electric/hybrid cars

[Anonymous]

I got a prius prime (Plug in hybrid) back in 2021 when they were dirt cheap-16k after the 4500 tax credit.

It's great for daily trips like to the store / work and I can do all of that on electric only.

The biggest advantage over a full electric car is that If I am in a rush to get somewhere, or doing a long drive like DC- CT, I don't have to worry about a charging stop. When I've had all electric rentals I usually would fit a charging station into my errand, and typically just enjoy the 20 min break I'd take anyway to just watch stuff on my phone etc.

I've been tempted by some of the dirt cheap lease deals right now for some all electric SUVs like the Nissan Airya, the range is great for local travel, I can charge at home every night, and with some payments I've seen as low as 150 a month, I'd be willing to pay that just to divert away from wear and tear on my other cars. Unfortunately insurance rates now + already having 3 other cars doesn't really justify it. If you're open to leasing check out a website called leasehackr- Lots of unicorn deals pop up throughout the year.

I'd say for 90% of people a plug in hybrid is a great choice, especially in cities or urban areas. You still have the security blanket of a gas engine, but if you have a shorter commute you have gas savings. Now depending on the price premium for a plug in hybrid, that may be negligible.
Even though an all electric car with a 250 mile range in theory could support the needs of 50% of the population, for 80% (guesses) of the time, people often get hung up on the scenarios like long drives or road trips a handful of times a year, which I get, especially with what cars cost today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tell me about your experience with electric/hybrid cars. How long have you had it, experience with charging. Anything you want to share. Include any financing, leasing experience. Thank you.

Prius V
100k
6 years
Excellent when rear ended as strong metal bar prevents major damage
Love it but wish it were a bit higher off the ground

I bought before the pandemic so got excellent deal. Not sure that is the case now. Toyota dealerships make more on service than sales so you often can get a good deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell me about your experience with electric/hybrid cars. How long have you had it, experience with charging. Anything you want to share. Include any financing, leasing experience. Thank you.

Prius V
100k
6 years
Excellent when rear ended as strong metal bar prevents major damage
Love it but wish it were a bit higher off the ground

I bought before the pandemic so got excellent deal. Not sure that is the case now. Toyota dealerships make more on service than sales so you often can get a good deal.

Toyota dealerships have stopped offering the presidents Club which made getting services at dealerships competitively priced. Now their service packages are almost as bad as Honda. Fortunately many mechanics know how to service Toyotas. .So while I would buy a Toyota EV from a dealership it might make more sense not to get service at dealerships .

[Anonymous]

I have a mild hybrid now, so I get 40mpg, which I love. I don't have easy access to charging. I think I need to stick with this type of hybrid for now. The technology is regenerative with the breaking system.

Do Plug-in types operate like this?
Meaning, do they alternate between gas and battery, or do they go with battery only and then switch to gas when the batter runs down?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a mild hybrid now, so I get 40mpg, which I love. I don't have easy access to charging. I think I need to stick with this type of hybrid for now. The technology is regenerative with the breaking system.

Do Plug-in types operate like this?
Meaning, do they alternate between gas and battery, or do they go with battery only and then switch to gas when the batter runs down?

I think there’s a button you can press to tell it which way to go

[Anonymous]

I love my rav4 prime plug in hybrid. I charge at home at night and get 40-55 miles on electric depending on the weather and city driving. It’s a 2021. I get about 650-750 miles per tank. Didn’t finance.

[Anonymous]

We have had 2 (not plug-in hybrids) and 2 EVS. I can't say enough great things about the EVs. The first one was 2015 Nissan Leaf that we still own and last year, we bought a Tesla. We do not have a home charger but charging has not been an issue. Almost all of the grocery stores where we shop have free charging. We also sometimes just use an extension cord to plug into an ordinary house outlet overnight.

We leased the Leaf and got an amazingly good deal. When our lease was up, we bought out the lease. This allowed the dealership to pass on the tax credit to us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had an EV on a cheap lease for three years and I loved it.

Driving experience was noticeably better with instant torque for acceleration to merge onto the beltway and regen for braking (one pedal driving with all the stop signs in my neighborhood). And no oil changes or maintenance.

We don’t have much of a commute so we just plugged it into a regular electric outlet— pretty much always full.

+1 Our Toyota EV is so zippy. I love driving it.

But, I'm not sold on having all EVs in the house just in case of a massive power out, and we can't charge at home. There aren't *that* many charging stations in the area, and I would imagine all the EV owners will be trying to charge their cars.

