When is it time to replace the family car?
November 12, 2018
I’ve had a hankering for an electric vehicle for a while now, as part of our striving to be as environmentally friendly / sustainable as we can with disastrous climate changes hovering over our heads, but it’s not been in the cards for a few reasons.
We have philosophical differences.
PiC thinks a smaller EV is ok to be our daily driver as long as we have our second car for longer hauls. We tend to the two extremes of driving: very little locally day to day and a few very long distances.
I think a new car needs to be able to hold our whole family (2-3 adults, 1 car seat, 2 large dogs, everyone’s luggage) because I’d rather the EV take the brunt of our driving day to day AND be our comfortable road tripper. But no EV is big enough for that.
That difference of opinion alone will keep us from buying anything until one or both of us compromises or is persuaded to the other’s point of view. I confess I’m not sure which way it’s going to go! I suppose I’m open to persuasion like I assume he is.
Friends buying Teslas a while back told me about federal tax incentives and so on but since I refused to give Tesla any business, I didn’t pay much attention.
Our local dealers have teamed up with the county to offer some incentives but on their own, there’s nothing compelling here for a bargain bin shopper.
Looking at other available incentives, there are a variety:
- Federal Tax Credits for certain vehicle makes and models ($3500-7500)
- Clean Vehicle Rebate ($1500-2500) (San Diego residents can get preapproved!)
- Pacific Gas and Electric Company offers a one-time $500 rebate to customers who own or lease a qualified plug-in hybrid vehicle (San Joaquin gives a $2000 rebate),
- The state of California allows plug-in hybrids like Prius Prime to use the HOV lanes regardless of the number of passengers,
- Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE) and Sacramento Municipal Utility District offers reduced electricity rates for charging the vehicles.
I don’t anticipate any reasonably sized EV would cost us anywhere in the neighborhood of sub-$10,000 that we’re accustomed to paying. For example, the Volt gets $9,000 in rebates, plus a $4,000 discount, which then works out to about $18,000. The investing opportunity cost on that has me squinting.
Our two are working just fine. We paid $7800 for my car about 7 or 8 years ago and it’s just needed some maintenance now and again. We paid $10,000 for PiC’s car two years ago and that happened well ahead of our planned replacement period only because someone crashed into us.
Of course “planned replacement period” implies that we regularly replace our cars. We don’t. Up until I cut off Dad and transferred, I still owned the first car I ever bought, a 2002 model. Why not? She still runs fine. Both our cars run well and we all fit into PiC’s for road trips (though not comfortably) and could squeeze all of us into my car in an emergency, though the dogs would have to consent to be stacked.
My last hesitation: I’m a bit of a Philistine when it comes to cars. The newest cars we drive are rentals and they’re sort of spaceshippy mysteries to me. I’m really in no hurry to have to learn the ins and outs of a new vehicle! (What’s “regenerative braking”??)
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I’ve been sleeping on this for a while and doing some more research on EVs and hybrids (I also fell down the rabbit hole of hydrogen powered vehicles via the Toyota Mirai but where are hydrogen fueling stations? Here’s a map! But it doesn’t look like they’re available for Federal Tax Credits).
RoadShow has a reasonable overview of the technology out there.
Oddly enough something clicked for me, while doing this research, though we haven’t discussed it any further while I’ve been leaving this to marinate. What I wanted was an EV (battery electric) for everything but we don’t currently have two cars that do everything. We have a people car and we have a whole family car. The people car is for local commuting and half day trips that the dogs can’t come on, the whole family car is for outings and long road trips.
Though I wasn’t seeing it this way before, it can make sense to just replace the people car with a battery electric car and spend this time burning less fossil fuels while we wait a few years to how battery electric and plug in hybrid minivans develop. Battery electrics still don’t have AMAZING range, it makes less sense to jump into one now for our everything car.
We don’t want to worry about running out of charge without a charging station in sight!
The two things that predisposed me to pressing for the battery electric now was knowing a friend who road tripped up the coast of CA just fine in their battery electric, and already being equipped with the necessary 240 volt charging station that was the far-reaching notion of our contractor that we just went along with.
