That’s good to know. I liked the Volt, but it had some quirkiness. The Prius Prime was a very fine car. However, we’ve since gone to full EV, and haven’t looked back.
There is a new plant abuilding at the Salton Sea to extract and process the lithium underneath. Current government estimates are that there is enough there to easily build 300 million car batteries. If it comes on line quickly, the mandates will stay.
OK–we’ve got 720 miles on the Lyriq on aggressive studded snows in winter conditions. It’s showing 2.1 miles per KWh, so at $.15 per KWh were looking at $51.42. Our CR-V got 35 mpg (indicated, not calced) on winter tires, so that would have been $57.60 at $2.80/gallon. This is a dramatically different car, however. Just watched a summer range test where they got over 3 miles per KWh and 330 miles of range. YMMV.
We drove an X and Y today. While the X is larger and has slightly better clearance, I don’t think it’s worth $30K more. They have a new Y on the lot and they are offering an additional $3K off (it get’s the full $7.5K incentive) and I think I’ll be calling tomorrow to buy it.
After driving a 4-cyl Subaru for 12 years, it’s amazing to press the accelerator and feel acceleration! My wife felt unease at it but I don’t think she has felt acceleration like that except on the back seat of one of my motos, and that’s a bit different. The Y is smaller inside than our current Forester, plus we go into parts of Idaho without charging, so we’ll keep it for now. However, the sales rep said Tesla is bringing charges to McCall, ID (I wonder if they say that about all the places folks bring up). We’ve always been a 1-car family, but we might need two for a bit. Rooftop boxes and even tailgate mounted storage zap mileage. Along an interstate, it’s not as big of a deal, but in ID you better figure out how to cram everything inside.
BTW, I keep hearing how expensive Teslas are to insure. It will be $15 more per month to insure a new Tesla Y over our current 2012 Subaru Forester. Is this what folks consider “expensive”?
BTW - We have Collision and Comprehensive coverage. Not just liability.
When I retired, I kept up my continuing education for a few years, which often consisted of the free online seminars. SAE is one of the groups I subscribe to, and I note with interest they have a free “charging infrastructure seminar” coming up. It includes presentations specific to the charging infrastructure of Tennessee, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Colorado, plus some other topics. Thought it might interest someone.
Oops - $30/month more for a new Tesla over a 2012 Subaru.
Still not expensive in my book. I assume any new car would be quite a bit more than an old vehicle.
$30 a month is pretty expensive to some people, especially depending on what the base is. But it’s all subjective of course. My biggest concern with insuring new electric vehicles (and yes, I’m planning on getting a PHEV and a BEV over the next 2/7 years, and have a thread on it) is that the chances of a total loss are going to be much higher, especially for Tesla apparently.
Speaking as a former insurance adjuster, the more expensive it is to repair a vehicle, the more likely they are to be considered a total loss. Tesla, by all reporting is much more expensive to repair than most other EV, which are (for the moment) more expensive to repair than an IC vehicle. And Tesla vehicles have dropped in value due to a variety of reasons mentioned in thread - including the rather serious price cutting Musk/Tesla have done to push sales. So High Repair costs vs Dropping Value is a nightmare for the consumer when it comes to a claim.
Add in people who are upside down on their new car payments… I wouldn’t want to be there.
Now, granted, the average Doper, and those who’ve been reading the thread is going to be prepared for the pros and cons, and I’m not trying to talk anyone out of a PHEV/BEV - and if you like Tesla, go for it. But it’s something to keep in the back of your mind.
One last car adjuster piece of advice based on other reporting: if your policy does NOT include rental car coverage and you buy a Tesla, make sure to add it at the maximum values. The reported delays in getting Tesla vehicles repaired due to insufficient skilled techs and spare parts means you’re likely to need a rental vehicle more than in the past. And if it’s a fault/mutual fault/single car incident, you’re not likely to be able to get one via claim against another carrier. And while better than the worst, rental cars aren’t cheap.
I realize that. My point is, is the $30/month increase due to it being a Tesla or is it due to it moving from a 12-year old car to ANY new car? If I would’ve bought a $40,000 Chevrolet, would my insurance have stayed the same or increased a similar amount?
The fast answer is to go online and check with your carrier! But that assumes your carrier does that sort of thing. If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say all else being equal (as you say a 40k Chevy ICE vs a 40k Tesla EV) it’s probably about 30% higher. So 20ish per month. So much of insurance pricing is based on a host of other factors, such as how much the vehicles are stolen (COMP issues) vs repair (COLL), as well as your local market.
The part of me that used to work in that field is actually somewhat interested in the long term changes in such patterns as EVs take up a larger slice of the pie. Are the parts/rare vehicles going to be worth enough to support various criminal activities and car theft things? No catalytic converters will also change vehicle claim patterns. And do you want to steal a vehicle if you’re not sure of the current range left on the battery to drive it away? What about concerns that it can be more easily tracked, and OTA updates?
It’ll be interesting, but again, not in that field anymore. A perfect Somebody Else’s Problem.
