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The following is another clip from the book I am working on to get off of fossil fuels.
[b]Buying or Leasing an BEV that meets your requirements[/b]
For people considering an electric car of some type there are a number of considerations: Many first time buyers of electric vehicles do not understand what they are getting into with a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV). The questions below are mainly for BEVs since that seems to be the trend for EVs. I believe that this trend will continue for many years since there are so many advancements being made for electric vehicles.
1. How much range does the vehicle require? There are tradeoffs for more range in a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV).
2. How many people need to ride in the vehicle? How much luggage do you need to haul with you? Size matters.
3. Does your home support charging an EV?
4. Is an EV going be your only car or do you also plan to keep an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) type car for high energy things like towing a trailer?
5. How significant is upfront cost and life cycle cost to you? What tradeoffs are you willing to entertain?
6. Do you need all wheel drive or does just one driving axel work for your needs? How much driving on snow and ice do you perform in a year?
7. Is off road capability also needed?
8. What is the climate like where the car will be driven? If a person lives near the Arctic Circle, then an EV might be a bad pick.
9. Are road trips a possibility? Do you have an internal combustion engine (ICE) driven car that can be used until there is a better network of chargers in your area of the country?
10. Check on what type of plug is used for fast DC charging before buying a car. If the connection is a ?CHAdeMO? type as with what is used with the Nissan cars you may wish to eliminate them from you ?buy? list. Some 2023 Nissan EV models may be coming out with the more common type ?Combined Charging System? (CCS) so that fast DC charging is more available. I highly recommend buying or leasing a car with a CCS type connection or a Tesla Type 2 plug connection.
11. Are you willing to sacrifice some of your personal time to save money?
12. Do you really need a self-driving car?
13. Would you like to product your own energy?
14. Do you transport large objects frequently? Would a trailer towed by a SUV meet your requirements? How far do you need to tow a trailer and what type of trailer do you plan to tow? What kind of speed the trailer going to be towed at?
1.0 BEV Range
Battery range for a BEV is very important when selecting a battery driven electric car. In colder climates, a good rule of thumb is to take the EPA car range and divide by two to get usable range for where you need to go. Plus it is not a good idea to run the battery below 20% capacity. An example would be if one needed to drive 40 miles to work and there is no charging at work, then the car would need at least 160 miles of EPA range. Add on a 20% battery reserve and a 200 mile battery is needed for cold weather driving.
For highway driving at higher speeds, BEVs are very sensitive to headwinds. With high headwinds, the range might be reduced by over 30% and one may have to drive slower to keep enough battery energy. This issue arises because the electric car is so efficient with energy and all energy losses become very apparent. Newer electric cars have features that will help save energy. A heat pump will help save energy in the winter because it can extract heat energy from an already cold outside. Depending on conditions, you might be able to get three times the heat energy with a heat pump as compared to resistance heating.
My 2022 Bolt does have a climate feature that allows heating only for defrosting the windshield without starting the air conditioning compressor. This feature saves a significant amount of energy in cold weather driving. Older models do not seem to have this feature and it does save energy when clearing the windshield.
BEV manufacturers should consider listing energy saving features that are available on each model car to help customers select the right car for their needs.
Snow and ice tires should be considered to help winter range for BEVs. Cold weather tires provide less rolling resistance during cold weather because they flex more freely. Parking the BEV in a garage during cold weather is also very helpful in extending range. Preheating the car with it plugged in before driving off also helps range.
Proper air pressure in the tires is also very important for maximum range. Check the tire air pressure at least once a week when driving a BEV. Be sure keep the air pressure well below limits when airing the tires up cold.
2.0 Electric Vehicle Capacity
One should carefully consider how big the electric vehicle needs to be to meet your requirements. If you only need capacity to haul around four people then there are presently loads of options. As with ICE vehicles, larger vehicles such as a Ford Lightning pickup take nearly twice what a smaller vehicle such as the Chevy Bolt. If you have high electrical energy costs, this might be something you would want to evaluate. The Bolt will get around four miles per Kilowatt Hour (KwHr) and the Lightning will get around two miles per KwHr. If your electrical energy is nearly free like mine, it is only an issue when you need to pay for fast DC charging. Expect to pay twice as much for a large electric vehicle verses a smaller electric vehicle.
