If you have an electric dryer that circuit can often be shared via a switch with an EV charger if the location is convenient.
Apparently 90% of the house’s load is all on one side, including the only rational line up to place the charger. So we’re going back and forth on praying the car holds out and doing the electrical work ASAP and getting the PHEV now and saving for the electrical work.
Fundamentally the board is just too old and obsolete for what we want to do, even juggling stuff around.
This thread is relevant to my interests.
I’m planning on buying an electric car in a year or two. AWD would be a big plus. I think i need a range of 200-250 miles, after taking into account winter, aging, etc. (That is, i really want to be able to go 140 miles without charging, in bad conditions, with a full load of friends, after I’ve owned the car a few years.)
So I’m curious what’s our there, and what’s coming soonish.
I’m hoping to get something fun to drive, but with a relatively traditional interface.
Well, I can’t speak to the interfaces yet, we’re getting our second estimate on the electrical work next week and the spouse feels that replacing the electrical system > new car, which I can agree with but worry about Agree, because if the house shorts out due to the imbalance, it’s a lot worse than trying the alternate, where the Subie dies and we try to do the one-car household thing.
The Tesla dashes I saw when doing the research were about as far from a traditional interface as I can imagine, and knowing just how easy it is for all those touch screens to fail from accident or design leaves me … uncomfortable. Just… no. Some people love them though, so that’s up to them.
And I’ll leave out any further repetitions of my feelings for anything that puts $$$ in Musk’s pocket these days.
If money falls in our lap to offset the electrical work though (I wish) we’re still looking for a chance to drive the EV6 and the Ioniq, as well as the PHEV Rav4. Right now things be crazy, as the wife is working the Monday through Friday job, but was too darn nice to back out of the class she agreed to teach at the local college prior to her graduation. Which means she’s in the office Mon-Fri from 7am-5pm, and teaching Saturday 9am to 4pm.
So not much time to further our ambitions right now. Life be complicated!
Anyway, the three vehicles I listed above (the first two are BEV, the last PHEV as mentioned) should meet or exceed your needs in terms of range even with the AWD options. I think the lowest I saw was around 250-260 in the AWD format. The Rav4 has 40-50 miles all electric range, but that isn’t really an issue with a PHEV.
Yes, i used to have a PHEV with a range in perfect conditions of 20 miles. In reality, we got 12-15 miles. And when we got rid of it (it was a lemon) i calculated that half our miles had been electric. A 40-50 mile range would cover the vast majority of our driving.
Depending on your budget, the Jaguar iPace does what you wish. I have a 2019 model, and it still charges up to 256 miles in warm weather. It has AWD, and is fun and easy to drive. It is not the most economical EV choice however.
We own an Audi Q4 e-tron (Sportback). It hits all of your requirements, especially the fun to drive and traditional interface. It is now my “wife’s car” and our Tesla (M3) is “my car.” She does not like the Tesla interface (The Screen is intimidating), and loves the comfort and appointments of Q4 (it’s an Audi, after all). I like the Tesla minimalism, but admit that the Q4 feels like a luxury car and is fun to drive. (For example, there is a feature where the shift paddles on the steering wheel increase/decrease the regenerative braking so you can “downshift” like an ICE car, if you like that sort of thing.)
The Q4 is not the best or worst at anything (price, range, efficiency, etc.), but fits the bill for its class. Pricier that some of the other options mentioned in this thread, but we like it so far (with the usual minor pros and cons as we go along).
ETA (re: the Tesla):
Thanks for the share. It looks like I could build a 2024 Audi Q4 e-tron® 50 e-tron® Premium quattro (with the mandatory AWD) for an MSRP of $56k. Of course, don’t know if, as with some others, you’d have to pay a premium above and beyond. And with a 236 mile range, it’s a smidge shorter than ideal, but neither that or the price is totally out of keeping with my search at least.
Razzafrazzing electrical system in my house…
236 miles works great for me. I’m not sure when we’ll next be car shopping (probably if/when our daughter moves out) but there seem to be a growing number of promising choices out there.
FWIW, we bought ours a couple of months ago and there was no markup. Audi was offering a lease with a $7,500 credit (plus another $3,000 with Costco, et. al.) at 3.5%, and let me put many thousands on my credit card. We were going to buy it outright, but decided to just take the lease and buy it out at lease end. I think they are getting ahead of the domestic credit available to their competition by just matching it this year.
I sympathize with your charging issue. We are lucky where we have charging at home and (even cheaper charging) at work. It makes a big difference.
Coincidentally, they tore up our street a couple of weeks ago because one neighbour wanted 200A service, and installed the infrastructure to support the whole street. Out of curiosity, I asked what it would cost for an upgraded service and was told “about $15k.” Yikes.
Just got notice that our Cadillac Lyriq had been released for production. Hopefully we’ll get it in January (which messes with our tax situation–we we’re supposed to get it months ago). AWD, 500 HP, 307 miles of range. Really looking forward to it at long last–we ordered it a year and a half ago.
