I sold three gasoline vehicles and bought two electric cars - Part 1
I'm a car enthusiast, not a turbo nerd Jim!
If you are an EV enthusiast, this article is not for you. I am not “preaching to the choir” and I don’t need you telling me to sell my gas powered vehicles. If you’re a car enthusiast and tired of the rich people owned news regurgitating the standard EV talking points and the endless steam of EV fanbois, then this article is for you.
Good news! I've got information relevant to you. I…a certified, card carrying, gun toting, race car driving, drag race championship winning (cars not clothes), dirt bike jumping, red blooded American white male, took the electric vehicle plunge. But before we get into any of that, I think my history, my car history anyway, is important to this conversation.
Story time
My first car was a 1974 Mazda RX2, a 16th birthday “present” from my grandmother, who had the car since new. It was bright orange with a white interior that after it fell apart she redid in black. It had two engines under her ownership. I didn’t have it very long, 6 months or so before it’s 4 speed automatic transmission blew up. This car was fun to drive and I wish my parents had held onto it instead of taking it to the junkyard.
I don’t remember the fuel economy for this car, or the range, but it wasn’t great. But it ran on regular instead of unleaded. You might have to ask your great grandparents what this means.
My second car was a 1991 Subaru Justy, bright red, 3 cylinders, 5 speed manual FWD. That’s right, a FWD Subaru. This car was terrible in nearly all measurable categories except fuel economy. It got something like 41MPG, but had such a small tank You struggled to get more than 200+ miles per fill up. It blew a head gasket in only 10,000 miles after I got it.
My third and fourth cars, I got them roughly the same time, a 1990 Ford F150 (5.0 V8) and a 1986 Mazda Rx7 (you’d think I’d have learnt my lesson on Mazda’s but rotary engines are fun). I had both those cars for a few years until the Mazda blew up it’s engine, to be fair, I drove it pretty hard. The Ford was pretty solid though and I sold that when I had to commute to college because it got 12 MPG. That’s right, TWELVE miles per gallon. Now wait a minute you say, you had one and you got better?! Well you know what!? I don’t drive like a grandma on Xanax! So I got 12 MPG, gas was cheap where I grew up and no one cared. The range on fill up for both these cars was about 200-270 depending on how hard you drove it.
My fifth car was a 1995 Acura Integra LS. It had a 5 speed manual, a 1.8L 4 cylinder and got great gas mileage at 27-30mpg. I could get over 300 miles on a fill up, but most importantly, this car had an amazing aftermarket for performance parts. This was important to me because, I had started racing. Both bracket drag racing and autocrossing with this Acura. It was a wonderful car for my lifestyle at the time. All the racing was about 50 miles from my university so I’d go to school all week, go drag racing Friday and Saturday night, autocrossing on Sunday then go back to college. I’d put on some decent brake rotors and pads, a decent compromise of street/performance tire, a fully adjustable suspension among tons of other upgrades to make this car faster. In 2001 I won a dragrace championship, 5th place in 2002, but didn’t do as well in 2003. I did pretty well in autocrossing too, I won a few races, and a handful of 2nd and 3rd places. I carried a local sponsor on the car for a couple years as well, offsetting the 150+ miles I’d put on the car every weekend to get to and from the events.
Some time around 2002 or so, my father in law offered me his 1956 Dodge truck (270 V8). It was non running and in really rough shape. My dad and I dragged it out of his orchard, got the engine running long enough to realize that the valves were porous and that it smoked. About 2010 my wife and I had a stable enough income that we had a local shop begin a restoration on the truck, which was completed in 2017. We had a lot of fun with this truck, taking it to lots of local car events, such as cars and coffee most weekends, and even one historic race event at Portland International Raceway where it did two parade laps around the circuit. If you want to know more about this truck, let me know in the comments, I’ve got quite the history for it.
I’ve had a lot more cars and also motorcycles which I’ll list here, but save the stories for other articles.
2001 Nissan Sentra SE
2006 Infiniti G35 coup 6MT
2007 Kawasaki Ninja 650R
2009 BMW X3
2016 BMW M235i xDrive
2016 Triumph Street Triple R
2012 BMW F650GS
2019 Hyundai Tucson Night edition
2022 Nissan Leaf
2023 Tesla Model Y
Now if I’m being completely honest, I haven’t given up on gasoline completely, I still have two of those three motorcycles. The 2012 BMW F650GS and the 2016 Triumph Street Triple R. I love them both so much, I don’t know what situation I’d get rid of them. Maybe when only rich people can afford gasoline. Even then, They might just get turned into decorations before I’d get rid of them.
This is where the story changes. When Covid took the world by the balls in 2020, my wife became unemployed for a short period of time. While we were going to be fine, it was a wake up call. Like for most American couples of our age, we like to spend money on, well, everything.