3.0 Does Your Electric Service Support EV Charging?
The quickest way to sort out what the capacity of your house?s electric service is would be to check your electric panel and see what size fuse or circuit breaker you have. If the circuit breaker shows, ?200? on it that would mean it is rated for 200 amperes (commonly called ?amps?) flow of energy at 240 volts of electrical potential. This would be plenty for charging an electric vehicle. If you see something less than ?200? then you might consider an electric service upgrade. Generally speaking, the power company you have would be able to provide 200 amps of service to a 200 amp rated electric box. Most houses build in the last 40 years would have a 200 amp service box.
If there are no slots left for another circuit, you will need have a subpanel wired so that you will have more circuit breaker slots available for charging an electric car. For myself, I had a dryer plug that was not being used so I purchased a charging adapter cord from Amazon and used it to charge both the Volt and the Bolt. The dryer outlet can provide about 11 miles of range for each hour of charge. My friend Jeff installed a 48 amp charger in my free standing garage that can add about 44 miles of range per hour of charge. Cost was around $600.
4.0 Is the EV going to be your only vehicle?
Since a battery powered electric vehicle (BEV) does not have the kind of energy storage that an ICE powered vehicle, one must understand there are currently significant limits on what it can do. For example, if you wished to tow your 5000 lb. boat to a lake that is more than 60 miles away with a Ford Lightning pickup, it might not work out unless you can charge back up near the lake for the trip home. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) range rating does not include towing or even going over 55 miles per hour. So towing might cut the range to less than half of the rated range. Also if you need to go 80 miles per hour, the electric vehicle is going to take a large hit on range because of the aerodynamic drag on the vehicle. In addition if you typically head into very strong winds, the effect is the same and the range will take a large hit.
5.0 Upfront Cost and Lifecycle Cost
If you just want just comfortable, reliable and low cost transportation, at Tesla might not be for you. The issue is the very large upfront cost of any of the Tesla models. Even used Tesla cars have a big price tag. Currently the lowest cost long range electric car is the 2023 Chevy Bolt with an MSRP of $26.5K dollars. For many people, they could buy the Bolt and make the car payments instead of the gasoline payments they are currently making. I have a friend who is spending $120 every four days on gasoline. There would be a huge savings if he purchased an electric vehicle. His cost for electrical energy is just 10.25 cents per KwHr. Do a spreadsheet analysis to see what your savings would be. A spreadsheet comparing cost is further down in this writing.
6.0 Two Wheel Drive Vs All Wheel Drive (AWD)
If you have to deal with a lot of snow and ice on the roadways during the year, you might consider an All-Wheel Drive (AWD) vehicle. With electric motors, the typical approach is to have a very simple gear reduction drive integrated with a differential driving each axel. There are a few like the Rivian pickup that have separate motors driving each wheel. The mechanical arrangement using motors is much simpler than the conventional ICE drive arrangement and should be more reliable and cost less to repair.
However you might be able to get by with only two wheel drive. A BEV is not like the older rear wheel drive ICE car where all the weight is not on the driving wheels. A BEV car that is two wheel drive will perform about as good as an ICE car with front wheel drive.
7.0 Off Road Capability
Off road driving is a bit different from just driving on ice and snow. For most off road driving a larger amount of ground clearance is needed under the vehicle. Tesla has some models that can increase ground clearance on demand to help with off road driving. Another item to consider is how heavy the vehicle is. A large heavy pickup does not do that well in loose sand or mud even with oversize tires. However the same vehicle might do very well in the desert where it does not rain often and mud is not normally an issue. One should look at how heavy the new battery powered Jeep will be when it is available to the public.
For myself, I would like to get a Subaru Solterra at some point for limited mild type off road driving. In the US market it will only come with AWD. Road clearance is pretty good and it is not crazy heavy. Another great choice would be the Ford Lightning pickup or Chevy BEV pickup equipped with the AWD. So far I have not read anything about a very serious off road BEV with skid plates to protect the battery pack.
