The plug in hybrid makes sense in a relatively limited number of situations. Basically lots of short range driving on electric that gets recharged at home, with occasional long trips for those who do not stop often. But the trade off becomes less room because the plug in hybrid battery is much bigger than a non plug in hybrid battery.
However, if you are getting a non-EV, many of them are (non plug in) hybrids which effectively just get better fuel economy with very little in the way of trade offs. For example, you can get a van with 35mpg (Toyota Sienna).
Be careful about allowing your desire to charge with solar leading to uneconomic decisions. While it might be psychologically difficult to pay a few bucks to the utility to charge your car on a cloudy day, it’ll still be a lot cheaper than filling a gas tank.
Take it from one who knows all about uneconomic behavior. When winter comes I put my electric car in the third bay and drive my gas Mercedes almost exclusively. It’s a great car and wants to go 80 and I drive it in order to avoid suboptimal performance on my Bolt.
But yesterday I drove the Bolt for a quick errand and thought “I miss this car.”
My wife asked why I drive the Mercedes in the winter and I told her it was because of the Bolt’s reduced fuel economy. Then I did the math and realized that even in cold weather I’m going 200 miles on $10 of electricity which, based on our electricity rates, is financially equivalent to 60 miles per gallon.
Makes sense. One question we have not asked is whether we can get by on one car. We could make it work but I don’t think we want to at this stage in life. Maybe when we transition from the go-go years of retirement (when we stop working and travel less) to the slow-go years, we could transition to one car.
We have briefly discussed the option of going down to one car for the two of us, as our neighbors did but really appreciate the greater flexability of having 2 cars (especially when our kids visit for several weeks).
How often do you two need to be in two different places at the same time? If not that often, I’d have a trial period to see if you can get by with one car, and if that becomes a problem, I’d add a second car.
We technically have 2 vehicles, but we pretty much use our old X exclusively. I’d be fine without the truck but my husband insists he needs it to haul crap to the dump and to bring home loads of bark and dirt, so the truck had to be purchased. It sits in the garage and gets driven maybe once in two weeks if not less. I’d much rather not pay tabs and insurance on it, but oh well.
I think everyone who is considering buying a new car should at least test drive an EV. You might decide its not for you but it’s worth giving one a spin around the block to see what they feel like.
We will never go back to an ICE-only. We do have a plug-in hybrid, but are probably going to sell it soon. We have 3 cars, 2 EVs and the PHEV. We bought the 2017 Chevy Bolt EV new at the end of 2017 and have loved driving it. Got a used Chevy Volt PHEV for chump change about 2 years ago to replace another used Chevy Volt (also for chump change) and now we have a used Chevy Bolt EUV that was too good of a deal to pass up. All the used vehicles were less than $10k each.
But if you are willing splash out for a new BMW, definitely drive some of the higher end EVs. I think you might really love the handling and the immediate acceleration and torque. They are soooo zippy and fun.
And for 95% of our driving it’s just like charging your phone at night. You plug it in at bedtime and wake up to a fully fueled vehicle ready to go. No smelly gas stations. Car is always ready to go in the morning. You only need to use public chargers on long road trips or if your living arrangements don’t allow access to an electrical outlet for your car.
And maintenance is minimal. No oil changes every 6 months. Brakes still look good on our 8 year old X. Only needed to replace tires twice (most recently because one got a very bad nail puncture and was not repairable), 12V battery, and windshield wipers. No timing belts or spark plugs or any similar hassles.
@BunsenBurner, I will have to monitor our schedules, but I think we would need to take a lot of ubers and uber/lyft and we are too remote for that.
@Sweetgum, I have driven a Tesla model S and it was a phenomenal car. The acceleration from 0-30 was extraordinary. Originally, I was thinking of buying that instead of my BMW many years ago, but we don’t have a garage and I thought charging in the New England winter would be inefficient. In our current house, the electrical panel in my wife’s studio is on the inside of the wall we would park next to, so it would be easy to put in a charger, but we still have no garage – the husband of an artist discovers that his garages always get converted into studios. I was thinking we could get her the EV when it is time to replace her car, though I don’t know about leaving an EV out in the cold.
EVs tend to have steeper depreciation than gas powered cars, particularly in first few years. There are several factors – varying tax incentives for new/used distorting market, technology changing more rapidly than gas powered cars leading to preference for newer model, and battery decline.
