Thoughts on our new electric car

We are now the owners of a bright blue Bolt EV. It had 3 miles on it when we bought it. It had never even been for a test drive.

It’s a really nice car. I’ve never owned a really nice car. And in the eight years since we last bought a (three year old at the time) car, A LOT has changed. Also, a lot of things were broken in our old car and we never fixed them. Did I mention we’ve been putting a portable speaker on our dashboard to listen to music from our phones for three years now?!

Now I plug my phone into the car and it shows up on a big screen. If I want to make a call it will take me through all the steps, orally, so I don’t have to look at the screen. When someone calls me I can answer it without looking at my phone, or even moving my hands. It’s amazing.

When I back up I can see how close I am to the other car via a camera. I almost never look at that because it’s HARD to back up while your body is facing forward. I haven’t managed to do it yet — my body just instinctively turns to right — but it is cool for when I’m parking really close to another car and I don’t want to hit it.

Speaking of parking, it’s so much shorter than our sedan. I can fit it in so many tiny spaces.

And yet inside it’s surprisingly spacious. I think part of it is that there is just less stuff taking up space (the engine is super small, there is no gas tank, etc), and also the space is utilized really well. It’s kind of like a tiny house car in a way. We’ll see if there are moments when it really feels like there isn’t enough passenger or cargo space.

It has a regenerative braking mode and when you are in it, the car starts stopping as soon as you take your foot all the way off the pedal. It took me a little while to get used to it, but now I LOVE it because I can basically drive without ever moving my foot to the brake pedal. I also get great range in that mode because I’m producing energy anytime I lift my foot even slightly off the pedal.

So far I use about 40 miles worth of charge a day, even though I drive a little more than that. Obviously the high speeds of the freeway burn through a lot of energy, but driving around in the regen mode I get great “mileage.”

We sit higher in this car than the sedan, which I like.

We have a month of free Sirius.XM radio, which I hate, except now I found a 90’s pop station and I hate it a little less. We’re definitely going to cancel that subscription when we need to start paying.

We have three free months of On.Star, but we’ll be cancelling that as well.

It’s weird just pressing a button to turn on the car. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reached for the key when it’s time to turn it off. And I swear the shifter only moves in the ways it does to give you the semblance of shifting, they could have just as easily put buttons somewhere to move from P to D to R.

Also, it’s a hatch back so you don’t have to pull the trunk door level like in my old car. I’ve honestly reached down for that more than I’ve grasped for a key that isn’t there.

When you do put it in park, it stays absolutely still. No rocking back and forth gently. That still weirds me out.

It doesn’t use gas so I don’t need to change the oil (it has no oil!), or get a SMOG check. And of course, I never have to get actual gas either. I am so excited about all of these things.

It gets around 250 miles on a charge. So far I’ve been able to charge it to full at night (starting at 11pm when rates go down) without the level 2 charger, but we are still getting one put in. The electrician came today and said it should be fine, despite our crappy electrical infrastructure and small main panel, as long as we charge it at night when we aren’t using electricity elsewhere. I don’t think I’ll use the level 2 charger all the time, but it will be nice if there is ever a night I forget to plug it in, or when we come back from a longer trip and we need to go from zero to full more quickly. It also is super charge compatible (that was an extra $1K) so we can get about 150 miles in 30 minutes on the road (at a super charge station). Living in California we have more infrastructure for electric cars than most states, especially in the Bay Area.

All told, it cost about $41,000; $35,600 for the LT model with the secure driver package ($550 for the backup camera which my husband really wanted), the super charger  port ($1,000) and the color ($400), plus taxes (almost 9% here) and a $2500, 5 year/100,000 mile warranty (that was $4000 off sticker, plus an educators discount (nice!) and a little more off because our credit union works with this dealership a lot). We’ll get $7500 back from the feds and $2500 back from the state, so it will be $31,000 + some interest when all is said and done. We put down $10,000 and got a three year loan (at 2.26%) from our credit union for the rest, but we expect to pay it off in two years. I haven’t calculated exactly how much we’ll be paying in interest, but it’s not that bad. (I’m including all this in case anyone is interested and wants an idea of real cost.)

We will save $2,500 a year on not buying gas, but also spend more in electricity (not sure how this will look yet). Also our insurance went up A LOT ($800 a year), as this car is worth 10 times what our other car was worth at the time of the switch, but it would have gone up no matter what kind of newer car we bought. Still, we’re paying as much in car insurance now (about $2,000 a year) we were before we switched to State Farm from AAA (when we had an older car), so it’s not that bad.

Do I wish my old car had been worth keeping for another 2-4 more years? Absolutely. Am I excited (and totally nervous!) to have a brand new (for the first time in my life) electric car? F*ck yeah. Mostly I’m excited to not be using gas. I’ve driven a 45 mile commute 180 days a year for 14 years, plus all the driving I do around the city and the suburb where I work. I feel a lot of guilt about that. Yes, I’m still a single driver in a car on the road, but at least I’m not burning gas to get around. When we get solar panels I’ll feel really good about things.

So yeah, that’s our new car.