The Subie (2010, 200K miles) lost power steering and we decided it was not worth putting more money into it. So we just bought a used 2021 Ford Escape Hybrid after shopping for a few weeks. We were looking at CRV and RAV4 hybrids but they were hard to find with low miles, and cost $10K more than the Ford. So far I’m getting 40+ MPG in more comfort and safety.
Our ideal choice would have been a RAV4 Prime (plug-in hybrid) but that was at least $15K more and we didn’t think it was worth the feature, nice as it would have been.
We’ve been reading a ton, watching videos, and trying to learn as much as we can. We were originally leaning towards the Rav4 Prime, but now we want to go pure EV. We are going to test drive a Tesla Y and X fairly soon. I like the X because it is larger and we have a larger dog, but that price tag is a bit much for us (we can afford it, but it just seems excessive). Most of our shorter weekend adventures are all within a 2-hour drive each way, so any 300 mile’sh range EV should get us there and back without issues. A pure EV can also take care of a lot of our long distance travels since there is plenty of charging along any of the interstates but what it can’t do is get us to our prime backpacking and outdoor recreation locations in central ID. Look along highway 12 and down McCall and Stanley way - dearth of level 3 chargers. We also occasionally take some gnarly Forest Service roads and I’d rather not beat up a nice car. We’ve always been a one car household, but our 2012 Subaru Forester isn’t worth much so we are now thinking of keeping it until lvl 3 chargers make it into some of these more remote locations, or we figure out how to fit in slower destination charging. If we were retired, destination charging would work great, but we are often on a 3-4 day weekend deadline for these trips. The rough FS roads aren’t great in our Forester either (they are a snap on my dualsport, and were a lot easier when we had a full sized pickup), but it’s already lived a rough life 
Since we already have a 30A 240 outlet in our garage (the 100A subpanel is right there so we could get more if needed, but I don’t think that will ever be required), we are ready to go for home charging. Test drive and make a decision is what is required now.
Yeah, I don’t expect superchargers in Stanley or McCall anytime soon. My buddy did take his Rivian over there, but had to take a circuitous route that turned a 7 hour drive into a 12 hour drive.
I’ve looked at those alternative routes that mainly involve heading to Ontario, OR, but like you said…many added hours.
We also pack in:
- Cabinets - doable
- Selkirks - doable
- 7 Devils - tough
- Eagle caps - tough
Just need to retire so we can spend a night along the way. Right now we tend to leave work early and drive and spend the night at the trailhead, depending on when we get there, then head in. A night of lvl 2 charging along the way would make any of these locations accessible.
I’ve driven a Model X on rutted dirt roads, but total distances in the few mile range. Going 50 miles into the back country might be a different story.
It was fine. I was certainly going slow (not beat up a nice car thing). The air ride can be set to soft, and used to raise the ground clearance. At maximum lift the wheels don’t have much downward travel left. It’s not a rock crawler.
The four wheel drive works well, and the low end power is so easy to modulate and so plentiful that going over ruts and pulling tires out of holes is easy. It’s not like my Suburban that I have to put into 4-low to back over curbs.
I would be very hesitant to drive my Model 3 on anything that needs more than a few inches of ground clearance. I think the Y is a bit higher, but not much. The bottom is completely armored, but the low plastic splitter is a big issue.
Most places we go require some forest service road driving, but the majority of those roads are in goodish shape. Some of them are pretty rough and a Subaru needs to go 2-3 MPH to survive. A few roads I’ve done on my dual-sport moto or full sized pickup would destroy a Subaru, or it would get stuck. I think a Tesla could do the first classification and we’ll keep the Subaru for the second. We haven’t had a true off-road vehicle for years so those last type roads will have to be moto only.
Just quick repost from upthread:
All credit to @cardinal_fang of course. So yeah … not amazing clearance. Not terrible either. But I’ve been on dirt roads in the mountains in Colorado where I’d worry about the 6 inch option. Not that it would stop me, but I’d be driving a lot more carefully (which would probably be for the best anyway) than I would be with the 8 inches on the RAV4
This is why I prefer the X since it sounds like you can raise it to 8" of clearance but I think it does it at the expense of suspension travel. But, most of the forest service roads we drive aren’t too bad if you avoid all the potholes. You just have to drive slower which can be difficult for me.
We ended up going with the Y. The X is cool, both for the clearance as well as cargo space, but it was a huge price difference and we couldnt’ justify it. Today we took it to one of our nearby places that requires some clearance and compared to our Subaru Forester, it is pretty comparable. I know the Subie has a bit more clearance and I would go a bit faster because I don’t give much of a shit about a 12 year old Forester, but, the Y did great. It was a muddy, potholed, rocky road and it did fine.
I did start to think about a spare tire since I’ve gotten flats due to rocks (Chevy K1500 tire swap on off-kilter sketchy ground was super fun!), and I do know the Y doesn’t have one, so that’s something I need to look into. The Forester has a donut, but I’ve used it twice and glad it was there.