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posted by
Fnord666
on Wednesday May 01 2019, @04:31AM
from the they-don't-keep-going-and-going dept.
from the they-don't-keep-going-and-going dept.
CNet:
Electric cars are becoming an increasingly common sight on American roads. And while just a few brands may dominate the news cycle, there are actually well over a dozen fully battery-electric models on sale in the US today.
We thought it would be helpful to throw together a guide to better make sense of all your electric options if you're on the hunt for a new car. And to go a step further, we're also adding just how far each one will go on a single charge.
The range of most models still relegate them to commuter cars.
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Every Electric Vehicle on Sale in the US for 2019 and Its Range
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by dltaylor on Wednesday May 01 2019, @08:26AM (6 children)
When I can drive From SoCal to Lewiston, ID, on other than Interstates, stopping no more often than every 3 hours, and for no more than 1/2 hour at each stop (unless we are at someplace interesting, like a National Park), I'll consider an electric. Both my XJ and my best friend's Subaru are perfectly capable, when loaded, using headlights, air conditioning and the sound system.
It would help if one was as roomy and as easy to get into/out of as ours, and not burdened with "millenialist" electronics. Rather than the current, insecure NFC/... (un)locking, I'm quite happy with a key.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday May 01 2019, @12:50PM (4 children)
Don't drive your own car on epic road trips; rent one. Its cheaper per mile, cheaper on your (mileage based) car insurance. When your giant rental SUV breaks down fifty miles from nowhere surrounded by cornfields, some rental rep will rapidly appear with a replacement vehicle and you drive away from the broken rental. If your car breaks down you have to sit there, possibly for days depending on parts, while the mechanic overcharges you and makes you late, with a rental and a proper agreement the worst delay is a couple hours and you're in a new rental driving away and the blown radiator is someone else's problem. If, god forbid, you get into an accident, as long as there's no legal entanglements due to the accident you can drive to work on Monday in your own car, the damaged rental is someone elses problem. Ditto comprehensive damage like some idiot hits it in a parking lot or hail storm damage.
You can also upsize or downsize to match the size of the vehicle perfectly to the size of the cargo for that specific trip.
Innumeracy has its financial costs; you'll run into people who insist that paying $2500 of depreciation and maintenance and gas and insurance gradually via multiple charges and bills is somehow cheaper than a single bill for $1500 to a rental company.
It's not theory, my coworkers have done this very successfully.
This also pays off for moving; trying to pack way too much stuff into a too small car or make multiple trips makes using your own car to move a fools errand.
Something I don't particularly understand is that route is 1100 miles and takes 18 hours per google maps; at an optimistic IRS permitted 58 cents per mile that trip costs you 18 hours and $638 if you drive, but if you fly, according to google, Delta will get you there in 4 hours with a connecting flight for $320 bucks. So the "freedom" of driving will cost you 14 extra hours of windshield time and $318 extra. Just to break even financially (you'll never break even on time) it'll take at least three passengers in your car.
I know from personal experience that Enterprise car rental provides unlimited one-way rental if you reserve it that way, or surcharge $0.25/mile if you say F it and just drive over the limit without pre-planning approval. So the cheapest way to travel is pre-approved one-way going both ways, but if you just say F it and drive off its still $0.33/mile cheaper to drive an Enterprise rental than drive your own vehicle. Most rental companies have something deep in the fine print to prevent substantial financial losses to the company, but at least superficially it can be cheaper to rent a car than drive your own. The usual scam is if you get unlimited miles, the daily rental is quite high, so crazy as it sounds you're usually better off renting three cars per trip, two one ways for the trip and one up there with a low daily mileage limit. They plan on you keeping the same car the entire time and then screwing your over either per mile or per day, but that can be worked around for substantial cash savings.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday May 01 2019, @01:17PM (1 child)
If you fly, you lose the opportunity to see national parks along the way. If you fly, you may end up needing to pay for TSA Pre✓ [tsa.gov] to keep strangers from molesting you and your children [reason.com], or at least passports starting next year if your deeply right wing state has opted out of the REAL ID Act.
Such as a family trip to Disneyland or wherever.
I was told there's a surcharge for crossing state lines in a rental car, such as between Idaho and California, and for not being 25.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday May 01 2019, @01:43PM
All true, but its a pretty big market to search for the optimum (and avoid the pitfalls of) and the surcharge of "doin it almost exactly the wrong way" being near 100% means there's tons of flexibility to work around things. That surcharge is so expensive, that at least financially it might work out cheaper to simply fund two separate family trips if you want to hit the national parks along the way!
