Electric vehicles less reliable because of newer technologies, Consumer Reports finds

bttt

“Folks will have to carry their own charging cables in their vehicle.
When they plug in then run inside to grab a cup of joe and come back to their EV with no cable attached....then what?”
***********

Guess, give up your cup of Joe 😂?
Btw, I’m not a EV advocate. I drive a Silverado 4X4 Crewcab 6.2L. Love it.
I live in DFW area, Texas and drive to Phoenix every now and then to visit one of my grown daughters. Run 80 from Dallas to Midland, 85 (sometimes 90) from Midland to El Paso, 70 ~ 75 on to Phoenix. When a EV can make that trip in August with AC on full in the same time I make it in my Silverado I might consider one. Right now there’s only one EV charging station on the interstate that I know of and it’s at a hotel in Van Horn. Guessing Bezos had it installed.
Btw, I’m betting on Hydrogen for those of us out in the hinterland. EV’s won’t cut it.

“Folks will have to carry their own charging cables in their vehicle.
When they plug in then run inside to grab a cup of joe and come back to their EV with no cable attached....then what?”
***********

Guess, give up your cup of Joe 😂?
Btw, I’m not a EV advocate. I drive a Silverado 4X4 Crewcab 6.2L. Love it.
I live in DFW area, Texas and drive to Phoenix every now and then to visit one of my grown daughters. Run 80 from Dallas to Midland, 85 (sometimes 90) from Midland to El Paso, 70 ~ 75 on to Phoenix. When a EV can make that trip in August with AC on full in the same time I make it in my Silverado I might consider one. Right now there’s only one EV charging station on the interstate that I know of and it’s at a hotel in Van Horn. Guessing Bezos had it installed.
Btw, I’m betting on Hydrogen for those of us out in the hinterland. EV’s won’t cut it.

Back in 2019 my power bills averaged $188/month and my natural gas bill was $125/month. Obviously they fluctuated a lot through the summer and winter. But this is for a 5-bedroom, two-story house. And I spent about $150/month in gas to drive 200 miles per week in a used gas car (15mpg). I use 2019 as the standard for energy prices because that was during the Trump years but before covid. And I'm using the cost of just one gas car from then instead of two because with my wife now retired and me working from home a lot, we now drive about half as many miles as we used to. So for me, normal energy costs are $463/month (2019's energy costs but with today's driving habits).

Then cheat-by-mail put Biden in to finish the war on energy that Obama had started. See, even with the 2019 prices, the power bill was increased some over the Trump years to pay the billion dollars in cost that the local power company was forced to spend to shut down a coal plant and replace it with a natural gas plant during the Obama years. Biden made natural gas prices go through the roof, which made both my natural gas bill and my power bill go up bigly.

Nope. That dog don't hunt. With the system I have in place now it costs my budget $850/month to pay the car payment + HELOC payment + tiny power bill (no natural gas bill). The reason I'm going with $850 is: $450 is the $463 I'm using to spending per month + $400 my wife and I monthly put into a car savings account to repair our old cars or buy the next used car to replace one when it needs replaced. The idea being with a new car (the EV) under warranty I don't need car repairs for a while. So I use that $400 to help make the car payments.

So each month, how do I make it feel like to my budget that all of that costs $850/month when those cost more than $850? I pull the difference from the HELOC, which increases the balance more than the HELOC payment pays down the balance. In March or April of each year when I get the tax refund, I put the EV and solar tax credit into the HELOC to pay down the balance. I have 2.5 years of that left because the solar tax credit carries forward to the next year if the tax credit is more than your tax burden. The net-effect is the HELOC is paid down more in the year than my monthly pull from the HELOC brings the balance up.

In 4 years the car payments will cease and I'll switch my energy budget from $850/month to $450/month (putting the $400/month back into the car savings account for car repairs, including one day replacing the EV's battery). That $450/month is enough to pay down the HELOC, even if part of that $450 is used to pay the tiny power bill.

Ten years from now I'll still have some HELOC balance, but my overall energy savings will be about as much as the HELOC debt. Basically, this is the breakeven point. In the big picture, my budget operated last year and up to 10 years from now with an energy budget that's as though it's still year 2019 ($450/month). That's the whole reason I'm doing this. To make it so that my retirement savings isn't harmed by energy inflation. And the 10-year mark is calculated assuming only a reasonable 3% inflation rate in energy costs. Obviously if the Dims hike energy prices more than that, then the breakeven point happens sooner.

So what happens after 10 years from now? Well, my panels have a 25-year warranty guaranteed to still be putting out 70% as much in the final year. My home batteries have a 19-year/50% warranty. But since I have 18 batteries I'm working each one of them very little, so they'll probably last long and perform well the full 25 years of the panels.

On the 25th anniversary of me installing the 1st panels and batteries a year and a half ago, I will have saved a quarter of a million dollars in energy costs. That's even with a slight decline in throughput over the next 25 years. Again, that assumes only a reasonable 3% inflation rate in energy costs above what they are now.

Read that as $250K less I have to pull out of my retirement investments over the years to pay indulgence tax to the Dims for our cow farting sins. I wish I could make all inflation go away, not just energy inflation.