotating what's on there. It is doable, but once you get the puck gizmo installed, you've got about 4.25" clear to the floor. My floor jack's min height was about one inch more than that, so ran the whole car up onto my diy low-rise ramps first. My first Tesla "driving" experience...

From there it went well: got the jack in place, and lifted one corner at a time, JUST enough that the ramp became loose. Trying to avoid unecessary torsion to the car's frame, as much as possible. Bit of an unease feeling though, having the car only supported by floor jack.

Torque value for the lug nuts is 129 ft/lb. Put my corded-electric impact on, and it battled for at least 5 seconds before it started turning.

 

yep, first they remove the spare, then the jacking points.

 

EVs, in2025, in 6 words....
"Harder than it has to be...."

Otherwise.....
WHY subsidies them?

Don't get me wrong!!!
I love the fact that EVangelists are out there fighting the good fight!!!
I poked fun at iphone users for a decade before they 'democratized' them for all of the rest of us!!!

I just bought by 5th airtag yesterday for $18USD.
Cheaper than the stuff they sell for SMART phones!!!

 

That's basically what I did.

• However the 2013 Nissan Leaf back in 2016 didn't have a warranty that long back then, not that I needed it though.
• Also, I was blasting past 30,000 miles a year back then. When I traded the Leaf in for the Avalon I went from 50,000 mi to 80,000 mi in the first year.
• As for what I lost on the Leaf, it had cost me about $12,000, but I was able to get a state incentive of about $3,000 back then due to a loophole here in Colorado when you brought in an EV from out-of-state that hadn't ever been registered in Colorado. So it was $9,000. I sold it 12 months later and got $7,000 for it, so basically I walked away with only having paid the car payments and the electric costs as I wasn't under water but didn't get anything from it that didn't go to the debt.
• I found that range would be killed up to about 50% here in cold weather, even with trying to keep the heat-pump heater turned down or even turned off. The more I research it I find that this is normal for this area, and up to 50% range loss in the winter is to be expected. So this puts the range limit that I can currently handle at 275 miles to guarantee making it the 96 miles to the closest quick charge station heading South or 200 miles if I account for an L2 station they plan on installing 70 miles from here. (275 x 50% winter range loss x 70% end-of-life capacity = 96 guaranteed miles or 200 x 50% winter range loss x 70% end-of-life capacity = 70 guaranteed miles)
  
• So for me, a 200 mile range BEV or PHEV would be my minimum requirement unless I decide to keep it as a second car and just use an ICE car for long distance.

 

... why buy an EV? When, you could otherwise have, a hybrid?


Samuel, '04 Ruthiemobile

 

full tank every morning

no fumes

quiet

zippy

unlimited energy supply from the sun

no tune ups

not dragging a battery and engine around

 

IF you have a $1,000,000 house to charge it from.

Unless you're one of the 'little people' who live near the power plant....

So are golf carts.

As delivered?
UM....not exactly.
See: Night. Clouds. Hail. etc....

There ARE places where solar input is as uninterrupted as one might expect for people living on an oblated spheroid circling a nuclear furnace and tilted at roughly 24-degrees - BUT NOBODY LIVES THERE!
That means that you're probably grid-tied to a power source that makes the polar bears cry.....just like the 'red states.'

or.....ALMOST ALL of the states if you believe in a representative republic!

 

that doesn't answer samuels question, mr negatve

 

So I've been "plugging in" for about the last 15 years and here's some things I never see mentioned.....

Dealing with charging cables multiple times on a daily basis (30x2=60 minimum/month) is WAY more effort than stopping at the gas station (at the grocery store) twice a month (hybrid). Dirty/wet cables on the ground means dirty hands/steering wheel, running over cables/handles, tripping on cables, hiding or managing cables for security, "chinese fire drills" moving vehicles around in driveway/garage to access charge points, snow/freezing temps., forgetting to plug in, hands full (including hot coffee) when approaching car means physical gymnastics most mornings (fun!), due to various reasons being limited to only one charge location for multiple vehicles (family), etc. It all adds up.

FWIW

 

"not dragging a battery and engine around"

Right about the engine anyway

 

i guess i'm fortunate that the charging cable is coiled up nicely on the wall nest to the car, never dirty, wet or oily. in fact, there is no oil on the floor because there is no engine.
300 mile bolt allows me to charge once a week or so. i never do anything with hot coffee in my hand except drink it