Something for those of us who don't want to buy an EV but still want to feel good about ourselves . . .
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I have had an EV for the past 6 years and I dont think I can go back to ICE.

-The garage doesnt smell anymore, I can warm up the car during winter with the garage closed and not stink up the place.

- I dont have to go some shitty gas station and get gum on my shoe right when I step out.

-I dont have to go into the gas station and get chips and coke and gain more weight and be a fatty

Things I dont like :

-Not as comfortable as some of the bigger SUVs I used to have
-Range anxiety

It would be interesting to know if all the CA EV owners hold off on their charging on hot days during the critical 4-9 pm hours when the peakers will be firing up. Hopefully so, as everyone is getting lectured to not do laundry, run AC too cool, etc. it will be interesting to see how we make out this summer. So far, no stress on the system as the month of May has been oddly cold in SoCal so far.

July and August say "hold my beer".

But you do bring up a great point. I've already been doing laundry and other things requiring electricity during off peak hours.
Last month, I lowered my usage so much that I got an environmental credit. I didn't pay anything for March, and had a reduced bill for April (it probably helps a lot that I'm at work during the peak hours).

Hopefully people with EVs (and our power grid) will benefit from charging on off peak hours.

But you will need electricity to detonate the bolts no ?

Problem solved:

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Well, I'm a Texas EV owner and our grid is shaky AF as you know.

I do have a time-of-use plan where 3-8PM is around 3x more expensive, so we charge after 8PM only for $0.089705/kWh.

It works out to about $0.026 per mile.

thank you for patriotically donating 1/3 of your grid's capacity to bitcoin mining!

ICE, ICE, Baby!

That's got nothing to do with me. Cryptocurrency is a ponzi scheme.

The Texas grid says, hold my keg

When did life become fair? I must have missed the memo. And big oil is heavily subsidized, which is also unfair.

Ford offered the instaclear windshield in the 1980s it was a metal film lay in the glass
But First seen on the Rolls Royce in 1969

I see the Elon hate runs think here. How easy it is to completely dismember anyone in the public eye with "journalist that work for " business insider trading "(actually a German tabloid) CNBS , auto trader , the White House .and democrats .

the anti Musk groups love to have a whine about billionaires , but those folks use amazon and facebook and don't mind warren buffet or Branson..

PS Im a long time Sanders supporter

Ive done loads of personnel polls about Musk or Branson here in New Zealand, Kiwis love Branson but hate Musk .. funny thing is , they can't tell you why they hate musk..
could the well funded oil rich media have changed the minds of billions , ? worked with climate change .

have any of you worked at Tesla that claim the working environment is crap ? or are ya all just pushing the narrative

musk is a personal hero (only one Ive ever had), he gives me hope, and something to look forward too.

and not one person I know has ever said their new 20' what-ever ICE car was insane, awesome, mind blowing, life changing, incredible. and I should go test drive one. I can't say the same for TESLA's

would love to here the reasons the hate for Elon runs so thick. because he's a nerd ? smart? has a business in china ? was it the pedo commit , that he's voting republican ?

