Electric and Hybrid Car Thread

[Badhobz]

What the fuck…. You only did 300km ?!?!? I’m almost at 2000kms on my hitler box and you picked up your hilter suv before me

[EvoFire]

It does have an active SIM, whether if it's physical or eSIM I have no idea. The car is new enough that the BMW connected sub is still active so I don't know how much online functionality I retain after it expires.

On Canada Day we went to Burnaby Village Museum. It was nice to be able to start the climate control when we were about to leave so the car is not cooking inside.

Fortunately seat heaters are no longer subscription based. I think most of the car functionalities aren't. The only thing I know I use regularly but is subscription is the real time traffic info.

Originally Posted by Badhobz

What the fuck…. You only did 300km ?!?!? I’m almost at 2000kms on my hitler box and you picked up your hilter suv before me

It's half the usage as my wife has the other profile and it doesn't show usage on that one. But even then we are probably at around 5-600km for the month.

[radeonboy]

Originally Posted by EvoFire

Why a PHEV works for us right now, we barely use any gas in the month we've gotten it (this is half the usage for my profile). And when we go camping in the Okanagan, we don't have to think about stopping and charging and dealing with entertaining a 1 yr old and a 4yr old for 30 minutes.

I'm just not ready to deal with having to charge as I don't think the infrastructure is quite ready in Canada. The hotel we stayed at in Kelowna last time we went, the charging costs was more than getting gas and 1/3 chargers didn't work. Was listening to the family with a Tesla complaining about it in the lobby.

Can you walk me through your thought process on paying a premium to get the 45e over a similarly-spec'd 40i? Anecdotally I see a $15-20k gap between the two variants, and it'll take quite a bit of driving before breaking even on gas alone.

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by radeonboy

Can you walk me through your thought process on paying a premium to get the 45e over a similarly-spec'd 40i? Anecdotally I see a $15-20k gap between the two variants, and it'll take quite a bit of driving before breaking even on gas alone.

For the specific options and condition that we were looking at, it came down to under 10k difference after taxes. Keep in mind the PHEV is 5% tax instead of 15% so we saved 5k after trade right off the bat even when comparing list price. We weren't looking at anything older than 2021, the significantly cheaper cars were all >80k mileage and 2019/2020. We waited for the right car to come along as this was listed at 75k, vs a lot of other cars that were listed 80k+ for less options and worse condition.

For the justification - The route we need to take to get to daycare drop off that required cutting through some side streets (read a lot of side streets) involves a lot of slow/stop and go sections. Our fuel consumption was not at all representative of how far we were actually driving (16l/100km). This had us putting in about 3-4 tanks of gas in the X3 at around $110-150 depending on gas prices (roughly 170.9 to 210.9 at peak) and how far we went after the light came on. Even at the middle point we were putting in around $350-400 a month in gas. The daycare thing isn't going away anytime soon since our 18m old would be doing this for the next 3.5 years, and with our current usage of about $30 a month for electricity, we come out even at around 3 years compared to a 40i gasser. I also imagine going to the X5 40i would burn even more gas than our X3.

The second part of this is preparing for my wife having to eventually go back into the office. She is full WFH right now, but she looking for a new job and that may entail her having to head to the office 2-3 times a week. When she does that our cost monthly is still almost exactly the same.

There's the intangibles of rarely having to visit the gas station. Visiting the gas station every 10 days or so takes only 5-10mins, but it's so much easier to just not have to think about it most of the time.

Ideally the perfect 2 car family should be using a small EV for day to day city things and a large gas vehicle for long road trips. But we aren't the perfect family as I am a car enthusiast. I am not ready to give up my gas sporty car so the regular city run about will also need to satisfy the road trip camping portion of use. Because of my need to have a gas vehicle that we rarely use, we would actually fall into the 1 car family bucket where the single vehicle needs to satisfy all of our requirements and the X5 45e does just that.

EDIT: That monthly log posted about is not actually the full month since we picked up the car on June 9th and we've skipped a few daycare days this week. We usually put around 1200km a month on the family car. I'll have to admit that the X5 45e fits our use case well, but we also have a very specific use case of low daily mileage. If you lived in Coquitlam and have to commute to DT, this isn't going to be in your favour unless you can plugin and charge cheaply at work.

[Badhobz]

Pssshhh he bought it for the white color and the crystal shifter. Nuff said

[AstulzerRZD]

Originally Posted by EvoFire

1 car family bucket where the single vehicle needs to satisfy all of our requirements and the X5 45e does just that.

+1 if I have to buy another car, it's going to be a Wrangler 4XE for the exact same reason. It does the convertible, utility, snow, and plug-in thing so it's cheap while still having 370hp and gas engine for road trips.

