Bought a new Hyundai Ioniq 5 on Friday. No EV tax credit for that one, but...fleet purchases still qualify regardless of make, and your company can buy as many as they like (that's my understanding, and probably not 100% correct). The outcome is that Hyundai buys the car, takes the EV tax credit off the price, then turns around and leases it to us. So despite the Ioniq 5 not qualifying for the credit, we got the credit in a more roundabout way (or arguably less roundabout, as I don't have to deal with it at tax time).
In summary, lease the Hyundai and get $7500 taken off the price, then buy out the lease after the first payment[0]. I'm not sure when this deal ends, maybe May? (And if you're buying a Hyundai, Hyundai calls it a "lease rebate", but they're really just giving you the tax credit that Hyundai receives.)
Point I'm driving at is maybe there's yet another hooping-jumping method to squeeze out a tax credit?
EDIT: what I'm referring to is lightly referenced at the end of TFA: "Treasury in December said EVs ineligible for the $7,500 consumer tax credit could qualify for a commercial leasing $7,500 credit."
[0] We were going to pay cash anyway, but it is my understanding that you can still get a bank loan to buy out the lease. See your dealer, bank, and Reddit for details.
A bit off topic, but how are you liking the Ioniq 5?
I'm on a "2 year waiting list" with my local dealer for an Ioniq 5. It has 200 people on the list, and he got 8 years in the last year. Still a "2 year waiting list" though, even if you've been on it a year already.
A 2-year waiting list may also indicate a bad local dealer that isn't even trying to sell the car as much as or more than it indicates a popular car. Only getting 8 cars in the last year sounds maybe like a choice to have as low of stock as possible in the dealership as much as it sounds like a supply issue. You may want to consider checking neighboring dealerships if the waiting list is not shrinking on a car that has been out in mass production for as long as the Ioniq 5 has been.
My assumption is the OP is in Canada, where various online forums seem to indicate that this is the way it is for the whole country. But, yeah, if OP is in the U. S., look elsewhere. There are dealers in Seattle with rows of them.
I've known folks that have gone the other direction to buy motorcycles in colors the U. S. didn't get. There used to be at least one Honda dealer in Vancouver that would have the paperwork done up, and a MPH speedometer ready for you to show customs. Prices were reasonable, as I recall. But motorcycles have a lot fewer things that need to meet safety regulations specific to a country.
If this were a thing going US->Canada, I imagine some Canadian would have posted to the Ioniq 5 Reddit, or https://www.ioniqforum.com. I do not recall seeing any such post. Probably wouldn't hurt to ask around.
My sympathies to our brothers and sisters in Canuckistan on their wait times. I won't tell you how many were on the lot of the dealer we purchased from. They even had Ioniq 6s just off the truck.
Anyway, we've had it since Friday, and I would highly recommend the car. Now, we came off a 12 year old Leaf, so perhaps we're easily impressed. But for us it hit the price/feature crossover point that we were willing to pay. Looked at Audi, BMW, MB, but those seemed to be priced just above what we were willing to pay for the features we wanted. Tesla was off the table for reasons (and I find the seats uncomfy). VW: "too plasticy", sez the spouse and too big sez me. Was going to wait on 2024 Chevy (probably Blazer), but no CarPlay. Didn't want another Leaf, and the new Nissan EV crossover is aesthetically unappealing (and frankly, wasn't all that impressed with Nissan). And so it was Hyundai's sale to lose.
I'll start with the bad, especially for the PNW: did you seriously think this thing didn't need a rear wiper, Hyundai? Well, it desperately does. And we have to back into the garage to charge because the port is on passenger rear, instead of up front and center like the Leaf. Given our garage and public charger layout, a centrally-located front charging port seems to make more sense. If I get ambitious, maybe I'll move the charger some weekend.
Other than that, can't say enough good things about it (top-trim Limited w/AWD). Seats are super comfy, plenty of headroom for a 6'/183cm person. Build quality seems solid. I've owned sports cars over the years, and currently ride a powerful motorcycle, so "fun to drive" is a high bar for me, and the Ioniq does NOT go over that bar. It's a heavy grocery-getter. That said, for a heavy grocery-getter, it's kind of impressive. Of course it has the tons of torque from the electric motors, and 330bhp to match, so it most certainly gets out of its own way in a hurry. I tried to upset the tires on a damp road uphill on some corners, and the AWD keeps things planted. It's still new, though, and I wasn't giving it 100% effort to try and land in the ditch. :-) So maybe not "fun to drive", but certainly "puts a smile on your face".
