We’ve been thinking of ways to live a bit greener and think that an EV would be a great way to make good use of our surplus solar power. 💡We used online research to narrow down the best options and then found a couple of cars in Halifax to test drive. Fortunately, they were two of the top cars on our list. In this post, we talk about what is happening with EV, why we think it may be the right choice for us, and then share our experience test driving two EV.
EV technology and related news
EV are building momentum.
The financial case for switching to EV is still tenuous, but getting better. Countries like Norway offer significant incentives to get people to switch to EV, by helping with much more than the cost of purchase. EV owners' benefits in Norway include reduced taxes, tolls, and parking costs. Canada's incentives are much more modest, offering a $5K purchase incentive, which is less than the 15% HST we pay in NS. Quebec and BC offer additional incentives, but Nova Scotia has yet to get on board. To ensure vehicles quality for incentives, most EV makers are offering a baseline EV just under $45K in Canada.
There are other ways EV owners save beyond purchase costs. Fuel costs for an EV are about 25% of equivalent fuel cars. We drive about 16,000 km a year, which amounts to about $1,300 in annual fuel savings. EV also require less maintenance. They don't require regular oil changes, the brakes last longer due to regenerative braking (see below), and they generally have less moving parts to break. For us, we estimate more than $1,500 annual savings in operating costs.
The options for EV vehicles are improving as mainstream car makers get in the game. In Oct 2017, General Motors announced that they were shifting to all electric vehicles with plans to have 20 models on the market by 2023. It's now early 2020 and they still have a lot of work to do, but they are making progress. The Chevy Bolt EV was top on our list for a test drive. Of course, Tesla is pushing hard into the EV market, while other brands (e.g. Nissan, Hyundai) also have EV options, with more on the horizon. 🌅
The technology required to make EV practical is improving. One of the big challenges to make the switch to EV practical is batteries. 🔋 A Halifax battery researcher teamed up with Tesla and recently announced a new battery chemistry that offers improvements. The eye catcher is the promise of a million-mile battery. Current battery warranties offer something like 160,000 km (100,000 miles), so a million miles would be a big improvement (and outlive most car bodies). Another battery-related concern is what to do with them once they are spent. Innovators are working on this problem too. Another Canadian company is trying to take the lead in battery recycling, while others are working on ways to give batteries a second life. Car batteries can be used for other applications once they are no longer practical for use in an EV. This work gives us confidence that current challenges will be solved as EV grow in popularity, though it would be even better if we could find battery chemistries that are greener and easier to source than lithium-based versions.
Canada needs better EV charging infrastructure. Petro-Canada is helping out by installing 50 fast-charging stations across Canada, but more will be needed to allow EV owners to roam without range anxiety (i.e. fear of running out of charge). Of course, you can install a charger at home to charge your EV overnight for about $1,000 and save trips to the gas station. You can also go shopping at IKEA and get a free charge, but other options are still pretty limited. Chargepoint indicates 26 charging options in the Halifax, NS area. Openchargemap indicates other options, but options are much more limited as soon as you leave the city.
One has to keep in mind that how green an EV is depends on the source of the electricity used to charge it. A recent CBC article highlighted this fact, but stated that even if you use only coal power to charge an EV, it is still 10% better than a gas vehicle in terms of green house gas (GHG) emissions. With a typical mix of renewables added in, GHG emissions reduce to 40% of gas. However, if we use our solar panels to charge our EV, GHG emissions reduce to 0% of gas for use. Yes, GHG are emitted during EV production, but they are also emitted during production of gas vehicles, so this is still a huge net improvement.
Why we are thinking EV
So, why would we switch to an EV now? We just upgraded our 12-year old Subaru to a newer, albeit used, model and love the all-wheel drive. All-wheel-drive EV (i.e. high-end Tesla, Jaguar, etc.) are too expensive so they don't make our list. However, we also recently completed our first full year in our new energy-efficient home and got to see how well our solar panels were performing. In 2019, we had 2.2 MWh of extra power! Even being pessimistic, this is enough power to go 11,000 km in a decent EV and 14,000 km if you use the Chevy Bolts' mileage rating of 6.4 km per KWh. We are also planning to upgrade our hot water heating to use solar, which will save more power for an EV. We feel that change will save at least another MWh, giving us over 15,000 km of available energy, which is about how much we drive each year. Long story short, if we switch to EV and upgrade to solar hot water, we could be completely energy self sufficient. How cool would that be! 😀
With this in mind, we've been busy trying to get smart on EV. We've been doing online research, reading reviews, and talking to friends who have EV. We are very budget conscious, so there has to be a business case. We see two options: new or used.
Practically speaking, a new EV will cost us $50K after the NS incentive. This assumes that after options and other fees the car costs about $48K, then add on taxes and take off the $5K rebate. A brand new Subaru Impreza Touring (our current vehicle) would cost us $30K, taxes in. Thus it would take over 13 years at $1,500 savings a year to make up the difference. Though possible, 13 years is pushing it for any vehicle, but this doesn't take into account the opportunity cost of tying up another $20K in a vehicle (i.e. that money could earn interest invested in a TFSA). 💰
So what about a used EV? The best option for this is a trip to Quebec, where EV rebates are baked into used car prices. You can get a relatively new used EV in Quebec for about $36K taxes in. A similar age used Impreza would cost about $21K taxes in. Now the difference is only about $15K, which is still significant and would take about 10 years to cover in reduced operating costs.
