OP is planning on buying a new vehicle so that’s sort of a moot point for his purposes. But it’s Lifetime for the original and 10 Year/100,00 mile if used.
I think a PHEV might be a better choice for us than all-electric - just because there would be semi-regular trips that are 200+ miles round trip. I would not want to have to rent a car every time we visited Dweezil at college, for example. Having the gas as a backup if we run out of juice running errands would make that more feasible. We’ll have to look into the options there.
I’d be more interested in all-electric if we also owned a hybrid or regular ICE as a backup. I don’t mind the idea of renting something once or twice a year for longer jaunts, but once or twice a month would be a deal-killer.
The gas tax does work to encourage reducing and eliminating gas usage, in the same way that taxes on cigarettes do. There are other incentives for hybrids, plug-in, and alternative fuel vehicles including tax credits up to $7500, use of carpool lanes, lower tolls, etc. A $75 road tax fee is relatively small when it costs about half that much to fill your tank.
Keep in mind that 50 different states have different ways to fund road construction and maintenance. Gas tax values differ from state to state, but the infrastructure works across the country. They range from 62.5 cents/gallon (CA) to 14 cents/gallon (AK) so you’d have to come up with a funding method that’s collects a constant amount for federal funds and varying amount for each state.
Good point!
Cool! Buy one when your baby is born and register it in their name. BAM! You’ve got a car that could theoretically last for 80 years!
Has anyone ever wondered if there are hit squads who assassinate people if they’re too far into a lifetime warranty?
Well, sadly, the warranty is for the lifetime of the CAR, not of its OWNER. And lots of other things could do that car in, other than the battery.
I have a PHEV Kia Niro. (Yes, I know you’ve never heard of it. I’ve never seen another one on the road. It’s a crossover, SUV-styled but sitting like a sedan.)
We’ve had hybrids in the past and decided that this would be a better solution. It runs 24-26 miles on a full charge, and then 40+ mpg on gas. We weren’t expecting the pandemic, but it’s proved to be perfect. I think we’ve put gas into the tank four times this year, but it may be only three.
There are some cons. Trunk space is small because of the battery. The almost-dealbreaker is that the heater only works with the gas engine, so any trip of more than a few minutes requires gas here in upstate New York. The pros is that it’s a very nice little car, and the top of the line has all the bells and whistles that my hybrid Lexus had five years ago plus tons of more modern stuff. And it costs about 2/3 of a Lexus.
I wouldn’t get it if I had to haul kids around all the time, but it’s great for a couple.
One annoyance I just realized, with a plug-in: our garage has an outlet.
AN outlet. As in, one.
Which is currently occupied with a small chest freezer and a vacuum cleaner’s charging base.
What kind of draw would a PHEV or full electric take? I imagine we’d need to have an electrician pull another line, but might it overload the circuit?
We could put the vacuum elsewhere (though it’s very convenient where it is) but the freezer can’t easily be moved.
The PHEV will probably want to draw the full power the circuit can continuously provide, which is probably 12 amps at 110 volts. It may be possible to adjust the car to use less power, for example capping the rate at 6 amps. There is also the question of what other things are connected to the circuit that outlet is on, so the demand might be more than just the freezer and vacuum charger. It’s not so much the number of plugs available, as the total load on the circuit.
Charging a PHEV on a normal 110 volt household circuit should be fine, because the battery will fill overnight. This would only be an issue if, for example, you do a 20 mile round trip in the morning, and then do it again a few hours later.
How expensive it is to get a new circuit run will depend on how close your breaker box is, and if there is room in it. There also may be federal, state, and local tax breaks or utility subsidies for adding a circuit to charge your car. The final price may range from the low hundreds to thousands.
If you do add a circuit, definitely go for a 220 volt either 30 or 50 amp line. That will charge a PHEV to full in 1-2 hours, and get you ready for a future full electric vehicle. Or if you want an electric kiln, or something.
We have a 2013 Hybrid Camry. After my wife’s older Camry was totaled, we found this 5 year old model for sale. Since it only had 5000 miles (really - we verified this every way we could and seemed legit) we decided to buy it instead of a new one.
So far it’s worked like any other Toyota – drive it and change fluids on schedule. The older Camry got 26, and this one gets 40mpg in real-world driving. So we consider it a great improvement for a small investment.
Worth it? Knowing Toyota’s quality I think so. Unless some huge battery-related expense shows up in a few years, it’s a worthwhile improvement over its ICE cousin. Almost nothing is different for day-to-day use and it’s useful load is slightly higher than the older one (even with the battery pack).
As a side question: how the hell will we get rid of the old car?
It’s a 1998 Civic with a quarter million miles on it. It failed inspection due to the exhaust system, which would cost 2400 bucks to repair. Even if it were half that to repair, the car is worth maybe 500 dollars per Kelly etc. I hear horror stories about donations going awry (the new “owners” fail to register it, and months after you think you’re rid of it you start getting unpaid-parking-ticket notices etc.). I don’t know if a dealership would want it for parts - it has a new alternator, at least - that was the last big repair, and the one that put the car on notice that its days were numbered.