All kinds of niceties that I won't go into, but it feels like Hyundai tried really hard to put some "luxury" in their otherwise kinda cheap cars. It's a little plasticy in spots, but doesn't feel as cheap as some other brands (see: VW above). I can see us easily being happy with it for at least the 12 years that we put on the Leaf.
In summary, we've kept an eye out for a Leaf replacement for the last couple of years, and I think Hyundai has a hit on their hands.
Btw, how much is the monthly lease payment? I clicked on one ad from a dealer where I live and it showed close to $1000 a month. Now I don't know whether I misread it or it is really that expensive.
My 92-year-old granddad is a car enthusiast and he is waffling about going in on the waiting list because he really likes the car but doesn't know if he will live long enough to accept delivery.
After reading this it may sound like I am either trolling or astroturfing but I guess like all other turfers I tell you I am 100% legit. It was really funny after he made me watch about 30 minutes of YouTube reviews on the car for him to say the punchline...
I just got an Ioniq 5 a little over a month ago and did pay with cash (ie no tax credit). The quoted lease interest rate was an insane 8%+ even with an 825 credit rating and I didn’t realize you could simply buy out a lease early like a regular loan until well after the purchase.
I didn’t think the credit made a difference to my purchase decision because my income phased it out anyway, but I hadn’t realized you could back door it through the lease with an immediate buyout. That’s a really neat trick, and if I’d known that I’d have paid a lot more attention to whether they were offering that $7500-back lease deal when I bought mine.
I’m not even bitter. The HI5 is well worth the full price I dropped for the Limited if only for that beautiful AR HUD it has; HUDs have been a #1 must-have safety feature for me ever since buying a Genesis with one years ago. But props to you for figuring out how to end run around the process and get the HI5 and a great deal!
We, too, were fully prepared to pay the full price without the credit, but I had spent way too much time surfing the Ioniq forum before purchase. Like you, had I only found out later, I wouldn’t even be bitter. The car is worth it even for $7500 more. Congrats on the purchase. Our Limited AWD has us tickled.
I hate to see the Nissan Leaf lose an incentive because I still think it's the most accessible name brand EV on the market. I imagine the Chinese part of the supply chain is what keeps Leaf's so cheap. And though I do mostly support efforts to grow the EV industry in the US, I care a lot more about ending the sale of new IC cars.
What does the Leaf have that the Bolt doesn't? The Bolt uses a standard charge port, is larger, has superior range, and has active battery thermal mgmt.
Collateral damage of hostile de-globalisation. European, South Korean and Japanese EV manufacturers face a de facto lock out of US market. Outcompeted already in China, there may not be many other obvious markets to go
The reality is that if USA can't produce a majority of EV batteries itself then there will never be any serious reduction of investment in gasoline engines since it will pretty much be required for national security reasons.
Same reasons it's presently in the process of basically relocating TSMC to Arizona.
> Same reasons it's presently in the process of basically relocating TSMC to Arizona.
Right as the global semiconductor market implodes because demand has shrunk while production has recovered.
There is a snowball's chance in hell that the US semiconductor factories will be able to turn a profit; they will likely shut down quickly, if they ever open. They'll be partially built, just enough to claim the grants and tax breaks...and then rot.
It's just yet another policy that throws tanker-trucks full of cash at the already unfathomably wealthy with little accountability and zero expectation of payback (either real or in terms of ancillary benefits to society) while the poorest Americans have to file reams of paperwork just to be able to get basic assistance for things like eating and healthcare.
nah this is different because USA has no interest in fighting China over Taiwan. But it also can't have the microchip supply chain cut off. Hence, relocating Taiwan's most valuable assets to Arizona before the war starts.
That's always been the gameplan for free trade. Open markets where your country has a competitive advantage, subsidies and tariffs and closed markets when it doesn't.
We gave China free access to our markets for decades. China, in turn, has never given any foreign entity free access to their market, not without paying bribes at least. You always have to have majority Chinese ownership in your joint company.
