Featured Americans insist on 300 miles of EV range. They’re right

So is everything else.

Would spending around 50% of the family's income on rent/mortgage and on top of that spend another 25% or so on car expenses be considered sane or insane?

 

Be careful when citing tax credit amounts. The Model 3 RWD and AWD LR are only eligible for $3,750 in tax credit and the Performance is eligible for $7,500. All Model Ys are eligible for $7,500.

 

I just learned something, thank you. Did they change it? Some were claiming $7,500. On the base a few months ago

 

Idk, when we bought our first house back in the day, the bank limited our mortgage to a third of monthly income , and I instilled this in my kids.
Our cars were beaters I maintained myself for the most part. We didn’t buy a new one until after we’d been married eight years and I was established in a decent job.
Hey, I’m driving an eleven year old car now

 

There are rentals here that won't let you move in if the cost is more than 1/3 of monthly income. But there's some "low income" housing for sale that's about $300,000 per condo but limits household income to $50,000/year in order to qualify. That's around $4,000/month income at best for around a $2,000/mortgage. I'm tempted to buy one just so we can have a place of our own since rent just seems to keep going up and up and I qualify 100%.

With the exception of our short-lived Nissan Leaf ownership we are in our first non-beater car, and it's now 10 years old. We bought it after 12 years of marriage and at the time I had been working in the same place for 11 years, where I'm still working to this day. We got the Leaf a year before and then sold it for just enought to neither owe anything nor get anything out of it so I could afford the monthly payments on the Avalon.

I do nearly all the maintenance on all our cars we've owned too. Not that long ago I changed the sparkplugs for the first time and the transmission fluid for the second time on the Avalon.

I guess the point was it's not a great idea to try to buy a new EV or PHEV if you can't afford a new car period.

 

The new rules went into effect 4/18/23.

 

I think you nailed it

 

The battery origin requirements for the tax credit were being waived until the accounting was in place to track them. Now they are in effect. The Model 3 RWD is $3750 because the LFP battery cells are made by CATL in China. Other EVs that qualified for $7500 earlier in the year have the amount reduced or eliminated.

PS: the numbers for the Edmunds TCO of the Model 3 I posted earlier didn't included any tax credit.

An owned condo could be as difficult as a rental house in terms of EV charger installation.

 

According to Tesla, all versions of the Model 3 now (6/2/2023) get the full $7500 credit.
I suspect the battery sourcing was changed to the USA.

 

Stay tuned for the next exciting adventure in "SUBSIDY LAND."

Sorry for the lame joke but my experience is we buy a car when we need a car. Sales and subsidies are nice but the primary motivation is need.

Bob Wilson

 

I just saw. Crazy, does that mean people who bought in between only get half the credit? Fun for the IRS/tax software to figure out.

 

I would assume so.
I would have been surprised if Tesla had not shifted the batteries around.
Personally, I like the lower cost batteries. I was considering going back to a Model 3, but will wait until they go back to using them.

 

Bottom line - most of the USA that that want EV's - not only want an EV's w/ a 300 mile range ... its gotta come with a few options .... AND w/out ripoff price gouging to force you onto a car - that you didn't really come into the dealership to buy. Yet the new Toyota creed seems to be;
"You'll buy whatever WE choose to sell you ... & you'll like it". LOL.
.

 

According to recent news, ALL M3 are now eligible for the full $7500 credit.

Tesla says all new Model 3s now qualify for full $7,500 tax credit | TechCrunch

EDIT to Add: Whoops I'm late on this. It's already been covered in the above comments from others.

 

i have always purchased cars ahead of need so i can get the best deal and model i want.

i'm currently looking, and the tax credit is an important piece of the puzzle

 

Yeah, it is always a good idea to be able to shop around. For most of us, a car is the second largest shopping item after the house. You don't want to be in a situation where you have to buy a car without having the option to do comparison shopping.

For now, we are doing fine with just Escape PHEV for two drivers. I traded my PP for Escape PHEV basically with no money out of my pocket after the tax credit and state incentives. Even though Escape PHEV does not come anywhere close to the efficiency of the 21 PP, the longer EV range makes it basically an EV for most of our daily driving. And it has a large enough cargo. Plus comes with a spare tire. Since it replaced both PP and Pathfinder SUV, the total annual car cost is now lower than what it was when we had two cars.

I am on the lookout for a Bolt EV in a local dealer's lot. A BEV for our location is only good for commuting, not for long trips. So, currently, Bolt is the only cheap daily driver option I have, now PP or Leaf not being eligible for the tax credit. But even if I find a Bolt in stock for sale, I don't want to pull the trigger yet until I know what happens to my commuting situation for my work. If I can keep working from home, I really don't need a commuter car. The only thing is that I wouldn't know what happens to my work commuting situation until later this summer.

 

So June 19th, I'll leave before sunrise to drive ~700 miles to Ann Arbor MI for an Open House at Munro Associates the next day. I will spend two nights at a motel with four, free EV charging stations. There is a great automobile and transportation museum that I'll try to visit or possibly a casino.

June 20th, I'll head about ~700 miles to my Huntsville AL home but I may divert to visit brother Dave and/or a nephew and my parents grave at Arlington. Depending on mood, I may head over to the Outer Banks but tourist season is not my idea of a 'good time.'

Bob Wilson

 

i get 600 miles range, but only drive 10 miles a day

 

Seattle Times (from Bloomberg): Why so many electric-car chargers in America don’t work

"J.D. Power regularly surveys EV drivers in the U.S. about their charging experiences, working in collaboration with the PlugShare app that many drivers use to locate stations. Two years ago, 14.5% of respondents said they’d been unable to charge at a public station. Now it’s 21.4%. “It’s definitely heading in the wrong direction,” Gruber said.
...
One widely cited 2022 study of fast-charging stations in the San Francisco Bay Area (excluding Tesla’s Superchargers), found that about 25% of the 657 plugs weren’t working. While J.D. Power doesn’t disclose reliability rankings, Gruber said the worst-performing charging company leaves drivers unable to plug in about 39% of the time.
...
Tesla proved that reliable charging is possible. ... Tesla consistently gets the highest customer-satisfaction marks of any charging company in J.D. Power’s surveys, Gruber said. Its drivers report charger downtime of just 3%."

So, at least today, I can have reliable Tesla chargers on a too-sparse web, not where I usually need them, or a quite noticeably wider but still insufficiently complete network of unreliable chargers.

"As EV adoption continues to pick up in the U.S., the majority of car charging will take place at home, a convenience that is itself one of the chief selling points for electric driving. But even with the average U.S. EV range approaching a record 300 miles, public charging stations will still be needed for longer trips and garage-less drivers. That’s why the Biden administration this spring established a lengthy set of rules aimed squarely at broken chargers. Among them: Any federally funded charger must be functional more than 97% of the time."