I’m not going to bug my insurance agent to get a price for a car I’m not going to buy, but if the difference between an ICE and an EV is a $10/month difference, that isn’t the “expensive” claim I’ve heard.
In my real-life situation, the insurance for a Tesla Model Y is less than $1200/yr with maxed out liability/under/uninsured and $1000 deductible for collision/comprehensive. Here is the complete coverage:
Okay, juuust for the record, because we’re not really having an argument…
Your coverage is VERY high compared to the ‘average’ person who often skates far closer to the state minimums. So your “base” cost is much higher, damping out the fluctuations a bit.
Second, your Deductibles are higher than I’d have recommended in the past. Your risk exposure, is, of course, your own, but that is also damping out part of the difference.
But overall, I’m -glad- that your coverage is reasonable for you. Did I have many encounters with persons who find $1200/yr for one car to be highway robbery? Sure did, so good idea to keep that UM/UIM/UPD up!
For me, my PHEV minivan actually gets a discount for being an PHEV. It may pay to shop around for different insurance.
//i\\
Ahh…that is excellent insight and I’m sure part of what I am seeing. I still don’t know why Sam posted averages that were over twice my amount (over $2700/yr), even factoring in those averages were for Canada - that’s over in the Cali EV thread - Is California being unreasonably optimistic. (Electric Vehicles) - #247 by puzzlegal
We have this coverage for two reasons:
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We decided we needed an umbrella policy and that requires us to max out our auto coverage on the UM/UIM/UPD side (thanks for the acronyms)
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I had a family member severely injured due to an auto. Life flight, lengthy hospital and recovery stays, multiple years of specialty follow-up, and forever changes to their health. Luckily, the driver had an umbrella policy. That was an eye-opening event for us.
And yes, we can cover a higher deductible and decided it was worth it on our Subie. I will ask what that does to our rates lowering it when we go in to add the vehicle.
That’s fine. And trust me, I went from insurance sales to insurance adjuster those many years ago. I was trying to talk people into more coverage both as an up-sale AND because after getting a P&C license you realize a LOT about exposure. And then, as an adjuster, well, I got to explain all the problems with either party having minimal coverage, NOT fun.
Heck, first thing I did after doing my P&C training was quadrupling my coverage! Honestly, once you get the basics, increasing liability (barring prior poor driving experience of course) is generally incremental despite getting multiple times the coverage.
One more piece of advice on Deductibles. Generally (!) COMP is much cheaper than COLL. And IMHO, COMP claims are the ones you get pissed off about paying: vandalism, weather/hail, windshields, animal collisions, etc. COLL is MOSTLY when you hit something or something hits you, which, well, you’re either blaming yourself, or blaming someone else, so the emotional pain of the Deductible is easy to dismiss.
So, even if it’s pricey to drop both, dropping COMP may be a comparatively minor expense to you, and may well result in less out of pocket costs down the road!
NOTE - I no longer have a P&C (Property and Casualty) license in any state, so this is the advice of a formerly licensed individual making an informed judgement. Please feel free to consult with a currently licensed individual before making any final judgements. 
Now this is interesting to me, in that most insurance companies are the definition of conservative and risk adverse. If they’re giving a discount, they’ve almost certainly have good reason to consider it a good risk, and that old part of me wonders why.
I was shocked at how little our rates increased after raising our liability significantly.
And thanks for the advice on COMP vs COLL and your reasoning makes perfect sense.
Speaking as an actuary on the edge of retirement…
Weirdly, one thing that mitigates the cost of buying more liability insurance is that people who choose higher limits tend to be safer drivers. Whether they are just more risk-adverse individuals, or whether it’s self-selection of who can afford to buy more insurance (probably some of both) it’s a real thing, real enough to affect the rates companies charge.
Fwiw, claims adjusters i used to work with advised me to steer clear of Teslas. Not EVs (although there weren’t a lot of other pure EVs on the market when i got this advise) but Teslas. Hard to get parts, expensive to repair, not well made. At least, that’s what they told me.
Called today and bought. And oddly, the “on lot incentive” had gone up to $4.5K. So, with that and the $7.5K fed incentive, it was a bit under $40K (not including sales tax). The Order Agreement calls the $4.5K reduction a Price Adjustment. Wasn’t expecting that, but not sad to see it. I wonder if we would’ve waited another day if it went up another $1.5K?
BTW, when I say lot, it’s A LOT! There are so many Teslas at this dealership! When they all kindof look the same and all the same set of colors, it’s a bit odd. I assume Service has an easy way to find the “black Y” in the midst of a couple hundred cars. If we ever have to drive to this dealer again, I’m going to leave a trail of breadcrumbs back to ours.
Sooo… How do you like it? We’re enjoying our Lyriq, but still learning all the systems. I don’t think it’s as information dense as a Tesla, and still retains physical controls like stalks, shifter and climate control. The acceleration is kind of crazy, and it’s not even in the same realm as a Plaid.
The Blue Bomber. I’m coming around to the color. It’s not a blob!