Update on the car

We decided to retire our Honda Accord and get a new car, and while we’re leaning heavily towards a 2018 Che.vy Bo.lt EV, we’re not decided.

I never did get another estimate for the work, but I absolutely trust my mechanic (I’ve been bringing my cars there since I was 18) and know he’s giving it to me straight. I think if I hadn’t gotten behind on the 150K maintenance and replacing the windshield, and had already put that $1.5K into the car, we would be replacing the axles, struts and tires. But I did get behind, so now, all together, it would cost at least $4K to do all the necessary work to keep it running safely, and the fact that no one can tell me how or why our front axles got bent (meaning maybe it’s a defect and could happen again), we think starting fresh is the best option. Also, we don’t have a way to connect our phones to this car anymore (we’ve been using a portable speaker to play music for YEARS), and some other stuff is broken (the inside ceiling and dashboard lights are out, the key fobs only work intermittently) which were simply annoying before, but now make getting another car that much more enticing.

Still, spending that much on a car is freaking me out. The only thing that makes me seriously consider it is not paying for gas again. I spend $50+ a week on gas, and that is if I don’t go down to my parents’ on the weekend or have any other random driving to do. So we’d be saving AT LEAST $200 a month on gas, more if the prices go back up in the $4-4.50/g range (which they do frequently here). So we are looking at around $2500 a year in gas savings. That is nothing to sneeze at. And California offers a $2500 tax rebate on top of the $7500 federal rebate, so that is helpful. And yes, we will be paying for the electricity to charge the car, but I’ve been wanting solar panels for so long now, hopefully we can get them soon (and people I know who have EVs have said they didn’t notice major changes in their energy bills).

We’re test driving a Chevy Bolt this weekend and we’ll see if we like it. It’s REALLY small, much smaller than my sedan, and I worry about its cargo space since it’s our only car. But I absolutely want to make it work, because while hybrids are great, they don’t save THAT much gas if you’re primarily driving on the freeway (41m/g vs our Accord’s 32m/g). And my work doesn’t have charging stations (or even a way to run a cord out to the parking lot) so I can’t drive something like the Prius Prime without burning fuel on the way home (they can go 30 miles on a charge and my work is 25 miles away). California also has other incentives for driving an EV, which helps.

In the end, an electric car is so much better for the earth, and I’ve done so much damage commuting alone 50 miles a day, 200 days a year, for 15 years (I shutter to write all that out). If we can afford an EV, it really feels like we should get one.

We still have so much work to do to make getting a new car happen – and a lot of decisions to make, the most important being how we’ll finance this fantastically expensive endeavor. We could produce all the cash, but we’d be decimating our emergency fund, plus taking money from some other accounts we’d rather not tough. I’d rather find a 0% APR for 48 months deal and pay it off with the money we’re saving now that our son’s not in daycare. Also, our credit union offers a 1% APR loan for new cars, so we could do that. It will probably end up being some combination of cash and financing. We also have to figure out what to do with the old car. I can’t imagine we can sell a car that’s blue book value is the same as how much work has to be done to it. Perhaps we’ll donate it to a good cause (that is what I did with my last car). Any suggestions?

I still can’t believe we are doing this. I absolutely thought our Honda had another 4 years left – I was planning to drive it for 250K miles! I feel like a deer caught in the headlights with all of this, but I’m so thankful it happened now that we have a more cash available each month. It could have been much worse.