It's not surprising that the US and EU are slowly waking up to just how bad of a clusterfuck they maneuvered themselves into and starting to cut out toxic dependencies.
Nobody 'gave' China anything - US corps exploited cheap Chinese labour to grow globally dominant consumer tech, whilst providing US consumers with cheaper-than-otherwise consumer goods. Entry into any domestic market requires observing local laws, the US dominated banana republic era ended in the '80s
> We gave China free access to our markets for decades.
I comment about the nature of 'free markets' in the general (but more specifically in the context of 'peer'-nation trade between the context of US-EU), and someone inevitably jumps in with an off-topic gripe about China.
China this, China that, it's like Beelzebub. Say the word 'trade' three times, and the thread's in for a derailment.
> I comment about the nature of 'free markets' in the general (and especially in the context of US-EU), and someone inevitably jumps in with an off-topic gripe about China.
We are talking about the US sanctioning Chinese battery supply chains specifically, to quote TFA:
> The rules are aimed at weaning the United States off dependence on China for EV battery supply chains and are part of President Joe Biden's effort to make 50% of U.S. new vehicle sales by 2030 EVs or PHEVs.
>
The law, enacted in August, required vehicles to be assembled in North America to qualify for any tax credits, eliminating nearly 70% of eligible models at the time. On Jan. 1, new price caps and limits on buyers income took effect.
> The IRA requires that 50% of the value of battery components be produced or assembled in North America to qualify for $3,750, and that 40% of the value of critical minerals be sourced from the United States or a free trade partner for a $3,750 credit.
The battery sourcing requirement means that 'China' is only relevant to a small portion of this question, but makes for a great distraction.
Indeed. I didn't notice this on the first read of the article because I didn't notice the "Show more" button - seriously, WTF is this crap news sites tend to pull? I get it on content container / teaser pages, but an article page?!
In any case: nothing stops foreign car makers from coming back to Detroit or whatever and producing cars there. BMW at least has a decent presence in Spartanburg, not sure about the others - but Tesla has shown that this model can work, their first plant in Fremont was a retooled GM/Toyota plant.
"The rules are aimed at weaning the United States off dependence on China for EV battery supply chains and are part of President Joe Biden's effort to make 50% of U.S. new vehicle sales by 2030 EVs or PHEVs."
Japanese and European car manufacturers can just source batteries from somewhere else other than China, then problem solved. Car/electronics manufacturers are already moving out of China at a rapid pace this year anyways. According to the office for national statistics in China, for jan/feb of 2023 http://www.ce.cn/xwzx/gnsz/gdxw/202303/27/t20230327_38464161..., electronics manufacturing profits is down 71% and car manufacturing profits is down 41.7%, due to slacking demand. Smart to move sourcing early anyways, it looks like China is starting to be confirmed to help Russia militarily https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-says-it-is-find...
Actually, it would appear that Chinese EV manufacturers have not much place to go. EV market in China peaked at 2021. With regards to Europe, BYD only sold tens(!!) of cars in Germany in 2023, compared to thousands of Tesla cars sold.
The link you supplied belies the myth that Ford paid his workers such that they could buy his cars. Ford paid his workers what he did so that he could get more reliable, productive workers.
There's no EV battery supply chain in the US, just like there's no real solar supply chain.
You can't just snap your fingers and say "OK, subsidies only for US made batteries!" when there is little industry and ramping it up would take many years.
The policy is just a way of "soft" killing the subsidies.
The price of EVs is the only thing keeping me from replacing my 13 year old car. Everything I would consider buying is just slightly too high for my budget and needs.
Its still a 27k car. You get more with a gas car at that price range.
EVs are purely novelty item at this point. An EV vehicle is fundamentally simpler than a gas car in terms of parts required, and should be cheaper to make and way cheaper to buy new.
Also you would see way more functional tech in regards to EV, like for example, cheaper battery packs that don't offer as much range and are power limited, but keep the price low. Or trunk mounted gas generators with fuel tanks for longer trips.
The total cost of ownership is much lower for EVs than gas cars though.
