What do you all think of Electric Vehicles?

[dfrecore]

There were people with old flip phones saying I'll never buy a smartphone and proudly displayed them when asked about it. Finally, my uncle gave in and ended up buying a smartphone lol.

Electric cars are the future.

This $4000 electric car made by GM in partnership with a Chinese company is the most popular electric car in China
https://youtu.be/jNeOCWKt7FE

Small cheap electric cars would be suitable for short-range city driving.

What might end up happening is people will buy cars such as the Prius that are fully electric but features a backup gas-powered engine for range extension. So you would have the choice of getting 85 MPG on gas alone or charging up at home if you wanted fully electric driving.

The cost of batteries is rapidly falling, and soon electric cars will be cheaper than the gasoline version, especially if there are more government subsidies added in the future.

CA is now telling people not to charge their electric vehicles on some days because the grid can't support them AND allow everyone to use electricity during heat waves.  What happens when even MORE people are driving EV's there?  They've outlawed selling non-EV's starting in 2035.  

"At it's peak while charging, an electric vehicle can consume as much electricity as 3 households." So they're going to encourage people to get solar panels on their roofs combined with battery storage.  That is an extremely pricy proposition, in addition to the price of the EV, the home power system (can cost upwards of $5000 to update your electrical system to hold a 240V), $10k in solar panels and upwards of $10k for a battery.  That's insane.

Also, I read a great article about someone who took a road trip using an EV, and it was a nightmare.  The charging was cheap, but it wasn't worth the amount of time it took to charge it just to get to the next charging station (at times it took 3 hours to charge enough to get to the next one).  They spent almost the entire trip trying to figure out how to get enough juice to make it to where they needed to be.  Hours and hours and hours charging.  Again, insane.

I will pass on the EV.  If someday they get to the point where the grid can handle the increased usage, the price is the same as a gas-powered car, the range is better, and the cost for the infrastructure at your house is doable, I guess I'd consider it.  But for now, it's a crazy proposition.

[bjcheung77]

@dewisant - Sometimes I wouldn't mind living in the "boonies", far from the city life... it's just hard to find some place like that and have the option to "work from home" as there wouldn't be reliable internet. For transportation, if I lived in that area for a longer term, I don't think I'll venture into the EV or hybrid option as it's going to be somewhat hard to find a mechanic to fix any issues if something happens...

[LevelUP]

I drove a Prius for quite some time.

A Prius is one of the most reliable cars ever made and has been known to go for 600,000+ miles. It basically has a camper mode in which you can run the AC all night and it will barely use any fuel.

However, the weakness of the Prius is the battery and if one single cell fails, the whole pack fails. I had this happen to my car and I repaired it myself putting in a used cell to replace the bad one and it worked for a couple of years before throwing another error.

Since that battery warranty is now 10 years or 150,000, and for older models it was 8 years or 100,000, I wouldn't recommend buying one out of warranty.

There are hypermilers that can get 80 MPG+ with a Prius. So I would love to see an all-electric Prius with a gasoline backup generator.