I bought an EV…then sold it. Here’s the story…
I had been interested in EVs for a while…mainly from the “low cost of operation” angle. I started tracking new Chevy Bolt prices in 2020. The Bolt was the only inexpensive EV with a decent range (265 miles) and somewhat close to my self-imposed price ceiling of $20,000. I know...you're thinking "You can't buy an EV for $20k." Remember, in 2020 it was a buyer’s market and most non-Tesla EVs were not in demand.
By the summer of 2020, a handful of Chevy dealers in the US had Bolts for $15,000 off MSRP. So a $40,000 Bolt was now around $25K. That got my attention…but it was still too much. This was the “real” price of the car. The Bolt was not eligible for any federal tax credits at this point because too many had been sold.
Then Costco came out with a $3,000 Bolt incentive. That meant Bolts were now $18K off for Costco members (at some dealers)...
That was good enough for me! I bought a new $39,300 MSRP Bolt for under $21,000. It was more than I wanted to spend, but I bought options I wasn’t planning on (more on that later). I could have purchased a “stripped” Bolt for just under $20k. Crazy when you think that a top trim level Mirage costs that much now!
Here’s the thing… I didn’t need a new car and even at $21K, this purchase didn’t make financial sense. My 100K mile Mirage is reliable, it’s paid for, and it’s cheap to operate/maintain. But I had been wanting to try an EV and this was too good to pass up, so I pulled the trigger. I kept my Mirage because back in 2020, it was only worth about $3K on a good day. I wasn’t going to give it away….and it’s a good thing I held onto it.
Gas was well under $3 a gallon in 2020 and I was questioning if this Bolt purchase was such a smart move. To make matters worse, a month after I bought it my employer made everyone in my division virtual. What the @#$!…now I’m driving fewer miles than ever!
Fast forward to summer 2022. The Bolt just turned over 5,000 miles (I wasn’t driving it all the time). The car market has turned on its head. Gas is $4+/gallon and suddenly everyone needs to buy a $50,000 EV to save money?!? Just for the heck of it I get some quotes to sell the Bolt to Carvana, Vroom, Driveway, etc. Driveway (a company I had never heard of before) offers me a little over $28K. SOLD! Driveway trailered it 2000 miles away to a dealership in Portland and sold it for close to $32K in 1 week. Crazy.
So as fast as I was an EV owner, I was back rowing gears in my Mirage…with some extra cash in my pocket for the trouble. I enjoyed the Bolt and got to drive it for free for 2 years. But from a purely financial angle, I couldn’t justify the purchase price with a paid-for 50 mpg Mirage sitting in my garage.
Would I buy another EV? Maybe. When I can buy another new one for $20K, somebody let me know. Until then I’ll stick with the Mirage and its carbon-belching 1.2 liters of fury.