So far, (and I say so far because as of yet he hasn't earned or denied my trust) I like Elon Musk. I'm also a 61 YO lover of cars and I currently own a '30 Chevy street rod with trips that gobbles up fuel like a thirsty camel.. EV's have their place for sure and society will migrate to them, but it should be at it's own pace, not rammed down our throats by the green new deal. These inflated gas prices are by "his" own admission just for that purpose. Now onto the EVs.. many of my points were already made, but I'll recap. Toxic materials being mined at great risk to health.. for batteries that are expensive to install, not as efficient as they could be yet (tech needs to come up with better batteries) and expensive to replace. The cost of the vehicles themselves is expensive, add to that the cost of adding a charging station to your home. Not really ideal for long trips, they do have a range and if I'm not mistaken with age those batteries hold less of a charge. If I run out of gas, I can go get some and be on my way. If my EV runs out of charge on the road, then what? Now on to the energy.. basic physics if I'm not mistaken is horsepower is not free, in other words it takes horsepower to make horsepower.. so as of now it takes a good amount of fossil fuel to make the electricity to charge the EV. As ownership goes up it's going to stress the grid, and more and more fossil fuels will be needed to provide the electric. In my opinion the saving of the environment by going to EV is a fantasy when all factors are considered. When your EV is old and the batteries have failed, then what? What do you do with it? What will a Tesla be worth with bad batteries? Where will it go? to a land fill? to a recycling plant? Where will the batteries go? For now the electric we use is fairly reasonable. Do any of you remember a time when diesel fuel was cheap? Then more and more people started turning to diesel for personal vehicles because it was cheap. Look where it's priced now! Once more and more demand is put on the grid the power companies will need to spend money to renew their equipment to meet the further demands, that costs money. Did anyone stop to think what the power companies will do to price when they see a big demand, you are held captive! They can raise their prices and what can you do? Did anyone think that if we go mostly EV and depend on our power grid (our aging power grid) what would happen with a cyber attack to our grid (quite possible). A hostile force could possibly cripple our nation with such an attack if we are heavily dependent on EVs.. Can anyone here envision our military using EVs? As the number of EVs goes up, the number of people thinking about entering the field of ICE mechanics could possibly decline. The production and availability of parts for ICEs goes down.. We just are not ready for this, it's being forced on us and not happening as it should, by market demand. We aren't ready yet.

That could happen to our fuel grid also and did happen a year ago in the south east when hackers attacked the company running the Colonial Pipeline with ransomware. Many gas stations between Houston and New Jersey had no gas.

We are hard wired to gossip. Simply put - "If somebody is a competitor or somebody is higher than you in the food chain, you want dirt about them." "You want negative information, because that's the stuff you can exploit to get ahead."

The dude is a conman, nothing more. He's built his "empire" on the backs of the American taxpayer and his daddies slave labor in South Africa. Without the billions in tax payer money and the head start his dad gave him you wouldn't know his name. THAT'S the problem.

Also, I have done work at the Tesla Fremont factory and I can assure you EVERYONE is terrified of the guy and he's a complete and total asshole in person. Has no respect for the people around him, treats them in a derogatory fashion, and only wants to work with people who will do nothing but tell him he's right, he's perfect, and he never makes a mistake.

I don't care what he does in his personal life, none of that matters to me, but his professional life is built on a lie... That's a fact.

Jeff

Literally not true. Nobody is being forced to buy an EV and ICE is not going away within our lifetimes.

I would argue market forces are the only reason for the uptick in EV interest. People are experiencing cars like Tesla and falling in love with the performance and low service cost.

Well, if you are implying "big oil" is unfairly taxed because they make a lot of money then you should agree with my argument that wealthy car buyers should not get subsidies and pay more in road taxes. But of course that's not how things work. We only like it when we get tax benefits and not other people.

I wasn't going to go into this, but because this word salad of Boomer anti-EV talking points comes up on Facebook constantly, I'm going to retort.

This same battery tech powers smartphones, laptops, you name it. Are you opposed to those technologies too?

I can't argue that EVs are currently expensive. All early-adopter technologies are. But the cost of adding the charging station to the home is a couple hundred bucks. We did it twice, one for wife's Tesla and once for my Taycan....so we each get our own. There are tax breaks when you do it, too. This cost is easily forgotten with lower "fuel" costs, no more oil changes/plugs/tune-ups/belts/pumps.

My wife drives from Dallas to San Antonio regularly. I myself have driven from Dallas to Arkansas for a car club event. It worked out fine and the charging was literally FREE. I actually found it the best road-tripping car I've ever had - the quiet smooth drive was less fatiguing. On the trip out I optimized for the fastest Electrify America 350kW chargers. It was over 1000 miles with 3 20 minute charge stops. On the way back I let the car route me to whatever charger it wanted, and a direct route. That was around 650 miles with two stops, one at 25 mins and one at 30 mins. (And several less hours on the road.)

First of all, it's unlikely to happen since EVs have computer-controlled charger-aware GPS. They monitor your consumption rate and route you through additional chargers on the fly if needed. But if it WERE to happen, your options are effectively the same as running out of gasoline: flatbed to a fuel source, or have a fuel source brought to you.

