Bolt EV new vs used: am I missing something?

In reply to Keith Tanner :

This.  I have a Tesla Model S, which is not a cheap car and I didn't buy it for practical reasons.  I do stop at gas stations -- to buy drinks!  You can turn the Tesla's AC on thru the app and even if it's sitting in my parking lot at work, it'll be cool when I get in. 

I still drive the Freeus (a Prius that I got for free) a lot of the time because I like having all of my cycling junk and tools in a beater and I'm driving rough gravel roads in the countryside often.  It's also nice to park in crappy parking situations and not worry if someone's going to door ding you (they may, but I'm not worried about it.)

It's very nice though to get in a car that has no gas costs, doesn't have 300k+ miles, has an awesome stereo, the latest safety features, etc.  691 hp, amazing handling, and a luxurious interior are the icing on the cake.  Those last few may not be applicable to a Bolt..

Edit: I should mention that here in Jacksonville, JEA put in a bunch of Level 2 Chargepoint EV chargers and several of them are free.  I pay to park the Tesla in a city parking garage, but I charge it for free.  The only time I've paid for charging since buying it is on long trips when I use the Tesla Superchargers.  Zero fuel costs.

As someone with a plug in hybrid I can tell you with absolute certainty there is no real money savings in it.  A few data points from the real world:

• My plug in hybrid was ~$75k out the door.  Even with my tax credit it was $67k.  
• It needed a $400 charger plus another $300 in materials (conduit, outlet, breaker, wiring) to make it remotely practical.  If I would have had to pay someone that $300 would have bene $1500.
• Driving 20ish miles a day adds $50 a month to our electric bill.  

That all being said, it is quiet.  It is cool.  The roof and doors come off.  Its fun to dabble my toes into EV ownership where our use case would not support a full EV.  

But it doesnt save you money, thats for damn sure.  A paid off Avalanche with an 8.1 and gas at $5 a gallon would cost me way less to drive 20 miles round trip every day.  

In reply to 93gsxturbo :

This isn't apples and oranges though. You bought, presumably, a wrangler 4xe. Which isn't a basic appliance economy car. You paid 20k over the average new car transaction price. I am looking at something that is nearly half that. 

Your experience isn't really applicable here. You wouldn't compare that 20 year old Avalanche to a 20 year old Civic would you?

frenchyd said:

In reply to SV reX :

The average person travels 12,000 a year.  The cost of a gallon of 87 octane is around 3.50 the average fuel consumption is 22 Mpg.     That's $1909/ year. Assume a 20 year life. $38,180.  
     Now What is your cost for electricity?   
    I'm pretty sure an EV will pay for itself in fuel savings alone.   Plus no more driving to the gas station, no more scheduled oil changes?  you leave each morning with a full "tank". 
    Plus it's quiet.  

For me, I suspect that we will put at least 15,000 miles a year in it, as it would allow us to not drive our van when we go somewhere as a family. I have solar so charging is nearly free most of the year and my electricity costs 0.12 per kWh with a sliding scale down to 0.08. 

What would be monthly payment for the car? (I'm assuming you're not paying cash but if you can, awesome)

What's your monthly gas bill? 
 

Run some numbers and get an idea of how much you'll pay in electricity to charge at home. 
 

From there you should be able to see what makes sense. 100% the EV will cost more per month but it also will have more value. Will it pay itself off in 3-5 years? That would be my criteria I think. 
 

Reliabilty is part of this for sure. For that I would compare these numbers with a basic IC car, new or used. A 2 year old Camry/Accord will probably need very little and get better mileage than the current fleet. 
 

If it's about the numbers I think this is a good place to start. 

Bolt EUV is rated at 29 kWh/100 miles. Let's be conservative and say it uses 33.333 kWh/100 miles, just because that makes the math easy :) 3 miles/kWh.

15,000 miles/year will use right about 5000 kWh of electricity. Singleslammer gets power from the floating fusion reactor in the sky so it's mostly free, but worst case is that it's all purchased at 0.12 per kWh or $600.

That $20k Kia is rated at 33 mpg, so it'll use 455 gallons of 87 octane to travel 15,000 miles. Average price of mid-grade gasoline today is $3.868 - a year ago, it was $4.630. So that's $1758 in fuel, $1158 higher than the electric. That's almost $100/mo in savings on fuel as a worst case - higher than rated energy consumption at the maximum cost.

