What do you like about the vehicle you drive and would you have changed anythin about it?
Realized that with my new job I’m at $500/month for gas. Starting to seriously consider a hybrid or electric but damn they expensive. Either way might just need something more reliable than my 320k+ car.
I used to. Moved to more rural area of Canada where there aren’t public transportation options. It’s been eye opening actually having to rely on a vehicle, starting to worry about tires and winter and blah blah blah. Not to mention the cost and overall environmental impact. Gross.
If someone’s spending $500/mo in gas, let’s just say public transport probably isn’t an option. Also, in the US, public transport is practically non-existent outside of urban centers. We kinda suck at stuff like that.
Lucky. It's $3.20 a gallon (around $0.85 a liter), were I live in the southeast US, drive around 60 miles a day at 25mpg, so a generally around $7-8 day (I drive an older car, and don't live too close to work), or $40-50 a week. Plus around 5-7hrs worth of driving a week.
The US both pretty heavily subsidizes gas and we produce the most. It's required to get around in all but a few places in the US after all. A lot of us would actually kinda prefer trains and trams, but most of the US is rural or semi rural, so that isn't often an option.
I am about 1 hour drive from NYC and the bus from here costs $620 per month if you buy in bulk. Otherwise, it’s a $40 round trip. There’s also a trains and ferry, and those are even more expensive than the bus. $500 in gas is cheaper than working in the city.
Was literally in that situation back in 2018. 110 mile round trip daily commute, ~$500/mo in gas. Had to fill up every other day.
Bought a 2017 Ford Fusion hybrid and cut my monthly gas expenditures down to about $200. Payments were about $225/mo so I ended up saving $50/mo once the insurance differential was factored in. A tank now lasted me just over a week.
As of 2020, l’m still driving it, but I’ve since moved much closer to work. A tank lasts me about a month now.
As of 2021, I work from home. A tank lasts me 3-4 months on average. Car is paid off.
Also have a 2017 Ford Fusion. Great car. Shows its age but runs like a champ as primary commuter work vehicle. Literally my only complaint is that I didn’t spring for the hybrid.
Drive a 2018 Nissan leaf, fantastic car except for the fact that it uses CHADeMO for DC fast charging (cancelled connector, getting harder to find)
Would recommend getting an EV, especially if you can charge at home. With tax credits and the savings in gas you’ll have paid the difference before you’re done with the car for sure.
I’m looking at getting a used leaf or a bolt. Do you know what the battery range degradation after 5 years would be approximately? 30%? Is there likely to be some sort of cascading failure at some point that would necessitate a battery replacement? Or are they good to drive to hundreds of thousands of miles with reduced range?
Mine needed a full battery replacement after almost 5 years due to a defect, many 2018-2020 models will also have gotten the same due to the same issue. If you get one of those you get a new pack with ~170 Miles (default was 155 for mine)
Before turning it in I’d gone down to an estimated 125-130ish from the 155 it started at, honestly it didn’t really feel like it’d lost much range at all, had the battery not failed due to a manufacturing efect I feel I’d have gotten at least another 10 years before really feeling the squeeze. That’s gonna depend on how often you DC fast charge vs level 1 or 2 slow charge, though. Then again, I’d mostly used DC fast charging to charge that battery so idk how much it ACTUALLY hurts the battery in the long run.
If given the choice I’d go for a bolt, preferably one with the refurb batteries from THEIR recall. Main reason being slightly more miles on the battery + CCS-1 (More common than CHADeMO and adaptable to NACS) DC fast charging
My leaf does a daily 46 mile one way commute and I get home with 35-40% charge every day, which I’d say isn’t bad at all. If you don’t road trip it, it rules
2017 Leaf here. It’s my first EV and I can’t see myself going back. The fact that I never have to put gas in it hasn’t gotten old. I should note that 2017 is ancient in EV years so the range is pretty bad. I can only rely on this as my primary vehicle because my partner has a gas car.
100kms round trip commute in a 2009 Volkswagen Rabbit. Also doing 300km round trips on the weekends a couple times a month so that don’t help.
It’s supposed to be fine on gas and to be fair I’ve been having check engine light and some tire issues that have been affecting mileage but before I invest too much in fixing those wanted to check out other car options.
That’s a lot of KMs on the poor car. I’m a little confused on the price and gas monthly cost because of the “$”. I was thinking those were dollars. I assume, those aren’t $500 dollars a month?
So that’s roughly 600km per week, 2400 per month? Damn dude, that is a lot. A hybrid won’t help you much because electric motors are mostly used at low speeds, like to get going from traffic lights in a city, which saves a lot of fuel. They don’t do much on highways.
