Electric Car Ownership - Any Experiences?

[Zaukrie]

I'd like one, but we use my car for all the long, long, trips, into back country..... My car was totaled during the pandemic, so we got an incredible amount of money for a five year old car. Unfortunately, no hybrids were available in the PNW, so one more gas car.

Thanks for all the comments everyone. Mostly confirms my thoughts for the next car, unless things change.

 

[Li Shenron]

I am most interested in people's experiences owning EVs, in general, and your experiences or information on home charging stations, specifically, as we'll need one of those as well....

The best advice I can give you is to only collect information from people who have or had EVs. Their experience varies, so you'll have to weigh pros and cons depending on your own situation. There are forums on the web but less than I would like them to be.

We switched to EVs about six years ago and our experience is very positive but we are probably in the best demographic for them. We live in Northern Europe. As a family we drive about 20000km per year, neither too little nor too much. The more you drive the more money you save compared to petrol, but also the more charging you need.

Most of our trips are within 200km back and forth (a range which most post-2020 EVs can cover even in very cold winter) so we don't need to charge at public points for them, we charge at home with basic 240v, which means adding 15-20km of range per hour (even if we find ourselves with very low battery, charging overnight brings it up to our typical longest needed range next morning). We never needed to buy a L2 home charging station so I can't help you with that.

When we take a longer trip, we look in advance ahead where are possible charging points and pick a place that has other stations within reach in case the first is out of order. We always carry with us the 240v travel charger and a L2 charging cable as a backup in case all planned L3 stations are down. Stopping to charge for 30-60min is never a nuisance because we would stop anyway at least every couple of hours for eating. EVs tend to charge fast up to 80% and slow down for the last 20%, so if you want to save time see if you can make more shorter charges along the route rather than full charges.

Charging points availability is only getting better here. Six years ago our first EV had 100km range only and we still managed to never be in trouble, but a couple of times we really wanted to go on holiday trips in the middle of nowhere and decided to rent a petrol car. Nowadays it is a non-issue.

For us an EV is even less expensive than a petrol car. The purchase price is clearly bigger but charging at home costs almost nothing. We haven't made calculations recently but on the first year we had an EV we estimated saving 1100-1200 euros and we drove less than 10000km on that year. Maintenance costs about half, but be aware that there are still mechanics who overcharge on EVs just counting on the fact that people think everything costs more on newer technologies.

I see almost only positives for us with having EVs. They also drive much better with an excellent response (in Europe almost all petrol cars still have manual gears for instance) and even smell better, our garage almost doesn't feel it's a garage anymore

The one and only negative is that when winters temperature drops below -20C (it happens here) EVs start acting weird and can go in "turtle mode" which means speed capped at 50km/h, which can be a big deal if you need to drive out of town; to avoid this, we need to remember to turn pre-heating on and charge the battery at least a bit e.g. half an hour before driving IF we had parked outside (not a problem if coming from a garage). That said, you need to pre-heat the engine of a petrol car as well in such weather or you might damage it, and I have heard that diesels simply don't work at all below certain temperatures.

 

[Li Shenron]

Things we learned about energy consumption:

- range is affected by MANY factors, manufacturers can't really describe range with one single number, once you have a few EV models in mind, research as much as possible; the ratio between the highest and lowest ranges we  think we would have covered with our cars is about 2, with the official range of those cars being maybe at around 1.5 (IOW you can ballpark the worst range at 2/3 of the range told by the manufacturer, and the best range at 4/3)

- speed affects range in a non-linear way; there seems to be a tipping point between 80-110km/h above which consumption is much higher, depending on the car

- rain, snow and especially upwind will decrease your range, they actually do the same on a petrol car but you only learn this when you drive an EV because it will tell you by showing a lower range e.g. as it detects rain, just don't panic about where did the extra miles go since parking the car yesterday when it's raining; if it stops raining, the range will go back up

- air conditioning and heating can decrease range by 10-20%; with air conditioning it seems that the speed of the fans is the culprit rather than target temperature so it's a good idea to turn fans to minimum once the temperature is reached; with heating, use air heating only if necessary e.g. to defog the windshield, otherwise use seat heating and steering wheel heating (definitely must-have features if you live in cold climates) especially if you travel alone as they use MUCH less energy

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I have heard that diesels simply don't work at all below certain temperatures.