If we see fuel go up to where it was a year ago, and we take Singleslammer's solar as a free power source, the annual savings are $2100 or $175/mo. 

So fuel savings aren't necessarily the only reason to do this, but they're real. You're basically paying an extra $100-175/month to drive the gas car, so that's on top of your payment. At the $20k car level, that's a big increase.

Just for fun - a $20k car with $5k down and financed at 4.5% for 60 years (those are default numbers at Calculator.net) is going to cost about $280/mo before fuel costs. I ran those numbers to get an idea of the ballpark, they're not necessarily representative of the current auto loan landscape because I don't know enough about it.

Keith Tanner said:

Just for fun - a $20k car with $5k down and financed at 4.5% for 60 years (those are default numbers at Calculator.net) is going to cost about $280/mo before fuel costs. I ran those numbers to get an idea of the ballpark, they're not necessarily representative of the current auto loan landscape because I don't know enough about it.

These long-term car loans are really getting out of hand.

Did a bunch of work around the Bolt and it is a really nice sporty EV.  Not a rocketship but certainly a fun solution to the problem.  20.5K is an amazing amount of brand new vehicle for the money.  I've seen Keith's math work out on my EV and have been pleasantly surprised by the lack of maintenance.  Now to get back to working on the 39Yr old VW in the garage.

Well, if I sell the Astro and the Town Car, the insurance is a wash. 

In reply to wae :

Ha! Busted. I'm gonna leave it there.

Full marks for reading comprehension.

spandak said:

What would be monthly payment for the car? (I'm assuming you're not paying cash but if you can, awesome)

What's your monthly gas bill? 
 

Run some numbers and get an idea of how much you'll pay in electricity to charge at home. 
 

From there you should be able to see what makes sense. 100% the EV will cost more per month but it also will have more value. Will it pay itself off in 3-5 years? That would be my criteria I think. 
 

Reliabilty is part of this for sure. For that I would compare these numbers with a basic IC car, new or used. A 2 year old Camry/Accord will probably need very little and get better mileage than the current fleet. 
 

If it's about the numbers I think this is a good place to start. 

My wife has a Honda CRV 10 years old 140,000 miles on it. My wife keeps to the penny costs of everything so I'm just guessing some of these numbers. One repair of about $600 in that  period.  That's 23 oil changes average cost is $75 each. $2325. I know I can change oil cheaper but it's her car.  So•••• 

  She only gets an average of 22 mpg. Short runs to salon, store, family, etc with a couple of trips thrown in.   $22.722.  Plus $2325 close enough to $24,600 I won't argue the difference. 
   Now she paid cash for her Honda. 

Here's a data point on crunching numbers to aid in decision making https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tesla-taxi-hits-the-road-in-vancouver-1.5737062

There is a 30% federal tax credit on used EVs and plug in hybrids of up to $4,000 which would widen that gap between the new and used Bolts.

A friend was shopping locally for a Bolt EUV and apparently the dealer inventory on Chevy.com is really inaccurate. They have none in stock within range here so they decided to order instead at MSRP. Should be here in 3 months or so per the dealer.

If you want the full $7500 tax credit, shop quickly. The Bolt twins will probably will miss out on half of the tax credit once the federal government finally releases rules on which cars qualify, which is expected end of this month. 

frenchyd said:

In reply to SV reX :

The average person travels 12,000 a year.  The cost of a gallon of 87 octane is around 3.50 the average fuel consumption is 22 Mpg.     That's $1909/ year. Assume a 20 year life. $38,180.  
     Now What is your cost for electricity?   
    I'm pretty sure an EV will pay for itself in fuel savings alone.   Plus no more driving to the gas station, no more scheduled oil changes?  you leave each morning with a full "tank". 
    Plus it's quiet.  

I was all ready to get an EV of some sort (12K miles a year just for the commute) and my employer has free charging. And then they offered voluntary retirement...

So now I drive maybe 3K miles a year, and suddenly the smart points of EVs sort of go away. I have a 10-yr old F150 with 130K miles on it, and it no longer makes sense to replace it, considering it's paid off and the cost of gas just doesn't matter much. Also, electrical expense here in SoCal is very high. We pay $0.32-0.45 depending upon usage and time. I'm leaving out the expense and amortization of solar panels - that's a whole 'nother discussion, what with the incentives going away, and various fees being placed on solar users. Point being, the economics of driving an EV very much depends on usage, where you live, and your local government/electrical providers shenanigans.

