Rethinking EV’s?

[Altamate]

Originally Posted by Phillies8008

Where it matters is on the routes you frequently travel when taking a trip, and possibly at your destination. There could be 200 level 3 chargers within 10 miles of my home and it wouldn't matter – I'd never use them. But having enough of them on the route I take when we go to the beach, for example, is very helpful. Honestly, the only charging that really matters when you're not traveling is the charging in your garage (or whatever).

100%, when there is more charging built on my travel routes I’ll reconsider EV

[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

No. Temporary situation.

On December 10, 2021, during the idiocracy, I paid $4.81 for Shell premium (adjusted for inflation). Yesterday, April 3, 2026, I paid $4.99 for Exxon premium. Same regional area.

Had more time to review my gas records for the E90. On 5/12/2011 during another idiocracy, I paid 4.299 for premium (probably Exxon). Inflate that price to 2026 and it is equivalent to $6.249.

[ZL9M2]

No. Not reconsidering..

[RockCrusher]

Originally Posted by freakystyly

Seldom mentioned... every person/city/state/country is different but it's hard to totally skip over insurance premiums when considering an EV.

I did get a quote on the most expensive i4 on the dealer's lot.

6 months' coverage -- I won't list the coverage amounts -- is $686. The 2024 Ridgeline (for which I paid $40,000) was costing me $500/6 months and of course this is after owning it 15 months.

(My 2024 M8 with the same coverage costs me $1200/6 months

Later this AM I'll find out exactly what a 2026 BMW i4 xDrive40 will cost to insure. I leased one yesterday. Not the most expensive one or the cheapest one on the lot but one in the middle.

[RockCrusher]

Originally Posted by JeffinOregon

The main advantage of a dedicated charger is speed. Particularly if your EV usage is limited range (local), the need for a dedicated charging setup is not as high. You can basically choose between a standard house outlet and a 240V type that’s often used for clothes dryers and refrigerators/freezers. The capability to power these outlets already exists in your home.

Talked to the complex manager. She said yeah I can have a 240VAC outlet installed. Up to me to arrange for it to be done.

So yesterday I leased a 2026 BMW i4 xDrive40. At some point in the process the salesman sent me a link to BMW's partnership for charger installation.

Later this AM I'll select someone to install the 240VAC outlet.

In the meantime I have Electrify America and Shell Recharge and 2 years (or 1000kw) of free charging at anyone of the 100,000 charging stations in the US and Canada. Have not tried it yet but I was told just drive up to a charging station and the car "negotiates" with the charger and then I just have to connect the cable the car.

After the Genius helped me get the Electrify America/Shell Recharge set up and a credit card linked to them he had the NAV system plot a route from my location -- Benton County AR -- to St. Louis MO. The route had charging stops highlighted and the time to spend at each one to at my destination have a 10% battery charge. I said 10% was too low and he quickly upped to 25% and a new route was plotted with a change in charging stops and times. Amazing.

I can also charge via a 120VAC outlet. The salesman said he used 120VAC to charge his i4 xDrive50. But since I can have a 240VAC outlet I'm going to go ahead and get one.

[Phillies8008]

Originally Posted by RockCrusher

Talked to the complex manager. She said yeah I can have a 240VAC outlet installed. Up to me to arrange for it to be done.

So yesterday I leased a 2026 BMW i4 xDrive40. At some point in the process the salesman sent me a link to BMW's partnership for charger installation.

Later this AM I'll select someone to install the 240VAC outlet.

In the meantime I have Electrify America and Shell Recharge and 2 years (or 1000kw) of free charging at anyone of the 100,000 charging stations in the US and Canada. Have not tried it yet but I was told just drive up to a charging station and the car "negotiates" with the charger and then I just have to connect the cable the car.

After the Genius helped me get the Electrify America/Shell Recharge set up and a credit card linked to them he had the NAV system plot a route from my location -- Benton County AR -- to St. Louis MO. The route had charging stops highlighted and the time to spend at each one to at my destination have a 10% battery charge. I said 10% was too low and he quickly upped to 25% and a new route was plotted with a change in charging stops and times. Amazing.

I can also charge via a 120VAC outlet. The salesman said he used 120VAC to charge his i4 xDrive50. But since I can have a 240VAC outlet I'm going to go ahead and get one.

I'm going to let you in on an unfortunate secret: Electrify America is revoltingly terrible. Like just dreadful. If you don't already have one, get a NACS adapter and use Tesla's stations. They work correctly, are fast, plentiful, and have a have a decent amount of chargers at each station. I promise you that your trip will be much, much better. Even at free EA is overpriced.

Congrats on the i4 – it's amazing and you're going to love it!

