Featured Toyota Falls In Brand Loyalty Rankings After Customers Defect To Tesla

I've heard that it greatly shortens the battery life.

 

Curious if you can provide a link to that view of "what I've heard" ... because it's simply not true. However - 800 volt charging - as opposed to higher amperage charging is better then the latter when it comes to battery degradation. Similarly traction pack programming that slows charging when traction packs are very cold or very full assure they suffer way less degradation.

& since I asked you to show me yours, I'll show you mine

Tesla Supercharging Does Not Significantly Affect Battery Life, Study Reveals

You may have heard otherwise from somebody who hates plug-in vehicles.
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And yet I hear from our resident Tesla admirer about his 100k miles car he is buying an adapter for, worrying about where to charge it, needing/wanting to redo the suspension, taking another car on some long trips, battery degradation, etc

Me I just get in one of our hybrids and drive wherever and will be able to pay for gas for another 10 years for the difference in cost between mine and its equivalent EV replacement (even considering taxes and recent discounts). If I want to go 500 miles and then stop, I do it in either car. I don't plan my trip. I just do it. And I don't have the angst of maybe dinging a new car, the expense of additional insurance costs, the expense of special tires, etc. I do have maintenance. Maybe $200 a year. But the $20k I don't spend on an equivalent function EV but invested is paying for the maintenance.Heck my home charger installation even with some tax help would pay for lots of brakes and tires.

And when 4 of us go golfing, we don't have to pull clubs out of the bags and align them carefully, just throw the bags in the back of either car.

 

I don't know about the other guy but this is what @bwilson4web does for "self maintenance." Some maintenance and tuning takes more than one day to complete so a second car is needed to fetch tools or parts.

Summary of the two cars:

• $3.750 tax credit on ~$42,000 new Tesla Model 3 in 2019
  • $18,300 trade-in of 2017 Prius Prime
  • today has 116,144 mi
  • battery -9%, ~215 mi from 240 mi new range
  • adding CCS-1 adapter to 'fill the gap"
• $4,000 tax credit on $15,000 used, 2017 BMW i3-REx in 2023
  • today has ~58,000 mi up from 55,000 mi
  • battery -4%, 27 kWh vs 28.3 kWh
  • built-in 25 kW motor-scooter engine driven generator

In addition to maintenance: tuning to reduce drag; fully reclining passenger seat, and; advanced sun and winter cover. A car sized, camper with interstate privileges.

Bob Wilson

 

Don't forget getting a dash mount for his phone and hooking that up to his car internals just so he can have a proper instrument panel.

We're not all like that. Some of us bought EVs from other brands that have proper suspensions and allow us to (shock, horror) adjust the airflow coming out of vents with our hands.

 

Don't forget getting a dash mount for his phone and hooking that up to his car internals just so he can have a proper instrument panel.

We're not all like that. Some of us bought EVs from other brands that have proper suspensions and allow us to (shock, horror) adjust the airflow coming out of vents with our hands.

 

An engineer, we never have enough information. An individual's imagination and curiosity defines the limits of what they want and can do with the data.

Bob Wilson

 

I've used a Scangauge II on the Ranger, HHR, and Sonic. Simply haven't gotten around to installing it on the Outback.

 

I very much enjoy;

• The convenience of having a full 'tank' every morning
• Not inhaling toxic fumes when fueling up
• Minimizing the toxic fumes others are subjected to when I drive by
• The peaceful silence
• No longer needing to fiddle with the HVAC or most other controls on the dash
• The self sufficiency of fueling at home
• The pleasure of not having to deal with a Stealership.
• The peace of mind for me to take off at a moments notice to go anywhere I want (ICE vehicles have this capability as well, for the most part)

I can't imagine ever going back to an ICE vehicle.

 

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There are pros and cons to either choice, but I agree that overall the benefits of having an EV outweight whatever disadvantages there are.

The ability to fuel it off electricity is appealing to me. It is technically possible to make my own eletrcicity, either via solar panels or a wind mill or similar device. That appeals to me.

