For anyone considering a car to end the year, I bought a Tesla Model Y about 9 months ago and have been very happy. It is a practical size and economical to operate but does have the horsepower to be a midlife crisis vehicle when you need a serotonin hit. My commute is about 50 miles round trip and I spend about $2 a day in electricity charging at home $0.15/kwh. On a 220v outlet takes about 2 hours. I have used Superchargers a few times. It is variable but about $0.30/kWh and a full tank charging from 20% to 80% takes about 15 minutes. Have never been in situation where I was sweating about finding a charger. Have had no maintenance other than rotating tires. Had a trial of the self driving feature. For me it was more of a party trick and not that useful, so I did not decide to purchase it. Several manufacturers make competent EVs now, though Tesla’s self-guided buying experience with no sales person is unique, if you can set aside the CEO’s sometimes odd personal beliefs. Potential downsides of all EVs are more expensive insurance because most independent body shops are not qualified to repair and if you drive aggressively the torque will cause premature tire wear.
If you are on the fence about a vehicle purchase and considering electric, feel free to reach out with any questions. It is unclear if congress will remove the $7000 federal incentive next year. Specific to Tesla, any current owner can also give you a code for a $2000 discount.
We bought a Kia Sportage Plug-in Hybrid this year and it's a fantastic car. We had to buy a car on short notice and we weren't sure if we were ready to go full electric yet since we're retired and we like to take a couple of long road trips each year. So we opted for a plug-in-hybrid and it works perfect for us since most of our driving is short trips near our home in Sacramento so 90% of the time we are on all electric. It only has a range of about 34-38 miles electric but that gets us almost to Davis and back on all electric from our home in the Land Park neighborhood.
My brother-in-law has a Volkswagen ID4 and he has driven it from northern Wisconsin to Tucson and said finding charging stations was no problem. In hindsight, I think we could have gone full electric and would have been ok doing long road trips although, some of the remote places we like to go to, would take some prior research to make sure we knew where the charging stations were.
starting to see some R1S in my area. Haven’t seen an R1T in the wild but looks more useful than the Cybertuck. My first exposure to Rivian was the Long Way Up miniseries on AppleTV with Ewan McGregor.
We just bought a Kia Sportage hybrid (not plug in). We have some electrical issues in our house so a plug in didn’t make sense. But we like the hybrid so far! Next time we’ll hopefully make the jump to full electric with our next purchase.
hope you can get your electrical issue resolved. Initially I only had enough power to run 2 out of 3 between car charger, hot tub, and laundry. Somehow it was the laundry not getting done. I added a 50amp charging circuit and it’s great, but is important to use USA-made industrial components.
It's a great car. We had a 2011 Kia Sorento before we got the 2024 Sportage and it was a good car for us. We are incredibly impressed with the comfort, fit and finish and drivability of the Sportage. Most everything is so functionally well thought out and the touch screen is great. Some impressive engineering and quality control went into the design and manufacture of it.