The transition

jabberwocky said:
m amazed it would be more expensive than fueling a gas F150, unless you're exclusively charging at expensive fast chargers
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Didn’t pass judgement on more or less expesive than petrol model.

My brother has a Tesla and a Cadillac EV. My SIL commented, in the winter, their trip to CO from NY cost more to fuel the Caddy vs a similar size Honda something it replaced (this is pre-war gas prices). Plus takes several hours longer.

To each their own.
 
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Theres going to be millions of 'senile' old Teslas roaming the country, their electronic brains not capable of running the latest software, failing capacitors, cameras fogged up.
People honking them to get moving as a plastic bag confuses their hallucinating minds.
Come on grand klanker, its just a picture of a cat.
Car inspections will have to include a dementia test.

Mechanics holding up pictures of a child, then a suitcase and someone laying in the road.

You get a call off the cops because theyve found your Model Y chasing young sports cars around the park.
 
If you Do The Math, even the most expensive fast chargers (which usually are only expensive at peak times) top out around $0.70 to $0.80 per kwh. Which translates to fossil fuels at $5 to $6 per gallon.

More typical DCFCs will run $0.40 to $0.60 per kwh. But if you shop around (which is tough because nobody posts the price on a big sign or even at the charger) you can find it as low as $0.20 per kwh.

The real ripoffs are some 240VAC public chargers out there that charge $10 per hour or more, which can quickly add up to $1 or $2 per kwh.

Charging at home as much as you can is where you save real money. Which depending on local electricity rates can easily save you thousands of dollars per year over a dinosaur burner. What is costs me at home to charge works out to about $0.65 per gallon if I was burning dinosaurs.

It shocks me that so many people are willing to leave that much money on the table just because they like oil companies so much. Or something.
 
Mr. Coffee said:
Charging at home as much as you can is where you save real money. Which depending on local electricity rates can easily save you thousands of dollars per year over a dinosaur burner. What is costs me at home to charge works out to about $0.65 per gallon if I was burning dinosaurs.

It shocks me that so many people are willing to leave that much money on the table just because they like oil companies so much. Or something.
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My brother isn't some green zealot, he just think it maths out for him. And the Rivian is genuinely a fantastic car; super comfy, nice inside, extremely fast (he had the quad motor which like 3s to 60; it outruns my dads M4 pretty handily). He does road trips several times a year and has preferred the Rivian even though he gives up some time for charging vs refueling the Bronco. He does like the Bronco a lot as well, but that seems to be a good weather top down or off roading car.

Hes a tech guy and does pretty detailed costs for his cars and over the past few years he has had both says the Rivian is like 1/3 the cost of the Bronco for total operating costs (charging and maintenance). His main issue is that he had some warranty stuff that had to be fixed and Rivians repair network is spotty. They have good service and take care of things, but he had a battery issue last year and it had to go to Richmond VA for repair (he lives in PA, so it was 3-4 hours away). But they seem to be investing and opening more service centers. Will be interesting how Rivian does with the R2 coming out, which is built and priced to be a lot more mass market.
 
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Mr. Coffee said:
It shocks me that so many people are willing to leave that much money on the table
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Our "around town" driving (thus charge at home) is about 6000 miles a year. With our current "around town" vehicle and current fuel prices, we spend less than $1k per year on fuel.

Based on a quick search, a similar sized EV starts at $55k, current model of our car starts at $42k. Pay now or later; to each their own. Checked records, at 6 yrs and 50k miles, we've had ~$600 in maintenance costs, not including a set of tires.

Some day an EV might make sense for us, but for now we don't want to change the way we travel. Realistically "a couple of thousand left on the table" is pretty insignificant in the big picture. (My HPE is up more than that today alone.)

Fortunately, we all still have choices!
 
Rivians do not have a great reputation for build quality at this point. But a lot of people who own them still love them.

On the price difference, it is rapidly going away and already for all practical purposes nonexistent in some cases.

A Chevy Equinox is available as both a dinosaur burner and an EV. The EV version lists for about $2000 more. But dealers often give rebates and discount for the EV which brings the costs even closer. Yes, the Equinox is a POS and I kind of hate them. On the other hand, comparable Subaru models run about the same price for EV or non-EV versions. Because of all the trim variations it is harder to make a direct comparison there but generally the costs of comparable models are within about $3000, with EVs sometimes being cheaper. And again, dealers in a lot of cases still offer generous discounts for EVs.

As a personal example, the 2026 Subaru Solterra I bought in February listed for $39k. I got about $6k in discounts to take it off their hands. A comparable Subaru Forester lists at about $41k, although I have no idea what discounts they would give on that model.
 
Mr. Coffee said:
As a personal example, the 2026 Subaru Solterra I bought in February listed for $39k. I got about $6k in discounts to take it off their hands. A comparable Subaru Forester lists at about $41k, although I have no idea what discounts they would give on that model.
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If one likes little cars they appear to be similar. Our around towner is an Ascent.

Viva la choices!
 
