Mine is the 2025, fyi
If your preference is for smaller and you can wait a short while, the Toyota/Subaru joint offerings are about to include a smaller car with the same drivetrain as the BZ/Solterra badged C-HR for Toyota and Uncharted for Subaru. A bunch of youtube reviews for the C-HR just dropped yesterday, and were pretty much all positive. I’m looking at buying in this segment later this year, and this duo is on my short list. Not that it’s relevant to you, but they’re likely to be the only AWD options that will qualify for the newly-announced Canadian federal rebate.
Only if one has a house with dedicated parking & have a house new enough to be able to handle Level II EV charging from your existing panel. It’s a large, one-time expense if you need to upgrade.
If you own or rent in a city & have to rely on on-street parking & can’t guarantee a spot in front of your house then charging is worse as you would always have to use a charger somewhere else, which may very well include wasting time while you sit there charging. Similarly if one is in an apartment complex & the chargers are far from your building; I wouldn’t want to have to do that in inclement weather &/or if I was mobility challenged, or if there are more EVs than chargers & you get home late.
Maybe for you; however, there are lots of people who prefer to drive than be forced to take extended breaks every three hours.
I did 800 miles in 37 hours this weekend on a barstorming photo trip in rural areas. Of five meals on the trip, two were eaten in the car & two others were a combined < ½ hour ordering, prep, & eating (pizza joint heating & then me eating a couple of slices of pizza before getting back in the car & on the road in one case, kiosk ordering for the other one). I chose the best hotel on convenience & price, not the most convenient hotel with EV chargers, nor was I concerned if I’d be there early enough to get one. As I pulled out of the hotel early, with a ½ hour ride to make sunrise shot the low fuel light came on; no worries as there was a convenience chain gas station less than one mile away along my route where I got both gas & a custom made breakfast sandwich & was back driving in under eight minutes with 100% range & food to eat.
I had 10 scheduled photo stops & made about 15 total photo stops with some things I found along the way. I get ±300 miles per tank, which I can refill to 100% in four minutes. Losing 60 miles of range (only filling to 80%), coupled with having to drive out of my way as even gas stations can be few & far between in ruralia, let alone EV chargers, couple with the significantly longer recharge time would have required an extra day in my trip just to equal what the ICE vehicle was able to accomplish. It will (future tense) come but until EV recharging is anywhere close to as many locations, as reliable (there is one new car dealer near me that must have disdain for EVs as their charging station is typically double parked with inventory making their chargers physically unrechable), & anywhere close to as fast they are not as good.
ICE cars don’t typically spontaneously combust when they do catch on fire but thermal runaway can happen when there is no driver around. My town has enacted an ordinance, much of it copying other municipality’s ordinances applying to any garaged EV chargers other than a single or two-family dwelling (so, apartments & office garages) must be sprinklered for any new or upgraded garages, including adding additional chargers. When EVs burn they’re a lot harder to put out & you can’t get a fire engine, or tow truck in many garages due to their low height, which makes them even harder to put out due to the need to manually stretch a lot of hose rather than just pulling right up. In the name of saftey they just made it more expensive to add more chargers to an apartment building.
Were the people standing upwind of the smoke? Was it in insufficient quantity to cause issues or at least not immediate issues?
Besides just the out of pocket $ cost of the rental vehicle, it’s getting it & returning it which may entail leaving work early to pick it up &/or coming in late to return it, the time effort to move stuff from your car to the rental & back again (car seats), & the fact that rental cars are inherently less safe just because you’re not familiar with them, couple with the fact that one should never pair their phone to a rental car as that may make your info & things like text history available to the next user. If you’re not using the on-screen maps, do you have a good phone mount for this vehicle? What might work well in one car is blocking something in another car due to differing layouts.
Sat morning -
- Park at pump
- Walk in & order breakfast sam’ich
- Walk out & pump gas
- Walk back in & pick up now-ready food
- Walk back out & get in car.
- Drive off & eat in car.
Total stop time < 8 mins & 96%ish charge.
Do you think there might have been a reason I included the words “most of the time?”
And, BTW, if you’re only going the average of forty miles a day, I think even overnight charging at 110V is enough.
That’s not her issue. The issue is that enough people were charging that the electricity cost (and simultaneous drain) became non-negligible, and apartment management wanted to manage it.