Diesel fuel freezes at around -20 degrees C (exact figure varies, actually turns into waxy lumps), but most modern diesel vehicles have fuel pre-heaters.

 

[Staffan]

- rain, snow and especially upwind will decrease your range, they actually do the same on a petrol car but you only learn this when you drive an EV because it will tell you by showing a lower range e.g. as it detects rain, just don't panic about where did the extra miles go since parking the car yesterday when it's raining; if it stops raining, the range will go back up

- air conditioning and heating can decrease range by 10-20%; with air conditioning it seems that the speed of the fans is the culprit rather than target temperature so it's a good idea to turn fans to minimum once the temperature is reached; with heating, use air heating only if necessary e.g. to defog the windshield, otherwise use seat heating and steering wheel heating (definitely must-have features if you live in cold climates) especially if you travel alone as they use MUCH less energy

I think there are two relevant issues here.

1. The main thing costing power is wind resistance, and that increases by a lot once you hit a certain speed.

2. In an ICE vehicle, you're getting heat and, to some degree, electricity "for free", just as a consequence of running the engine. Cooling the engine is an issue, so if you can use some of that heat to make the passengers comfortable that's a win-win. But in an EV, they're all drawing on the same power, so heating will now affect the range.

 

[Li Shenron]

. In an ICE vehicle, you're getting heat and, to some degree, electricity "for free"

It is kind of a deceiving statement considering you're paying a lot more for ICE fuel, but then you are also paying more for the EV itself. We stopped caring about theoretical discourses once we got the first EV, ran our own numbers and realised it was worth for us.

 

[Staffan]

It is kind of a deceiving statement considering you're paying a lot more for ICE fuel, but then you are also paying more for the EV itself. We stopped caring about theoretical discourses once we got the first EV, ran our own numbers and realised it was worth for us.

What I mean is that you're getting it as a byproduct of running the engine (which is why I put "free" in quotes). Turning on the heat inside the car does not appreciably affect how far you can go on a full tank of gas. Things requiring a lot of electricity, like AC, might because at that point the generator needs to work harder to provide power, but heat and some level of power is "free" – or perhaps "free with purchase" is a better term.

 

[Li Shenron]

Anyway... nobody cared about these when we only had ICE vehicles even with their costs and inefficiencies, and most EV owners can already stop caring as well given their typical ranges. I still think too much about optimising energy consumption because our first EV had only a 100km range thus it was important to do so, and it stuck with me. But the truth is that with our current EVs it is already no longer important. As I said, we're probably in the best demographics for EVs.

In @Umbran case, the Chevy Bolt has suitable range, as do Kia Niro, Ioniq 5, Kona, VW ID.5 and others. MG4 is even cheaper than Bolt but not sure if available in the US. You may not even need the home charging station at all. If you plan to have another ICE as a backup, then you won't really have a problem.

 

[Umbran]

It is kind of a deceiving statement considering you're paying a lot more for ICE fuel, but then you are also paying more for the EV itself.

No, it isn't decieving. If you are running that IC engine to go from point A to point B, it is going to burn some amount of fuel. Something upwards of 60% of the energy of the fuel goes into heat due to the inefficiency of the engine. You don't have to burn any more fuel to get that heat.

That is the sense in which it is "for free". You are paying $X for the gas to travel. The heat does not increase that cost.

 

[Umbran]

We are also looking to buy an electric car for our next vehicle, but none of the best small ones are being sold in North America, because car manufacturers think there's little market here for smaller vehicles. It's super annoying.

Yeah. That's the problem with the Bolt - we would consider buying a new one, except they aren't making them at the moment. Chevy had this brain-fart that they'd use that assembly line on trucks instead of small cars, but rethought it, and lost the 2024 and 2025 model years in the process.