[Koflach]

I just did 2 trips to Kamloops last month in my Model 3. We stopped in Merritt both times to top up before getting to Kamloops and spent roughly 20 minutes there. It was enough time to get out of the car, use the bathroom, have the kids whine about being hungry, and getting a small snack before returning to the car with about 5 minutes left to stretch our legs. Truthfully, not much different than filling up a gas car.

On the way home, we basically did the same thing but with a slightly longer stop in Merritt to actually eat and charge to 80 or 90% so we had enough juice to get home. Charging was actually done before we were finished charging so I had to leave the family while I unplugged the car.

The mountain terrain eats up the battery but the charging is fairly quick and doesn't really extend our stay much more than a gas vehicle did.

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by Koflach

I just did 2 trips to Kamloops last month in my Model 3. We stopped in Merritt both times to top up before getting to Kamloops and spent roughly 20 minutes there. It was enough time to get out of the car, use the bathroom, have the kids whine about being hungry, and getting a small snack before returning to the car with about 5 minutes left to stretch our legs. Truthfully, not much different than filling up a gas car.

On the way home, we basically did the same thing but with a slightly longer stop in Merritt to actually eat and charge to 80 or 90% so we had enough juice to get home. Charging was actually done before we were finished charging so I had to leave the family while I unplugged the car.

The mountain terrain eats up the battery but the charging is fairly quick and doesn't really extend our stay much more than a gas vehicle did.

That's the other issue we have, we are not interested in getting a Tesla because I've driven 3 and the seats do not fit my body.

Without a Tesla, I feel like charging just isn't there, nor are the space considerations enough.

[dark0821]

^ As a model 3 owner myself.

I think the other thing about Tesla charging is that... you just have to stick to the major routes, on a known highway, no problem, but what if you want to take the scenic route down south? It's one extra thing to worry about tbh, not saying it can't be done, just more hassle

So for me, the model 3 is always a 100% GVRD vehicle that gets no further than Whistler up north, Chilliwack out east, Seattle Premium Outlet Exit 202 down South.

Anything further is Prius Prime all the way, its just easy, $40 bucks gas = 600KM

[EvoSpider]

Originally Posted by dark0821

Say what you want, due to how Tesla is run, it is flexible like this.

Super smart move though, legacies automakers like Hyundai might react, but won't be able to react this fast. Which means once the new rule takes affect, Tesla will once again pretty much have a monopoly on the EV game till the rest catches up which could take months.

Like as bad as a model 3 is... no one is gonna buy a Nissan Leaf with 300KM range over the model 3.

Like our Kona EV Ultimate is only $1,199 over the limit. Which for all things considered $1,200 bucks isn't the end of the world. They would be smart to drop it to be one of the few vehicles that can compete with the Model 3 in terms of feature set and range. But we don't know if Hyundai will drop the MSRP (BC is such a small market in the grand scheme of things) and if they do, how long will it take, how many meetings will it take to get it on the ground

Any news with Hyundai adjusting MSRPs on the whole lineup?

[bcuzracecarz]

Originally Posted by Koflach

I just did 2 trips to Kamloops last month in my Model 3. We stopped in Merritt both times to top up before getting to Kamloops and spent roughly 20 minutes there. It was enough time to get out of the car, use the bathroom, have the kids whine about being hungry, and getting a small snack before returning to the car with about 5 minutes left to stretch our legs. Truthfully, not much different than filling up a gas car.

On the way home, we basically did the same thing but with a slightly longer stop in Merritt to actually eat and charge to 80 or 90% so we had enough juice to get home. Charging was actually done before we were finished charging so I had to leave the family while I unplugged the car.

The mountain terrain eats up the battery but the charging is fairly quick and doesn't really extend our stay much more than a gas vehicle did.

If you don’t mind me asking what was the cost to charge while going there and back?

[EvoFire]

That's actually a really good question. I believe superchargers rates are decent? But the other chargers are all over the place, some of them are easily the same cost as gas or more.

[TypeRNammer]

Originally Posted by EvoFire

That's actually a really good question. I believe superchargers rates are decent? But the other chargers are all over the place, some of them are easily the same cost as gas or more.

Superchargers are extremely variable in terms of location, cost, and charging time of day

Richmond for example has a cost of 22 cents per kwh

Burnaby Brentwood, it's 50 cents per kwh between the hours of 12pm to 8pm, during the off peak hours of 12am to 4am it's 22 cents

Chilliwack has a flat rate of 49 cents

Hope has a flat rate of 51 cents

Kamloops is 49 cents but I see one that has a rate of 61 cents

I see one station in Kelowna that's 26 cents

With a base Model Y, if you arrive at one of the stations and charge to full from 20% , it's $22 to $25 which would get you about 300km of range with 80% usage

[underscore]

Originally Posted by TypeRNammer

With a base Model Y, if you arrive at one of the stations and charge to full from 20% , it's $22 to $25 which would get you about 300km of range with 80% usage

So about the same as something that gets ~5L/100km? Although cars with that kind of economy usually go more than 300km on a fill.