In reply to kb58 :

If you don't drive, then no car really makes financial sense :)

In reply to kb58 :

That's interesting. Minnesota which really doesn't have any shortage of electrical power, offers a no out of pocket installation of solar panels. Paid for  with your surplus energy sold   Back to the grid.  
      One area resident expects  to pay off the panel installation inside 7 years at the current rate of surplus energy. 
    When zi was selling Wind generators one hog farmer who paid  over $250,000 for two of them  figured in 3 years he would break even and with a projected life of 20 years before overhaul. 
       Granted he doesn't live very far from a major wind farm.    

For fun I just checked CarMax for Chevy Bolts - the cheapest ones were $27K, and they range up to the low $30Ks. Basically the same as a brand new one (at least at MSRP).

Question: Can the $7000 credit still be applied to a used EV, given that the credit was already paid when the car was new? I suspect not, making used ones seemingly even less desirable.

In reply to kb58 :

There's a smaller credit for used EV purchases. 

Everyone else has talked about the financials of an EV and the Bolt in particular. A few things not yet mentioned for new vs used at this point. The new models are basically heavy facelifts of the old car so drivetrain-wise you are getting the same car and same DC Fast Charging speed no matter what.

If going used, make sure the car is equipped with DCFC abilities. Not all of them were.

The new ones have way better seats in terms of overall comfort. They also offer SuperCruise, which is hands-free Level 2 driver assistance. Very, very good lane centering and radar that uses GPS-mapped highways to be more advanced than any other L2 system on the road right now. Ford's BlueCruise is similar but I find SuperCruise better.

As others have said, the Bolt EUV is not really "big" per se. It is larger than the regular Bolt by a touch, moreso just differently shaped. I like the car overall and I think you'd be in a good position to negotiate on price, should absolutely not be paying over MSRP for one. 

Brake_L8 (Forum Supporter) said:

If going used, make sure the car is equipped with DCFC abilities. Not all of them were.

That's a really important piece of buying advice if you're planning on road tripping. IIRC it tops out at 50 kW so it's not super-fast, but the alternative is 7.2 kW. Another way of expressing those numbers is the amount of range you get per hour - the 50 kW fast charger will get you 100 miles in about 30 minutes, the 7.2 will be about 29 miles in an hour. 

In the real world, 7.2 kW is fine for daily use with overnight home charging. Perfectly acceptable for a city car - the only time we've ever needed faster charging in the past 3+ years has been mid-road trip. Just be aware that a non-DCFC car is basically confined to a home base or a single leg trip to another overnight charger. If that suits your needs, no problem. But you'll want to make that decision instead of finding out later :)

Brake_L8 (Forum Supporter) said:

The new ones have way better seats in terms of overall comfort. They also offer SuperCruise, which is hands-free Level 2 driver assistance. Very, very good lane centering and radar that uses GPS-mapped highways to be more advanced than any other L2 system on the road right now. Ford's BlueCruise is similar but I find SuperCruise better.

Just to clarify, SuperCruise is not an option on the regular Bolt. SuperCruise is an add on option only for the Premier trim of the Bolt EUV

MrJoshua said:

There is a 30% federal tax credit on used EVs and plug in hybrids of up to $4,000 which would widen that gap between the new and used Bolts.

There are a lot of "got yahs" with the used rebate , one is I think you need to buy it from a dealer , better check first

I bought mine with a few thousand miles from Carvana, and I have loved it. It's saved a lot of money, which I calculate and update every 10K miles or so in my thread. I have 76K miles or so now on the car.

californiamilleghia said:

MrJoshua said:

There is a 30% federal tax credit on used EVs and plug in hybrids of up to $4,000 which would widen that gap between the new and used Bolts.

There are a lot of "got yahs" with the used rebate , one is I think you need to buy it from a dealer , better check first

Yep, has to be from a dealer. There are also income limits (I believe $75k per single person household, $150k for family). The credit is only good towards taxes owed, and does not carry over to next year. Those are the biggies I remember.