this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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Car dealers say they can’t sell EVs, tell Biden to slow their rollout (arstechnica.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

I live in a small town in a rural area. There is one charger in my town, but it's at the county building and is for county employees. There are chargers at grocery stores, but those are 50kms away.

My house still has a fuse box, I don't have any available holes. The whole system needs changed and I will, but that's $10k and that's not a very exciting purchase.

I guess I didn't mean lease, I meant financing. I definitely hope to have a vehicle at least 7 years. I just upgraded my paid off corolla because we needed all wheel drive vehicle for our winters here. Otherwise I'd have kept it till it died in 20 years (corolla joke). The electric car would have to be comparable to that and I'm not sold that they will be. We bought one of the few cars available to us without a multi month wait.

I'm sure many of my fears are unjustified, but I require further evidence. I'm not an early adopter type.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You really only have 1 problem (aside from perceptions), but it's a real one. You need to be able to charge at home, and it sounds like you probably can't do that. You'd be stuck on trickle charging (3 miles of range per hour on the charger), and even that's questionable.

The car will keep the battery warm whenever it's plugged in. If you take care of the battery (rarely let it go all the to 0% or 100%), it will easily last over 100k miles, and probably to 200k. When it does start to wear out, it's not a hard cutoff- just like your phone, you'll notice the capacity (range) starts to drop.

FWIW, there are very significant federal rebates/tax credits in the US for EVs. That specifically includes upgrading electrical service to support an EV charger. But given that you said kms, I have to assume you are in a different country. Many have their own incentives, but you'd have to check into those yourself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

From what I understand our incentives ended a couple years ago and my Premier is a dick. I'm definitely not against electric cars, but I think the car we bought was a good choice for our current situation. I hope our car is the last ICE we buy. Much of my needs are met with my ebike and I try to structure my life to need a car as little as possible. Winter's a bitch though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I had a 87 corolla for the longest time. I sold it to a teenager a over a decade ago and I still see it rolling around town. Great car if you are only worried about going a-b and don't need fancy things like usb chargers or A/C.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Mine was a '16 and had more features lol. Great car. The only "repairs" it needed in 7 years were the brakes. I was sorry to let it go.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I get the old house rural life. I wouldn't worry about the lasting 7 years right now. That being said driving a relatively efficient car for a couple decades is definitely environmentally friendly by comparison to getting a new truck every 5 years. Probably not too far from buying a new EV every 7 years once you add the embodied energy.

In a few years things will come around so make sure you've upgraded your electrical panel by then.