I love the fact that I have no modern annoyances. No cacophony of binging noises to warn me about every small pointless thing: a car passing me, minor speeding, upcoming cameras, a car braking in front, reversing towards an object. Nice and quiet… just the hum of the engine. I don’t think I can drive a ‘new’ car.
I have an escape plug in hybrid. I get about 40 miles all electric, and about 500 miles on gas. I just took a camping trip where I towed a trailer, so my average mpg is down to about 50. Normally it rides around 70-80, since most days I drive less than 40 miles.
I like my fuel efficiency, and that I can plug it in to charge. I wish I had a little more cargo space, since I’m just shy of “project” capacity, and more “flat pack furniture”. I dislike that the towing capacity is low, since the hybrid drivetrain is more complex, and the car just weighs more, so I can only tow about 1500 lbs, which limits your choices for campers and such.
I originally started the buying process because I needed a new car, and I had a three hour round trip commute. Now I’m working from home, and it’s even better because I basically never use gas, but haven’t sacrificed range. Only my poor, beleaguered bank account. Which I don’t regret.
Almost the same, but the RAV4 Prime plug-in hybrid. 50mi electric range, AWD, we almost never have to fill it and there’s free slow chargers in our town!
2016 Toyota Camry. Up until that, I always bought used old beaters and ran them into the ground, but in 2017, my new job required a car less than 6 years old, so I bought the Camry.
I might be jinxing myself, but, besides normal (disposable) things like tires and brakes and minor tune ups, it hasn’t needed any major repairs since I bought it.
I bought a used 2015 Camry and have had no problems that I couldn’t handle myself. Or just ignore, like tire pressure sensors that give false failure signals.
I bought a 2019 Corolla, the Camry’s cheaper cousin, for the same reason. Hoping it lasts til 200,000 miles with no issues. 300K would be fantastic. Last Toyota I had was a Tacoma and it made it to 270K buy replaced the transmission twice 😭
a cheap e-fatbike. it’s almost free to ride and it has a decent range of about 30 km without pedaling so it gets me anywhere i need to go. i regret that i didn’t get one that has studded tires available, riding on ice is scary (finland). it also squeaks on bumpy roads like an old bed…
I currently drive a hybrid escape, ~600 miles per 14.5gal tank, pretty happy with it. Mine has the lane/brake assist but I turned off the lane since my state is so bad at painting lines it was trying to steer me out of lanes due to old lines being still visible or no lines being visible meant it was worthless too. That’s really my only complaint so far, had it 2 years now.
My driving is a mix of city and highway, I average low-mid 40s
I went from £400 a month fuel spend to just over £100 going to hybrid. My insurance came down from £700ish to £450 p/y (all the anti collision toys etc). The services were 4-600 a year now 250-300. It’s been 4 1/2 years and I’m keeping it. It cost me about 10k more than I’d normally pay for a car and I reckon I’ve made my money back and then some. That anti collision stuff has also saved my arse a couple of times.
I have one of the new Nightsters, it’s a harley-davidson that isn’t a vibrating air cooled dinosaur. It’s smooth, fast, and quiet. It handles great. It gets decent gas mileage.
If it’s raining or cold, I drive an old Samurai. It’s not a vehicle for those on the spectrum like myself who have trouble talking to people, because it sometimes draws a crowd.
I bought a 2020 Honda Accord, and I have absolutely zero (meaningful) complaints.
Things I like about it so much that they are requirements for future car purchases:
Adaptive cruise control
Brake-holding
Tactile inputs for media, cruise control, or climate control (almost wasn’t going to mention this, but new cars are shifting away from this, which I can’t stand)
A respectably-snappy infotainment system that supports CarPlay
Little things:
Adaptive cruise control is always ready to be set, so I can just head out and immediately start using it (I’m one of those people who likes to use cruise control at every possible opportunity)
I think they’re referring to Hill Assist. In manual cars if you let your foot off the brake you start to roll down hill. This is dangerous if you’re parked or stopped facing uphill with another car close behind you.
For generations, this was a problem that people had to deal with, and it took some skill. About 15ish years ago manufacturers started putting a feature on that would automatically hold the brakes until your foot hit the gas.
Brake hold is a feature where when you are stopped and in drive, the car will hold the brake until you hit the accelerator. The idea is that in stop and go traffic, or at a red light, you can stop the car and then remove your foot from the brake and the car will hold it’s position rather than creep forward.
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