Since I don’t have $45,000 to throw at a plug-in hybrid minivan, which is still just the (very expensive) compromise vehicle, coming around to the smaller battery electric version first seems like a much more sensible approach. Not that I’m eager to sink $20,000 either, but I do feel a strong urge to stop burning fossil fuels as soon as possible considering what dire straits we’re about to be in with our carbon emissions. I know we need a global solution but I strongly feel that every little bit that we can do matters.
In the meantime, as I return to this post several weeks after saying “Our two are working just fine“, my daily driver is slowly falling apart. It needs new tires ($500-800? haven’t priced this thoroughly yet), the a/c compressor is out ($800), and the automatic shifter was acting really odd indicating we might have a transmission problem. Nooooooooooo….. Considering my car’s served me well for the past 8 years (bought used for $7900) and only needed basic maintenance, I’m loath to give up on it but I’m starting to wonder when we do the math on the continued repairs of an older vehicle. When do we pull out the pot and hand it over for the next daily driver….?
Good overview on the new tech. We park in a garage and don’t have access to plug in so EV is out, unfortunately.
It’s hard for me to say when to replace a car. We got a new car before our son was born. The old car overheated around the same time so it was an easy decision. I’m hoping this car will last until our kid goes off to college. We can get a fun car once we don’t need all that space. 🙂
Our two are pushing 15 years old each so I don’t think they’ll last til JB goes to college but who knows! Maybe we’ll take REALLY good care of them.
Regenerative braking makes no difference to your driving– it just means that it collects the energy from braking and reuses it rather than letting it go to waste. The driver can’t tell the difference (other than that on cars with it it will often show you how much charge you gain when you brake on the dashboard).
We’re still happy with our Honda Clarity! (Which is a plugin hybrid, not just EV.)
… electric vehicles still burn fossil fuel unless your electricity definitely comes from only renewables (and even then, it’s likely just lowering the price of other people’s fossil fuels, increasing their usage). I’m fairly sure that keeping driving my 2005 Hyundai Accent is better for the planet than buying a new EV. Though it depends on what the person who would buy my car used would buy instead and how much they drive…
You’ve seen our lengthy series of posts on when and how to decide to replace a car! I still haven’t replaced mine yet, so…
I also wanted to say, electric cars are fueled by fossil fuels too! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California. I guess power plants are generally more efficient than point sources of emissions, but… yeah.
My philosophy is: every little bit counts, I hope?
You make good points! My hope is that we will ruminate on this at least as long as you do 😉
The percent of carbon based electricity in the mix is rapidly shifting.
My local utility, which is currently burning a disgusting amount coal, is going to shift to nearly all renewables (mostly solar) over the next 10 years, which is a timespan I’d hope to keep a car for. What is bad for my wallet is that it would be cheapest to move to all renewable more quickly, but there would be grid reliability drawbacks because we don’t have any natural gas/nuclear/hydroelectric or even much wind here. Your electricity will vary, but it’s worth looking up because it may be better than you expect, or moving-toward-better quickly (Texas leads the US in wind power capacity, for example).
Anyway, about 10 years ago I heard a lot of Smart People say the carbon cost of making a new car tended to mean that wouldn’t outweigh the savings from going hybrid. But I tried to argue that now for electric vehicles and got met with this Union of Concerned Scientists tool, which lets you look into the numbers for your own situation better https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/ev-emissions-tool#.W-nI8npKi9Y.
Anyway, I am still in my old car debating whether to get it a new door or not, so I don’t have good advice on how to actually act on decisions that cost money. I just think the best advice on whether to do go electric based on the *carbon* calculations is changing rapidly.
That website doesn’t seem to have anything about the car production at all? Just the standard once you’ve bought the car here’s the benefit.
In my case, 2005 Hyundai Accents are extremely light cars and already very energy efficient and I still have less than 50K miles on it, which means I must not drive it very much (I buy ~$16 of gas every two weeks). That means production costs are comparatively important (unlike someone who drives a lot and currently has a gas guzzler).