[RockCrusher]

Originally Posted by Phillies8008

I'm going to let you in on an unfortunate secret: Electrify America is revoltingly terrible. Like just dreadful. If you don't already have one, get a NACS adapter and use Tesla's stations. They work correctly, are fast, plentiful, and have a have a decent amount of chargers at each station. I promise you that your trip will be much, much better. Even at free EA is overpriced.

Congrats on the i4 – it's amazing and you're going to love it!

I managed to use the car's NAV system to find an Electrify America charging station about a mile from the dealer. A type 2 charger.

Got the car charging and let it charge for about 20 minutes. Mainly just to get a feel for the charging process. Of course the type 2 charger didn't raise the SOC of much. Consumed ~2kWh of electricity and was free.

Then yesterday evening charged the car at home via a 120VAC wall outlet in the garage.

Charged the car 6 hours 50 minutes. Raised SOC from 71% to 79%. Used 9kWh of electricity. Cost was ~$1.11.

In the process of getting a 240VAC wall outlet installed in the garage close to the breaker box with the socket about 3 feet off the floor and a few feet inside the large garage door.

I'm about ready to leave to run the dealer to pick up something I ordered yesterday. I'll ask about a Tesla adapter for my i4. Probably wouldn't hurt to have as many charging options as possible.

[Phillies8008]

Originally Posted by RockCrusher

I managed to use the car's NAV system to find an Electrify America charging station about a mile from the dealer. A type 2 charger.

Got the car charging and let it charge for about 20 minutes. Mainly just to get a feel for the charging process. Of course the type 2 charger didn't raise the SOC of much. Consumed ~2kWh of electricity and was free.

Then yesterday evening charged the car at home via a 120VAC wall outlet in the garage.

Charged the car 6 hours 50 minutes. Raised SOC from 71% to 79%. Used 9kWh of electricity. Cost was ~$1.11.

In the process of getting a 240VAC wall outlet installed in the garage close to the breaker box with the socket about 3 feet off the floor and a few feet inside the large garage door.

I'm about ready to leave to run the dealer to pick up something I ordered yesterday. I'll ask about a Tesla adapter for my i4. Probably wouldn't hurt to have as many charging options as possible.

If you're going to do any roadtrips whatsoever, I can't recommend the Tesla adapter strongly enough. I have no love of Tesla nor their cars, but their charging network is far better than anyone else's (in the US) and having access makes a world of difference. IMO, BMW should be including it with the car now that it's available. At the very least your CA or the Genius should've made you aware and strongly urged that you get it.

And yeah, 120v charging is a cruel joke – 220v at home is where EVs absolutely shine.

[midadami]

For a daily driver, I want to buy an electric car: simple to use, low-maintenance, and cheap to run. The only problem I see is paying for a car that can only serve as a daily driver. The moment you suggest a big electric car, I know I won’t use it much in the city, so I currently prefer combustion for the 10–15 short trips and 1–4 long journeys I do each year.
The chance an electric car ends up on my garage this year is high. But it will be a small car used for the city on a daily basis. I also have a decent solar installation so it adds up having "free" electricity from march/april to september/october.

[jaffles]

Originally Posted by Phillies8008

And yeah, 120v charging is a cruel joke – 220v at home is where EVs absolutely shine.

Agree home charging is a sad joke and a bit of a feel good ploy on the dealers behalf for new buyers. But its a start for a newish tech and thinking.

In Aus the general purpose wall socket charger that comes with the car is 240v/2kW, but its capped at 2 amps not to overload the home circuit even though its 10amp. You can upgrade to 7kW if you have a 15 amp circuit but the charger is still capped at 4 amps, and so still slow. Its not until you install 3 phase power, or have it already you can have a 22kW charger pumping in 22kW.

At present its an extra cost, but builders or renovators will add it as standard over time. No different to solar, battery, pool, or shed so to speak. I look forward to the day multiple cars are charging at home but all being paid for by the sun. I'm almost there having 3 phase and 13kW solar. For work we just fitted a 22kW charger under a 20kW 3 phase solar system. So virtually no power bill to run the business and now moving to cars to absorb the excess energy the solar makes as the grid offers 2c/kW feed in. Go figure though, as we bought the system from the grid no interest 5 year payment plan. So you could say our whole energy/fuel bill is around 4K a year and the grid still gets a cut. Pretty good for a business with a few cars. Won't get that from fossil fuels plus we have shielded ourselves from Energy wars.

[Phillies8008]

Originally Posted by jaffles

Agree home charging is a sad joke and a bit of a feel good ploy on the dealers behalf for new buyers. But its a start for a newish tech and thinking.

In Aus the general purpose wall socket charger that comes with the car is 240v/2kW, but its capped at 2 amps not to overload the home circuit even though its 10amp. You can upgrade to 7kW if you have a 15 amp circuit but the charger is still capped at 4 amps, and so still slow. Its not until you install 3 phase power, or have it already you can have a 22kW charger pumping in 22kW.