Regarding horsepower, the conversion of electricity to motion is dramatically MORE efficient with EVs vs the complicated Rube Goldberg that is the modern ICE engine. EVs are roughly 3x more efficient. Look it up.

As for the electricity being created by fossil fuel, sure that is likely the case for now and the near future. But what you're failing to consider is that electricity, once generated, travels freely over wires at the speed of light. Contrast with gasoline which, once refined, needs to be trucked all over the place in filth-spewing trucks.

Same thing you do with a modern cellphone when the battery fails, you get it replaced by the manufacturer.
I will add that the death of EV batteries is largely exaggerated. My wife has 90K on her Tesla so far and I have 17K on my Taycan. No issues with retained range yet. I've read of people putting a million miles on Teslas. ICE vehicles are miserably unreliable after 200K, mostly because they spend their entire lives trying to blow themselves apart.

What is an ICE vehicle worth with a blown engine? The answer is the same, depends on the desirability of the vehicle and cost to repair vs cost to part out.

Same place unusable ICE vehicles go, to a crusher/junkyard where they are farmed for parts and raw materials are recycled.

The electric companies can only push consumers so far, because there is a built in check-and-balance: solar. Right now it's cheaper to pay the electric bill than to install solar panels (usually.) When that is no longer true consumers will install solar and generate their own power.

We are already at the mercy of foreign countries for fossil fuels. And what if there's a cyberattack on refineries? Playing what ifs here is pointless.

Sure, I can.

Yep, that's called supply and demand. It's probably pretty hard to find cassette tapes or VCR parts too.

It's amusing that with your previous point you're anti-market forces and in this one, pro-market forces.

I think the real issue here is fear - you're afraid that you won't be able to keep/service your ICE vehicles. I believe that fear is unfounded.

wow, how long did it take for you to survey EVERYONE?

Really? LOL... Well when every employee you work with has their own "avoid Elon" story I'd say that's probably not a good sign. My own interactions with the guy affirmed what I was told but hey, I'm sure the kool-aid tastes rather nice.

Jeff

a few hundered to install a charger, not likely:
https://www.fixr.com/costs/home-electric-vehicle-charging-station
https://www.homeserve.com/en-us/blog/cost-guide/ev-charging-station-installation/
https://www.realtor.com/advice/home-improvement/installing-electric-vehicle-charger/

that same trip in an ICE car, 2 stop that take 2 minutes of filling up.

A new engine is cheaper than a new battery pack.

Solar is great, when its sunny. Not so great as you move away from the equator. Even less useful in the winter when the days are shorter and the panels are covered in snow. I'd love to add solar, but to make it reasonable I'd need to turn my house 90 degrees to get a reasonable south exposure and take out about 5 trees to keep it from being shaded 60% of the day. What I'd generate in the current configuration would be a negligible reduction in grid use at best. People in multi-family units really don't have the option at all. And storage is still highly limited with solar.

There are already mandates coming that all new cars will need to be EV. that's not an unfounded fear.

So because it doesn't work well for YOU means it's not practical for anyone else? Also, storage is not remotely highly limited with solar, maybe 5 years ago but certainly not now. Granted, currently in most places under most use cases, grid power is going to be cheaper. The beauty of the technology improvements in this space are making it more and more practical for people to live off grid which isn't a bad thing... (this of course assumes you either have no electric service to your land or you are lucky enough to live in an area where forced grid connections aren't the law)

My charger installs I did myself so other than the cost of the charger the expense was minimal. YMMV...

Regarding the mandates, it's an interesting situation in that there is a sizable group of people who either rent or live in multi-unit dwellings where an EV charging install either isn't practical or simply not an option at all. The model works very well when you can charge while you sleep but not so much if you can't. That must be addressed first but it doesn't seem like it is which is going to be very interesting when these mandates fully kick in. I sense a lot of pending government regulation on this that will be forced onto property owners at their expense which isn't going to be a very good thing for the already exploding cost of living situation. I guess we'll see how this plays out over the next few years...