Mr. Coffee said:
Rivians do not have a great reputation for build quality at this point. But a lot of people who own them still love them.
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His is a first year quad motor. He has had some minor issues and the one major one (my recollection is he was slow charging off a 120v connection at a vacation rental and the slow charge inverter had an issue and put the main battery into limp mode). They seem to be going down the same path Tesla did, which is that cars are hard to build and doing everything in house means learning lessons. Rivians support has been excellent; zero argument, they cover tow/rental vehicle/repairs. Hes unsure if he will keep it out of warranty though.

To be fair, he had a Tesla 3 before that and had a ton of issues with that, and Tesla support was pretty bad (they basically made every warranty repair a fight). The build quality on the Tesla was not good. Which less forgivable because Tesla has been at it a lot longer than Rivian.

My wife and I recently got a new car and as much as I was interested in an EV it didn't make sense. We live in a small town but our lot is urban so we don't have a garage and would be entirely reliant on public chargers. The town does have some new municipal chargers that are reasonably priced (about what we pay for house electricity) but we decided that it didn't really work so went IC again (2017 Explorer to 2026 Explorer). We tend to keep the main cars about 10 years, I'm guessing when it is time to replace it we will be going EV. The F150 will be around until it dies, it gets terrible mileage but we don't drive it much and its basic and reliable.
 
Does anyone own a shovel so we can put this dead horse to bed once and for good.
Beating him has shown to be some sort of intellectual arm wrestle of the obtuse 🙃
 
I just watched a vid on those container fitted remote charging stations, theyve got about 12kw solar on the roof and it was up in Utah outside of the grid.
It was diesel backed up at first, but that was mocked, so they went solar only and quickly went bust.
In the comments everyone was sad.

Sad for who, that one car a day it could half charge over 4 hours?
 
Good sum-up of where China is at with renewables and coal in 2026. Both sorta 50% 50% for now but the renewables expansion year on year is just extraordinary.

How ironic that Trump's led-by-the-nose by Bibi's batshit Iran escapade is driving more and more to renewables - not because of climate change, but because of energy security.

 
PedalUma said:
This is weird, maybe I should send one to Eastern Europe to help out and save a guy trapped in Spandex at 15.3 mph max.

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aaagh! stinky,tempermental buzz! my electric lawn care junk is superb!( no "whut.whut' put ,put and die!) pull the trigger and go.I always mention on the red blooded sites,take an EV or a ICE in a closed auditorium and run them for an hour and see which one chokes you to death,we have this illusion of an unlimited atmosphere.
 
Chargeride said:
China is still building coal plants at some rate.
energyandcleanair.org

Built to peak: Coal power expansion runs out of room in China – Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air

energyandcleanair.org energyandcleanair.org
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yeah that clip above covers that. it's cheap and within their borders, as are renewables. They are using both - vast population in huge metropolises with modern electricity demands of their enormous industry. But as the renewables infrastructure continues to be built that will change.
 
I've owned Ego lawn care equipment for about 5 years. My first battery died last week. The failure mode is that it is able to take a charge, but the runtime is only a few minutes before it cuts out and the red light flashes. That's good, but not great, for something that's rarely used more than 40 times per year.
 
Chargeride said:
China is still building coal plants at some rate.
energyandcleanair.org

Built to peak: Coal power expansion runs out of room in China – Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air

energyandcleanair.org energyandcleanair.org
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have no idea what China's coal reserves are,but have been told the Norfolk coal exports have been halved for quite awhile,even our local Papermill halved its coal imports when the "biomass" boiler was online.It all boils down to this,heat! heat does the process,generates the steam,makes the environment bearable,yada,yada.The best part of the oil craze and "REA" was reliable lighting and saving the whales,you think refrigeration is important,lighting is at least a very close second.( I don't understand why most homes do not have a water tank in the attic to take advantage of the heat up there in the daytime,I found out this interesting tidbit,"closed attics" are coming in "Vogue now" they have a moisture escape port and allow very little outside air in to increase the moisture in there,this follows the closed and sealed crawlspaces on "earthstar" homes,think about you cannot dry a cool place with hot humid air( you can actually dry a crawlspace with cold dry winter air) renewables and nukes are the wave of the future plus a sustainable population,over usage of water and drought have really hurt some hydro generation,the next crazy thing that is happening is the reintroduction of apex predators near population centers plus farmland being turned back into forest,just wait,food prices,you ain't seen nothing yet.
 
kevinmccune said:
tidbit,"closed attics" are coming in "Vogue now" they have a moisture escape port and allow very little outside air in to increase the moisture in there,this follows the closed and sealed crawlspaces on "earthstar" homes,think about you cannot dry a cool place with hot humid air
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Knowing a bit about HVAC, the closed attic does not make sense in hot humid climates. Don't know what an "earthstar" is, but years ago looked at an earth home (underground) had a sizeable dehumidifier in it.
 
Grid-scale Solar + Battery is now cheaper than any fossil fuel in certain markets. Given that the price trend on both solar panels and batteries is down that will be true everywhere very soon.

Earlier the up-front capital costs of a renewable electricity plant were higher than for one burning fossil fuels (although renewables always win on operating costs). They are very close to parity now and will certainly leave fossil fuel plants in the dust in the coming years.

By 2030 it will likely be much cheaper to abandon existing fossil fuel plants and replace them with solar+battery systems pretty much everywhere. Unless you live someplace like the Aleutian Islands where it is cloudy 320 days a year. Although there is no shortage of wind there.
 
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