Bought an EV...wait...Sold my EV...

[Top_Fuel]

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.

[Top_Fuel]

Let me throw out some random thoughts about owning an EV…

There are options in an EV you might consider mandatory. If you live in an area that gets cold in the winter, you will want heated seats and (if available) a heated steering wheel. These will keep you warm and use less power than running the car’s heater. Most EVs now are loaded so these options are probably standard. These were not standard in a 2020 Bolt.

DC Fast Charging – This was a $750 option for my car (but is now standard on new Bolts). Without this option, the car would be incapable of recharging in about an hour…instead of multiple hours. That would make the car impossible to use on a long road-trip. Again…I can’t imagine that any new EV doesn’t have this ability as a standard feature now.

If you’re considering ditching your Mirage to buy an EV, do the math if you think it will save you money. In my case, owning an EV costs an additional $200 for annual registration (that’s what Ohio charges to register an EV). The insurance on my Bolt was also $300 more per year than my Mirage. So right off the bat, it cost me $500 more per year just to own an EV. At $3.50/gallon, $500 buys me enough gas to drive my Mirage almost 7,000 miles…which is about 90% of what I’m driving per year now.

EVs are cheap to operate. If you’re going to spend $40K on a new generic family truckster SUV that gets 20mpg, then consider an EV. If you drive a lot, a comparably priced EV probably makes financial sense. Even a more expensive EV might be a good idea.

What if I have to drive a 1000 mile road trip in an EV?!? OK…for some reason everyone asks you that when you have an EV. You can road-trip most modern EVs with a little planning. Yeah…the trip is going to take more time. So if you want to drive 1000 miles to Disney World with the rugrats and only stop for twice for 10 minutes, then just rent a gas-powered vehicle. If you’re able to stop a few times for 45-60 minutes each time, an EV will get you there.

EVs are fast. A Bolt weighs 3500 pounds and will do 0-60 in 6.5 seconds…and a quarter mile in about 15 seconds. Something that fast will feel like a rocket ship compared to your Mirage. And the Bolt is slow compared to some other EVs.

I don’t think I would want to own an EV if I lived up north and didn’t have a garage during the winter. The range of an EV is almost cut in half when it’s really cold out. Sure…you can turn on your EV and warm it up before you get in. But that will cost you some range that you might need in cold months. If you can keep it plugged in at your house, that is a huge positive. If you are relying on public charging stations to charge an EV, that would really be inconvenient (translation: it would suck) in the winter.

EVs have lower maintenance costs. From a mechanical perspective, they are amazingly simple. There are no oil changes and EVs don’t have a transmission. And you may never have to get new brakes (see next paragraph). Having said all that, a Mirage is still pretty cheap to operate. So don’t think there’s any massive savings to be had when you compare maintaining a Mirage vs an EV.

Regenerative braking rules! This is when you lift off the accelerator and the car uses the momentum to charge the battery…which slows the car. You literally can drive around and start/stop without touching the brake pedal. It sounds strange but it’s one of the things about driving an EV that I enjoyed. You can probably drive one of these things for 10 years and never have to replace brake pads. The problem for some EVs is that the brakes rust from lack of use.

If you don’t like touch-screens controlling stuff, you aren’t going to like EVs. The radio, HVAC, seat heaters, and a few other things are controlled from a central touch-screen. I’m not a big fan of that kind of stuff. A Tesla would probably be my worst nightmare. The auto climate controls in the Mirage are suddenly looking more attractive!

[Basic]

Hopefully you took the RPF1s back off before you sent it on it's way.

I had been wondering about you. I am not around much anymore sadly.

[Top_Fuel]

Hopefully you took the RPF1s back off before you sent it on it's way.

Oh yeah!

Those wheels are a whole other story because they don't make RPF1s in a 5x105 bolt pattern that the Bolt requires. I had the holes in those wheels re-drilled by a shop in California. I had never heard of doing that but it turned out great. I probably had the only Bolt in the country with RPF1s...LOL.

[7milesout]

The auto climate controls in the Mirage are suddenly looking more attractive!

Maybe I should buy an EV long enough so that my Mirage HVAC controls don't annoy the hell out of me.

[Fummins]

Maybe I should buy an EV long enough so that my Mirage HVAC controls don't annoy the hell out of me.

I hear Hyundai makes a good one

[Wallythacker]

Funny the Bolt topic. I got to follow one today on the highway for a good 30 kms. She was bundled up like she was in a freezer. It wasn't that cold out, maybe -2 or -3. It's a nice looking car but I know I can fix/replace an ICE but I know nothing about fixing a giant battery.

[Top_Fuel]

Funny the Bolt topic. I got to follow one today on the highway for a good 30 kms.
She was bundled up like she was in a freezer.

The cabin heater uses a fair amount of energy. So if you're trying to squeeze additional range out of the battery, you turn the heat off and rely on your heated seats and heated steering wheel to keep you comfortable (these don't use much energy compared to the cabin heat). If your car doesn't have heated seats and/or a heated steering wheel, you bundle up. That might be why she was looked that way.

Most people pre-heat the car while it's still plugged in (so it's not using the battery to heat the car...it's using household current). But if you can't plug in at home, you can't do this. These are things to consider before you buy an EV.

Bottom line: f you live in a colder climate, don't buy an EV without heated seats and a heated steering wheel!

[Fummins]

I saw an ioniq5 and the windows were all fogged or frosted up, I couldn't tell which but I couldn't see inside it. Kinda hard to defrost your windows with a seat heater. It was cold though, like -22f ish.

[Top_Fuel]

Kinda hard to defrost your windows with a seat heater.

There are entire threads on the Bolt forum with suggestions on how to keep warm while minimizing using the heater. How about a 12-volt heated blanket? Yeah...some people do that.

The best case scenario is to have your EV plugged into a 240 volt charger at home. Then you can "pre-condition" the car (think of it as starting the car and warming it up) but you are using household current to do this...not the car's battery power. It takes less energy to maintain a warmed up interior than it does to warm up a cold interior. So heat up the car before you leave, then you won't need as much energy to keep it warm. Sounds good on paper!?!

That's why I keep telling people to do the research before you buy one of these things. If you don't have a garage and/or a way to plug in to 240 volts at home, owning an EV in really cold weather might be a serious pain in the azz...especially if you can't charge it at home.

Driving in snow hurts your range, too. So try to avoid that. LOL...I read that as a tip somewhere.