Be Honest: What's "Stopping" You from Buying an EV

It seems like the biggest objection are all the long road trips people seem to be making.

I know I average less than one trip per year that is longer the range of most of these EVs.

Buying a gas car for this reason is like buying a pickup truck because you move a couch now and then.

Now if you don’t like the choice of vehicles, that’s totally legit.
I love having options.

Misleading title, most of you guys are not BUYING these cars, you are leasing or financing.

Pathetic and pretentious.

I buy used cars every 10 years for less than a paycheck. Currently on a 2003 Audi A3 with a "real" 1.6l engine, hardly any electronics.

I disagree about solar panels. I had them installed in 2015 in Southern California. Initial cost after tax rebate was about $14k. I got a 20 year mfg. warranty to produce 90% of advertised wattage. Electric costs in my area have risen about 30% since then, so my calculated break even of 7 years was probably closer to 6. Since then I have been making about 12% return AFTER TAX. The added house value is at least the solar cost, so I have lost nothing on the investment.

Financially the solar panels were a great decision. On the other hand, an EV is a depreciating asset with a shorter lifespan that is significantly more expensive than readily available alternatives. They have a slight advantage in operating and maintenance costs. But the break even will never occur even with solar on my house to offset the charging cost.

I WANT to drive an electric car for environmental reasons, but to me it makes no financial sense.

This....

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You live in a very sunny region with no real winter, I’d assume a mostly south facing roof with no shade and space for the panels, and got a good deal from the sounds of it. You are the ideal candidate. That’s great, but it isn’t common across the country.

No manual transmission, no satisfying engine note. Almost all of them are ugly in an effort to reduce drag. Not convenient for road trips. Regenerative braking. Poor fit and finish (in Teslas, which is the #1 EV maker). They are very heavy (often 2.5 tons or more) Going fast in a straight line on roads with 55mph speed limits is overrated.

Due to high household income, we don't qualify for the $7500 tax credit. I would be paying about 15% more than everyone else. No thanks.

(I am aware of the lease with immediate buyback loophole but not all dealers are willing to pass along all of the $7500 savings)

I want a plug-in hybrid. We don’t have many options out there, especially for a 4-wheel drive, high clearance vehicle. I want to be able to use electric for 95% of my trips and be able to gas up when necessary for longer trips since that infrastructure is there. We’ve decided that it’s either gas or electric and hardly any in between.

Price. Getting involved in an auto payment is just dumb.

I owned one but got rid of it. My kids play travel ball and 300 miles each way over a weekend is very common for us. Planning a trip around charging stations and hotels with chargers is a pain. Especially when they don't work about 20% of the time. During the winter, our car that was supposed to get 320 mi of range got about 230 at best. We stopped at the only charging station we could and it was out of order. We had to get towed to the next working one. We had several other instances where we were 25 mi from our destination and had to wait 2 hours in line for the only charger in the area. That all said, it was great around town, but it didn't work for us. Traded it in on a suburban. We will never go back unless the charging infrastructure is substantially upgraded. Probably won't happen in my driving lifetime to be honest.

If your entire life is close to home, I think it's great way to go.

Came here to say this, except we have 3 EVs.

Many people are still uneducated about the realities of EVs, and influenced by the large amount of FUD.

Just chiming in here to say the range/charging issues are way overblow (at least for Teslas at the moment). I've had a Tesla Model Y for 3 years now and have never had any issues with charging. As most others mentioned, 90+% of my charging is done at home and is completely sufficient.

Charging on long road trips (including one cross-country trip) was never an issued. I actually liked stopping every ~3hrs to charge. I would plug in, go grab a snack/use the bathroom, flip around on my phone for 10 minutes and be good to go. Finding hotels with free EV chargers would also save me ~$25 each night.

The only times I really need to plan out charging are when I do remote hikes (located in the PNW). But even then it's never been that big of an issue, may just need to do a quick top-off before I head off into the boonies.

lol what don't you understand?

No, batteries don't produce energy, they store energy. EV's run off electricity. What's not to understand? It's an EV (Electric Vehicle), not a BV (Battery Vehicle) haha, not sure why you are hung up on the difference between the concepts of a battery and electricity.

Electricity comes from all sorts of sources. Oil only comes from oil. And sure production of the battery is not environmental friendly, but making the batteries for one car is a hell of a lot more environmentally friendly than burning gas for a couple hundred thousand miles of driving. Also EVs are generally more efficient with energy than gasoline vehicles are.

How much more eco-friendly an EV is over gasoline vehicles really comes down to what your energy production mix is. If you live in an area that gets all its electricity from fossil fuels that sucks and yeah having an EV ain't that much different than a gasoline car. But plenty of places have a mix of fossil fuels and renewables or even nuclear, and some places are even gonna be heavily using renewables, and people in these places who drive EV's are much more eco-friendly than using gasoline cars. And with time the world is only going to go more to renewables so the difference between EVs and gasoline vehicles is only going to grow more heavily in favor of EVs.

Claiming that EVs aren't more eco-friendly than gasoline vehicles is just a false excuse. Real reasons would be range, cost, not enough charging stations, or takes too long to fill up. Lack of eco-friendliness is not a reason because its automatically no worse for the environment than gasoline cars and for most people its much better.

I live the vanlife and my dream van is an EV van with solar panels built into the roof and connected directly to the EV battery with outlets from the battery available in the cabin. That way I could get rid of my whole self-made solar setup, run things off the car battery thus vastly increasing my home electrical capacity, and have all my solar energy going straight into the car battery and not being wasted a lot of the time with my solar batteries sitting at 100% and knowing that my van would be driving at least partially on solar power.

But for now I just have to settle for living on 100% solar energy but driving with dirty gasoline with low mpgs.

Once EV vans are available with good mileage, with the built-in solar setup as described above, and plenty of charging stations everywhere, I would totally switch to an EV. Even if by that time I'm only in the van for road trips or part-time. And the next time I buy a vehicle that isn't a van (which probably won't be for a number of years) it'll be an EV.

+1

If there is even a chance of turning an 8 hour road trip into a 10 hrs because Im just sitting waiting for my car to charge, Im going with gas. It takes 5 min to fill up and be on my way.

Price. Unproven technology. Lack of charging stations.

Price and charging time and availability are reasonable concerns. Which part of the technology is unproven? Electric motors and batteries predate internal combustion engines and are very reliable. The charging process is well proven.

1) Cost. My current car has been paid off for years, has 190k miles, and I only pay for the insurance. It also gets 45mpg, which is pretty good.

2) Infrastructure: I live in an apartment, and the apartment lot has no charging stations.