Our aging Prius just passed the 200000 mile mark. My wife has an hour commute while I get to walk to work. To replace the Prius, that should solely be her decision, right? Not so fast.
I want to replace the car with a fully electric vehicle. We tried out a Hyundai Ioniq 6 and found where we could buy one with a 361 mile range. There is only one problem: The big in-your-face giant display - I mean, why do they have to put an iPad in cars these days? This is a deal killer for us.
The few prii we can find for sale in our area are inflated in price, the used ones even more so.
That leaves us with a good old standby: The Chevrolet Malibu. In other words, a conventional car. A gas guzzler. OK, so maybe this is the one that we should buy, after all, it is my wife’s commute! That said, if there is a problem, I am called upon to solve it. This car would mean oil changes every 3000 miles, smog checks every 2 years (we are Californians although my wife is originally from Massachusetts - in fact, I work for a company that started in Massachusetts, and I am a Unitarian - a church headquartered in Massachusetts, so enough said, I like things that come from Massachusetts.)
So…what kind of car should we get? I want to get out of tailpipes. No, the Tesla is absolutely not an option - I don’t want to give my reasons except to say we just don’t want a Tesla. Also, my wife likes a regular gear shift, stearing wheel, and speedometer display.
We are in a very good marriage, so we will figure this out, but having to buy ANY car with a tailpipe just kills me! It is a Unitarian Universalist sin! (My wife is Catholic, and I was the music director of her church when we met - I got married at work).
One solution is to hold my nose, buy the Malibu, and get over it. So how do I get over the guilt of introducing another gas guzzler to the environment? In that case, I will have a very happy wife. I would love to hear Click and Clack’s response to this one!
No it would not. 3K miles has long gone the way of the Dodo. The Malibu will tell you when it needs an oil change. 7500 miles is recommended unless it get lots of steady highway miles… not Stop and Go Cali miles!
That said, the Malibu will be no more after 2024 so you might get a smokin’ deal on one right now. And they were not expensive to start with. As for “gas guzzler” the combined MPGs are 30 and highway can easily be 34 or more.
As for the tailpipe emissions, the creation of an EV takes TONS of diesel fuel to mine the lithium and cobalt for the batteries. So much so that it has been estimated to require driving the EV 80-90K miles before the break-even point as far as CO2 creation is concerned. EVs eat tires at a high rate as well so assume you won’t be getting 50K miles out of a set of those “carbon donuts”.
Cali still uses fossil fuels to generate about 35% of their power which means an EV will still create CO2 when driving around. If your home is equipped with solar panels, as many Cali homes are, you are still using those fossil fuels to charge your car at night when the sun goes down unless you also have storage batteries to draw from. This also assumes you won’t be getting any orders to limit your power consumption (and EV charging) during heat waves
There are a ton of good hybrid cars (like the Prius) available from nearly every carmaker. Toyota makes several models in their Toyota line as well as the Lexus line (and they are very good at hybrids). Your neighbors might not KNOW you are driving a hybrid if you don’t choose a Prius as other cars are less recognizable AS hybrids. I favor a hybrid, myself, for use such as yours.
And I agree with you about the tablets jutting up from the dash. Hate them! That just looks wrong on ANY type of car (and so many cars of all stripes do that now).
Maybe I made the choice easier for you… Maybe harder, but at least the facts are on the table!
Ok - I get it now. I just lost the argument. Maybe I just wanted an EV for the coolness factor. :-). My kids remind me that I have never been, and am not, cool.
To my knowledge, zero EVs, plug-in hybrid, or hybrids have a “regular” gear shift. I doubt even a Malibu has a manual transmission available.
Why not a Miata? Though they too have the tablet like screen.
Corolla hybrid? Camry hybrid? For an hour commute I’d want great gas mileage.
Coolness factor? Of course “coolness” is in the eye of the beholder. To me, a cool EV is pretty much limited to the Maserati GranTurismo Folgore.
I cannot think of ever hearing religion brought into the subject of car ownership. The U.U. Church near me has gas powered cars in their parking lot.
I think by regular gear shift they mean a lever for the automatic rather than a dial on the console .
Like things from Massachusetts? Is there even a vehicle manufacturing plant there ?
As for the Tablet screens in vehicles now some are not as obnoxious as others . But the screens do allow setting the many functions that vehicles have now and does take some getting used to .
Do you mean a new Malibu? Typically buying a 2 or 3 year old car can save the most in our chase price and low enough total miles that it should last a long time as her commuter car. The lower purchase price can allow you to get an off lease used hybrid for a price similar to the Malibu’s. If it’s a PHEV you can change overnight on a 120VAC line at home.
I own an EV and like it a lot. For an hour long commute one way that means charging two or three times a week. If you do that, you need a Level 2 charger with 240 VAC service and the installation is expensive if you don’t have it already. That could be $2000 or more for the charger. I don’t know what your commercial chargers charge in your area buy in Central Maryland the prices range for about $0.27/kW to $0.50/kW. It’s still not as expensive as gasoline buy you are stuck at the charger for at least 30 minutes for a full charge, probably longer if it isn’t a Tesla Supercharger. I drove 4300 miles last year and the 120VAC line in my garage works for such short mileage.