Also there's pretty obvious non-binary solutions. If the park is half way there, and flying costs half what driving costs, theoretically you could drive to the park at great expense and expended time, then save 50% by quickly flying from the park to the other stop on the trip, for an averaged savings of a hybrid trip of 25%.
The family trip thing is very true; my wife's van is staggeringly uneconomic with zero passengers but you pack in six, and its not so bad anymore, either economically or environmentally.
There are larger scale systemic issues such that Disneyland is so expensive that the costs of gas car vs airline vs electric car are totally swamped such that you're better off optimizing other aspects of the overall trip-system such as lodging or food, than micromanaging the minor experience and cost differences of gas vs electric cars or whatever. Kinda of like if the purpose of the activity is piling up a stack of $20 bills and setting them on fire, optimizing the exact way you store $20 bills in your wallet isn't really a significant component of the overall process of incinerating money as fast as you can.
(Score: 2) by mobydisk on Wednesday May 01 2019, @09:54PM
The math isn't working out for me. Your post is good timing, because my wife and I are actually looking into doing this for a road trip later this year, partially as a way to test drive a new vehicle. So I literally had my research open in another tab as I read this.
Google says a car costs 61 cents per mile including gas. Gas prices range from 3 cents per mile (electric) to 13 cents per mile (pickup truck) so I pick 10 cents per mile. So the non-gas cost is 51 cents per mile. A 360 mile road trip will cost 360 x 2 x 0.51 = $183 x 2 = $366 in non-gas expenses.
For comparison, a local rental car agency near me is charging >$270 per week plus 25 cents per mile for a compact car. $270 + 360 x 2 x 0.25 = $270 + $90 x 2 = $450. That's 22% higher than my cost. A small SUV (RAV4) is $341, a large SUV is >$700, and a full-size Chevy Suburban is >$1100. That's not including the per-mile charge.
To me, it looks like owning your own car for a long road trip is cheaper than renting one. Now this is a vacation where we go 360 miles then park for a week, then return. Perhaps the equation changes if you are driving 360 miles every day, rather than just once and back. So maybe rent a car for driving cross-country with frequent stops?
(Score: 2) by dltaylor on Thursday May 02 2019, @07:14AM
This has nothing to do with cost, or time. I have a degree in applied mathematics, and can do the arithmetic.
I don't enjoy driving much of anything I can rent. My friend's Subaru handles snow and unimproved roads well, and if we're not doing that, there are very few road cars more comfortable or satisfying than my XJ. Traveling solo, I'm almost always on a motorcycle.
Flying, OTOH, is an utterly miserable experience, in all aspects. Haven't done it in decades, as it has steadily become more cramped and invasive from my last lousy experience. Customer service is totally lacking, as my family's, friends', and acquaintances' misplaced luggage and missed connections attest. If commercial air travel was banned in the USofA for something like security reasons, I would not miss it at all.
We take US highways more often than Interstates and State/County roads when we choose, stop, even detour, whenever we find something along the route interesting, spend as much time as we like, and arrive in a much better frame of mind. The example I gave is just a small part of our trips together and my solo travel. So far, in the contiguous 48 states, I have only missed Minnesota and Louisiana west of the Mississippi, but have crossed it on a motorcycle to visit family in Illinois.
(Score: 2) by Codesmith on Wednesday May 01 2019, @03:45PM
Ok, I'll bite:
San Clemente, CA to Lewiston, ID avoiding Interstates is (according to Google Maps) going to be 1,153 miles (1856 km) and take 22 hours. Now stopping no more than every three hours for one half hour totals to 25.5 hours.
Two things stand out here: to be resonably safe, you need either two or three drivers, and passable sleeping/relaxation space for at least one of them. Driving it straight through will mean that for half the drive you are not going to be stopping for interesting sights as they will be closed and it will be dark.
I performed a similar drive with my spouse last fall from South-Western Ontario (Canada) to Summerside, PE (Canada) and we took 2.5 days and 2 nights for the trip. Much more enjoyable and allowed us to see locations along the way. Even the most efficient ICE vehicle I have had would require 4 tanks of fuel for that trip.
If you need to be there for work, fly and rent a car. If you're going on holiday, take your time and enjoy the trip. If you are on holiday and time-limited, fly and rent a car. Your use is an edge case; the average driver only travels ~145 miles (235 km ) per week. It would make much more sense to drive an electric in town and either have a second car or rent for exceptional travel.
Pro utilitate hominum.