I just spent over $100 filling up the gas tank of our backup car. We used to fill it about once a week. That's $5200 a year in gasoline at current prices. So, if the EV lasts 6 years (ignoring the discounted value of money over time, and the ever increasing cost of gasoline), it costs negative $4200 vs. whatever the retail price of the ICE car is.
Base corolla is 21k. Base leaf with 40kwh is 27k. (Please double check my math on this, but Im pretty sure its correct)
Corolla gets 32 mpg average. If you drive 10k miles a year, you spend about 312 gallons which is about $1000 in fuel costs give or take at regular 87 octane gas prices.
Nissan Leaf is 7$ to recharge the 40kwh pack, for a range of 140 miles. For 10k miles, you need about 71 charges, which is about $500. Thats $500 per year difference, so you need >10 years to break even for the cost of the cars. And then, if you live in an area without convenient chargers, you pay secondary non-monetary costs for planning around charging.
Insurance costs are also higher for a more expensive car.
As far as battery goes, if you look at something like an ebike battery made out of LG 18650 cells, you get an approximate cost of $10 per cell including bms and assembly. Nissan leaf has 192 cells, but the battery pack costs way more than $1920, its closer to $4k. Huge markup.
Lets hypothetically say that leaf had appropriately priced battery pack, which was $2k in stead of $4k. Thats still a $4k markup over corolla. There is no way an electric motor and controller cost an extra $4k over a ICE engine.
Your numbers for your situation is way nicer than mine. I live in the California Bay Area. Right now Regular 87 octane Gas is $4.8/gal and electricity is $0.38/kwh.
Nissan Leaf advertises 105 MPGe which is 3.12 mi/kwh.
10,000 miles / 32mpg * $4.8/gal = $1,500 a year for Corolla fuel
10,000 miles / 3.12mi/kwh * $0.38/kwh = $1,218 a year for Leaf electricity
This is ignoring things like charging losses but also oil and filter changes.
It depends how much you drive the car, plus some ICE cars have the benefit of being tried and true workhorses that you assume will have a near 100% probability of meeting or exceeding your expectations, whereas an EV’s total cost is more volatile due to lack of data.
You can reasonably expect a car with simpler electrically-driven systems that are digitally controlled to be more reliable and to have more predictable failure modes than something driven by a long fluid-filled drivetrain that is powered by carefully-metered controlled explosions.
That's only if you fill up once a week. Anyone who does some remote working or any of a number of other mitigations is going to find an EV very expensive.
If you are filling up less than once a week/once every two weeks you are risking stale gas and extra wear and tear on an internal combustion engine when you do use it, generally increasing the risk of expensive maintenance and still much higher TCO.
For a remote worker with a vehicle that moves irregularly an EV is still cheaper and easier and more convenient. A battery charge doesn't "go stale" and you aren't going to get engine rattles and knocking or accidentally melted fuel lines from "old electrons".
I'm a big EV fan who just dropped $60K on our second EV (my comment is probably still at the top of this page). I also used to be a professional auto mechanic, and I can tell you from both professional experience and personal (because we still have a rarely-driven ICE) that there is little basis in truth to what you posted.
If you are filling up less than once a week/once every two weeks you are risking stale gas and extra wear and tear on an internal combustion engine when you do use it...
No, the gas will have to sit much longer than that. We drove our previous EV for twelve years, while filling up the ICE Scion about once a month (if that). That Scion is still running just fine twelve years later. Don't even ask how long the gas sits in the VW camper van. I'd bet real money I go out, turn the key, and it'll fire up just fine.
I'm all for encouraging folks to get an EV, but inaccurate information only hurts the cause.
Refreshing to hear an nice, truthful voice of sanity in a discussion about EVs. I know people are all super hyped about feeling like they are helping the environment, but the sheer amount of classist untruths spouted about EVs vs. ICEs online is noxious. I mean, there are enough real pros to appeal to those that want to be early adopters without all the self-righteousness out there.
Anyway, thank you for your refreshingly grounded-in-reality comment.
That's a great anecdote. For what it is worth, I have anecdotes of people that refueled infrequently enough that they suffered big ICE problems later in the vehicle's life.
I wouldn't say that there is "little basis in truth" if there is an entire industry of fuel additives to make things safer/cleaner/"better" for infrequently fueled ICE vehicles and entire gossips worth of advice on how long a motor should run before highway speeds, etc to make sure that the fuel is safe.