At present its an extra cost, but builders or renovators will add it as standard over time. No different to solar, battery, pool, or shed so to speak. I look forward to the day multiple cars are charging at home but all being paid for by the sun. I'm almost there having 3 phase and 13kW solar. For work we just fitted a 22kW charger under a 20kW 3 phase solar system. So virtually no power bill to run the business and now moving to cars to absorb the excess energy the solar makes as the grid offers 2c/kW feed in. Go figure though, as we bought the system from the grid no interest 5 year payment plan. So you could say our whole energy/fuel bill is around 4K a year and the grid still gets a cut. Pretty good for a business with a few cars. Won't get that from fossil fuels plus we have shielded ourselves from Energy wars.

In the US I was able to add a 220v charger that pulls 11kW without any changes to my panel, etc., so it works out well. Charging generally takes us 4-6 hours, depending on how much is needed, so it works out perfectly.

Personally, I wouldn't want to have an EV if I wasn't able to use level 2 charging at home. I just think level 1 is far too slow to be reasonable, having to rely on level 3 on a regular basis would be inconvenient and too expensive, and having to rely on level 2 charging elsewhere would be miserable due to the time involved, unless it were my workplace which would work out almost as well as having it at home.

[pz619]

Like everything else, there are pros and cons. Gas powered car is a M2C 6MT which I absolutely adore. The electric car is Highland Model 3 Performance, which is also pretty fantastic.

No question in my mind that the EV is certainly cheaper to operate. It also checks a lot of boxes for me. In socal there are no shortages of public chargers, to the point where I never charge at home. It's been about a year since I plugged it in at home. I like the sounds that gas powered cars make, but from a performance perspective the M2 feels slow, even though it technically make more power (tuned) than the Tesla. Weirdly, the tesla also has way better steering feel than the M2. M2 is much more nimble though, but that's expected with a full set of coilovers on the car.

I would say drive a few and see what you think. I wouldn't necessarily buy it just because gas is expensive though. I suspect that prices will normalize at some point. Plus the additional cost of an EV over a similar gas powered car probably means there isn't much of an ROI even with the "fuel" savings.

Average costs for me that I recorded:
.39 cents per KWh in 2025 at various tesla chargers
.42.5 cents per KWh to charge at home (fuck you, SDGE)
$5.14 per gallon in 2025

[RockCrusher]

Originally Posted by Phillies8008

If you're going to do any roadtrips whatsoever, I can't recommend the Tesla adapter strongly enough. I have no love of Tesla nor their cars, but their charging network is far better than anyone else's (in the US) and having access makes a world of difference. IMO, BMW should be including it with the car now that it's available. At the very least your CA or the Genius should've made you aware and strongly urged that you get it.

And yeah, 120v charging is a cruel joke – 220v at home is where EVs absolutely shine.

Thought a bit about doing some road trips but I'm on a 10K miles per year lease plan. But I'll see. If my usage around here is not very much I might take a road trip just for the heck of it.

Just making do with 120VAC charging at home until I can get a 240VAC outlet installed.

But I have the car set to charge immediately and after running some errands earlier this afternoon as soon as I got home I plugged in the 120VAC and the battery should be charged to 80% SOC around 7:30pm.

Yeah slow charging but it will suffice for a few days or so.

Earlier today there was a notification in myBMW app about that Lectron & BMW NACS to CCS Adapter now available and access to Tesla chargers available too so I ordered the adapter. As per the notification I'll save the adapter in myBMW app to unlock all NACS-equipped stations.

[vt100]

Originally Posted by ShocknAwe

That car was such a letdown. Needed about 100hp more tbh. Could have been such a hit.

To each their own I guess

I personally love mine and consider it a perfect beater. And it doesn’t need more power in my opinion, or it would defeat the whole purpose of the car otherwise.
Though there are original Honda SC one still could buy on eBay.

But it does need proper shocks though. Mine also has all poly suspension bushings which makes it lots of fun to drive (yes, slow, but there are quite a few other fun driving aspects ).

[ShocknAwe]

Originally Posted by vt100

To each their own I guess

I personally love mine and consider it a perfect beater. And it doesn’t need more power in my opinion, or it would defeat the whole purpose of the car otherwise.
Though there are original Honda SC one still could buy on eBay.

But it does need proper shocks though. Mine also has all poly suspension bushings which makes it lots of fun to drive (yes, slow, but there are quite a few other fun driving aspects ).

That car with a K24...

Can't argue with you at all. It's great as a beater. But it could have been a genre defining car instead.

[vt100]

Originally Posted by ShocknAwe

That car with a K24...

Can't argue with that either!

