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Personal Finances Buying and Maintaining a Car
21

Very late to this party, but I own an EV (ID.4). I really like it. The ONLY issue is that you need to plan road trips carefully to make sure there are available chargers along the way. There are various apps to help you with that.

In terms of features, I think most brands offer ACC, and lane-keeping, and cameras and sensors. ICE or EV, those things are available. For most in-town driving, I think you’ll find the EV is less expensive to operate, and there will be plenty of range for that. As I said above, the only gotcha is road trips, in which case you just have to be careful. Unless it’s a Tesla, in which case they have chargers EVERYWHERE. Tesla was smart building that out early.

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22

Never too late… But we’re into this as far as we can get with some restrictions, self imposed, on overall vehicle length, so DW opted against the Honda CTV Hybrid, a little too snug. So we’re after the Toyota RAV4 Hybrid Limited or XLE…

After many failures, so pumping non-hybrids, today, our local dealer, actually here in town, popped up with both a Limited and an XLE, right colors, options, the Limited has a few more options, but maybe we can live with them, or save a few bucks on the XLE… Both are in transit, so we’re waiting to hear on the next steps…

DW wasn’t keen on any plug-in/PHEV, so we haven’t looked at them, myself, if I were the primary driver, I could be OK with it… But at our ages, maybe we don’t need the slight hassle, either…

patience…

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23

We were all set to go make the Reserve deposit this afternoon, when out of the blue, the Toyota dealer up the road 16 miles sent a note about a RAV4 Limited, right color, features for about $2700 less than the one we were about to jump on. No glass panorama roof and a couple other options, plus, they don’t charge a Dealer markup fee, she said they are only one of 3 in the State that doesn’t.

It was a cancellation, someone dropped off, so we hopped on, did the Reserve over the phone, so now just await it’s arrival mid September… Not that far off, actually… And it has the right color, options… And the lady we talked to was good, knew what we had to do as it arrives… Inlaw says he’s bought 3 vehicles from that dealer, all good…

Progress!

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24

Seems like the decision has been made, but I will say the slight inconvenience of plugging in a vehicle is more than made up for when I see gas prices above $4/gal. A PHEV you probably don’t even need to get a 240V charger installed in your garage. Wall power -120V- will be adequate.

We have a 240V charger. Got a deal from SRP. We’ve used it a few times, but we’re in the last year of free charging from VW. Once the 3 years expire, we’ll use the charger a lot more.

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25

I have 220V outlets in the garage, one buried behind shelving where originally the dryer was located, but later on I added a sub panel for additional 120v outlets, outdoor security lamp, and even made a run to my ‘office’ so the laser printer is on it’s own circuit. Home was built in the late '60s, too many rooms on single breakers, so that additional sub panel was the solution. As part of it I added a 220v 50A outlet for my Miller AC/DC welder, so it orally of the 120v outlets could have been used for a PHEV…

However, since my DW is the primary driver, it would be one more thing for her to deal with, so we turned away and went to the RAV4 Hybrid… As few miles as we put on, at ~40 mpg, gas costs will likely be cut in half from what we now do with the Civic, gas here is pushing closer to $5/gal but again, not a huge factor in the deal…

Our grandson, will be the one who will have some adjustments as we’re gifting it to him, so as a new car owner, likely some adjustments on his part are coming up…

We’re still in waiting mode, with for the car, and for the grandson to catch up, also sending him to a few non-Dad driver training sessions until he and we are more comfy about turning it over…

A lot different from my first car, a $25 beater, back in the late '50s… Insurance? Really?

weco

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26

DW Spotted this this AM:

And this evening our sales agent called to let us know it has arrived, they’ll do the safety checks and run whatever their tests are, we’ll go do the final deal tomorrow afternoon… Whew…

Now to see if I can make a little space in the garage…

9/16 - UPDATE! It fits! A little snug and it does not like being as close to the front wall as it needs to be, but there are adjustments that can be made… great sales lady, another Dane, she tried to cover everything, then passed us off to the financial guy, well it was late, we were tired, and didn’t catch all the extended warranty items, so we overpaid a bit, but went back this morning, had a further discussion with the financial guy, in the end an email to cancel most of it…

Drove it home, sorting out adjusting the side mirrors on the fly, rear view mirror can be digital, there are cameras everywhere, just have to figure out how to get at them…

Did find, on the fly, a neat graphic representation of how the power is being distributed, some from the engine, some from the battery, and when braking, each wheel send a bit back to the battery. Regenerative braking…

Manuals are massive, I have now downloaded them, popped them up into iCloud, so either iPad or iPhone can access them, maybe searches, still a work in progress… YouTube video on all the buttons, another on the media use, likely another on the latest CarPlay…

Anyway, a bit of overload for a while, DW is still very leary, also will take a while…

Progress!

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