There are a lot of people looking for expensive collector cars. They sold over 1700 last week at the auction.
The short answer is that cars and trucks can be thought of as rolling works of art.
The car above is a 1969 Dodge Charger with a 426 “Hemi” engine? That engine alone is probably worth $100,000 just by itself. It’s very rare and a highly desirable and collectible car.
That’s why I kind of think that EV’s will someday have collectible cars and trucks that will be worth lots of money. We’re just very early in the “ball game.”
The 1969 model year Charger was also the focus of a TV show that destroyed a bunch of them in stunts while increasing collector interest in that car.
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It was a VERY popular car, regardless, Dodge produced 89,000 just in 1969 alone. 96,000 were produced the prior year (1968).
And 40 years after the “Dukes of Hazzard,” show ended (1985), IMO, I don’t think that’s the present appeal to pay $200,000 for that particular car.
More relevant to the Mopar’s popularity today, in general, is a current TV show called Graveyard Carz, which is on its 20th season on TV.
In the Boston Globe Sean Murphy writes a regular column airing consumer gripes. Today he wrote about a woman who bought an electric Hyundai Ioniq to replace her plug-in hybrid Honda.
She asked the salesman how long it would take to charge the battery. He confidently answered 8-12 hours. She buys the car and her first overnight charge only reaches 3%. Her gripe is that the salesman never mentioned that this would happen unless she upgraded her home charging station, which she told the reporter would cost upwards of $2K.
Her complaint is that she feels like the salesman deceived her, telling her what he needed to say to make the sale. It turns out that the set up, cable, etc. that comes with the car would requre 60 hours (!) to charge the battery.
No resolution as of yet—will be reading future columns to see where this goes. My personal take is that (1) she didn’t do her proper homework and (2) a bit of sleaze from the salesman, lying to make a sale.
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We are now about 15 years into mass sale of EVs, and I have finally heard (second-hand) of someone who actually ran of out charge on the road. It was kind of a cute and sad story. The person was speeding home in her husband’s EV in exceptionally cold weather, because she was dogsitting and was worried the dog wasn’t going to understand the dog door.
One in fifteen years is not bad! I do feel very bad for the woman though, she had to be rescued by her husband, who was apparently at work at the time. I don’t know the outcome for the car, nor do I know if the dog in question made it out the dog door.
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Interesting story. To me it’s not as much about the fear of actually running out of charge as the stress of making sure there is always plenty of buffer. (For our cross country treks, at this point EV is a hard No.).
A car salesman told a story about coming home from skiing with his wife in EV and pulling into the garage with 0% on the display. (He opted not to recharge before leaving the slopes, dealt with lots of traffic in the cold). I said it must have been a Marriage Buster moment.
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I’ve driven miles on “E” in several ICE vehicles. Is 0% in an EV a pretty hard limit?
In our Bolt we don’t get a 0%. The screen goes orange and the car stops telling you how many miles are left. It says “propulsion reduced” or something along those lines. The car gives you a LOT of advance notice that this is going to happen, and I suspect this is why it’s so uncommon for EVs to run out of charge on the road.
Just for you, I will ask my husband if he’s ever genuinely tried to run it down to zero. I’m sure there is some kind of impact to the battery life that I’m going to hear about in great detail when I ask 
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I’ve ran out of gas in our old jalopy… that was not fun. Fuel gauges
in some cars are very imprecise. Running on fumes is apparently not good for the fuel pump$$$$.
Many EVs display 0% when there is some more energy left before the true 0%.
https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/testing-teslas-range-anxiety.html
SIL has ended his trip with 1% battery left several times. With regenerative braking, you often get more mileage than expected.
D2 was driving her sister’s EV home from a ski trip and was nervous because it wasn’t fully charged when they left. But she was amazed to see the mileage and percentage of charge remaining go UP as she cruised downhill. They made it all the way home without needing to charge
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depends on the manufacturer. Elon built in a reserve after zero in the earlier Teslas, but then took a hit on the official published range. (Dunno if they still do that.). In other manufactures, zero means zero.
That said, many of these are just computer estimates.
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We have a 10+ year old Tesla, and pushed the milage limit on our last trip earlier this month. Starting prediction had it at 15 miles left getting home. We have to drive up a hill for the last couple of miles and didn’t know if that was figured into the equation.
Got home with a bit over 15 miles on the charge. Did drive close to the speed limit because we’ve found being speedy drains the battery faster. Did the math and stopping to charge would take more time than driving 65 on the freeway.
I never let my ICE car get below 1/4 tank. New PHEV to replace it is on order. Fits our day-to-day driving very well. We’ll see which car we take on these shorter trips.
I never cared for the look of that type of car or guys who liked that type of car when I was in HS . Hated Camaros, corvettes etc.
My son has a Tesla and I’d guess if his wife didn’t get on him he would run his miles till close to zero. He has a charger in his garage and most of his driving is less than 10 miles a day so has no excuse.
Yep. I know. When way op first started using jaguars they got rid of most of their cr*ppy inner workings and put in their own. Waymo significantly improved the Jaguar EV crossover.
DIL had to drive on zero in their nissan leaf a few yrs ago b/c all the chargers she went to were broken. She managed to get home with a sick grandkid in the car. Our s will drive their tesla til it has 1%, and I think a time or two he made it home on zero (tricky in their hilly area).
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And that’s what makes “running low” a scarier proposition with EV. Someday there will be lots more charging stations. But I assume it will always take longer to “fill up” from empty.
I had my Tesla set on miles, and I got down as low as 6 miles remaining one time on a long trip. Computer was not happy. Started shutting stuff down when I got below 30 (I think). First was the outside cameras. Then the cabin heat. Then the radio. (although, it gave me the option to turn them back on.). It kept flashing messages: slow down, prepare to pull into next supercharger…
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Most ICEV fuel gauges are very low resolution, and seem to hit E well before actual empty, probably to get drivers to refuel easier. Distance-to-empty readings are somewhat higher resolution, although they may also be set to show 0 when there significant amounts of fuel remaining. Presumably, EV battery level indicators are designed similarly for similar reasons.