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Myers Motors

TheAsterisk!

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While I don't spot a whole lot of outright nonsense on their frontpage, quite a bit of their pitch is predicated upon certain non-universal assumptions, and they are sloppy as heck with their verbiage- which being a some-time pedant I cannot tolerate.

For instance, from their website:
Three-wheeled vehicles perform very poorly in bad weather conditions.

If the single wheel is in the rear (as it was on our 3-wheeled EV), the rear wheel slips all over the place in snowy weather. It’s hard to generate forward momentum. It’s also hard to stop the car from fishtailing.

So: Three-wheeled cars are harder to control in bad weather (even rain) and more likely to get into an accident.
Yes, but only applicable as described if you make your single rear wheel the drive wheel. Failing to mention that does nothing to help those who can't grok the driving and/or the physics behind the scenario they depict here. Like I said, not outright nonsense, but potentially misleading, dependent upon the context.
More to the point, 3-wheeled cars are considered “motorcycles.” They don’t have to comply with government safety regulations and are therefore not as safe as their 4-wheeled counterparts.
Well, no. "Don't have to" !== "doesn't". Again, not outright fabrication, but conflation of mandate with possibility. A lack of legal mandate to conform to functionally similar standards of safety does not mean that none do so, just that any such engineered safety features are put in as a concern of market and customer demand rather than as a concern of legal compliance. Different carrot/stick proposition, but not necessarily a different consequential output.

For example, nothing mandates or legally compels me to point out this flaw in the Myers Motors pitch, but I felt it warranted doing besides.
If a 3-wheeled EV is more likely to get into accident in bad weather conditions… and does not have the same safety features as a 4-wheeled vehicle… what does that mean?

It means your risk of getting into an accident is higher. If you do get into an accident, your risk of injury is higher also.
And they continue to further chase the thread they've found, predicated upon (or at least presented with) flawed logic. I'm willing to bet this has a little something to do with the other single-RWD EV for one that they pictured up above, with a caption loosely insinuating that three-wheelers are all symptomatic of a big business conspiracy to maim our children and kill our families in the greedy pursuit of profit. Or somesuch.

