We have a Nissan Leaf (30kWh) which has been great. No regrets.

The things you worry about before buying (range, battery life) are absolute non-issues. For optimal battery longevity you don’t want to use a fast charger very often, so just charge it at home which is generally more convenient anyway. You can make exceptions occasionally when you need to.

We use it for city driving, for which the range is more than adequate and we mostly only charge it every few days. We haven’t yet attempted to take it on a proper road trip; so far we just borrow a friend’s hybrid if we need to do that, basically to avoid having to think about charging.

If you have a place to charge it and potentially another car to swap/borrow for road trips it is pretty much the best vehicle for city driving/daily commute.

1. Charging at home is much cheaper and healthier for the battery. If you can’t charge at home I wouldn’t get an EV.
2. Ask yourself how often you do road trips. Depending on where you live a 6-7 hour drive can easily turn into 12+ hours because of waiting around for charging if the chargers are not close enough to each other to utilise charging at the lowest battery % possible. Even the tesla supercharger network can be quite sparce outside of urban/wealthy areas.
3. Price - EVs are still quite expensive compared to ice in general, and depreciation can be killer. A used tesla model 3 is basically half the price now compared to what it was a few years ago when new. Check what kind of tax breaks or other benefits you can get in your region or consider buying used.

Downsides are you can’t drive as far, usually, before needing to fill up, and quick charge takes about 25 minutes, instead of the usual 5 for gas.

Upside is that only matters on road trips. If you have an outlet at home, like we do, your car is just always charged.

It all depends on your use case. For me with a 20 mile round trip daily commute and a 200 mile drive every other week where the car is then parked for 36-48 hours at a hotel with a level 2 charger before returning home an ev is great. If you can charge at home I think it’s a no brainer if you’re looking to buy new or slightly used. If you’re constantly driving hundreds of miles in a day then no probably not. Downside are longer road trips, as some other people said in places where charging is sparce you’re looking at 50-100% more time for distance traveled. But if you don’t mind being more leisurely and chilling out at a restaurant or what have you then it’s not a big deal. And initial price. They are still expensive.

I love mine. Hyundai Ioniq 5.

2 years so far and it’s been great. Wouldn’t ever go back to gas. I don’t even have a charger at home, but there is charging at work. I only need to charge it like 2 shifts per week, maybe 3 if I did a lot of driving, so it’s not hard to keep it topped off just from work. Every once in a while the work parking lot is so damn full every single day that I can’t charge there all week… So I have to suffer the inconvenience of… Going to a gas station and using their fast charger. Ugh.

Road trips take a bit more planning but I don’t go on many road trips anyway. One per year, at most.

Weekend mountain trips and camping/skiing is great, though.

Something I don’t see mentioned often… everyone I’ve met who doesn’t regret them for other reasons eventually runs into their first major issue when the first cold wave hits each year. You get two choices: put them in a garage where they’re a fire hazard (people vastly underestimate this issue) or leave them outside where the elements can be a hazard to them if you live somewhere with exceptional weather (water proof, cold proof, heat proof, and impact proof are not the same thing especially in certain severities, like would you drive down the road of bones in an electric vehicle?)

Looking into it, they don’t/shouldn’t come off as technically bad, I’m in no way saying they’re inferior to gas vehicles, but they’re made with carefulness in mind, not conformability. Not that I consider this outstanding in a world where vehicles have always been made with different emphasis on different things. I myself use public transport, I live somewhere where the fears that are valid would be the strongest should I complete a driving exam.

Yes, I ended up selling and buying a hybrid. Super happy with the hybrid.

• Basically instant “recharge” speed.

• Longer range.

• More vehicle options.

• Don’t have to worry about heat or cold draining my fuel.

• Can leave the car stationary for long periods of time without the fuel draining.

• More fueling stations.

• More reliable fueling stations (chargers may be broken.)

• Less software bullshit. (Tesla)

• Less possibly breaking updates. (Tesla) No joke. My car’s software literally crashed on the freeway once and I was essentially driving blind because all the screens went blank.

I drive a lot and for long distances. Switching to hybrid made trips shorter by an hour.

And I still got to keep fancy drive assist features. It’s like 80% of autopilot, if not more.

Oh! And big one! Even though an electric car may say something like 500km range! That’s NOT the usable range! You’re not going to be driving the car to 0km. You’re not even supposed to charge to 100% most of the time! So most of the time you’ll charge to 80%, that’s 400km in the battery. But, you probably wanna play it safe, so you’ll want to recharge with 50km to 100km left in the battery. Leaving you with about 300km of usable range.

Then the heat, cold, and time will slowly drain your 300km…

Meanwhile, my hybrid has about 700km of usable range, regardless of time and weather.

Model 3 owner (before the crazy) and I love it still. auto pilot is amazing, I hate elon but honestly the super chargers are so much better than the other plug. I may consider something besides a tesla if they get an auto pilot thing and adopt the plug, but unfortunately for the time being i’m stuck giving money to the jumping dip$h1t.

Not at all. Matter of fact I went and bought a second one a year later

I have Kia Niro, the range isnt as advertised and the gauge is not accurate. I barely made it hom when I should havenhad 40-50 km left in the charge.

I occasionally drive three hours to the office and same back necessitating two stops to charge.

The 200v chargers are more expensice than regular fuel. I have paid 100 euro for that return journey above.

I love mine, Chevy bolt. The biggest downside is that you need to plan road trips more carefully with them, and road trips will just take longer. Once you accept that, it’s actually kind of nice to periodically take 20-30 minute breaks while on a trip.

These problems are greatly alleviated if you also have a fossil fuel car. My partner has a gas car, so if we’re just going for a weekend or there aren’t good charging options, we just take the gas car so we don’t have to worry about charging.

I haven’t regretted it. Though if you were to do consistent long drives, and only have one car, I might suggest checking out PHEVs.

I’m very pleased. I have a 2023 Bolt.

For us there was no way we’d get one without a home charger. It’s great because every day you wake up and it’s like a full tank of gas.

My wife still has a gas car and we bought the electric planning that we’d still use the gas one for road trips. The Bolt in particular doesn’t have super fast charging (probably like 45 minutes to get to 80% using a fast charger) so if we didn’t have the second car that might be my one concern.

My wife wasn’t sold when we got it, but the electric was for me so we went ahead. Now she likes it. I’m banking on better EV options being available when we get our next car but I think it will be electric too.

The big question is if you can charge at home. Depending on the car, it’s feasible to do so on a normal outlet if you drive ~30 miles or less per day. A 240 volt outlet can be a game changer on top of that though. My setup charges my car 0-100 in about 6 hours (you know, overnight, when I’m not doing anything and electricity is cheapest). But if I were in an apartment and had no access to overnight charging I’d consider other options.

(Chevy Bolt EUV)

As much as everyone complains that it’s too expensive I am very happy with the Toyota zx4.