Electric cars

[nlloyd]

My spouse is considering purchasing an electric car and I know very little about them. She is almost always an early adopter of new techologies (unlike me) and an environmentalist as well. She is also a pragmatist and with her new job, which entails commuting around 90 kms to work, an electric car will allow her to travel in the HOV lane in our very congested Canadian city.

She would love to be able to afford the Volt, but that is too expensive for us, even second hand. Friends have purchased the Nissan Leaf (used) and a Fiat. Any thoughts from current owners about the aforementioned options or other e-cars? We are also concerned about charging as we do not have a garage or carport and the strata is reluctant to implement charging stations. Lastly, is it possible to rent e-cars from a regular car rental agency, just to get a sense of what it is like to own one? If so, which companies offer them in Canada?

Any advice would be much appreciated!

 

[Vash01]

I don't really have a solution for you. Sorry.

My brother used to have a plug-in Prius (around 40k US $). In California he used to drive it to work, plug it in there, then drive it home and plug it in his garage. If you don't have a garage, I don't know how you could charge it. This seems like a problem for electric cars. Where I live, there are charging stations in some parking lots at shopping centers. Is that a possibility where you live?

 

[RoseRed]

My family got one this summer. The new Hyundai Ioniq. I don't know what you'd do about the charging, since we have one in our garage, but we love it so far. It did take a few days to get the charger after we got the car (it came earlier than expected), and the dealer let us come charge it there. We estimate it added about $9 a month to our energy bill (we mostly charge at night. Hyundai underestimates the range so even though they advertise up to 200 km, we get 260+ most of the time. The way you drive affects the range too. Unless we were on the highway, we mostly just open windows instead of AC (you can still get 200+ km using AC the whole time though). It does super well in traffic, especially if you use the regenerative breaking (which I love). It's so nice to drive.

As for price, we took advantage of the government rebates on new electric cars (up to $14000) and for the charging station and we are saving a lot by not having to pay for gas. But I know they can be expensive still, we just needed a new car because we had one of the Volswagen's that was part of the big scandal and wanted something green.

 

[nlloyd]

Thanks @Vash01 and @RoseRed. The charging is likely to be a problem as we don't have a carport or garage, and we haven't been able to get much buy-in from the strata. I haven't checked the malls, but I'm not sure we would be organized enough to drive over to charge it there before the battery ran out. Thus, although my spouse would love to get the Hyundai Ioniq (she pointed one out just yesterday), we will probably have to think of a hybrid instead. With this we will forego the HOV lane and also a potentially very good government discount. The latter is a little uncertain as the program has run out of money for this year.