Living With an EV for a Week – Day One

"A better test case might be for someone living and working in a city such as SF, or a suburban resident with at least one other car. That's who these cars are really intended for anyway." If that's the case then you might as well just buy an electric bicycle, or take the mass transit system. Better yet, just buy a recumbent bicycle or a velocar, slap a Chinese moped engine on it, and use that instead. Maybe get a Crosley, or rescue that Metropolitan out of the junkyard.

@AFX Actually, you have a very good point. It seems like the optimum user for an EV in its current configuration (excluding Silicon Valley millionaire toys like the Tesla) is someone who ought to be using transit. Or not owning a car and all and using a service like ZipCar or Car-2-Go when local automotive transportation is needed, with use of a rental car for out-of-town trips. A related point is that these various calculations of "savings" resulting from going 12,000 miles/yr. on electricity vs. the same distance on gasoline are pretty specious. Given its limited range, its very unlikely that the EV owner is going to put the same number of miles on an EV that he puts on his gasoline car that the EV replaces. The gasoline car is just more versatile. And, for the 90 percent of us who don't live in coastal California, the apparent swings of an EV's range based on the ambient temperature seems like just one more aggravation. I put about 5,500 miles/yr. on my car; and my commute is well within any EVs range, round trip. But driving that number of miles, the fuel cost for my car is a relatively small part of the operating cost. Reducing it further, with a limited utility vehicle like an EV just doesn't make any sense.

@DC Bruce I don't necessarily agree. You can live in a city that doesn't have good mass transit and is reasonably spread out and still get good use of an EV. If lease rates keep coming down/and or staying low, and after I get my house, I'll look into an EV. The cost of the lease is currently right at the break even point compared to the operating costs of my BMW. I live in suburban Orlando, Fl and could continue to use the BMW for my twice a week 70 mile round trip highway commute, as well as any other situations where range was an issue. However, aside from my fulltime job, everywhere else I frequent is within 10 miles of my house, so I could easily use the EV for those trips and avoid the gas and wear and tear on the BMW when it at its worst, which is in around town stop and go suburban hell traffic, which is also when an EV is at its best.

@tjh8402 Thing is, that is also the perfect use case for a Prius. In suburban hell traffic you really will approach 60mpg with one, at which point you are using so little gas that it just doesn't matter. And you could still take it to work if you are having the BMW detailed that day or something. I refuse to say "if it is in the shop" fellow Bimmer Brother! :-) I have one friend with a Leaf. It will just about do what he needs to do on a daily basis, but if he comes into town in the winter, he has to stop at the Nissan dealer for a top-up or he might not make it home. He really is saving money vs. the Nissan Titan he drove previously, but realistically he leased it because he is a techie geek and thought it was cool. At least once we couldn't get together for lunch because he went out to the garage and found he forgot to plug it in overnight. Oops.

@krhodes - 60 mpg for 12k miles a year still means an additional $700 per year in fuel costs for the prius at $3.50/gallon, plus the additional maintenance costs of having a gas engine. While not a lot a lot of $, it does eliminate the argument in favor of getting the second "green" vehicle, which is that the ownership costs of an EV are less than the in town operating costs of the BMW. the Leafs current lease deal @$199/month is break even with zero fuel cost, and a Prius can't be had for any less than that (I checked, a Prius C also goes for $199/month). And yes, I factored the downpayment into the ownership cost of both the Prius and Leaf. If Prius's can be had for $150 a month or less, or premium gas regularly starts living at more than $4/gallon, than the math will favor the Prius more. As far as the BMW's need for frequent detailing and cleaning goes, between my parents and grandfather, our family has two more cars than drivers, and all are local, so procuring a loaner vehicle is never an issue. realistically, it's never down for more than a day, and with me only working 2 days a week and my mechanic only a mile or 2 from my house, it's easy to schedule service on days off.

@tjh8402 Electricity is cheapish, but it isn't free, unless you have your own solar panels or a wind turbine in the back 40. EVs need maintenance too. Where I live, an electric car would put me into the range of ~$.24/Kwh for electricity - which I realize is near the top of prices nationally. On a three-year lease your maintenance cost for either car is probably zero, but longer term the jury is still out on the EVs. That battery will not last forever, and I will certainly take the bet that it won't last as long as the one in a Prius, or the engine in the Prius. And the relatively gigantic battery of an EV will be quite expensive to replace when the time comes. Again, not relevant on a lease, but some of us don't lease cars. I use the same redundancy principles I use in my professional career for my cars. N+1 - the minimum number you need plus at least one more. I currently have six cars. :-)

@tjh8402 "Electricity is cheapish, but it isn’t free, unless you have your own solar panels or a wind turbine in the back 40." That equipment isn't exactly free either. A few solar panel companies had salesman try and sell me panels for my house. To fill my roof space with panels would in a best case scenario barely meet the average power needs of my house and would cost over 100k installed.

@Krhodes1 - I would never buy an EV for the reasons you listed. If I was getting this car for the long term, the Prius is definitely the better choice. I'm normally not the leasing sort either; my BMW is paid off, but if cost of the lease payments, downpayment, and operating expenses on the EV for 36k miles over 36 months are or equal to what it would cost to drive the 330i that many miles in that time period, then to me it makes sense to do, if only so the BMW lasts longer, if not as a money saving venture. Because of the high payment on the purchase of a new Prius, it will be years (at least until the car is paid off) before I actually end up ahead on ownership costs.