We’re definitely driving more than you are on average!
I know our electricity has been shifting to renewables over the past few years but I don’t think the shift is totally renewable yet. True, there’s definitely the cost of making a new car, which is why we’re not rushing into it, but I think that’s a wash since we’d need SOME kind of new car once ours is done with life.
We’ll be trying to make the most of our current vehicles for as long as we can, so we’re not in a hurry, it’s just more top of mind with the current problems.
I love cars. And, I hate myself for it. They are silly ways to get from one point to another faster. However, I’m still obsessed with them. Bah!
Our philosophy is to drive them until the wheels fall off. Our main daily driver now is a 2003 Honda Element that’s pushing 200,000 miles. It still works fine, so no need to replace.
However, when we do need to replace, it will be a full-on electric. No hybrid.
If I were you, I’d stay put for at least another couple of years. Almost every major auto manufacturer is working on electric cars now and your choices will get much better in just a couple years. At the same time, the technology is going to get better and cheaper. The charging infrastructure will be better built out.
As a holdover, get an electric bike now to replace some of those car miles.
I really enjoy cars! And bikes, and trains, and planes. But they are pretty crappy for our environment, except for the bikes. Unfortunately, the bike isn’t such a good option for me or for the whole family because my body isn’t up to that level of exertion yet.
We’re definitely staying put for a while, it’s just a question of 2? 5? 10? years.
We own two cars: a 2000 Honda Civic which predates our marriage, and a minivan to accommodate Surprise Third Child. We generally drive them until they die of extreme old age.
Your Civic is older than our cars! Ribbon for having the oldest car (so far, that I know of) 🙂
We have a Chevy Bolt, and love it, given the long range (~300 miles on a charge). We have a relatively unique situation, as we are close to work, and can charge for free at work. We don’t have a charger at our house, and have had our car for a year and charged one time exactly & paid in the city. We use our electric car for one commute a day, and pretty much all weekend activities. Outliers where the Bolt won’t work include: long weekend trips (Tahoe) & when I occasionally need to hold 7 people in our car (soccer carpools). I love the Bolt. We paid $5K, and then $120/month for the lease. We got a fabulous deal for a 3 year lease. The only reason we leased was a concern about the longevity of the battery life. Otherwise, we would have bought the car outright.
Other things; we got the PG&E rebate, and Costco offered a $700 cash card last year (executive membership), as long as we reviewed the dealership afterward.
We are likely going to sell our “fancy” car that we bought around the same time as the Bolt. We had an unusual situation where our car was part of the Audi recall & subsequent lawsuit, so got the car for about $12k below the going rate. We could only buy new to take advantage of the incentives. Even so, the car is gorgeous & lovely, and we still don’t drive it, because we like the Bolt so much more. 🙂
In other news, with the fires & evacuations, we will keep a car that isn’t electric, and has 4 wheel drive. (We have a 20 year old Lexus SUV.) We need two cars anyway, & I’m super paranoid about the potential need for an evacuation. Maybe later I’ll change my mind, but . . . so many risks.
Are they making the Bolt anymore?
I didn’t know about the Costco cash card, that’s a nice little bonus to tuck away if we go that route.
I’m with you on the need for an evacuation capable vehicle. Thinking of quakes and cut gas lines, I try to fill up whenever the tank hits half tank so that at the very least we’ll be able to make it pretty far out of the area if we have to.
I have an unsubstantiated desire for a VW e-Golf. We really loved our Golf, but didn’t get another one largely out of principle. We might be in the market for a 2nd car in the next several months (depends on what we figure out for childcare), and an electric car is a compelling option. I haven’t done research on what to get yet, but the goal would be mostly a more local commuter car, with our current car being the family / long haul car. I’m just really reluctant to add the additional cost of a second car until we have to.
I’d love to hear what you end up discovering when you do your research. I’ve got a lot more to do, I think.
We’re a mixed marriage when it comes to vehicles, and we’ve agreed to accept that there’s a “his” car and a “her” car.