+1
Depending on the specific model (and the distance of one’s commute), a PHEV can be an excellent choice. Even when you run in HV mode, rather than battery-only EV mode, the gas mileage can be very good. I run my PHEV in EV mode most of the time, but when I use HV mode on longer drives, my gas mileage is typically 38-42 mpg.
I’ll provide an alternate perspective…
Regardless of the car you drive… you will still have your wife.
Keep her happy.
I commuted over 30 years at 100 miles a day. I tended to look at overall cost per mile not mpg. But I got 240k, 400k, 350k, and 500k on my ice cars so the cost per mile was quite low. Way back when I first started I was told to drive the biggest and best car I could and your body would appreciate it.
My dad.just wants mom to have more safety features that her 2010 Prius lacks, otherwise hw gets a vote but it will be her car 99% of the time. Prius Prime possible but the 2010 only has 110k on it. You can help shop but find a hybrid or EV that works for your needs and wants.
Your wife needs to move her thinking into the 21st century.
Since you live in Calif, if you can figure out a way to eliminate having to take your car for a Calif emissions test every two years, that’s definitely a a good thing, eliminates a major annoyance. I’d put a lot of weight on that factor.
You didn’t lose any arguments. @Mustangman likes to toss out authoritative statements about EVs (and other car things) without citing anything. (E.g. “it has been estimated to require driving the EV 80-90K miles before the break-even point as far as CO2 creation is concerned.” Is that wrong? IDK - have no idea where the estimate came from.)
That said, in a general sense I’m not knocking Mustangman either (though citing sources is helpful). The general point is very well taken and needs to be made. There is no such thing as “clean” energy or “clean” transportation. They are dirty no matter what. But I have yet to see any non-politically motivated set of estimates that doesn’t say that EVs are “cleaner” than ICEs. And to be clear, I’m NOT saying that’s what Mustangman said. But that “message” is out there.
The realities are very complicated, and can be very situational. So you will need to do your own research on EVs if it means that much. CA does still have fossil fuel generated electricity to be sure, but not nearly as much as, let’s say, West Virginia. Leaving aside the full wheel to well spectrum, and just getting to the wheels, driving an EV in West VA is dirtier than in CA because most of WVAs electricity is still fossil fuel. Driving any plugin with solar and batteries is cleaner than not…and so forth. There’s no one right answer estimate or formula.
That said, if you want to worry about your carbon footprint (and all of the other problems that come from fossil fuels), then keep your current car. Do you have some problem with that other than age? The “three R’s” are Reduce, Reuse, Recycle." Keeping a car on the road is Reduce.
If you really just think it’s “too old” (my 2003 Gen 1 Prius is going strong at something like 220K), then buy a younger, lower mileage USED hybrid. That goes in the category of Reuse.
Part of what made Mustangman’s comments salient is that people grossly underestimate the amount of “ecology” it takes to get a new car onto the road. And doing that with EVs does have an immense ecological cost, as he pointed out.
I dare say that my 2003 Prius with over 200K on it is far greener than any new EV … because I haven’t thrown it away and contributed to new demand. Get a good local Prius shop, and have them regularly check up on and keep your current car up to snuff. If you’re around San Fransisco check out Earthing Automotive , formerly “Luscious Garage.” I’m on the east coast, but an owner of an old Prius, I know them by reputation. Or if you’re not near there, just find your local equivalent. My daughter is in an old '08 Prius near San Diego and has a good specialty Prius shop there. They will be around CA pretty much no matter where you are unless it’s the high desert or something. (And if you are in the high desert, dock your MPG-equivalent by some percentage to account for lots and lots of A/C use - LOL).
Source:
Tesla battery… 2.4 to 16 tonnes of CO2 just to make it. An average ICE puts out 1 tonne a year. So 2.4 to 16 years of average driving to reach parity between the ICE and EV. Let’s average that to 9.2 years at 12K miles per year so 80 to 90K for payback is reasonable.
And then there is the amount of electrical energy supplied by fossil fuels in Cali.
I can provide sources.
Even with fossil fuels generating electricity to charge the EV vehicle - EV’s are still winers in the environmental impact war.
Life-cycle GHG emissions of an EV compared to an ICEV (cotes.com)
Agree, once driven enough to negate the oil used in the battery mining.
And apparently even better if using Cotes drying room technology. 
If it’s newer than 8 model years old there’s an option to pay a small smog abatement fee in California that would not require going through testing until the vehicle is 8yrs old. Believe it’s $20/yr. Would apply to hybrid’s as well as ICE vehicles from what I can find.
Genuinely appreciated. And mostly I hope you read the whole post where I said that you were basically correct. Being stuck on tailpipe emissions is real problem. You do need to go well to wheel, as the lingo goes.
I’m just put off by authoritative “this is how it is” statements on the basis of mysterious “it has been estimated.” The variables are immense. E.g. The 2.4kg to 16kg tonnes range is huge. So I guess the “it has been estimated” number came from your own calculations based on this particular article? Ok, but it doesn’t do justice to the complexity. And even if 80-90K mile break even point is fuzzy but in the range, so what? The last time cars went only 80-90K and then to scrap yard was, what? The 80s?
It doesn’t matter. It a general sense, I wasn’t disagreeing with you. In fact, I was agreeing in overall terms.
If the OP is worried about ecology, then keeping their current “old” Prius on the road is by far the “greenest” option.