I chose a short time window because the problem I was referring to was total cost of ownership and long-term build up/slow break down, so I don't believe it was "inaccurate" just very (intentionally) pessimistic. I'm sorry it wasn't clearer enough that it was a pessimistic estimate on longer term horizons. I definitely understand there are lots of anecdotes and data on both sides, and that I have a stronger distrust of gasoline than many people do (in part because some of my own anecdotes).
Yes it does- cells slowly self-discharge when not in use and have their range affected by temperature swings to the degree that, for certain cars (mainly the Leaf), the weather will dictate if you're going to make it to work and back or not.
>an EV is still cheaper and easier and more convenient
I can't buy an EV for $10,000 that has more than 60 miles of maximum range and recharges in less than 10 minutes, so every one of those points is wrong. Oh yeah, and I don't have to spend an hour per week waiting for it to charge it because it holds what is, at current burn rates, a month's worth of fuel (I can't take advantage of home charging unless I want to move and thus burn several hundred more a month on rent- and several hundred dollars can buy a lot of gas).
The electricity itself might be cheap but everything else isn't.
>generally increasing the risk of expensive maintenance
Cars that run on gas are extremely reliable even past 100,000 miles, and have been for the past 20 years now (even the American-made ones). I give worse odds to the electric power packs that by their nature are cumulatively damaged when refueled; exhibit A being the Leaf, of course.
Again, cheaper with respect to total cost of ownership. The point remains that that TCO is cheaper even if you can't find some super cheap ones in up front costs (yet).
> recharges in less than 10 minutes
May I suggest a horse? If this is your qualification for an EV you are tilting against windmills.
> Oh yeah, and I don't have to spend an hour per week waiting for it to charge it because it holds what is, at current burn rates, a month's worth of fuel
I'm really confused by your math here: EVs hold on average a "month's worth of fuel" for you so you'd need to charge it every week? Isn't that just an hour a month charging time then if it is a "month's worth of fuel" you are charging?
> Cars that run on gas are extremely reliable even past 100,000 miles, and have been for the past 20 years now (even the American-made ones). I give worse odds to the electric power packs that by their nature are cumulatively damaged when refueled; exhibit A being the Leaf, of course.
Plenty of Leafs have already made it past 100,000 miles on their first and only battery. Statistically the number of replaced batteries in Leafs is insignificant.
Plus, recent Leafs finally have active battery temperature management. The excuse of "but Leaf battery degradation" is on its way out, sorry.
Can you rephrase this so it's not written so passive aggressively? I'd love to have actual info, but you seem to be trying to beat the previous commenter over the head instead of actually considering what's being said.
E.g. "The excuse of "but Leaf battery degradation" is on its way out, sorry" - this is just silly. It's not an excuse. It's a reason. If the reason goes away, then great. But to pretend that people are making excuses betrays a very shallow way of looking at things.
When in fact, what they're saying is true. It may not be the case for everyone, but for a lot of people's situations it will be. It would be good to understand the additional situations people are in that might be becoming EV-accessible, but we can't do that if people such as yourself are endlessly brow-beating people.
Those are fair requests, thanks for point that out. For the leaf, it's just true that they designed a very poor system for battery reliability in retrospect. All modern EV cars have a battery heating and cooling system that protects the battery and helps protect the mileage. I've had 3 evs now over 10 years, all 3 had battery heating/cooling. My first car from 2012 was driven about 50k miles over 3+ years, no noticeable loss. My second ev is now 8 years old, has about 5 miles of loss over 68k miles (something like 272->268). It's been driven a zillion times between my city and a ski area, about 130 miles round trip. My 3rd one is pretty new so too soon to know.
When you supercharge these cars (with a dcfc), with a high amperage high voltage charger, heating in cold weather or cooling in warm or normal weather really reduces wear and tear on the battery and keeps battery life good. It's just the case that the leaf did have this serious problem - there must have been one or 2 other cars without battery management systems, but the leaf is the only one that seemed to sell in large quantities.
Sorry, sometimes you hear and respond to the same arguments a lot and you forget that it might be someone else's first time hearing or thinking about them. (Related to that problem that myths and untruths cover half the country in the time it takes the truth to get its boots on.)
