danh123

Does anyone here drive an electric car?

I picked up a used 2013 Ford C-Max Energi plug-in hybrid almost a year ago. I hadn't even heard about the car until I started looking online for a car. I was originally looking at prius's and volts. The C-Max has been great. I get 20-25 miles on the battery and also has a gas engine. I am averaging over 100 mpg. I love driving in electric mode and trying to extend the range as much as possible by driving efficiently. It will be exciting see more electric options in the future. For me a volt would be perfect as it gets about 50 miles electric and then gas motor. I could do most of my trips all electric.

I was worried about having to go to dealer for service on the electrical system. I went in for some issues when I bought it. I told them I thought issues were caused by the small battery. They said there was damage to wires from mice and would be $1,300 just to dig into it and see what was wrong. I left and bought a new battery and put it and all issues resolved lol. Haven't had a problem since. Hopefully electrical system will be okay and I can avoid dealer. My regular mechanic can do most other maintenance. Lower wear on breaks because it has regenerative breaking. Lower wear on engine because electric most of time. Love the car and electric vehicles. Now I want to build an electric bike!

danh123

Here's a picture.

MNebiker

2013 Chevy Volt - purchased 3 years ago. Electric range about 34 miles in winter, 42 - 46 in summer, best range was 49.8. This range meets most of my driving needs, but it gets about 39-40 mpg when running on gas after electric depletion. Total gas used since purchase less than $50. Has been an excellent car, smooth and quiet. From what I have read, the service experience varies depending upon dealer expertise and attitude. Fortunately, my dealer has been very good. Only maintenance expense has been for oil change and tire rotation.

A Gen 2 (2016 - 2019 model ) has larger battery and would meet your range requirements.

gm-volt.com is a good source for info.

danh123

$50 on gas in 3 years, that's great! I have done 3 or 4 fill ups in a year for 20-30 each. Not bad. I love my cmax, I will drive it for as long as I can. It's a good feeling driving around more efficiently.

They discontinued the bolts didn't they?

danh123

Gas mileage on mine around 40 also.

Tpsfoto

I sold my 2012 Nissan Leaf with 17k miles.....not the car for Nevada....bought it for over 32k ...less the rebate......batteries crapped out 3 years later....I followed all of the rules of not charging to 100%....Keep it charged, and out of the heat as best as possible. Nissan replaced the entire battery system.....sold the car privately with new batteries and the KBB was only $7500.00..... this was a major loss...but I couldn't rely on it...don't buy these ....only lease...this way when the batteries die or the value drops...you just turn it in.

danh123

Geez too bad. AC will use a lot of battery if you have to use it. I have noticed the price depreciates rapidly with ev's. Can get good deals on used cmax or volt even some leafs.

Metal Man

I bought a Leaf new in 2012, still have it with 125,000 miles. It's only ever needed tires and wiper blades. It's only good for about 45, maybe close to 50 miles if you really baby it. It's one of four cars we have on the road and it gets plenty of use. Last year I bought a 2019 VE EGolf and that's pretty great. It's good for about 150 miles if you take it easy. We the credits and rebates I only have a little over $15,000 in it.

momsonherbike

2018 Nissan Leaf SV. 151 mile range per charge. Fits either of my electric bikes in the back (2019 Giant LaFree, and 2020 Specialized Turbo Vado). Comes with semi-autonomous self driving, incredible regenerative brakes, one pedal driving, remote start/charging/heating-cooling. Silent driving, smash-you-back-into-your-seat torque. Super comfortable, tons of room in the hatchback area so we use it as a mini-truck. Cheaper to buy than a Tesla, plus we got the full Federal rebate and a state rebate at the same time, but unlike the Tesla the Leafs gets no over-the-air updates. Has two charging ports, one J1772 for at home charging, one Chademo for fast charging while on the road.

AWESOME car! We take it everywhere local as our daily driver. Already have over 30k miles on it and not a hint of any problems. Battery is still absolutely perfect. Have a Prius 4 Touring for long trips out of state.

I especially love coming home, plugging it in, and walking off knowing it will be fully charged when I'm ready to use it again.

We are already on the waitlist for the Rivian electric truck. Once we get that, we will completely divest of any gas and diesel vehicles we own, and be strictly electric vehicles only.

danh123

Hadn't heard about the egolf, will have to check it out.

danh123

Awesome! That will be nice to be fully electric. It is a great feeling driving an electric car. So efficient and smooth and quiet and yes I love plugging in when I get home.

It made me want to get an electric bike also. I got one but broke my foot so haven't been able to ride yet. Can't wait.

What is chademo port? I haven't heard of that. Is it to plug in to the Tesla chargers?

momsonherbike

Tesla is proprietary. Only Tesla cars can use Tesla chargers. No other electric car can use their charging system. Period.

Chademo is the fast charging two-way system (it can both take and deliver back) used by Nissan, as well as a few other electric car manufacturers. It takes a certain charge plug and port, and isn't a home-based charger for recharging the car battery because of the amount of power it pulls. It is designed to be used (with the appropriate equipment and professionally installed set-up) as an electric containment system to power a house. Lots of YouTube videos out there that you can watch that explain this ability to be your house's main power supply if the Grid goes down.

Yeah, owning/driving a 100% electric car is a game changer. It is, in one word, awesome.

XxHaimBondxX

Got myself Ioniq plug-in hybrid at the end of January, they were having super cheap leases. Wife took over and mostly drives it now. Odd thing is that it only has 1200 miles, we drive mostly in electric mode, yet still on 3rd tank of gas.

flar

Just to clarify, Tesla's charging connector is used for both AC and DC charging. There are adapters that allow other cars using a J1772 connector to charge from a Tesla analog station, but the stations can be configured by the installer/owner as to whether they will work on non-Tesla vehicles.

The Tesla DC supercharging standard is offered to other companies but no other company entered a partnership with them. Instead the other companies chose to go with the CHAdeMO system or the CCS system. CHAdeMO also requires an agreement and the licensing fees are fairly expensive. Zero Motorcycles initially pursued an option for their electric motorcycles to use CHAdeMO stations. The $750 option included a port added to the bike that was just a plastic connector and some wires. The bulk of that money was due to the licensing fees. When they deployed it they quickly discovered that the CHAdeMO stations did not implement the standard and so their bikes would not be recognized by most of the stations that they had licensed to use despite them meeting the standard. So, they ditched the option. Current electric motorcycles that offer a DC fast charging solution come with a CCS connector.

Nissan is in the process of transitioning to CCS in the US and Europe: https://insideevs.com/news/433929/ni...sa51Y7FR4PFFVU They will likely still use CHAdeMO in their home market as Japan has a huge infrastructure investment in the system.

Tesla in other countries is already delivering vehicles with CCS connectors instead of their own charge port connector. All Model 3 and newer Model S and X come with a CCS port and connector standard in Europe. They also offer retrofits to CCS for older European Teslas and European superchargers are including CCS cables now. They still use their own connectors and ports in the US. They are also entering into partnerships with companies installing charging stations to include a Tesla cable - so far EVGo is the only company that I've seen actually come through on that.

CHAdeMO is big for now, but it may eventually disappear outside of Japan as most new electric cars are going the CCS route.