A friend who’s been encouraging locals to buy ev’s for years switched to a 2023 Niro EV after leasing a 2020 Niro EV for 3yrs, at the time there was $10,000 of lease cash plus he had some equity when he traded the 2020 to the dealer. Right about the time Tesla did a price drop on the Model3. Wouldn’t buy a Tesla at all but he’s really happy with the Niro.
After I got a MUCH better offer on my new vehicle from another dealer, I was contacted by the saleswomen from two different dealers that I had visited earlier.
Being confident in my decision, I laid-out the details of the much better deal that I was offered (I didn’t tell them that I had already signed-off on the purchase at the third dealership), and both of them admitted that they couldn’t beat the price.
I asked both of them if they acknowledged that the other dealership beat their offer by more than $7k and both stated that they couldn’t even match it.
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Good advice, I’ll add to not go away acting like you are mad at the sales-person. Instead say “thanks for your time”, then give them your telephone number on a note, along with the price you are willing to pay, and a date; then say if they change their minds you’ll be happy to make good on that out-the-door price for the car until the date.
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+1
I definitely exited from my face-to-face dealings with those two saleswomen on an amicable basis. However, I will admit to being a bit… agressive… with both of them when they did a follow-up contact with me via phone. It was personally pleasing to me to hear both of them admit that they couldn’t even match the $7k+ lower price from the third dealership.
One of the dealerships is part of a large chain of various luxury brands, owned by one guy whose slogan is “I tell my people that if they think anyone comes first other than my customers, think again”. What a load of horse manure.
I expect some dealerships may have hidden non-compete agreements.
Everybody has their own experiences. Sometimes we just do a fact finding visit and end up buying and other times are serious and end up leaving. We’re just trying to find that meeting of the minds with no games.
Last time we weren’t happy at all with the deal we were being offered at the dealer we had dealt with before and walked. We waited six months and went to another dealer that had promised the best in the west when we talked to her at the auto show. The deal we were offered was substantially the same or a little worse than before. Wife was ok but I walked and got a coffee etc. and came back. No change except we did get winter mats and touch up paint. So we just closed the deal. No point waiting any longer. Didn’t help that our trade was on the air bag recall and had to sit without being sold until fixed.
Sometimes you just play it by ear but I think you are kidding yourself if you think you will get good dealers down on their knees begging you to buy. As long as I sense we are all being honest with each other, the question is do we want a car or not. Right now it is not.
That’s what I ask people when they talk about paying $20k for a new battery, even on a brand new EV- “When you buy a normal car, do you worry about having to pay $5k+ for a new engine or transmission when it goes out? What about having to replace the transfer case on a 4/AWD vehicle?” and I also mention that most EVs have a warranty on their batteries for 8 years/100k miles.
One of my friends talks about charging the EV and somehow thinks that putting an alternator on the wheels will magically keep the car charged. I sent him a video showing how impractical that is not only in terms of weight and complexity, but the fact that the video shows how adding an alternator actually uses MORE electricity than it will generate. He comes back with that some time in the future someone will “invent” such a thing and it’ll be heralded as the next best thing. Another thing he goes on about is that he thinks that once we all switch over to EVs, the companies will start raising our rates so high it’ll become unafordable- neglecting to realize that 1: it’s a public utility and 2: electricity is used to power more than just EVs, like life saving hospital equipment, heat that prevents people from freezing to death in their homes in winter and things like HEAP will continue to be provided to those who will need help paying utility bills.
But I also don’t think there’d be nearly as much push back if there wasn’t talks of governments forcing us to buy them- or car makers ending production of ICE vehicles.
If you’re going to buy a new battery if/when the original EV battery is bad - then you shouldn’t own an EV. You can get the EV battery repaired for a fraction of a new battery. Do you put in a new engine if a valve is stuck on an ICE engine?
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I was more talking about the detractors when they say “Yeah, but you’re going to have to pay $20k for a new battery when the old one fails!”.
That’s when I ask them if they’re worried about having to pay $5-$10k for a new engine/transmission when they buy a new car, and why they don’t make a big deal out of that, too. I also tell them that they won’t always need a complete battery and that its cells can be replaced piecemeal if/when the time comes. And if the car needs a whole new battery setup, then hopefully battery tech has gotten better by then and one can get a better quality battery cheaper than replacing with the old tech. Like if someone needed a new battery system for their Model 3 and they could either replace the LiON battery for X amount, or get a batter LFP battery for the same price, or cheaper.