8.0 Climate Considerations
In extreme low temperature climates a BEV may not make sense. If you are in Alaska and cannot put a car in a garage, it might be a problem. The battery setup does not do well with extreme cold. A hybrid electric car might make more sense with temperature extremes that can go to minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
If the car can be parked inside a garage it will perform much better. The BEV has the advantage of being able to preheat the car before you get in while enclosed in a garage (no emissions).
Another consideration is extreme heat with a BEV that does not have battery cooling. Earlier models of the Nissan Leaf did not have battery heating or cooling. I the hot desert climates, these batteries took a large hit on capacity after a year or two of use. I would not recommend these type of used cars unless you live in a mild climate. Almost all BEVs on the market now have both battery heating and cooling to make the battery perform with little loss of capacity over time.
9.0 Road Trips with a BEV
Road trips all along the west coast of the US are not a problem because of the extensive charging network that is currently in place. If you need to go north or south in many areas of the western US it seems to be a problem. I could not sort out any good path from Holbrook, Arizona to Seattle, Washington. The only safe thing to do was to go to California and go up the coast on I-5. The Midwest has a pretty good charging network as well as the east coast. Most interstate freeways have charging stations all along the path to where you are going. States like Arizona, New Mexico and Texas do not have much in the way of DC fast charging. Check for charging stations along the path of where you might want to travel to see relatives and such.
10.0 What Type of Charging Station? (already addressed in Q&A section)
As of this writing, Elon Musk is not going to let you charge your non-Tesla BEV at a Tesla charging station. This could change at some point because Elon could make a lot of money off of charging the non-Tesla cars. There are a number of networks that service non-Tesla BEVs including Electrify America and EVgo. If you want to purchase a non-Tesla vehicle, I would recommend that you get one with DC charging available with the ?Combined Charging System (CCS)? type of charging connection. If the connection is a ?CHAdeMO? type as with what is used with the Nissan cars you may wish to eliminate them from you ?buy? list. Some 2023 Nissan EV models may be coming out with the more common CCS connection so that fast DC charging is much more available. I highly recommend buying or leasing a car with a CCS type connection or a Tesla Type 2 plug connection.
11.0 Sacrifice Personal Time
I think one needs to evaluate the lower priced BEV against the higher priced BEVs and what is really needed. For example, if cross country trips may only happen once a year, then something like a 2023 $26.6K Chevy Bolt would be the low cost option verses a Tesla Model 3. You can buy nearly by two Bolts for one 2023 Tesla Model 3 and they have similar ranges. So if you only wasted say 8 hours on charging while on a cross country trip, is it worth the extra $20K. Use the money to book a ticket on a commercial jetliner. If you are constantly on long trips then you might want something like the Hyundai IONIQ 5 that can charge very quickly.
12.0 Self Driving?
The self-driving car might be a good option for older folks that have lost some of their driving skills and have enough money to pay for this option. It is something to consider if you have the means to pay for this kind of option.
13.0 Make Your Own ?Gas? at Home
I hope everyone knows that you cannot make your own gasoline at home. However, with solar panels, generating energy for the electric car is not a problem.
You would think that most ?preppers? would really like the idea of having good transportation if cut off from civilization. Not only can you make your own energy with solar panels, there are some BEVs that can run your house if the electric energy from the utility company were disrupted. A great example is the Ford Lightning pickup. It can be charged with solar energy and it can provide electric energy for your house when the sun is not shining. So is preparing for a disaster important to you?
14.0 Do You Transport Large Objects Frequently?
If you have to frequently haul large items then a pickup might be the proper vehicle to consider. In my opinion, the Ford Lightning is an excellent choice. If you need to tow a trailer for more than 100 miles with no charging available, then this might not work out because the BEV pickup does not carry enough energy in the battery pack. Also note that if you are towing a trailer, there are nearly no charging stations that accommodate this arrangement so the trailer would have to be disconnected from the vehicle before charging.
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