10/06/2024
This is a longer post. It’s a bit of a rant. It rambles a little bit. It’s about electric cars if that’s not your cup of tea, scroll on but if you’re interested in understanding more about our experience with EV‘s and hearing, why I think everybody should go that way, read on enjoy.
This post is only about our experience with our used 2017 Nissan leaf that we bought in 2019. To enjoy in which we planned to keep for a very long time.
Since we bought our first EV using market average prices and suggested service intervals:
We have saved an estimated $1,700 on oil changes and $11,100 on fuel and $1,200 on brakes and
$350 for transmission service.
And also saved the time involved for Maintenance of 20 hours to book and attend appointments. And 37 hours of travelling to, and then getting gas at the gas station. Assuming I always pick up gas on the way at the cheapest station. And assuming I only pay myself $20 an hour
$1,140
My total savings at this point are. $15,490
But what were the expenses?
Assuming I didn’t get the best energy efficiency and assuming I use 20 kWh to travel every hundred kilometres I used 4.35 MWh to power the car.
I pay 14.5 cents per kWh with 99% of my charging being at home.
This has cost me $630
Plus $80 for fast charging 1% of the time.
We probably paid about $3,000 more for our used EV than we would’ve for the equivalent used Honda Civic gas car at the time.
So let’s say my EV costs are $3,710
Take that away from $15,490 and I’m left with savings of $11,780.
This isn’t meant to be accurate. Just useful.
My friend Phil was really smart. He financed his EV and made the payments with the money he saved from not paying for gas. he had a pretty brutal commute probably driving 150 km a day some days. For him it was a way to take the money out of big oil and gas his pocket and put it back in his own. Very smart my friend very smart.
The car we choose in 2019 has a shorter range of about 120 km And is in part responsible for us making our second car a long range Tesla that can travel almost 500 km on a full charge.
I realize that electric vehicles are not the perfect fit for every situation, especially folks who live in rural areas. But for people who live in the city and do most of their driving in the city and for people who own their own house and can put in their own charger
You can do what I did and then five years later, you can sit down and figure out that you saved $11,000
We didn’t do it for the money we did it because we think the pollution from the tailpipe is wrong and we had the flexibility to make a change
Honestly, the Nissan leaf that we bought probably has one of the worst batteries out there that you could have in an electric vehicle at this point.
It does not have a heat pump. It does not have thermal battery management. It does not avoid charging itself to full.
But it’s perfect for driving in the city. It’s sporty despite its appearances.
I’ve had a few people chuckle at me and say what are you gonna do when you have to replace that battery?well I’ve got $11,000 sitting in the bank just waiting, but I don’t think I’m going to have to replace that battery. Now over to you, what will you do when your gas engine seizes up for no apparent reason?
My dad once said “I win the lottery every week because I don’t play”.
I feel like I win the lottery every week when I don’t have to go to a gas station and hand over my money.
Again for people who missed my note above an EV is not gonna be perfect for everyone. It’s especially not gonna be perfect for people live in the country or have to drive very long distances unless you get a more expensive EV.
For people in the city, especially those in a single-family house you guys can do it just make one of your cars an EV. See how you like it.
I encourage you to make your next new car and EV. I don’t mind if you buy a used gas car just don’t give the auto industry the illusion that they can continue to make money by selling cars that pollute. we need them to step up and give us awesome electric vehicles at reasonable prices.
You know I’m really lucky that I’ve got an understanding, and patient wife who let us get an EV.
At this point with two EVs we don’t ever plan to purchase a gas vehicle again.
We’re off the treadmill. We don’t give an oil and gas company money when we want to go to church or when we want to go to the store or when we want to drive our kids to school. We don’t have to hand money over to a gas company when we go on vacation.
We just got off the treadmill. You can too.
Some of our friends, two families in fact, have gone even further and put solar panels on their roof and for the most part, they don’t pay the power company to drive their car.
The other day I was talking to a guy who owns a gas station. He drives a Tesla. I’m telling you the writing is on the wall hop on the bus let’s go.
With the price of batteries dropping with the price of solar dropping, we’re getting to the point where people will be able to produce their own energy. Use their own energy and not pay fees to utilities to move about. This sounds like freedom to me. This sounds like being able to unhook from big corporations charging us money to live our lives.
I’ve never understood the argument of people with big huge diesel trucks burning all that fuel waving their flags and yelling about freedom. I don’t see freedom there. I see car payments.
At this point at our house, we’re still paying the utility and the electricity grid, gets greener, and greener and greener every year we don’t feel bad about it. We don’t have a cloud of pollution around our house or behind our car.
Quite frankly, I’m baffled why more people aren’t making the switch?
All of you like the smell of clean air, don’t you?
But then again what did they used to say if the people at Microsoft had been running the car companies instead of Detroit your gas card would be getting 144,000 miles to the gallon.
We just have not seen innovation from Detroit
Apart from changing the styling of the car every year and adding in toys that they charge extra for. It is the same old polluting technology.
They Say that when women purchases a car they are far more interested in whether it’s reliable than if it’s beautiful
Gas Cars have about 2000 moving parts. electric cars have about 20 those numbers are not accurate, but they’re useful
Something with 100 times more moving parts is gonna break down more than an electric car.
A gas car is 20 times more likely to catch fire than an electric car.
Electric cars have most of their weight under the floor, which makes them extremely stable and resistant to rollovers
Most electric cars do not have a large engine upfront so in a front end collision that’s a lot of crumple zone space without an engine block coming at your head.
Gasoline is a known carcinogen it’s explosive. It’s flammable. It makes your fingers stink and it produces deadly pollution.
I’m happy not to have a big huge tank of gasoline stored in the garage in my house strapped to the bottom of my car anymore.
Yes, I understand that when a lithium battery does burn. It’s extremely dangerous.
I am really enthusiastic than an EV is 20 times less likely to burn than a gas car.
I also like how electric vehicles payback their manufacturing carbon debt really fast. A smaller EV like the one I discuss above, pays its carbon debt back after about 17,000 km of driving. So all the hand waving about metals in the battery and such essentially gets wiped out after you drive it 17,000 km. Every kilometre after that an EV pollutes less than a gas car.
I’ve talked to a few people who don’t really care about the environment but they drive an EV for the lifestyle.
They like always having the car ready to go full in the morning when they get up and
that, there’s no engine noise. But they never have to drive to a gas station and that they don’t have to care about the price of gas that goes up and down like a yo-yo because electricity rates are regulated. They’re basically insulated from the shock of oil and gas price fluctuations.
They like having instant power available when they press the accelerator. They like that their car is always preheated or pre-cooled when they get in.
Really hadn’t occurred to me that that could be considered a lifestyle b ok.
I wrote this today so you could learn from my experience. Not because I’ve got all the answers, but because I’m trying to be transparent about how good this is and I honestly don’t understand why more people aren’t diving in and experiencing the joy and savings that come with driving an EV instead of a car.
And one more note
If you’re thinking of hedging your bats with a plug-in, hybrid electric vehicle sure you could do that, but then you’ve got the gas tank and the engine and the maintenance and the complexity.
Surveys have shown that the owners of plug-in, hybrid electric vehicles are slightly less satisfied than the owners of battery electric vehicles
For me, it’s about taking my money off the table and sending a really really clear message to the oil and gas companies and to the automotive industry that pollution will not earn you any more money from our family.
Will you pledge to make your next new vehicle an electric vehicle?
