As an addendum to the
California Trip thread I have a bit more EV experience than I did a week ago.
We ended up with a Kia Niro as a rental car for a couple of days (I'll post the story in the California thread since it's more appropriate there) and I did enjoy the opportunity to drive it- even though I really dislike Kias in general. That having been said, this was a nice enough car. I didn't care for the driver assist crapola, but that's a problem in most modern cars and not just EV's.
If I owned it, I'd have gone to the effort to learn how to shut it all off!
But I don't, so no worries. It was a decent enough car in it's own right, and the all digital dash was neat. I wish it had a few mre hardware buttons, particularly for the climate control, but again, that's not an EV specific problem.
As with most EV's, I never felt it was lacking for power, and despite picking it up at only 60% charge, I really didn't feel any range anxiety, even though I knew I would have to drive it from Sonoma to San Francisco, and I'd already seen SF traffic up close.
We did have a bit of faffing about getting it charged though- the first EV station we found actually offered free charging, but it was only a Level 1 charge. If I had known it was there, I'd have charged the car while we went out for breakfast, rather than going for breakfast and a walk
before deciding to charge the car.
Not a serious problem, just need a bit of better planning in the future.
We decided to go find an Electrify America charging station, knowing that I'd have to pay for charging, but it would be (at least) a Level 2 charger. It was also only a block away, so it's not like we had far to go.
When I plugged in at the EA station the car was reading 50% charge already, which is no surprise as we hadn't driven that far/much since picking it up the day before.
We decided to go for a walk, and one thing lead to another and we came back a while after charging was completed. I know this is a big no no, but I did it anyway and paid the price. What should have been a $15 charge was about $30 as I paid a hefty penalty for "camping."
Again, better planning would have avoided that.
What gets to me is that the car we had before that (VW Passat) had cost us $83 to fill from 1/4 tank to full.
The EV, a bigger, heavier car, cost less than half as much to charge (admittedly slightly less since it was a half charge vs 3/4 tank), even considering I paid twice as much out of my own stupidity.
Looking at the math, and removing my idiot charges they compare like this:
$83.00/3= 27.67 for a quarter of a tank
$15.00/2= 5.00 for a 25% charge
And, that was at a public charger- if I was to charge a vehicle at home I could seriously get much cheaper charging. Currently here at home I am paying $.17/kwh in Canadian dollars, while we were charging at $.54/kwh in US dollars.
Converting for convenience:
$0.17 CAD = $0.12 USD
$0.54 USD = $0.74 CAD
So, the $15 I spent on charging works out to (roughly) 27.78kwh, and if charged at home would have been $3.34.
That is a massive savings.
For the fun of it, I also looked at the cost of road tripping to my father's house, about 2300km away from here.
Using the same Jeep vs Ford Lightning numbers I did in my post above, I calculated the cost at just over $640 to drive from my house to my father's, or almost $1300 round trip in my Jeep.
The same trip in the Lightning, using the stated numbers from Ford (yes, yes, I know that's under ideal conditions, I'll never get those numbers blah blah blah- I'll get to that) the same trip would cost about $96 one way or less than $200 for a round trip.
That number isn't entirely accurate though, as the cost is based on home charging, and I don't have an extension cord long enough for the whole 2300km journey, so figure it costs several times as much to charge at a station.
But, it would have to be six times more expensive just to break even, and I doubt very much the difference is that great.
What's also an interesting factor is that in order to get there, I have to drive through the Appellation mountains (yes, that range goes through Canada too) which means lots of up and downhill driving, which is hard on an internal combustion engine. I know, I have driven them many times, with and without fully loaded trailers.
I feel like the EV, not having to build up power (instant torque) would likely handle the uphill sections better, and recharge on the downhill sections, while the ICE has to burn gas both ways.
Do any of you EV drivers have any experience with that specifically? I'd like to hear if that's true or not.
All in all, I am really thinking the Lightning is the way to go.
On my trip I spotted a number of Rivians, both the pickup and SUV versions and I really like them. That is absolutely a beautiful vehicle, but Rivian is facing some financial issues right now, and I hope they aren't circling the drain. That's the main reason I am leaning towards the Lightning rather than the Rivian.
I also finally saw a Cybertruck in real life.
I thought it was extremely hideous in the photos and videos I have seen of it, but now that I have seen it in real life, in the flesh, I no longer think it's hideous.
I think it is an affront to every God there ever was.
And not in a good way.
I was also finally able to ride in a regular Tesla model (an Uber in SF) and I was really impressed with it. The side scanning sensor was really cool. I really liked the Tesla, and yet I'd still rather take a ball peen hammer to my soft bits rather than drive a Cybertruck.
I don't care how awesome the tech is, that
item should never have been allowed off the drawing board.
I don't even want to call it a truck. It is (at best) the gaudiest man jewelry you can get. It is an oversized gold bracelet for the man bun crowd.
And, as an added bonus, it will cut you.
The best I can hope for is that it fails despite the vast amounts of $$ behind it, and Rivian continued to falter despite having the first and probably best electric truck on the road, and Tesla buys them out, installs their software and features into Rivian's truck and starts producing something nice.
They'd be unstoppable.
Def
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), but I started watching carcarenut on Youtube, who was a certified Toyota mechanic. He changed my mind about hybrids. Hybrid brakes last almost forever; there is no starter, no belts (on my Sienna), no alternator, gas mileage doubles, etc. Plus you can get all wheel drive with the rear wheels operated by an electric motor that does away with the weight and complexity of a mechanical connection to the engine. Once I embraced reality, I was totally into hybrids and will never go back. The way things are going, I may never have the opportunity to go back anyway. All Siennas and Camrys (starting in 2025) will be hybrid only. 
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