Also, the same argument for safety absent any quantified or qualified risk assessment works for avoiding driving and public roads altogether, but I bet they aren't aiming for that conclusion.
Safety is the #1 reason why we abandoned our 3-wheeled EV. For EVs to reach the mass market, they need to be as safe as regular cars. That’s why we are now bringing our 4-wheeled EV to market.
That a vehicle has n wheels (where n is greater than two) means nothing by itself to safety absent further information. As critics of our local favorite rightly say, testing will have to speak to that.
  • We’re bringing a stylish 4-wheeled EV to market.
  • This EV will comply with all U.S. car safety regulations.
  • And it will sell for < $18,000 after tax credits that, even under President Trump, will be available for the first 200,000 electric cars we produce (by the 200,000th car we don’t expect to need the tax credits for profitability due to higher volumes, lower costs and, especially, lower battery costs).
1) It's about the ugliest render of a car concept I've seen recently. Not just the car concept itself, which is homely in a B-movie scifi cityscape sort of a way, but whoever did their actual rendering for them, and the composite into the photograph, did a terrible job of it. From the unrefined curves (looks like a video game real-time render from at least several years ago) that show their line and polygonal approximations of curves in the composite, to the weird choice of color, to the lighting on the vehicle, it's awful. Here's hoping they just went a quick-n-dirty route, and used an exported CAD render as their conceptual render for the illustration, and they didn't pay graphics or marketing professionals to make that render.
2) As legally mandated.
3) "<$18K after tax credits" means "<$25.5K out-of-pocket", and if you pay little income tax and no property tax- like myself- the rebate is all but meaningless. The rebate courts those who might buy an additional vehicle, not those who need transportation beyond a bike and a bus. Tax credits don't help, either, if you just can't afford to drop that much all at once, and if financing is an issue for whatever reason. Again, the Elio is the only modern vehicle I've yet seen that might potentially fit such scenarios new. (Time will tell.)
People want to love and own electric vehicles, but cost is the biggest factor keeping them from it. Our personal electric vehicle will finally bring the cost of owning and operating an EV well below the cost of the average gas car.
1) The cost/benefit proposition is keeping me from getting all enthused about it, not just cost. Cost means I can't be an owner, but the cost/benefit proposition means I find myself not even a fan. I know, nitpick-y, but it's an important distinction in terms, I think. For a hyperbolic example, a $2K EV that had a 1/2 mile range would also be a no-go, no matter how amazingly cheap that might be.
2) The cost of the average ICE car is too darned high, too. They're right, though; even the true upfront $25.5K cost is lower than current averages for a new car, but that's less a merit of theirs and more an indictment of the state of automotive production, sales and marketing much more generally.
3) The next biggest factor is the difficulty of owning and charging an electric car for renters. Ty seemed to get that up above in an earlier comment:
Typically, your most poor won't be living in a house and apartments have never been a place where you can just plug in a vehicle to charge it.
Exactly. As to a follow-up comment also from Ty:
I'd be willing to bet that newer apartment complexes/parking garages in cities will have electrical for charging.
Not to pick on you or your post, Ty, since the first comment was spot on, but newer complexes that stand to have such amenities are very often more expensive to rent, too. I worked for several months to rent a unit at the remarkably low sub-$300/mo. that I have here, but $650-plus/mo. is much more typical for comparable space and amenities in the area. I was very stubborn and very lucky. I guarantee that any such chargers would be (a) token, maybe one or two per building, much like they do so with washing machines so that they can advertise that there is "laundry" in the building (which you'll never use, because the three families of five each in the building always have some sibling or another holding a place in line for it like geeks at a midnight video game release), and/or (b) would be used as a justification to up monthly rates on leases. Glad to be proven wrong, but I'd wager that the corresponding increase would more than wash out fuel savings relative to comparable but cheaper 'no-chargers-here' units, since even just the hookups for your own washer and dryer usually raise monthly rents by $200 or more.

Alternatively, I can totally see other tennants pulling the plug out of others' cars for their own use, then just leaving their neighbors' as they are later, with a partial charge. Locking the charger to the car with some sort of mechanism could fix that, but then you'd also have to deal with someone like me, his EV sitting on it all day long while he sleeps for third shift.

Given the choice, I'd keep the cheaper unit and forgo the complex with (a) charger(s).

Either way, you wouldn't be able to rely upon access to a charger, unless you own a charger (good luck getting property management to OK that somehow) or you lease one solely for yourself, which- again- is likely to more than wash out any fuel savings over an ICE alternative, with the charger lease and the likely higher apartment/unit lease. It's not a solution I'd put much stock in beyond actual homeowners, unless/until I can see my apprehensions assuaged by practice.
 
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Sethodine

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Either way, you wouldn't be able to rely upon access to a charger, unless you own a charger (good luck getting property management to OK that somehow) or you lease one solely for yourself, which- again- is likely to more than wash out any fuel savings over an ICE alternative, with the charger lease and the likely higher apartment/unit lease. It's not a solution I'd put much stock in beyond actual homeowners, unless/until I can see my apprehensions assuaged by practice.

I don't mean to be a jerk, but it seems you're making a few assumptions about EV chargers that are not quite true.

First, any EV will come with a 110v, 12a charger that can plug into any household outlet. As long as it's on a dedicated circuit and you have an extension cord of the proper gauge, then many rental units will be able to accommodate an EV. My wife and I did this for a year at our last place.

Secondly, higher power portable chargers are also available (240v, 16a) for ~$300, that can plug into a standard dryer socket. If you are renting a duplex or some other unit that has access to such a socket, than this will charge the EV much faster. Depending on the landlord, they might even install a socket for you (you'd probably have to pay up-front cost for the electrician, but you would have to do that as a homeowner as well.) It doesn't hurt to ask. And heck, you might be able to get away with installing a wall-mounted station (240v, >30a, $500-$700) if your landlord is OK with that.