Then comes the inevitable “What are they going to do with all those bad batteries after they fail?”.
I’m pretty sure most car makers today have some sort of battery recycling plant of their own, or contract it out to another company, then I usually show them a video on how those EV batteries are recycled and what becomes of them afterwards…
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Maybe part of the confusion, batteries are often considered to be consumables, while the engine and transmission aren’t.
You do if that valve sticks open and the piston hits it breaking the head of the valve off then putting a hole in the piston and causing the piston to cock causing the rod to bend and going through the side of the block, seen it more than once… but I know what you meant…
Like the elites surely have this all figured out right? Seen what happens to the old wind mills an and solar panels?
These 1000 year old windmills are still in use.
Old windmills are also used in rural ranches and small farms in areas with a lot of wind, like West Texas.
Old solar panels can be recycled or reused.
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I’m not one of those x-New Yorkers with 7+ figure incomes that have moved to South Florida.
I’m really fascinated by this shift to EVs that’s happening right now. I’ll be the first to tell you that EVs are not perfect, and that they aren’t ideal for everyone in every situation. For example, I’ve been reading about the folks in the Chicago area having to wait 5 hours to charge their Teslas, because of the extreme cold weather. Well, if you read further into the article, most of those folks are apartment dwellers without a dedicated charging solution. So yeah, I would agree that’s a self inflicted wound there; you wouldn’t buy a gas-powered car if you didn’t have a way to buy gasoline easily, right? Same thing.
What drives me nuts is the mentality some have of questioning the entire value of EVs, just because of extreme, 1% possibility scenarios like the Chicago thing, or driving 85 miles an hour pulling a trailer full of stuff in the snow backwards and up a mountain. ICE vehicles solve a lot of problems and have a lot of advantages…but it’s mainly because that’s what we’ve become accustomed to over the past 100 years or so. What happened to all of the horses and wagons and industry that went with them in 1900? Somehow we adjusted and figured it out. But it didn’t happen overnight.
OK, rant over.
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I’ve watched quite a few videos of the process for various car makes and models. Some are relatively easy and some are very involved. For example, hybrid packs seem to be more easily removed, disassembled and repaired. Whereas a pack from an EV like a Tesla can be significantly more involved and the cost to repair much more expensive as a result.
I watched the process of removing a rather large Tesla pack and peeling off the various enclosure panels that are “glued” in place. They had to peel it open and destroy the enclosure panels in the process. The process of identifying the bad cells, replacing them and re-initializing the pack controller was quite involved and required very specialized equipment and software. In the end, they saved some money over a new pack for sure but not the tremendous savings I think people would equate to a repair versus replacement operation.
I’m as DIY as they come. My profession has me currently involved in high voltage equipment design so that is no hurdle. However, the process of opening the pack and then programming after repair is not something I would want to undertake for a likely one time repair.
That likely depends on the condition of the remainder of the engine. If it had 200k+ miles it would probably make sense to replace versus repair. Electronics are no different. A relatively new pack with a couple failed cells might be infant mortality and no cause to worry about the rest of the pack. An older pack might be concerning that other cells will begin to fail shortly after the repair. Numerous R&R operations could easily make for an economically unrepairable situation.
Well let’s dispense with the horse and buggy comparison. The public made the choice to adopt ice instead of using horses. They did it of their own free will after consideration. The government did not provide a susudy to do it. The government did not force wagon dealers to stock cars. The government did not decide to eliminate wagons and horses. And the government did not rage that earth would end if horses were still sold. It was free will.
Those fanatics that want to kill all the oxygen producing vegetation should consider changes in the sun, that 23,000 year cycle, the little ice age, and the glaciers that used to cover my house. Nothing new so relax.
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I’m not aware of any gov’t subsidies to assist Ford at producing model T’s (like there are for Tesla now apparently) , but I wonder if there were gov’t incentives/subsidies directed toward the companies that produced gasoline during that era? If so, a lower price of gasoline could be called a “subsidy” that helped the model T.
Lots of books out there. See the men who made America. The standard oi, the steel industry, railroads, telegraphs, etc. lots of interesting stuff coming together.
Gasoline was a waste product of refining so it was a natural for fuel. Electricity was very expensive… on the order of $1.00 per kW-hr in todays money
The ICE cars won because EVs were 40% more expensive in 1914, cities were only about 65% electrified and rural US or Europe or the UK were less than 5% electrified. And in 1912 Kettering invented an electric starter first used in 1912.
So EVs were more expensive and faced a very limited charging infrastructure.
Sound familiar?