It hasn’t been for sale nationwide. They just arrived at dealerships in Houston this week.

Electric cars don’t exactly need a lot of service and thinking a Chevy dealer will service your Bolt belies familiarity with dealer support of these things. I have a Volt, which requires all three coolant systems be serviced every 5 years (pretty much the only maintenance if you keep it in EV mode). Living in Houston,…

So do they manage to do this without increasing rolling resistance to the cars? If the road deforms more than typical asphalt, they really wouldn’t be capturing lost energy as much as taking energy from people’s cars (which aren’t exactly thermodynamically efficient to begin with)

You plug in at 6 or 7 and use a time delay so that the car finishes charging right before you get up the next day. You’re charging during off peak hours (in fact during peak wind production), which helps balance the grid. Actually starting the charge in the early evening and leaving a battery charged to 100% all night…

There are no pedestrians in space, makes it much easier.

People also forget about battery degredation. if you buy a car that barely meets your range requirements when new, at five years you’re going to be out of luck. Also, deep discharge cycles (like you will see if you use almost all of your range on a frequent basis) exacerbate battery degredation, making the problem…

If it was updated to include crew, there’s no way in hell it would fly in 2018.

33 here. Last I checked, no one is making new e30s anymore. While I own an e30 (gray market 323i no less), for daily driving in Houston freeway traffic I prefer something that doesn’t idle and has great AC. I’m not a new car fan, since used usually offers a better bargain and I’m not afraid of turning a wrench, but I…

I was surprised by the difficulty of finding chargers in Austin (compared to Houston) when I visited with my Volt. It may have partly been the higher congestion and general difficulty with parking. Most phevs are really just designed to operate in electric on your commute and gas for anything else, so while public…

The 17 focus ev is getting upgraded to 115 miles range and getting standard quick charging for 29k before tax credit (there are already incentives too even though I don’t think it’s even out yet). Still pricey compared to a $6k leaf with 60% battery health but it might be worth looking at.

My wife loved the Leaf so much it became her car, replacing an Escape.

As a Leaf owner, let me say the batteries are NOT holding up well, they are degrading quite badly in warm climates. My 13 is at 81% life remaining while many 11's and 12's have had the battery replaced under warranty (the battery chemistry was updated in 13 and again in 15 to be more robust to heat). Also, the 8 year…

What point are you trying to make here? Because Tesla on public chargers has a slightly lower operating cost than a Prius but offers size and performance of a similarly priced BMW, it should offer significantly lower operating cost than a Prius? I also fail to see this luxury gap Tesla critics describe. Every Tesla…

The Prius isn’t exactly comparable to a Tesla in driving experience. Almost every other ev is significantly more efficient than a Tesla but none are faster or more luxurious. If you compare operating cost to something like a 550i, you get a more honest comparison.

The Texas rates are pretty competitive. The only quick chargers around (nrg) are $0.20 per minute with a $5 initiation fee for a max of ~48 kW (my Leaf only pulled 20 kW the one time I tried it), or $0.10 / min if you join a $15/month subscription plan. At the 60 kW transition point on Tesla’s plan, you’re getting…

That’s the great thing about electric propulsion, with decent seals you can drive fully submerged, no need for a snorkel.

Damn Tom, way to hold a grudge

There were a lot of questions that he didn’t address. Do they have lower cost, non solar shingles for parts of the roof that are permanently shaded (the Terra cotta shingles seemed to hint at this)? It looks like there’s a single inverter so are there large efficiency losses when a few of the shingles are shaded or…

$7k will buy you a used leaf with about 18kwh left in the battery. A new Leaf battery is $5500, but that’s with a core trade in and doesn’t include an inverter.

I haven’t seen an ELR in Houston either, which is why it’s offbeat, but the electric powertrain is really a luxury feature. She didn’t want the typical doctor ride.