Sure, there are lots of places where charging an EV wouldn't be an option, which would require either moving to a new place or not getting an EV. We made sure to talk to our landlord before purchasing our first Leaf because we needed to be able to charge it, and in subsequent apartment hunting we always had to ask about this, just like we always have to find a place that allows a pet. Sometimes, finding a place that can accommodate your lifestyle is hard, but that's just the way life is.

As a side note, some states offer tax rebates to individuals or businesses that install EV chargers, so that is at least one bit that might convince a landlord or property management company to look into installing something that will make their property more attractive to renters.
 

Paul DeCrans

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True. Good point there. There are those who want to buy electric for their personal environmental or political reasons and who am I to tell someone they are wrong for either of those reasons.

From a cost-to-own perspective, a car like the Ford Fiesta will cost the owner approximately $1,000 per year to go 15,000 miles while an electric car will cost approximately 1/3 that in electricity.

https://energy.gov/articles/egallon-how-much-cheaper-it-drive-electricity

You'll save $864 a year by purchasing the electric vehicle assuming you could actually drive 15,000 a year in your electric. Basically, any time a person is considering an electric car for economic reasons, they should bear in mind that the electric saves $864 per year of ownership. Paying $8,640 more because a car is electric means it'll take 10 years to see savings. (Okay, 9 years if you pretend 6 oil changes will cost $864)
136

To be slightly back on topic. The car in the OP is a cute little thing.
I wish I only need to have 6 oil changes in 9 years.
 

Sethodine

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I wish I only need to have 6 oil changes in 9 years.
I think he meant 6 oil changes per year, which is slightly more than the recommended "3 month/3,000 mile" change schedule.
The thing is, you're going to be doing more than oil changes in a 10-year ownership timeline. At the proposed 15,000 miles per year, a new car would have 150,000 miles on it. That means timing belt, air filter and brake pads at least, and possibly several other ICE components in need of repair or replacement. Compare this to an EV, which doesn't have the most of those parts (and has much less brake pad wear thanks to regen braking).

Speaking from experience, in the 1.75 years we've owned our Leaf, we've put 20,000 miles on it and the only maintenance cost as been tabs and tires. It's overdue to have the cabin air filter replaced ($5-$20 and five minutes of DIY labor) but I keep forgetting to order the darn thing.

The thing that convinced me that buying a Leaf would be OK, was an article about a guy who put 100k on his 2011 Leaf over 31 months of ownership. No maintenance beyond tabs and tires, just like I've seen personally.
 

TheAsterisk!

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I don't mean to be a jerk, but it seems you're making a few assumptions about EV chargers that are not quite true.

First, any EV will come with a 110v, 12a charger that can plug into any household outlet. As long as it's on a dedicated circuit and you have an extension cord of the proper gauge, then many rental units will be able to accommodate an EV. My wife and I did this for a year at our last place.
Secondly, higher power portable chargers are also available (240v, 16a) for ~$300, that can plug into a standard dryer socket.
I don't mean to be a jerk, but it seems you're making a few assumptions about the bulk of low-income rental residential housing that are not quite true. ;)
(By the way, sorry if I'm getting you wound up- it's hard for me to tell even in person if I do that, and harder in text on a message board. I'm not particularly worked up myself- this is how I usually write and talk, for better or worse- but I know I come across somewhat confrontational sometimes, so sorry if I'm doing that, too.)

I am well aware that you can charge a BEV off of household current, absent a transformer, but then we get back to the downtime that I've criticized in older posts- which you also attempted to declare was no big deal, regardless of varied and sundry use cases and disparate demands drivers place upon their vehicles. For instance, a BEV would make a poor primary or sole vehicle if you have a job where you are on-call and might need to leave at unpredictable times of the day and night, if you're charging more slowly off of 115-125 volt outlets. That setup requires longer, uninterrupted charge times, which is most of the point of dedicated chargers. Fine secondary vehicle, but my primary concern is me, looking to own a single vehicle. I dismiss BEVs for my own use, based upon how I live and what I need; I offer nothing on the merits of a BEV for those living in actual houses or who want a secondary vehicle. I though that context was clear from this and previous postings of mine, but sorry if it wasn't.