The Leaf battery degradation "problem" is an excuse because it's an over-exaggerated thing that mostly ever affected several early model years of Nissan Leaf and a few early model years of Tesla. (GM did a lot more winter testing early on and made a big deal about battery heat management right out the gate. Other manufacturers picked up that message either from GM marketing or their own winter testing.) Since then Tesla and then Nissan both developed active thermal management for their batteries and any recent model years have them.
Even with all the model years that were affected, in general real-world usage and used market sales suggests that it is not a problem. The vast majority of batteries in cars are still in their "first use" as a car battery. If there is "degradation" in the battery range, used owners rarely notice or care (the range they buy it with is the only range they've known), and "degradation" of the battery is rarely to never the reason given that a car has been listed on the used market in the first place.
As far as I'm aware there's no industry at all for replacing Tesla batteries. I do know that there's a small boutique industry replacing Leaf batteries but most of what I've heard about that are anecdotes such as one about an owner of a 2008 Leaf, that had already done a decade of service as that first owner's family car, getting a new battery not because the old one was "too degraded" but because the new battery was a big enough range boost (above 2008 spec, even) to not just keep a beloved family car in the same family for another decade but also bump it from being less of a "secondary" vehicle for the family and more of the primary vehicle role.
There's no evidence in the used market that anyone needs to replace a battery after 10 years in an EV, but there are heartwarming stories of at least some owners have wanted to a replace a battery after 10 years because they love that car that much.
Outside of the first decade-ish of Nissan Leaf and the first half-decade-ish of Tesla, every other EV has active thermal management and battery "degradation" is nearly nonexistent after 10/15 years and we'll start to see soon what 20 years looks like, but current evidence suggests that batteries really do last the lifetime of a car. The exterior of the car, according to current used market statistics, is more likely to be in a state where the car needs to be scrapped entirely than the battery to appear significantly or noticeably "degraded". As with most statistics there are certainly outliers and you can find plenty of well publicized cases of especially individual Nissan Leafs with noticeably "degraded" batteries, but part of why they get publicized so much is because they are such rare events to the used market and often make interesting stories. (Who those stories sometimes benefit in keeping people afraid of a boogeyman of EV maintenance costs that mostly doesn't exist, I'll leave as an exercise to the reader.) If you dig you can also find fun counter-examples like the "'million mile' Leaf taxi still going strong years later" type things.
So that's one of the largest range maintenance myths.
The above poster also included several common charging myths. Charging an EV is sufficiently different from refueling an ICE that most of the people that think they "need" "10-minute charging times" either don't understand some of the difference or don't care to learn. No one expects a gas tank to be as full as possible every drive and only fill up once a week or once a month. The same is true for an EV, you don't need a full charge every night to be satisfied you have the range you need for that drive/that day/etc. Though home and destination charging is an interesting game changer from that previous status quo, too, because in some cases you can have a full charge every morning you park at home or after you've run a bunch of errands near a charger. Cars spend a lot of time parked and everywhere a car is parked is a (slow) charging opportunity, which is a massive change from gas stations which need to be highly centralized and fast because it is always and forever an inconvenience between two points. Our electric grid is everywhere and massively distributed. Everywhere the light touches can be a place to charge. I've charged my Volt in campgrounds in the middle of nowhere on a random camping plug I found. I've charged it at home in a shared garage where so far I haven't convinced the board to install L2 chargers, but an ordinary wall outlet still charges more than my average daily commute over night. (Or, at least, the last commute I had before remote work became more common.)
Certainly on trips you do have more reason to need a "fast charger" along your route in that "inconvenience between point a and point b" way, and on paper the shift from a "10 minute refuel" to a "20-30 minute charge" sounds like a huge time loss, but refueling is an active process you are supposed to (for safety and legal reasons) watch and be active in every step of that process, whereas charging is a passive process. When was the last time you felt you needed to watch every minute that your phone was plugged in and charging? It can much faster than refueling time to just plug the car in and check that it is locked, at which point you are free to wander to a restroom, buy a meal or snacks, check social media, and other things you are likely to do on a rest stop, all without worrying about your car or needing to watch a (dangerous) refueling process. It's a different experience. It's not necessarily a worse experience, in some ways I think it is quite a bit better. (Teslas and more recent cars [CCS chargers, "NACS" chargers] "know" their own payment information and can pass it to a charger network during charge handshake, there's not even the dance of pulling out a credit card and running through a wordy terminal or annoying "charge network" app, just plug the charger in and the car knows the CC information to send for you and how much you want it to pay for a charge. Support for such chargers isn't yet universal, but the capability is expanding.)