We have to get it off the road by the end of November, when the inspection sticker expires.
Donate it to a charity. Find one that will come a retrieve it for you for maximum convenience. They’ll usually first try to fix it up and sell it and if so you’ll get the value of the sale as a tax write off. Or if that just isn’t an option they will junk it (or sell it for less than $500) in which case you get to write off the minimum of $500 on your taxes, which for you sounds about accurate 
.
Another option which a friend of mine did is to donate it to a auto-repair/body work program at a community college. They often LOVE to have free new junkers to practice on and you can get some warm fuzzy feelings about having helped some college kids learn a valuable trade 
I just bought (new) a 2019 KIA Niro PHEV, and so far It’s been a great car for the kind of driving you (and I) seem to do: mostly in town, with occasional longer trips. Since I have solar panels and charge it overnight, the first 26 miles of fuel are virtually free. The ICE gets about 45 mpg on the highway. Because I didn’t pay for a Tesla or Honda badge, I was able to afford a premium trim line with a lot of luxury and safety features. The Niro seems to be quite popular in the UK; check out the YouTube video reviews. The Hyundai Kona PHEV is a near-identical twin.
I’ve traded in cars to the dealer, and gotten nominal credit of perhaps $500. (When I had to replace a decrepit Nissan Sentra, it had to be towed to the Honda dealership where I bought its replacement. They insisted that it be dropped off in the back, as it was too embarrassing to have out front.)
In Texas, Colorado, and perhaps in other states, there is a form you can file with the DMV that says “I don’t own this car anymore.”
A quick search for something like “sell a junker” will find salvage yards and auto recyclers in your area that will buy the car for scrap value, if nothing else.
California too. I donated my old Saturn to the local NPR station. Not sure how much they got from it, but it was very easy.
We went to 4 dealerships today just to look at the vehicles. Hyundai’s hybrid offerings (the Ioniq and Sonata) were OK for what they were - I could get into and out of them, though they were a tad lower to the ground than I like.
The Toyota dealership was just a few yards down the road. We first looked at the Venza - and my husband, who is shorter than I am, had trouble getting into the front passenger seat. I couldn’t even get in without bending my neck in a very painful way. I cannot imagine how a tall person could ride as a passenger in that thing. We had similar issues with the RAV-4 and the Prius, though less severe - it was merely uncomfortable to maneuver into the seat, not impossible. Both had moon roofs which exacerbated the problem. So while both are very good cars, they’re off the table.
Next was the Honda dealer (foolishly, we drove right past the Ford dealer, on the same road as the Toyota and Hyundai places). We looked at the HR/V and CR/V there. We weren’t interested in test-driving today, just literally taking 5 minutes to sit in them to see if we could get into/out of them. In both cases the driver’s seat was fine, and the passenger seat, especially in the CRV, was a complete nonproblem.
We backtracked to the Ford dealership to check out the Escape and were similarly pleased with the seating position. The back seat actually adjusts forward / backward in that, which is a nice feature (presumably you trade off seating vs luggage - would have been ideal for a day trip we took to the beach a while back, for example). We’ll have to look into the reliability there.
In all cases we are hoping to benefit from model-year-end sales.
Still need to take a look at the Kia Niro, which is the plug-in hybrid. We’ve absolutely ruled out all-electric: if we were going to also have a hybrid or ICE engine vehicle, all-electric would be good for around the town and commuting, but as our only car it would mean longer trips would pose significant logistical concerns.
Dweezil was home from college for the weekend. We had thought that when we made a decision, we’d drive our CRV down there and drive his Civic back to make the trade - but realized we can just have him take the CRV when he goes back tomorrow - which will a) save us a bunch of driving, and b) give him more cargo space when he has to unload his dorm in 3.5 weeks (they are finishing up at Thanksgiving).
It doesn’t look like they have that in the US. I actually asked at the Hyundai dealership if they made a hybrid SUV and they said no 
The Escape’s history concerns me: seems like they were sold for a few years, then stopped again, then started again, then stopped again, then started again this year. What’s going on there?? CR also rates it a bit lower on reliability, which is not happy-making.
It’s funny: last time we shopped for a new car was probably 14 years ago, and I asked for opinions here, and someone said “Every time someone asks, they wind up getting a Honda”. And it seems entirely possible that we’ll do it again this time. Though we really ARE looking at other models before we make a decision.
You are right, I drove the EV Kona. I did not like it as much as the Niro: it seemed smaller and felt “cheaper” to me.
One frustrating thing about searching for a PHEV was how few if them were actually available. I wanted to drive a Subaru Crosstrek and some of the Honda or Lexus models but the dealers didn’t have them, at least not back in April.