Also, apartments. Apartments. I focused on apartments. Most don't have appliance hookups (excepting range, water heater, etc.- no washer/dryer), and most don't have have direct access to the parking lot, which usually won't have assigned, predictable spaces- you park where there's a free space. You'd be looking at running a cord either out into an interior, shared multi-unit hallway, up/down stairs, and across a shared parking lot- or maybe out a window and across the parking lot, or something. Even in my current unit, which is somewhere between an apartment and a townhouse, and which has its door facing the lot directly with parking up against the building, I'd have to run it up from the basement, out the front door (which means the somewhat beat up door won't close and lock anymore, by the way), down the sidewalk (elderly neighbors with mobility issues park nearer to their unit, so I park a few spaces further down, since I can move around quite easily), and into the BEV. Nevermind the foolishness in leaving an extension cord in a shared area, plugged into your outlet, on your bill. Nevermind the property management company and neighbors likely taking issue with this. Bad idea, all around, and it's not even that nice if you live in a city where you have to park at the curb instead of in a lot.
If you are renting a duplex or some other unit that has access to such a socket, than this will charge the EV much faster.
No garage, no driveway, I'm in an apartment complex, in what is almost a townhouse. Not all apartments have utility hookups, and I'm prepared to move if it's closer to work or if I can get a lower rate (I've actually seen one in the same complex for less), so I wouldn't count on any I have now, anyway. I'm not running cords across a shared parking lot.
Depending on the landlord, they might even install a socket for you (you'd probably have to pay up-front cost for the electrician, but you would have to do that as a homeowner as well.) It doesn't hurt to ask.
(1) The upfront cost is part of the issue. I've said this before.
(2) I cannot count on not moving, due to periodic advantages in seeking lower lease rates, rendering the cost of a charger and installation something that may need to be repeated after a move.
(3) They will not. Other residents asked quite some time ago, long before I began detailing why this isn't feasible.
Sure, there are lots of places where charging an EV wouldn't be an option, which would require either moving to a new place or not getting an EV.
Exactly. I'm not getting an EV.
Sometimes, finding a place that can accommodate your lifestyle is hard, but that's just the way life is.
This may get more to the point. For me, the proposition of a BEV is not one of lifestyle choice, but one of economic feasibility, or a pragmatic capital investment. Which gets me where I go, from where I am, most easily, accounting for upfront investment, flexibility of use, recurring cost, and averaged cost over time or usage.

Frankly, I can also do without a car, but I cannot do without a place to live. I am prepared to move for lower rent or a better deal on utilities (right now, I only pay electric), but I am not prepared to move for a car. The car is extra, the residence is a necessity. Priorities take over.

Even as a measure of total cost, it is far cheaper in my situation to minimize recurring bills (phone, electric, insurance, rent, etc.) and then work with what transportation can fit into this scheme, rather than find my choice car, and then contemplate moving in order to accommodate the car. That constrains the choices I have for housing, and removes many of the lower cost housing options in this market from my consideration. For the Myers, for instance, again excepting sales and recurring taxes, I would have to make up about ($23K-$8.5K) (I wouldn't qualify for most of the tax break on an EV, due to my low tax liability), $14.5K, plus the cost of a charger, installation, potential increase in monthly lease rates, increase in electric bill, and insurance (I couldn't pay for a $23K car outright, but could pay cash for a modestly but decently equipped Elio, with current Elio Motors projections, so could put liability-only insurance on the Elio, but with a lien on a new EV, not so) in saved fuel costs to make it long-term worthwhile. Frankly, the time it takes to make up that amount is too great to remain a great positive in favor of an EV for me. As to used EVs, I'm not particularly interested in buying a used car, EV or ICE. The fact that the Elio stands to be a new vehicle for under $10K is what interest me, not that cars can be had for under $10K. A subjective cost/benefit check on used cars for me basically means that up to $2K or so, a used car is an affordable indulgence with some marginal utility for me, even if not too reliable, but from about $4K to $10K, used cars cost more than they are practically worth to me. A new car would be part indulgence, part utility, but they usually cost far too much to contemplate. Again, from here springs my interest in the Elio- part toy, part tool, cheap enough for a new-manufacture vehicle to merit consideration.