You know, it was a video about the insurable hazard of fires in lithium batteries. I have no idea why no one was concerned about toxic fumes, but no one, either in the videos or in the rest of the presentation, was concerned.
That they burn hot and fast was definitely a concern.
Yup. I have a friend who does this because she didn’t want to pay to upgrade. She has a PHEV, so she has a backup if she needs to drive farther. But she charges just fine on 120V for her minor driving needs.
To all of the nitpickers out there (you know who you are), note that I said most of the time.
It may be, because if where she lives has the same safety ordinance then it’s illegal & unsafe to change at a random outlet because those outlets may not be sprinklered.
Just in case this was missed upthread, a few hundred posts ago: I drive a 25 Solterra and have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it’s my favorite car so far (I like it a lot more than my previous Subaru Crosstrek or Mazda Protege, or the Teslas, Bolts, and Leafs I’ve been in).
On the other hand, it has some annoyances that may or may not be remedied in the 26 edition: Slow charge speed (about half of the rated max), significant range decrease in the winter (< 70% of the summer range), broken app, no rear wiper, no offline keyless entry system, mediocre 360 cameras, Android Auto instability, an overload of in-cabin alert noises, etc.
The lack of a rear wiper has been the biggest pain in the ass so far. In heavy rain, snow, or whenever you go offroad, the rear window becomes so obscured that you can’t really see out of it. And only the highest trim levels offer a digital rear view mirror tied to a camera; otherwise, your rear vision gets significantly impeded under anything but the most ideal conditions. It also does not wash out well, since the rear spoiler overhangs the glass and makes it harder to clean, especially at automated carwashes.
The 26 Solterra/Uncharted (smaller versions) will still not have rear wipers. The larger one (Trailseeker) WILL. I’m not sure about the Toyota versions, but I would assume they’re similar.
Anyway, just wanted to give a heads-up. Might wanna check out the sister forums Toyota BZ Forum or https://www.solterraforum.com/ for owner reviews; there’s a lot of shortcomings that aren’t obvious on a short test drive.
OK, sorry for the tangent.
Is there enough interest in a separate “Best EVs for 2026” topic, perhaps? Should we split these discussions off into a new thread?
This sounds so familiar to the stuff I used to do, when I would cover 2,000 miles in ten days with day-long long-distance sprints interspersed with a couple of days in one spot 
. Note the important caveat of used to, since I think I’m just not up to driving ~12-14 hours straight anymore.
This thread made me check again on the state of current charging deserts (generally literal) in some of my old favorite stomping grounds in the Southwest. Still an issue, unfortunately - especially in the West Virginia-sized Navajo Nation where a good 30% of the inhabitants still have unreliable electricity period. Visiting Canyon de Chelly, one of my favorite spots, is still going to be complicated with even a rented EV. Chinle at the mouth of the canyon (the rim of which is a 40-mile driving tour in of itself) has some pole-mounted 110 chargers in the parking lot of a hotel, but apparently the power is frequently turned off at night 
. Looks like it might still be technically doable, but uneasily so for a risk averse chap like myself.
Like I’ve mentioned before plug-ins of any sort just aren’t viable for me yet because of my living situation, even if I am past my epic road trip days. Nonetheless I’m a still fan of EVs as a general proposition and I hope this current rescission doesn’t prove crippling for the US in the long run. It is the future.
I understood your ‘most of the time’ to mean routine weeknight as opposed to a weekend trip.
FYI On my street there is a Tesla that has been parked by an apartment. Occasionally I will see an extension cord coming from the second floor balcony to the car – so charging may be possible for apartment dwellers if they are determined enough 
I currently have a non plug in Prius. I am not sure an EV will work for me – About twice a year I go car camping – not deep wilderness but usually campgrounds without electricity (other than maybe a solar light near the restroom). I didn’t last year, but I sometimes carry my kayak on my roof - that may be harder with a rental. I’m also thinking about towing a small teardrop* – not sure many rentals allow that. I’m not saying a definite NO, but will require some thinking if and when I replace my current car.
Brian
* obviously would need a different vehicle for that. The trailer I’m thinking about is < 1000 lbs, so don’t need anything big. Hybrid Corolla Cross or Hybrid Subaru Crosstrek would be my “if I had to get a new car” car.
It’s a big apartment complex, I’m sure the building code required it to be sprinklered anyway. But you know, car batteries catch on fire about as often as cell phone batteries catch on fire. Which is to say, it’s a real safety issue (witness those warnings on airplanes about what to do if you drop your phone) but it’s not one that anyone except the experts spend any time thinking about.