I also don't like the idea yet of taking long road trips with an EV because of the lack of charging infrastructure in some places.

I don't drive that much so a hybrid doesn't make much sense because you need to drive enough in order for the battery to be recharged.

So, for me, a plugin hybrid makes the most sense. I haven't gotten one yet, though. I still have my ICE car.

[Anonymous]

Like some other PPs, I have a short-range EV and a larger plug-in hybrid. Office has inexpensive charging and I have a Level 2 charger at home. Both cars are 2016-2017.

Very happy with both so far--love the quiet ride and acceleration and the very rare trips to the gas station. Still not sure about full EV only for road trips, but I'm guessing that by the time I need to replace one or both of these cars the range and charging options will have improved.

[Anonymous]

We've had our EV for about a year.

We do have a charging station at home. Usually charge overnight, but only "need" to charge every other day for the normal commute.

Longer road trips do take some planning. The high speed chargers take about half an hour, so we look for one next to a meal/snack/bathroom break. No issues finding one where we needed one, just need to do a little more research before setting out. Full cost to charge it up at a commercial charging station is about comparable to a tank of gas that would last the same mileage. There are free or lower-cost chargers but they usually take longer, so we look for those where we plan to stop overnight or for a longer meal.

I love the way it drives. It took some time to get used to the regenerative braking, but it's smooth, quiet, and accelerates instantly.

[Anonymous]

Never had a hybrid. Picked up a 2019 Tesla Model S with 40,500 miles a year ago for $41k. Tied for the best car I’ve ever had. Agree with previous posters that the ability to charge at home is make or break at this point. Home charging (at 240v) puts on about 10% an hour for me, which is also about what I use on my daily commute. 100% would recommend.

[Anonymous]

We have had our EV for a few months now (VW ID.4, which tbh not the best EV objectively but the lease prices on these were great so that is why we went with it, have a ~$300/mo payment with 0 down).

So far so good, the car handles fairly well, is smooth to drive, and comes with a decent amount of tech (infotainment can be a little buggy/laggy sometimes though).

More importantly, super convenient, never have to go to a gas station. We just charge it at home using level 1 charging (super slow version of the charging) and it works out well for us. Just charge it overnight and more than enough.

That being said, if you do not have access to charging at home, I would not go for it (as that partially defeat the purpose of EVs, cheap and convenient charging). Charging at public charging stations aint the cheapest (around 50c/kwh vs only around 14c if you charge at home/around $8-$10 for a full charge)

I would also recommend against buying it as the depreciation curves on EVs are crazy steep right now. Either buy used, or lease it. And if you lease it, make sure to use Leasehakr to determine what lease prices you should be paying (its an amazing resource, thanks to it we pay so little for our lease, otherwise we would have paid more like 500+ a month if we just took whatever price dealers gave us without the research)

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s great if you have dedicated charging at home, a short enough commute that forgetting to charge it one night is not going to ruin your morning, and don’t care that you lay $$$$ more for a car to save $$ on gas. Calc will change when BYD imports arrive, maybe

EVs are at price parity in many cases. For instance, a base BMW 4 series is $50,700 and a base i4 is $57,900. At first glance, it would seem that you are correct. But if you lease, BMW will roll in the $7,500 federal rebate which means the cars are only $200 a part. These are the same car other than the drivetrain.

BMWs don't qualify for the $7,500 under the new rules

https://www.cars.com/articles/which-electric-cars-are-still-eligible-for-the-7500-federal-tax-credit-429824/

[Anonymous]

We just drove our IONIC 5 off the lot on Sunday. I'm still learning all the features but so far I love it. We have a garage so we can charge it overnight. We will see over the long haul but it feels great not burning fossil fuels to go to the store. We have solar panels so our electricity is coming from there.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s great if you have dedicated charging at home, a short enough commute that forgetting to charge it one night is not going to ruin your morning, and don’t care that you lay $$$$ more for a car to save $$ on gas. Calc will change when BYD imports arrive, maybe

EVs are at price parity in many cases. For instance, a base BMW 4 series is $50,700 and a base i4 is $57,900. At first glance, it would seem that you are correct. But if you lease, BMW will roll in the $7,500 federal rebate which means the cars are only $200 a part. These are the same car other than the drivetrain.

BMWs don't qualify for the $7,500 under the new rules

https://www.cars.com/articles/which-electric-cars-are-still-eligible-for-the-7500-federal-tax-credit-429824/

There is a loophole that allows companies to lease the cars and take the credit themselves. They then pass the credit on to the customer. As a result, BMW EVs have been being lease with a $7,500 discount for a while.