[TypeRNammer]

Originally Posted by underscore

So about the same as something that gets ~5L/100km? Although cars with that kind of economy usually go more than 300km on a fill.

That's correct, with the higher pricing per kwh at superchargers, the economy is equivalent to a Prius.

I recently did a small camping trip with the family at Cultus Lake. Came back, then did another outing to Cineplex at Park Royal Mall.

Plugged in the Model Y at home, after one sleep, it charged up 48kwh which is about $7 at tier 2 rates.

[EvoFire]

PHEV woes, well really a first world problem.

The power went out yesterday evening, and because our battery is only 24kwh, we didn't install even a 240V charger, we don't have a full battery this morning for us to go to Squamish. We have a gas engine to use, but if say you depleted your battery in a smaller EV with about 240km range, and you wake up with only 50% charge in the morning and ~100km range, it would suck.

I actually haven't really put power outage into consideration as we aren't in the 90s and we rarely lose power nowadays.

On a side note, coming home without power and opening the garage door manually while the kid is screaming at you from the car was fun.

[JDMDreams]

Shouldn't you be able to charge the battery with the gas motor. I think the outlander phev said it only takes like 30 min of the gas motor to charge the battery. So technically you still had enough to get around the city a bit on EV, then just hybrid and charge when you get on the highway since it's more efficient to use the gas motor on the highway anyways.

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by JDMDreams

Shouldn't you be able to charge the battery with the gas motor. I think the outlander phev said it only takes like 30 min of the gas motor to charge the battery. So technically you still had enough to get around the city a bit on EV, then just hybrid and charge when you get on the highway since it's more efficient to use the gas motor on the highway anyways.

It's super inefficient to do so and you are better off just using the gas engine to drive than charge.

[radeonboy]

I test-drove a 45e recently and left saddened by why BMW didn't put this powertrain into more of their vehicles. It would've been perfect in a X7 IMO.

[dark0821]

^ it was expensive to produce and doesn't return the same margin of profit VS their other drivetrains, I think it was more of a need this powertrain option to meet regulations type deal.

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by radeonboy

I test-drove a 45e recently and left saddened by why BMW didn't put this powertrain into more of their vehicles. It would've been perfect in a X7 IMO.

The 50e should be even better with moar everything. My guess is the 3rd row occupies the same space as the battery pack in the trunk and you just can't have both.

When BMW created the 45e, they did away with the 7 seat option for the X5, I'm guessing to reduce the number of production SKUs.

We took the 45e to Squamish for camping. It can hustle still if you want it to but it does not like it. In comfort mode with ride height in normal setting it leans and pitches and just does not react to the steering wheel like the X3 did. When put into sport suspension, so 2cm lower, it does a lot better. Unfortunately you can't have a cushy ride and responsive handling at the same time.

We tried the assisted driving pro on the way up for about 5 minutes. Both my wife and I were looking at it do it's thing and neither of us are ready to trust it. It follows the lanes, but not well on the S2S. It's too reactive to the road and doesn't fit a bendy road well and ends up being too jerky. It would probably be fine on the I5 though. It also got confused on the merges as it doesn't know what to do.

We kept it in hybrid mode for most of the trip because 1) I didn't have enough battery power to make it the whole way, 2) I want to burn some gas so it doesn't just sit there, 3) the EV alone doesn't have enough power to scale the climbs.

I found the AC runs off the hybrid battery, and the 35C temperatures worked it hard. This would definitely benefit from a heatpump setup.

[Manic!]

Looks like Fiskers sunroof requires you to be connected to Fiskers server for it to work. Fiskers esims have stopped working. So now if you buy a Fisker your sunroof will not work.

[Manic!]

Software issue for one off lotus.

https://youtu.be/kMABG2rPW44?si=CLbWniwG64iO9uIR

[GLOW]

Originally Posted by Manic!

Looks like Fiskers sunroof requires you to be connected to Fiskers server for it to work. Fiskers esims have stopped working. So now if you buy a Fisker your sunroof will not work.

as an owner hopefully you didn't last use the sunroof in the "open" position

[AstulzerRZD]

Just bought a Lightning XLT Short Range for the family.
After EV credit, came out to $200/month more on the lease vs. a Maverick XL Hybrid base model.

Can someone recommend an electrician for install in Richmond?
Breaker is inside garage, we would want install on the "outside" wall right by the breaker.

We have the Standard Range so only really require a 50A charger.
Looking to get Chargepoint Home Flex (899+tax) with rebate from BC Hydro since it's the cheapest one and also supports 80A.
Open to other options without the rebate if it ends up net cheaper.