One nice thing about an electric car is that it’s safe to run it indoors. Even with the garage doors closed.
This my predicament. There are no nearby charging stations and I have no way of charging at home with street parking.
Nor do I have the physical ability to handle the length of time and effort that charging might entail.
Putting gas in my car is enough.
My next car (most likely my final one) will be a gas propelled Toyota.
I do love hearing the EVs going up and down the streets and alley ways. They sound like muted choirs of angels.
Yes, i just looked it up. It was a large closed structure, and it had to be sprinklered when it was built. As did the apartment complex.
But it is unsafe to run a lot of appliances that draw all 15 amps available all the time in a place not designed for that. Which is what the chargers are. It’s like running all your kitchen appliances at the same time on the same circuit. It everything works, you just blow the circuit breaker, rather than doing any real harm. But you don’t want to be sweet up to be risking that all the time.
Thus, her apartment complex has built a section of dedicated EV charging spaces, with adequate power for the task. And probably a way to charge the users for it.
I’m in this exact position except for the kayak. There is 1 tesla in our apartment complex. We have 4 total chargers for the pretty large complex, and I rarely see any of them in use. If the use of EVs explodes and I stay where I am then it would be unacceptable for me to wait for one of them or go somewhere else.
If I get a new car in the next few years, I might get a PHEV depending on the price of electricity at the time. It would be slightly more convenient to top up at Target and at the chargers next to the laundromat in my apartment while I do my laundry and only have to get gas once every couple of months, but the convenience wouldn’t outweigh the cost of upgrading to a PHEV if the electricity wasn’t going to in turn save me money. And even if it were slightly cheaper for the electricity, it would still wind up costing me money since the electricity would be more expensive than if it were completely my own.
EREVs at first seemed like a great proposition to me but now I wonder if they will make the gas last so long that it starts to degrade. For long road trips that you don’t have to do every day, it seems ideal. I wonder if I did get one then if I should top up my gas tank every 3 months, regardless of if I need it or not.
It absolutely is enough. Reference: Me, charging at 110V.
Of course, I’m not communting 300 miles per day in a blizzard over a mountain range, hauling 1000 pounds of hay bales, as some folks seem to need.
I’ve been car camping with a Tesla several times. The part that is really nice is “unlimited” power to recharge devices. When I’m at a place without power I just use a nearby Supercharger.
If I’m driving away from the campgrounds, then a 15 minute stop is not a big deal, particularly if it can be combined with other errands. If the car isn’t moving for several days, then there’s no need to charge.
I’ve stayed at places with power hookups, and then it’s just a matter of bringing the right adapter to charge.
For camping, I’d like a vehicle I can run a single burner inductive cooker off, so I don’t have to mess with fuel or camp stoves.
The kayak and small trailer are going to be big drags on range. If it’s enough to matter will depend on the details.
Inhabited structures being sprinklered is somewhat common; garages, less so but, based on my town, & some other towns they modeled it after it is becoming more so. That is a good thing as (just) water damage is easier to remedy than water & smoke & fire damage & very few people die from sprinkler drowning as opposed to being burned or dying in fires
How much does that- and all the things that EV truck is shown running in the ad- drains the battery? I expect just recharging a phone is minimal?
A typical phone might have a 5000mAh battery, tablets and laptops more. At 50% charge a Tesla Model 3 battery might be something like 10,000,000mAh (if I did my kWh to mAh conversion right). Or going the other way, it’s a 75kWh battery in the car and a 0.018kWh battery in the phone.
So a family’s phones can be recharged a lot from a car. Even if you include charging some lanterns, inflating a mattress, and other things, it’s not going to matter too much. An 1800 watt induction cook plate will be more.
The biggest drain is because charging devices prevents the car from going to sleep. When sleeping the battery loses about 0.20kWh in 24 hours. However, parked at work where sentry mode is running the car might lose that much an hour. It will be less if sentry mode is off, but I don’t have good estimates of that. Still non-sleep idle is much more drain than sleep.
Sleeping in the car in camp mode, so the heater or AC is running will use more power. Not crazy amounts, because the power used by heat or AC overnight are pretty small compared to accelerating 4000 pounds to 70mph in 10 seconds. I don’t think it would be a problem to sleep in the car with camp mode several nights in a row before having to top up the battery.