Car charging is just different from refueling and some of it you may not understand until you own an EV. A lot of "range anxiety" turns out to be nonexistent with just a tiny bit of daily EV use and a slow appreciation from learning of home charging opportunities (even at 120v "trickles" of standard US wall outlets!), destination charging opportunities, and the subtle differences of "fast charger" easiness/laziness versus "refueling" active and busy. (Including the overlap of "fast charger" and "destination charging" where you may run errands or see interesting sights or find other productive uses of charging times that gas stations are never quite as convenient to.)
Relatedly, if you distrust the used EV market statistics and they are still very weird compared to used ICE sales (because among other things the "average span of time under the first owner" of an EV is still crazy high with respect to previous ICE norms) or at least just generally like further evidence: Did you know that many early Leaf owners leased their batteries from Nissan? Nissan has plenty of reason to under-report exact statistics, of course, of how those leases went, but if battery "degradation" were a real problem, certainly Nissan would have felt it on their bottom line (which they didn't).
Relatedly, did you know that Nissan has a division like Tesla's PowerWall? Do you know why you haven't heard or seen from that division? Unlike PowerWall, Nissan's division promised to source entirely from "second use" batteries. (Most PowerWalls are built with new batteries straight from the factory.) Nissan keeps the division on the books, but so far has sourced so few "second use" batteries in the real world that they've not actually built much or delivered much or done any consumer marketing for that battery wall division.
We used to own a plug-in hybrid and it would keep track of when you filled up and occasionally force you to consume the gas in the tank. I want to say it was if you hadn't filled up in 6~9 months? Something like that.
We always buy ethanol free gas too, which lasts for years. I don't even empty our lawn mower over winter, it doesn't matter with real gas and a sealed tank.
The gasoline would realistically need to be sitting unused in that tank for months to have a chance of "being stale". I've started vehicles that have sat unused for 6 months+ before with no trouble from the gas (the battery is more likely to die if unused for a long time).
> EVs are purely novelty item at this point. An EV vehicle is fundamentally simpler than a gas car in terms of parts required, and should be cheaper to make and way cheaper to buy new.
Which means they have less stuff to break and thus less operating expense, yes. But the main cost block for an EV is the battery pack and power electronics - the ICE industry has had like a century of time to optimize every nook and cranny out of the production line, whereas mass manufactured EVs are only a decade or so old. (Yes there have been historic EVs too, but they differ so completely from today's EVs that there is no way one can speak of continuous experience building)
The thing is, the operating expenses are way lower, for a small increase in base cost. No need to replace oil every so often, if you're running a diesel no AdBlue and no regular periods of increased fuel consumption to clean the particulate filter, no need to replace a clutch, timing belts or transmission, even the brake pads last longer because regenerative braking doesn't create any wear. For fuel, if you're somewhere in the suburbs, place some solar panels on your roof and enjoy virtually free, clean energy while the rest of your neighbors fuel human rights atrocities in OPEC countries.
And the comfort of driving one is waaaay beyond ICE cars. Even your base Tesla Model 3 completely floors most affordable ICE cars at a red light drag race, they're so silent, no vibrations but those from the road, better handling because of the extremely low center of gravity, no headache inducing smell from cold starts in the winter...
I mean, you can get literally all of those with financing. And you're not paying money on gas at all, which is the whole point.
Sure there are down payments you have to plan for, but I'm not really sure what your point is. Yes, if you can't afford a new car you can't afford a new car.
But the whole point of financing things is to come out ahead in the long run.
...which has interest costs associated with it. A $300k loan at 5% over 30 means you pay an average of ~$9k a year just in interest alone. And thats before all the other things that you have to pay for when you own a house.
You can get a $7500 tax credit on a bolt and a few other cars. This is also true with the just updated EPA rules. This also means materials and manufacturing especially batteries were primarily from the US, Mexico or Canada. So it's effectively 20k for many people.