Again, I will also restate that I am not willing to lock myself into a particular residence, nor am I willing to revisit the costs of charger installation at multiple residences, because much of my method for reducing rent payments comes from being able to move on short notice for a better deal. This changes the dynamic significantly. Were I prepared to own a home, the situation might be different, property taxes and utilities depending.
As a side note, some states offer tax rebates to individuals or businesses that install EV chargers, so that is at least one bit that might convince a landlord or property management company to look into installing something that will make their property more attractive to renters.
Again, I'm pretty sure they'd use that as a justification- not entirely unreasonable- to up the monthly rates for renters. It's not a worthwhile compromise, given my financial priorities. I've addressed this.

[Maintenance is better for electrics.]
This, along with the propulsive advantages of electric drive, is precisely why I'm convinced that EVs- of one form or another, solely battery or otherwise- will eventually become preferable. (Just don't forget that batteries also degraded and eventually require replacement. Not really a deal-breaker by itself, though. All components eventually degrade and necessitate replacement, as per your note about belts, etc. Pads and filters are pretty easy to do yourself, though, so I'd mention the belts and maybe the catalytic, if the car is older still- that's pricey.) It's largely a matter of electric vehicle and parts cost (as it contributes to manufacture cost, more than maintenance) and lagging infrastructure at present. That being said, it is the present situation, and it's currently much simpler for someone living like I do to go with a small-displacement ICE driving a lightweight vehicle, given the compromises that are demanded by each.

Ultimately, do what works for you. If the Leaf or another EV is economically and practically satisfying for you in your circumstances, then by all means! Honestly, though, whether due to a failure in clear writing on my part or otherwise, it seems from our few exchanges on the subject of BEVs that you don't really understand how I live or how that impacts the potential attraction of a BEV versus a small, efficient ICE powerplant, but I've got to do what works for me, regardless. Same for everyone else- look into both, dismiss neither out of hand, take nothing for granted, and then decide on the balance.
 

Sethodine

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(Really long post) As to used EVs, I'm not particularly interested in buying a used car, EV or ICE.

So, you don't make enough to qualify for the EV tax credit, and you are very frugal as to your housing location. That is all fine and good, as I am much the same. I'm sure the rental situation is different from city-to-city, and my comments were much more general and were not targetted to your specific situaton. And my view on rentals is probably impacted by the region I live in, where very few apartments are multi-story, and the few that are, are quadruplexes with garages or assigned parking.

But what I don't get, is you are unwilling to consider a used vehicle? I don't understand this. The math will never add up to make a new vehicle a frugal option; only the Elio comes close, and even then used ones will be a better deal (around year 2 or 3 of production). New cars are for people who can afford to pay a premium for that new-car smell, and already have a real garage to park it in. Used cars are how the rest of us poor shmucks get to our shit jobs.
 

Ty

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I wish I only need to have 6 oil changes in 9 years.
My truck requires one oil change about every 15,000 miles. I erred. It would be 9 oil changes in 9 years. I don't think there are many manufacturers who still require the oil to be changed every 3,000 miles. What a waste that would be.


From Edmunds.com:

Car dealers' service departments are also guilty of incorrectly listing the mileage for the next oil change. We've seen them recommend a 3,000-mile oil change on a car with a 10,000-mile interval and also list a 5,000-mile recommendation on a car that has a variable oil change schedule.

Because busy car owners seldom read their owner's manuals, most have no idea of the actual oil change interval for their cars. And so they blindly follow the windshield reminder sticker, whether it's an accurate indicator of the need for an oil change or not. "I just go by the sticker in the windshield," one well-to-do, educated Denver Lexus owner said. "Otherwise, how would I know when to change it?"
 
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