My husband currently has 3 vehicles, all gas-powered. A sedan, which he drives to/from work and occasionally for errands. An older SUV, which he uses for most of his errands. And an older pick-up truck which is currently undriveable. (It was in terrible shape when he bought it and he’s fixing it. It’s still in pretty bad shape.) He very rarely has anyone as a passenger in his vehicles because he is So Picky About Keeping Everything Perfect when it comes to cars. Since he can’t seem to shut down that part of his psychology, I think everyone is happier without putting kids into his cars. I know I am.
My car is the family car, because we have a firm agreement that he’s not allowed to be picky about my car. It’s an agreement that he mostly sticks to. Everyone can and does ride in it. I drive it daily and we bought it new. I expect to drive it for quite a long time– it’s how I tend to do things. It’s a gas-powered car. I would’ve gone electric, except that we agreed that the family car was going to be mine, and we sometimes take long family driving trips.
(As a footnote: my husband’s car thing was pretty firmly programmed into him by his dad when he was growing up. I don’t think my husband has any sense of how much mental ease he doesn’t experience because he can’t let go of that programming. It really has highlighted for me how important it is for us to be aware of what we’re doing as parents–I don’t want our daughter going down that path.)
His (3) cars and her (1) car? That made me chuckle a little. And I agree that it’s really important to be aware of the things we “program” into our kids. However well meant, we can have a real impact on their quality of life.
Our current car is the first one we’ve ever owned that was from this century – we got it as an ex lease at 3/4 years old I think? Definitely driving till it dies or repairs get uneconomical, as with the others before it.
Ugh transmission issues … sounds expensive. I hope it’s not that! Your plan to focus on the people car makes sense.
EV infrastructure is developing here but I still think it’ll probably be a decade before an EV might become a practical/realistic option for us in terms of what kind of vehicles are actually available to us (if not an everything car, then a daily driver), cost, etc. Your breakdown was super interesting in terms of seeing what options you have with rebates and discounts and whatnot!
“repairs get uneconomical” THIS. We need to discuss where our line is.
I wonder whether the development of EV will speed up considerably in the next few years, here.
We currently own one car, a 2013 Prius C, and we bought it a few years before our son was born. Although the Prius C is compact, it’s good enough for the three of us. If we have another kid then it will start getting tight in the car and may force to trade it in for a bigger car. But if not, we would probably drive it until the wheels fall off.
Before the prius we had two cars, a mid 90s camry and a 2000 civic. They we’re both running well up until a year before we bought the prius. It various issues like the
suspension, axle replacement and muffler. We decided to just donate both of them and buy one car since our work schedules was flexible enough to own one car between the both of us.
You might be the first person I know who donated their cars! My first glance research into that route was that you can’t write off more than $500 generally, was that case for you?
Car maintenance does start to tip the analysis to switching once you get into a certain number of thousands spent per year. We chose to five up our 1996 Jeep Cherokee that was running fine, but kept having little repairs…every year. When we looked at the math, we could buy a 90s model Cherokee every year and come out ahead. :/
Yes, we’re over 150K miles per car so we know the maintenance needs will increase steadily, bit by bit, faster at this age than in the earlier years before we went over 125K miles.
The replace decision was made for us this last time because we had the diesel-engine Volkswagen Jetta TDI (diesel-gate) and they bought the car back from us! But my prior car I ended up holding onto for too long because when little things started happening I held onto it (this is after about 8 years on the road) and then it just kept breaking down or needing repairs. I’d have been better off making a change a year earlier so as to not incur the additional repair costs. This time we went with a Prius and I absolutely love it. I went into the test drive knowing I’d hate it, but the car absolutely won me over. It’s got more pep than I expected, the tech is great but not futuristic like other cars, and the MPG is to die for… I’d be happier with EV car but where I live in an apartment in New York City, there is no way to charge it up. Hopefully that landscape will be changed by my next car…
That was convenient! 🙂
Which Prius did you end up with? I was starting to look at them more closely.