Originally Posted by ShocknAwe

Can't argue with you at all. It's great as a beater. But it could have been a genre defining car instead.

Yeah, it could certainly be more fun with a more powerful (preferably high-revving) engine. But in this case my son wouldn't be able to get 45mpg out of it (I can't get any close to that number - of course, the kid has no money for gas ).
And I always can drive my Z4M to work when I have an urge for something faster

[Janjohn]

The battle continues. 3 years ago I lived in Albuquerque NM where we had solar panels on our roof and it generated enough electricity to power everything inside and was able to solar heat our pool. for free. We “banked” surplus generated. That was when I seriously considered a plug in hybrid. Three years later, we’re now in an area where solar panels are not cost effective at all and we wouldn’t get tax rebates for the expensive installation. Here’s the rub: many municipalities have very high electrical rates. I’m not in one but with all the AI and data mining server farms, electricity prices will rise for homeowners as will charging their EVs.

I can buy fuel much faster at significantly more places than I can conveniently charge.

These things always look good on paper.

[Emily172013]

Hell, I'm thinking even an electric lawnmower is't a bad idea. It takes a couple bucks in gas to mow the lawn now. LOL.

[Altamate]

Originally Posted by Emily172013

Hell, I'm thinking even an electric lawnmower is't a bad idea. It takes a couple bucks in gas to mow the lawn now. LOL.

I have a robot lawnmower, not only do I not have to buy gas, I watch the robot do it while sipping lemon aid and I have solar panels so the whole job is free. The robot is dead silent, only a light snipping sound as the blades of grass are cut, so I hear my stream, the birds and the bees while watch the lawnmower. It is so therapeutic watching “Bob the Lawnmower” work that I have him programmed to do it every second day.

[Phillies8008]

Originally Posted by Janjohn

The battle continues. 3 years ago I lived in Albuquerque NM where we had solar panels on our roof and it generated enough electricity to power everything inside and was able to solar heat our pool. for free. We “banked” surplus generated. That was when I seriously considered a plug in hybrid. Three years later, we’re now in an area where solar panels are not cost effective at all and we wouldn’t get tax rebates for the expensive installation. Here’s the rub: many municipalities have very high electrical rates. I’m not in one but with all the AI and data mining server farms, electricity prices will rise for homeowners as will charging their EVs.

I can buy fuel much faster at significantly more places than I can conveniently charge.

These things always look good on paper.

Again, largely dependent upon your situation and use case. For a lot of people it's looked great in reality, not just on paper.

It's really hard to get people to understand that unless you're traveling long distance on a regular basis charging speed really doesn't matter at all. In the 2.5 years I've owned my i4 charging speed has actually mattered maybe 5% of the time. Likely less. For my every day use I don't care if it charges in an hour or in six hours because it's doing it in my garage while I'm sleeping. I never even get close to using all of my available range. It's a totally different mindset than gas that people don't seem to really grasp until they've had an EV.

[jaffles]

Originally Posted by Phillies8008

Again, largely dependent upon your situation and use case. For a lot of people it's looked great in reality, not just on paper.

It's really hard to get people to understand that unless you're traveling long distance on a regular basis charging speed really doesn't matter at all. In the 2.5 years I've owned my i4 charging speed has actually mattered maybe 5% of the time. Likely less. For my every day use I don't care if it charges in an hour or in six hours because it's doing it in my garage while I'm sleeping. I never even get close to using all of my available range. It's a totally different mindset than gas that people don't seem to really grasp until they've had an EV.

I married into a staunch anti renewables family. I'm the tree hugging renewable lefty peg in a square traditionalist family. However one by one their addiction to money has seen then convert to renewables as it cheaper. The most vocal one who has been a federal politician and worked hard against renewables has gone the hardest and invested in making money from renewables. With the latest effort ditching the fossil fueled BMW for an EV Jag so he can trade its battery compacity from his home energy source.

The anti crowds marketing on range has sure taken seed. Most people do <100km (60 mile) a day so only need a small battery. But because the car can't do 450+ mile with a big heavy battery for the once a year trip the ol EV is junk. Imagine if people thought the ol ICE needed to be serviced once a year and for that it was heap of junk.

[ShocknAwe]

Originally Posted by Altamate

I have a robot lawnmower, not only do I not have to buy gas, I watch the robot do it while sipping lemon aid and I have solar panels so the whole job is free. The robot is dead silent, only a light snipping sound as the blades of grass are cut, so I hear my stream, the birds and the bees while watch the lawnmower. It is so therapeutic watching “Bob the Lawnmower” work that I have him programmed to do it every second day.

I'm watching my robot lawn mower do its thing while drinking beer and listening to the birds do their reproductive dances right now.

Had one for about 5y or so. Remains my best purchase ever.

We call ours Robbie. Our kids no longer chase him so he can work in peace.