The pure business case isn't fantastic, but when you add in the green factor it does become more attractive. It is at least attractive enough to get us to take a serious look, so on to the test drive experience.
EV test drives
Before we get into our test-drive experience with EV, it is important to note that we are not EV experts. ⚠️ These are our first, candid impressions and not a professional review. We've done our best not to pass on any misinformation and apologize in advance if we've got something wrong.
Spoiler alert, we liked both cars for different reasons but didn't fall in love with either car. We would pick the Bolt if forced to choose (and be happy that we also have a truck to make up for the lack of cargo space).
Chev Bolt EV 🚗
One thing that come out in our research was that the Bolt EV has great range and good overall customer satisfaction, though there were some complaints about the small body and basic interior. Fortunately, Steele Chev keeps several in stock so we could decide for ourselves. They had four when we visited for a test drive. Kerwin Hynes at Steele is all about EV and shared lots of good information with us during our visit without coming across as too salesy. We were clear from the start that we were there to gain some first-hand experience and not to buy, and he was great about helping us out. Thanks Kerwin! 👍🏼
We talked EV for quite a while and then hopped into the Bolt for a test drive. Our first impression was that it was indeed a small car when compared to our Subaru Impreza, which is also small by most standards. Playing "will it fit in the Subaru" would rise to a whole new level with the Bolt, but smaller also means lighter and more fuel efficient, so we weren't completely turned off. It is still a lot bigger than a smart car and can fit 5 people.
Once inside, we could see that the interior was indeed basic, and the seats were a bit stiff, but this also wasn't a big turn off for us. We're told that the car was designed from the ground up to be an EV and uses a lot of recycled materials. We liked that! ♻️
The Bolt EV started to shine once it was powered up, especially in contrast to the Kona EV that we drove next. It has a nice big central console and all-digital driver display with lots of useful, easy to understand information about battery charge and how much power you are using (or recovering as you slow down). It even gave us a score on how well we drove in terms of efficiency. We had to check out how the 200 HP felt, so there was an obvious spike on our efficiency profile 😊, but more on that later. The user interface got full marks for our first impression.
Next we put it in gear and took it for a spin. I was surprised and very pleased how quickly I learned how to one pedal drive the car. Both Megan and I drive standards and are used to three pedals and a stick, so this was a big switch. There are no gears to shift, and done right you can drive using just the gas pedal. In this mode, the car brakes as you let off the gas and it works as a generator to recharge the batteries. That is soooo much better than turning all that energy (and fuel) into heat on the brake pads. Another nice feature of the brakes is that the disks have a special coating to inhibit rust. This is especially important when they are not being used very much (or at all once you get good at it). The brakes were nice and clean when I did end up using them (see below for the Kona contrast).
The car drove very well. We took it easy, trying to be efficient except for some quick acceleration on the highway and found both power and maneuvering to be well up to our standard. Regenerative braking was solid and it didn't take long to figure out how to use the gas pedal to control speed rather than just accelerate. It was also cool to watch and see just how much power we were using (or gaining) with each action. Again, the displays were very easy to read. Even Megan was impressed and she is not a geek. To give you an idea how quickly you can learn, the total drive was less than 15 minutes. ✅
To sum it up, we found the Bolt EV to be a bit small and it doesn't have a luxury feel, but the user interface and drive was fantastic.
Hyundai Kona EV 🚙
Next we went to the Steele Hyundai dealership in Halifax to meet with Johnny Yeadon and try the only other EV available in Halifax that we felt might be an option. There are high-end options, but we are on a budget so left those off the list.
The Kona has good ratings and rivals the Bolt for cost, range, efficiency, and power, while it is a bigger vehicle and reportedly more comfortable, so for us it was important to be able to compare the two first hand.
The Kona looks very much like its gasoline-powered sister, so it was clearly not designed to be an EV like the Bolt. It does have more space and feels quite comfortable, in contrast to the Bolt, but this was where (for us) the benefits ended. ❌
Looking over the user console, we found some of the same general features as the Bolt, but it lacked some of the detail. For example, the Bolt provides a clear reading of exactly how much power is used (or regained) while the Kona provides a series of bars so that you can only see better/worse. There was some measure of how efficient the driver was, but again without the detail showing points as a graph for the whole trip and other information to help understand where to improve.
The power and acceleration of the Kona was good, but we had a lot of issues with the regenerative braking. The Kona lets the driver select from three levels of regenerative braking and provides two paddles on the wheel for adjustment. Even at the highest level, it did not slow at the same rate as the Bolt. If you planned well ahead you might be able to get the car to stop in time by pulling in one of the paddles, but if you let off on the paddle, even for a second, and pressed it again the behaviour changed and you couldn't stop reliably. I was forced to use the brakes a lot more and the brakes felt very gritty from rusting. I was told that the braking was a bit finicky as the Kona's logic isn't intuitive but that you could get used to it and make out better. That might be true, but I was left unimpressed by the test drive.
So to summarize, the Kona is bigger and a bit more comfortable, but the user interface and drive were unimpressive. 👎🏼
Summary of our impressions
EV are slowly building momentum, but have a ways to go before they can be considered mainstream. Canadian governments are helping, but could do a lot more. Manufacturers are working on more options but they are expensive and the business case for EV still has room to improve, despite the lower cost of ownership. The most economical options on the road today are OK, but not enough to get us really excited. We are keen to improve our green profile with an EV and will keep our eyes open for a good deal, but we are likely to wait a little longer and see what the next year has in store.
...