I'm absolutely pro-EV if you can afford one and charge it at home... IF...

Jeff

I've literally had it done twice, I know exactly what it cost me. And again, tax breaks on this.

You don't get out to stretch your legs, hit the restroom, etc? And what did those fuel stops cost?

Engine replacement costs are around 4K. More or less depending on the car, for example a Porsche engine replacement runs around 25K.
It looks like a Tesla battery pack costs 13-14K.

So it's going to depend on the vehicle and engine. But in all cases that 200K mile ICE car is starting to fall apart where the EV is just getting started.

There are battery packs (see Tesla powerwall) and such to work around those issues. But solar is not really realistic right now because the math doesn't work. The point I made about solar was that it keeps the electric companies from gouging us. They can't push things too far or consumers will revolt.

[citation needed].

And nobody's forcing you to buy a new car. Ever.

This is a really good point and a current barrier to EV adoption for apartment dwellers.

When I was working in California I was really impressed how hard companies leaned into EV adoption - there were chargers at the parking garages of most (maybe all) major companies, and people would charge all day while working. That's an acceptable workaround.

More fast DC chargers is also a workaround, and those are coming. The infrastructure bill puts one every 50 miles on major interstates.

who wants to talk about Ebikes again? Man, ebikes are kind of awesome.

they are

well, he does have Asperger's syndrome which may make communication and relations with others difficult for him
also, not a fan of kool-aid as it's mostly sugar

That is cause for anyone who loves their country. But I think I dislike the concentrated wealth our unequal laws provide - like taxing unearned income less than earned income. But he did one good thing, helped make it clear EVs can be sexy.

Oh man, that was the best read of the morning! Thanks for explaining it.

gentle reminder to not bring politics here...
If we must talk about Elon Musk let's just focus on how his actions relate specifically to the EV industry, for better or for worse.

We don't need to speculate on how people are TRULY just jealous of his shiny strong chin, his spiderman-like sense for detecting pedophiles, and stellar political acumen or whatever. He's only relevant here due to his current proximity to Tesla, and the chaos & publicity that brings to the topic.

I agree. I have a lot of problems with Elon but he and Tesla changed the narrative on EVs, without question.
They were small, dumb looking, slow and had low range before Tesla showed how it's done.

Thanks I went on a bit of a tear.

You refuted, point by point, every single fallacy I've heard used in other conversations. You did it respectfully, too, which is very hard to do on a website. I have seen this senseless fear on Corvette sites, where the hate is strong despite the torq electric motors can generate. I wonder if people think they won't be able to drive their ICEs. I think those are foundless fears, too.

That is the only explanation I have for the hate and disinformation they spread. Why else would they care what I drive?

Same here...

Jeff

If the cyanide doesn't get you, the sugar will ...

Conman? tell me more about him ripping of the government or people ? and niggly warranty stuff don't count.(give me an auto company that don't have sooo many issues )

built his empire on the backs of Americans. at least those backs made really incredible money.. have you ever said that about the Waltons or buffet of bezos

no proof his dad gave him money, and big deal if he did, my dad gave me money and I pissed it awa. he's disrupted 10 industries at least

BTW he paid back his loan , with intrest and early fees . can't say the same for ford gm of crysler .

Elon did however supply 15k sats to Ukraine and 19,000 schools in South America have the same opportunity's in education that we do. not to mention Indian tribes all around America and Canada that have access to hi speed internet ..

but yeah he only cares about himself, lol ..

my last tank of gas was $63.00 (note a year ago it was half that amount) and a tezla 3 awd cost $16K more than my car add 6% sales tax (in Michigan) and it is $16,960. I will forget factoring in the oil changes vs the added interest costs on the auto loan. 16,960/63=269 full tanks of gas or about 118,000 miles before My ICE costs more than your EV assuming you get your electricity for free. and if your pay $.05/mile for electrons then you have spent about $5,900 that another 93 fill ups or 41,000 miles to be driven. and a total of 159,000 miles is about 16 years at my 10K miles per year of driving.

You car may be green but my wallet will be greener for many years to come.

I pay around 2.5c/mile charging at home.