EVs are expensive primarily because of the battery at this point. And the secondary reason is the tremendous demand combined with reduced availability of cars leads to dealers adding their dealer markup. There have already been EVs that sold for a lower price with software locked batteries that you could upgrade later. Almost 10 years ago Tesla offered that. There were cars with gas extenders like you described almost 10 years ago, the BMW i3 is one.
A 27k car that dealers are adding, coincidentally, a $7000 markup to, so the sticker price is $34,000. So not only do they take the tax credit, they also increase the sales tax you have to pay. You'd be insane to buy one. Get a Kia Rio and the TCO will still be less than the Bolt, and you'll never be stuck with an empty battery and a broken charger.
Dealers are doing that - yes. But it's not hard to find dealers in my big city that aren't doing it. Just search around on the internet and you can also find car dealers that don't add these charges.
It means they will have to take a lease instead of paying by cash or financing with credit. It's a loophole that Kia and Hyundai is trying to steer customers to. Their last quarter was stupendously bad.
I wonder what the income distribution on buyers looks like for these different companies, and what proportion of their buyers would be unable to use the tax credit regardless? E.g. if proportion p of your buyers can't use the tax credit and relying on foreign battery production reduces the sticker price at least (1-p) * $7500, you would be net saving your purchasers money if you keep the foreign battery sources?
Do raw materials need to be sourced from the United States? Or can raw materials be imported, but the batteries need to be manufactured in the United States?
Re-resourcing such a major component is a massive undertaking. Will the automakers adjust their supply chains when a change in the political climate can negate their efforts?
I don't get why we need to work with the USA anyway.
There is already business to do with the middle east and south east Asia.
USA doesn't want European companies anyway. They have the FCPA that only applies to European companies, unique bumper regulations for cars (but no amber turn indicator and unlimited consumption), the buy American act.
We should stop wasting time selling stuff to them, as they don't want. And we should stop relying on American companies like Microsoft or Apple, ad they don't like business.
Oh, and cut them off from international banking.
They want to clamp down on tax haven. And well, states like Delaware are the world's best tax haven.
If the laws were consistent, we should cut them off.
If anything, not buying a BMW or VW saves you from plenty of headaches. These days buying asian means you get higher quality, but perhaps less bling, and more value (unless replacing cars as often as phones is your thing). More standard options tho and a slightly better pricing.
The U.S should loan Elio Motors to produce their electric car and offer a $7500 tax credit. Then the cost of it would be $7500 after rebates. If the company can't deliver, The U.S could seize the company and sell the car themselves. They already sell a public-health option for insurance. Then they could copy the solar panels from Aptera and add those to the Elio's roof.
It would serve the public interest, as there aren't many affordable cars under $20,000. Chevy got out of the Spark production last year. If the economy can't produce enough jobs to afford rent, how do people expect to get to work? The Cash for Clunkers program at least got dangerously old cars off the road. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System
Except Elio has struggled for 15 years to release a car. It needs a receivership, not one that permanently owns it, unless they are just deliberately playing with investors.
I remember my dad put a preorder deposit in for this when I was in high school, with his idea being it would be the perfect vehicle for me to commute around a college campus several years later. I am now approaching 30 and from what I recall of Elio's website when I looked at it then, it looks like they've made a lot of progress in offering the vehicle in additional colors.
technically they've added an electric option, and postponed the gas option indefinitely. Part of the reason it isn't popular enough is that there isn't enough demand. The gas option could use an opposed piston for even better fuel economy than 84mpg.
In summary, lease the Hyundai and get $7500 taken off the price, then buy out the lease after the first payment[0]. I'm not sure when this deal ends, maybe May? (And if you're buying a Hyundai, Hyundai calls it a "lease rebate", but they're really just giving you the tax credit that Hyundai receives.)
Point I'm driving at is maybe there's yet another hooping-jumping method to squeeze out a tax credit?
EDIT: what I'm referring to is lightly referenced at the end of TFA: "Treasury in December said EVs ineligible for the $7,500 consumer tax credit could qualify for a commercial leasing $7,500 credit."
[0] We were going to pay cash anyway, but it is my understanding that you can still get a bank loan to buy out the lease. See your dealer, bank, and Reddit for details.