We park our Tesla outside in Minnesota. Do not even bother putting it in the garage because it warms internal cabin temp to 70 degree in about 5 minutes even when it’s 20 below zero here.
When do you think you will buy a 100% pure electric vehicle?
- Thread starter dmclone
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I don't get why people act like EVs are the only vehicles that experience a range reduction in the winter. My truck is down 3-4mpg right now compared to earlier in the year. I think my current tank MPG is like 15ish and in the summer it bounces around 19mpg depending on my city/hwy mix.
Part of that is if you're ideling to warm it up before hand otherwise its only a slight decrease in actual milage due to winter fuel mix, but also a slight bump in power due to colder denser air.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a conventional gasoline car’s gas mileage is roughly 15% to 24% lower at -6°C (20°F) than it would be at 25°C (77°F).
There's a couple things going on for sure. Winter blends are typically less energy dense, air is more dense when it's cold and you need to burn more fuel to keep the air/fuel mix correct. Up until the last couple weeks though I haven't really been using my remote start.
I'm not ignoring it. I already am familiar with the range in my vehicles and how it affected by terrain, weather, etc. But I have no experience with EVs so this is a great spot to get some real life information on EV owners' experiences. Just because I am asking questions, doesn't mean that I'm not interested in EVs - quite the opposite, actually.
I love the idea and I’d love to get on board but I have a family and I couldn’t get any two seat car. When you start getting into more seats the price quickly jumps.
I see a short-lived fad, but I'm very curious to see if I end up being wrong. I like the idea in theory; I seriously question the large-scale appeal.
For someone like myself. No kids, uses a 3-row $50k ICE SUV to drive(alone) 30 miles a day back and forth to work, and has a 2nd vehicle. I could see me replacing my $50k SUV with this commuting vehicle. I could also see me being very sad when it's -5f, and I don't have a steering wheel heater.
I'm suddenly remembering how much I hated driving a Jeep Wrangler during a test drive......
That's kinda what I see with it. The population of people who really want a completely-featureless vehicle is really small ... The Denalis of the world are cleanly outselling the base models (to non-business buyers, anyway). People like creature comforts and they definitely sell. Commuting is hard enough as-is without making it even more uncomfortable.For someone like myself. No kids, uses a 3-row $50k ICE SUV to drive(alone) 30 miles a day back and forth to work, and has a 2nd vehicle. I could see me replacing my $50k SUV with this commuting vehicle. I could also see me being very sad when it's -5f, and I don't have a steering wheel heater.
I can see a world where these sell up front, then people get tired of the NVH/creature comfort losses for their daily driving uses...and suddenly they become undesirable after a short ownership term. There is some kind of market for these, but I suspect it's smaller than it appears once people really get hands on them.
That being said, if they really do hit their pricing goals, there's another discussion to be had. As soon as price goes up, the value prop drops very quickly.
I can tolerate an Allegiant seat for a couple of hours on an extremely rare occasion to get to/from vacation but I won't do it every day.
An EV that you can customize and repair yourself........for that price? There is a huge market for something like this. Now if the vehicle ends up being a POS......?
If not, hopefully it doesn't end up being a modern version of "Tucker" and shut down by the big boys.
A perfect example of this was the Honda Fit.
Hers was completely loaded for $22k.
Plenty of room for my 6'2 and fat body
Super reliable
Tons of storage
Zippy and fun around town. Easy to drive and park.
Great fuel mileage
Safe
A little loud on the highway
My mother had two of these, and they were amazing vehicles, but they sold like crap in the U.S. and got discontinued.
FYI: this thread did help me bump up my timeline for going full EV. I originally said 10 years of never, but just last fall picked up a used Nissan Ariya. Got it pretty cheap when word went out the US would only get the 23, 24, and 25 model. Japan still getting the 26 and up.
Realized our family was the perfect fit to have one EV. My daily drive is less than 15 miles for work. Maybe another 10 miles if I have to take the kid to something. This makes Lv1 charging more than enough. Most nights even with Lv1, it only needs 4-6 hours of charging. I got the Tesla adapter so I can charge on their network if I ever need. Maybe a few random trips going to the other side of Houston and back did I have to really let it charge all night for a couple nights to get back where I was. But I hardly ever do those drives. Winter in Houston is very mild so we don't get very many days in the 20s and 30s, so the range is almost always predictable.
Still have the wife's traditional car if we don't feel like planning our drive and just go with simple gas fill ups.
Realized our family was the perfect fit to have one EV. My daily drive is less than 15 miles for work. Maybe another 10 miles if I have to take the kid to something. This makes Lv1 charging more than enough. Most nights even with Lv1, it only needs 4-6 hours of charging. I got the Tesla adapter so I can charge on their network if I ever need. Maybe a few random trips going to the other side of Houston and back did I have to really let it charge all night for a couple nights to get back where I was. But I hardly ever do those drives. Winter in Houston is very mild so we don't get very many days in the 20s and 30s, so the range is almost always predictable.
Still have the wife's traditional car if we don't feel like planning our drive and just go with simple gas fill ups.
A lot of this is strictly out of fear, which I think is unwarranted. Sounds like a great win for you. The Bolt is another one that a lot of people seek out because of the savings.
I could see them selling the **** out of them for fleet sales. Every autoparts store has a couple bare bones Rangers or Colorados right now and I could see this taking the place of those. The people who say they want a bare bones vehicle is a lot smaller than you'd think because of how loud they are. I only know of one person who actually bought a bare bones Colorado a few years ago. Wanted one with crank windows, no AC and 2wd. I think he waited 6 or 8 months to get it because nobody outside of those fleet sales buys the damn things.
Would probably be really popular with parts stores, if they don't already use Mavericks.
Then it becomes a matter of how many fleet operations are ready right now to convert to EVs (there surely are some, but the cap on that is unknown). I wonder if the sales of just those operations will be enough to justify long-term production of them. I have to imagine the intended sales targets also include human customer sales along with business ones for a product like these, but I'm really questioning the longevity of the human buyer base at this point.