I hate getting out to start my Avalon and smelling the early morning exhaust fumes. Ineviteably I'll start the car to get the heater going so I can keep the windshield clean enough to drive, and my wife will come out, open the car door, then remember something from inside the house, and as she goes to grab it she also leaves the car door open and all the cold cat exhaust fumes just pour right on into the car. I feel like making some sort of catalytic converter heater and some electronically controlled car door opener/closers.

 

When I did my 1,000 mile tank in the old 2010 Prius, the trick was to absolutely minimize power load on the engine until the catalytic converter and fuel injection tuning was working. Those first 1-2 minutes are brutal on fuel efficiency.

Bob Wilson

 

This reminds me of another nice benefit of an EV;
When temperatures are well below freezing, (in the Garage in our case), While still plugged in - I turn on the car on (which you can't do with ICE in a sealed garage). Then - turning the car's heater on (which in our case heats up the coolant that's used to heat & cool the traction pack, motor & inverter) - we get extra efficiency. The car will eventually scavenge heat off the inverter & traction pack from driving, but that takes a lot longer when it's freezing outside - which reduces efficiency. When the car is pre-warmed it has the extra advantage of not having to heat up cabin as well as traction pack & inverter. Both you & your ride are toasty warm w/out having to gag on carbon monoxide in a sealed garage - and you avoid efficiency losses driving a frozen car while it's warming itself up.

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There may be, or may not be. The pros and cons are different for different people.
As exampled above, Mike finds tons of cons and no(?) pros. While some of his examples are either hyperbole or just flat out wrong, others may certainly be the case for him.
As opposed to Mike's view, I find all pros, and no cons.

Most people will fall somewhere in between.

 

Exactly! And my job has me starting the car and driving a minute here, then shutting it off. Then doing it again, and again and again. Sometimes my engine temps never get above 100 °F all day long.

This is why my wife still says the Nissan Leaf was her favorite car. We don't have a garage, but the preconditioning was awesome.

People tend to exagerate things to fit their point of view. The goal is to set priorities and be ballanced.

Driving long distances in an EV would be less optimal than in an ICEV IMO. I do drive long distances at least once a month. But those disadvantages shouldn't be that bad if the car has a long enough range and I have places to charge it at a decent rate. After all, I made the Nissan Leaf work for a whole year and only once got myself into a pickle. For a while I was driving that poor Leaf 150 miles per day! A car with twice that range (twice 84 miles) should be much easier to handle. More than 200 miles would be superb.

Now in the Golf I could fill up with diesel, drive clear to the inlaws (over 600 miles away) drive around the city all week, then fill up and come back. In the Avalon I barely make it to the inlaws with one tank, and it has a bigger tank than the Golf did. In even a 300 mile EV I will be sitting at a few charging stations along that same route. It may make it difficult to pull off in just one day. But I don't go to my inlaws every week; more like 3 or 4 times a year. Also, having a reason to pull over and rest from time to time isn't a bad thing either.

 

Oh Mike knows the pros. A MY is in one son's family, so is a Ford plug in SUV. But neither fits my needs for size. Neither makes cost sense for me. You may have a different view.

 

That is the one drawback of EV's right now. There are few options, and most are quite expensive.

My reasons for not getting an EV right now:

1. My current car still works fine.
2. My budget is $15,000, maybe $20,000 if it's an EV.
3. EV's in the $20,000 and below mark either have very bad range or the insurance for them will cost me $400 or more a month.
4. I don't qualify for most incentives.

Of course that could all change some day soon.

 

case chevy bolt, about 20k after fed credit, less if you have any state incentives. we have $3,500.

the fed is eliminating the need for tax liability after 12/31, so open to any income level below 150k single, 300k married.
and it will be a discount at time of purchase.
our state incentive has no requirements

 

Are you sure?

This has been rumored, but I havent' read anything in the new deal that actually says that.

 

Funny .... service in MANY industries has beome "so-so" compared to decades gone by - whether it's Auto Service, airlines, medical, Body Shops .... as long as the competition is equally so so - then what's the incentive for you to do any better ... more customers? at what cost to you business model.
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I don’t doubt there are cases of this.
For us though, the service has been great.
Far better than service from any dealership I have ever had.