Plenty of people drive EVs in New England. Range definitely does go down in cold temperatures but if you’re not driving hundreds of miles in a single day it’s not a big deal. If you are driving hundreds of miles you would most likely be using a public charger to fast charge on a road trip. I follow some EV forums on Reddit and there are folks in Canada happily driving their EVs. Norway has a huge number of EVs on the roads there too.
I don’t know your electrical rates but that is something to take into consideration. We have Time of Use rates and try to charge at discount or off peak times. For us charging our EVs at home is cheaper (not to mention cleaner) than gas.
We have solar with net metering. Which means in the darker months of the year we are burning through the credits we amassed during March-October when we produce more electricity than we consume.
I still make sure to top off at a local Tesla charger while we eat at the favorite pub restaurant… ‘cause that’s on Elon’s dime (free supercharger for the life of our car, ).
We bought a 2024 Nissan Ariya with less than 1000 miles on it for $28K. THe lady who had leased it was worried about the range and returned it less than two months after she started her lease. WIth the larger battery, it has a range of 300 miles, which we figure at about 200 in the winter in New England. WE LOVE it! NO longer being sold in the US, and they botched its release in 2023, so if you can find one, they are an amazing deal.They are built in Japan, and the screen tech is less than stellar. We don’t care because we just connect using our iPhones and CarPlay.
I really like our new car (2025 Lexus NX 350h - like the RAV4 hybrid, regenerative not a plug-in). It interesting to have the type of car that gets better mileage around town than on the highway. We actually do an annual road trip, which dings the average mileage. I’m now at 12K miles, about half from our summer road trip. Per dash, our average is 38.9mpg (gonna go down when we start getting real winter weather).
I do have a concern about the battery, very expensive to replace if it goes bad someday. We have friends that had to total their car at that point. Although we’ve never done extended warranties, this time we bargained to get one til 9 years (and I think 100K miles).
What really kills the mileage for EVs is excessive speed. Our one and only range scare happened when Mr. B decided to go 95 in Eastern WA on the flat as a pancake road. The range calculation at the beginning of that drive was a bit off. The car recalculated it as we drove… Mr. had to slow down to be sure we’d make it! We made it to the winery but drove a couple of miles past it to charge at the nearby supercharger and then come back. If we drive 70 and under, the initial range estimates are pretty accurate.
I still see lots of 2004-generation Priuses around, so their hybrid batteries must still be functional. That does seem to say good things about Toyota hybrids.
On the other hand, early Honda hybrids did have high rates of battery failure.
Interesting - thanks. (I do know my husband did a lot of research on the Toyota design). Our friends who had bad battery mentioned above did have a Honda.
My friend has an older gen prius plug in hybrid bf it’s still going strong. She has no complaints. Mine is 2018 and battery has only dropped from 32 miles to about 27 in all these years. It was supposed to be rated at 25 miles so still above that haha!
Consumer Reports reliability surveys are all over the map for different EVs. Owners of older Toyota Prius generally report high reliability for the 2010+ generations. However, the 2004-09 generation tends to have a good amount of issues. Owners report overall negative comments about the battery, although no where near as bad as other areas. Example comments from 2005 Prius owners are below. It seems Prius owners typically get a large number of miles and years before running in to battery issues, but they don’t last forever. Many Prius owners choose to replace battery, rather than replace the car, which contributes to why they are still on the road.
“Had to replace auxiliary battery twice and had to replace main battery recently at a cost of thousands of dollars.”
Anonymous, CA (2005 Toyota Prius None 1.5-L 4 Cyl hybrid)
“Local garages in my area don’t do OEM battery replacements (including the dealer!). It took awhile to diagnose and figure out how to proceed. Found a company (Hybrid Geek) that does mobile OEM replacements and it was easy and the car runs like new, also much improved gas mileage.”
Anonymous, VA (2005 Toyota Prius None 1.5-L 4 Cyl hybrid)
“Replaced original 2005 hybrid battery after 180,000+ miles. Red triangle if death came on, drive directly to the dealership where I originally purchased and had new battery installed next day. This was an anticipated repair given age /milage so had already made decision to repair and keep vehicle which I have passed on to my son.”
While Toyota EVs as a whole have had good reliability for many years, a good portion of other makes/models seem to really struggle to get a reliable EV line of their cars, even among newer models. For example, the 2024 Cadillac Lyriq has the worst possible rating among owners for EV battery, EV charging, in car electronics, and general build quality. Some owners mention their car getting “bricked” with only a small handful of miles. One owner only made it to 26 miles before needing to replace the battery. With this much variation between different makes/models, it’s difficult to generalize about EVs as a whole.
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