EVs are just superior

So 1 year of ownership and 28400 miles done! This means almost 80 miles a day on average. Given my average speed is 40 mph that means more than 700 hrs spent driving the car. About 6 MW of energy used. The fact is an electric vehicle makes you drive more and enjoy it ever more compared to a gasoline dirty, noisy and polluting contraption. And my i3 still smells like new! I have learned so many things and among them that BEVs are far superior to fossil fuel crappy cars. As ICE vehicle are inferior by the very design. Many more years of superior driving experience to come! For the financial part... I paid maybe $50 in electricity costs for the year vs. 4-5k in gas I would have paid assuming 80-100 fillups. On top of the 7.5k federal tax credit I got that means I was way positive cash flow this year as if I was paid to have the car and drove it for free. Not bad.

It's the VALUE you get - Buffet

So that moment came... after 27k miles I will change the tires as I noticed the thread being very worn out. So I went online and find the same type and got them shipped in a day... $90 each. That makes the BMW i3 a car with decently priced tires, considering how specialized they are. This is pretty much the ONLY required maintenance on the car. As far as the battery last and so far there hasn't been any reduction in range that I noticed. I can still do 120 miles from Murrieta to Santa Monica on a single charge.

I now average 700 miles or so per week commuting 60 miles each way and some mountain driving on week-ends, courtesy of all those chargepoint stations. When commuting to Santa Monica I was averaging 1000 miles a week so having an EV and that freedom to go anywhere on a whim really makes you drive a lot. I am sometimes jealous of not having a Fast DC port but the average cost of a level 2 station is a few K vs. 100-200 grands for a Fast DC outlet. There is no noticeable reduction in battery capacity and I often top it off. Kudos to the metrolink chargers in Anaheim that pump close to 6.7 kw. Strangely enough the paid chargers nearby only average 5.6. I read about the Toyota Mirai and definitely like the fact fuel cell technology seems operational and below a 7 figures price tag for the first time in hundreds of years but the infrastructure is the Achile's heel of it: 1) $1 million per hydrogen fueling station. A grand total of 10 in SoCal now 2) Hard to image how someone can refuel a...

This is the reason why I have an electric car. At the end of the day we either behave like amoeba or we are lucid enough to make sacrifices in our lifestyle to avert a catastrophe: This graph shows 97% of all vertebraes are now human beings and their livestock or pets. The rest of the biomass is pretty much negligible in size. Should we destroy more habitats to look for oil and sustain the unsustainable? already we are beyond the carrying capacity of the planet and any destruction upon the monoculture that sustains us will have devastating effects. Mismanagement of the Planet can be reverted with small steps.

So I went to Julian once again and this time the trip was even more enjoyable. The car does best on downhill where there is no need to use the breaks... it just regenerates. But uphill and on curves its true characteristics and the low center of gravity due to the battery pack make it an awesome rocket that carves the road like it would be on rails. Passing other motorists is incredibly easy and reminds me of riding a high power motorcycle like a Ducati I used to own a few years back. This is especially important as along the whole of the 79 there are only 2 spots where one can legally pass and both are less then 1/2 mile in length so an ultra fast speedup followed by a quick slow down is necessary to stay within the range of the dotted line and with a good sight of the opposing traffic. The smoothness of the power curve is, well, just that: Linear and swift. The mountains is where a high performance EV really shows how much electrics are mechanically and performance wise far superior ...

Yesterday decided to visit someone in the high desert, and also test my battery and range after crossing 21k and racking up about 100 miles a day since then now. I changed work and no longer need to commute 203 miles a day between Murrieta and Santa Monica. Nonetheless the range is as solid as ever. Up the Cajon pass did cost me 1/3 of the battery but then it was all cruising along. And when I fully charged there I could make it all the way back to Murrieta 97 miles away through ups and downs across the 15 and 215. Nightime the temp dipped to 27 and the steering became slightly noisy (grease needed?) and the tires are sensitive to it given their pressure will dip by 5-7 PSI under such conditions which needed me to add some pressure. I passed the 22k mark on the way down. At this rythm I expect > 40k by the first year I will have the car. Long distance commuting and long range travel within 300 miles are definitely the best qualities of a pure electric vehicle.