The cost cutting began, ditching all the subscription services, trying to cut utility costs, eating out became non existent, but grocery costs began to skyrocket. Gas and maintenance costs went under scrutiny. At that time, our garage consisted of two motorcycles, the 1956 Dodge Truck, the 2016 BMW M235i and the 2019 Hyundai Tucson. We were already pretty unhappy with the Tucson. Hyundai had already sent us two recalls for it spontaneously catching on fire due to the fuel rail leaking onto the exhaust, but since they didn’t have any parts, their official fix was, and I am not making this up, “Don’t park your 2019 Tucson in your garage.”
I’m going to pause here for a second. For every article about Teslas, or Chevy Bolts catching fire, I think we all need a reminder that gas is f***ing flammable too. Cars can just burn to the ground and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.
Anyway, time went by and a third recall for a similar problem was issued and we decided, that’s it, we’re done with this car and we sold it to Carmax. That’s right, it turns out gasoline is extremely flammable too, and unlike Tesla, you can’t over the air software update your way out of that flaw. There are now two class action lawsuits totaling something like 2,100,000 and 4,000,000 Hyundai/Kia vehicles respectively.
It was at this point we decided to replace our daily drivers and the vintage truck with EV’s. Why would a middle aged guy with decent income and a history of performance cars want an EV? Well it’s complicated. Really it’s a few factors, at that time the European Union had set 2030 as a date where all Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) would no longer be able to be sold in EU member states. They have since moved that date to 2035. Considering that the EU accounts for about 12 million new car sales per year, this would be a significant impact to the amount of gasoline used. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that oil companies aren’t going to like this, which pretty much always means higher prices. I live in the USA and the state I live in is one of the states that is also banning new ICE cars for sale about the same time.
In early 2021 we sold the BMW M235i to Carmax, sold the Dodge Truck private party and ordered a Tesla Model Y from the website.
Somewhere around winter of 2021 I walked into a Nissan dealership where we financed (0% APR) the cheapest Nissan Leaf they had on the lot. The dealership experience was garbage, but of course it was. We then sold the Hyundai to Carmax as well. January 2022 rolls around and the Tesla showed up at our door, literally. The dealership experience for Tesla was, well, quite pleasant actually.
At this point you’re probably sick of me not talking about EV’s, so I’ll get to the point.
Some of the things you hear about EV’s are true, some aren’t. Off the top of my head:
Throttle Response is amazing, the power delivery feels instant because it is:
Especially fascinating compared to the turbo M235i xDrive with 8 speed gearbox which takes about .75 seconds to make all the choices when you floor it.
Range anxiety doesn’t last long, basically after one or two road trips you decide that it’s trivial to find a charger.
Don’t even bother trying to road trip the Nissan Leaf, it’s pointless. You bought the wrong car.
There are WAY to many companies selling slow-ass J1772 connected power and they all suck, every last one of them.
If I have to install one more piece of s**t app that charges me $15 for 4 hours of slow charging I’m going to stab someone.
Tesla’s supercharger network is easier and more convenient than getting gas, even if it’s slower. I’ve already written another article on this topic, teaser though, you can’t get a beer quicker than it takes your Tesla to get to 80%.
When not road tripping, you pretty much never have to care about using public charging even if all you have is a wall outlet (more on this later).
There is virtually no maintenance on EVs. The Leaf has one entry in the manual at 75k miles. It’s an inspection. It’s also free.
Tires wear out the same more or less.
Brakes barely get used due to regenerative braking but still wear out.
Brake fluid isn’t listed, but I suspect I’m going to take a look at mine at the 4 year mark. I can’t imagine it’s any different.
Batteries probably have a tenish lifespan (more on this later).
Purpose built EV’s make incredible use of space, the Model Y is a great example for this.
Picture 1, that’s where a gasoline engine would be. Are you paying attention
Picture 2, that’s how much space a typical ICE crossover has.
Picture 3 and 4, that’s where your hybrid battery back and gas tank WOULD be if you had a hybrid.
Picture 5 again, but now everything else is packed where your engine/gas tank/hybrid battery would be.
Not pictured, the transmission is also missing, but that shows up as extra leg/headroom in the interior space, and is difficult to take a picture of.
We spent 4 nights skiing this winter and above is the Tesla Model Y packed for the Airbnb. (Not photographed), myself, the dog, wife and kid which all fit, with minimal complaints. When we picked up the skis, we put them right down the middle and moved the suitcases around them, which I forgot to take a picture of.
Pic 1, the frunk with most of the food, the rest of the pics, the back, has nice storage compartments where all the winter gear, Tesla charger, toiletries and a heavy duty extension cord, which I’ve never used, but still seems to feel like it’s a good idea.
I’m going to end this as part one of the car enthusiast goes EV article. If you’re interested in EV battery efficiency, performance numbers, cold weather realities and stuff like that, make sure you subscribe so you can know when I finish those articles. If you have made it this far and decided, “This guy is an absolute moron” then be sure to leave a comment telling my that I’m an absolute moron. Be specific though, say something like, “Why TF did you sell an M235i and buy a Model Y” or “omg Jenny, I can’t believe you still own two gasoline powered motorcycles, did you know they don’t even have emissions controls?”