But yeah, the initial car cost was steep for sure . No loan though so interest isn't a thing.

The thing is though, we're not comparing apples to apples.
I've driving an expensive Porsche sportscar, so the cost of the car is almost certainly going to be out of whack no matter what.

One final point on this - people assume I went EV because of going green. That's a nice side benefit, but not why I did it.

I did it because my wife's Model 3 made my 911 Targa 4S feel slow.

The instant power and torque of an electric motor genuinely makes ICE vehicles feel broken by comparison.

Who will notice the 3 and who will notice the 911 Targa ?

How about the 70-120 MPH performance ??? I agree the EV have tons of torque at 0 MPH

Last weekend I watched parts of three races: Coca Cola 600, Indy 500, F1 Monoco GP. I did not see 1 EV on the track racing.

Added note: tezla does not have a car in Formula E where the race is just long enough for 1 battery charge. Because nobody want to see a 45 minute pit stop.

Around here Model 3's are so generic they are almost invisible. However, I don't buy cars for that reason...I buy them solely for the personal driving pleasure.

This is an area where my Taycan -really- sings. From any rolling speed to ~130 is just...WOOOSH. I have the lowest-end version so it's not a 0-60 monster but once it's going you can get it to any speed you want with almost frightening speed. It's a joy!

I don't really follow motorsports so I don't have any input on that.

LOL... Whatever. I HAVE MET AND WORKED WITH THE GUY... But yeah, you know more about the person he really is than I do naturally... JFC...

Jeff

Same reason why you are bothered by what other people think about your car and go on a rant. If you love your ev car then just enjoy it. Not everyone has to like the same thing even if it's better in all measurable ways. The thing I really like about cars is variety. Perhaps it's for the best if all cars are ev in the near future. That just saddens me to think there would be no more V12 supercars, V8 muscle cars, turbo hatchbacks, big diesel trucks, or anything interesting. It will just be the same thing wrapped in different skins.

Sure I go to the bathroom, but i can stop anywhere I want to stop, not when my car tells me I have to. I don't know what you're doing in the gas station bathroom, but I certainly don't need 20-60 minuted in there.
So according to you the articles showing costs of a *typical install* are lies? Sure there can be outliers. But typically they are not just a few hundred dollars. The chargers themselves before other materials and labor are more than a few hundred. What is the cost for a upgraded service and panel when someone in a 1980's or older house has 100amp or less service? And tax breaks, that does not make it cheaper, that just means everyone else if paying for it for you.

Can you point out exactly where i said it works for no one? I certainly never said that. I said "in my case" and for people in "multi-unit housing". Storage is absolutely still limited with solar. Its the pro-ev people who generally go on and on about "all you need to do is try it and you'll magically see its perfect for you". You want an EV go for it. You don't want one, go for it.

Not going to play the literal game with you. Also, storage is not limited with solar at all, so stop with that BS. I'm currently shopping right now and there's no limit to how much battery storage I want, none, zero, zilch. The question is how big is my budget...

I don't care what kind of car someone buys either. Don't care if it's an EV, don't care if it's not, it's not my decision to make and none of my business. The ONLY thing that annoys me are older diesel trucks and their "coal rolls". If I could ban that shit, I would in a heartbeat...

Jeff

I don't care one bit what anyone thinks about my car. I do care about people spreading lies to try and discourage EVs.

That will never happen in our lifetimes. Those cars will continue to exist.

Yes. EVs come with a mobile charger and all you need is a NEMA 14-50 plug installed to use it.
Can you go fancier if you want to? Sure. We bought the Tesla wall connector for Susan's car. The wall connector was $500 and the install was a few hundred.
For my car the mobile charger came with wall mounting gear so I just had the NEMA installed for a few hundred.

Is this going to be the same everywhere? No. If you have an old hoopty house and you're already maxed out will it be more? Sure.

My point is that the charger install cost is being over-inflated as another FUD talking point to scare people away from EVs.
The normal case is quite reasonable (and barely more than a month of gas at today's prices.)

Thanks very much for helping! I also got an $8500 tax break on both cars so thanks for those too! <3