Carmax has used 2025 SEL Ioniq 5's with 10-15k miles for 33k; that's practically new. Other than the ICCU issue, probably the best electric deal rn? 84kwh battery, I've can drive it Portland to Seattle on 2/3 of a charge.
Carmax has used 2025 SEL Ioniq 5's with 10-15k miles for 33k; that's practically new. Other than the ICCU issue, probably the best electric deal rn? 84kwh battery, I've can drive it Portland to Seattle on 2/3 of a charge.
My generator was $1000 and can power my entire house (including server rack). If I bought it used it would’ve been $500. I can trivially store 2 weeks worth of gasoline (and I do, constantly) and as long as somewhere within 700km of my house has gasoline I can get there, refill, and get home. I own 6 gas cars and they total less than $33k. My daily I paid $2500 for and average 6L/100km. (All CAD) If you start taking used cars into account the math goes waaaaaay towards gasoline car + generator.
I don't think there's a pure cost argument that favors EV's in this scenario. I think instead the argument is, EV's are relatively affordable now and have other benefits. For context, the Ioniq 5 is rated Edmund's _best_ EV SUV (afaik, most popular overall category). So e.g. this isn't an example of a crappy one to make na argument (I've owned it for 2 years, my first EV, its v. impressive).
So for someone who wants an EV (for the convenience, environment, or performance reasons), I think the statement is you can e.g. do so fairly affordably and also get free generator with it. Its a nice perk imo.
Does this also factor in operating costs of the vehicle? Especially considering gasoline at $4-7/gallon?
Then there’s also the potential scenario of “buyer prefers an EV anyway.”
In my case I’m currently driving a ~10 year old conventional gasoline vehicle that I purchased new, and I plan to keep driving it for roughly another 7-10 years. Given the current automotive product lineups out there I can’t think of a scenario where my next car will involve gasoline regardless of my desire for a backup power source at home.
> Does this also factor in operating costs of the vehicle? Especially considering gasoline at $4-7/gallon?
Depends on the vehicle of course. But for me at least, my 5-speed Civic for $2500 is way cheaper over its expected lifespan than a $7000 Nissan Leaf (and the Civic is way more flexible, since it can actually go more than 100km every 6 hours in the winter). At $1.50/L and 6L/100km, I can drive about 50,000km before I spend more on gasoline than the price difference between the two. The actual breakeven math (assuming 21kWh/100km) is closer to about 65,000km when factoring in electricity at ~$0.12/kWh. Oil changes are negligible (I do my own maintenance and oil changes), and a used Leaf is going to have just as many problems (if not more) with "the rest of the car" as a gas car (suspension, steering, brakes, tires, electrics, interior components, not to mention battery pack services).
If you buy a nicer EV than the break even point goes even further out. At least where I am, the EV equivalent of any gasoline car has a breakeven point of at least 50k km driven, usually more.
> Then there’s also the potential scenario of “buyer prefers an EV anyway.”
Entirely fair, but I'd still buy a generator and an EV. Because coupling your house power to your car just seems like a bad idea (to rely on it, at least; if you live somewhere that you never need to rely on off-grid power, then who really cares). For instance, my house has a sump pump that must run every ~hour or my basement will flood, and during storms that gets down to about 20 minutes. If my area doesn't have power, then I can't charge an EV anywhere nearby, and if I'm powering the house off the EV, how am I going to recharge it without my basement flooding?
I think you’re a huge outlier here. The median person is not doing their own maintenance and oil changes. $2,500 Civic that runs reliably is a meaningless data point. I might as well say I found 128GB of DDR5 RAM at an estate sale for $20.
50km-75km break-even is not a whole lot of kilometers.
You can compare a used first gen leaf’s poor range but in a short amount of time from now the bulk of the used EV market is going to be Teslas and Ioniq 5s that charge fast, are equipped with heat pumps, and get plenty of range.
Not everyone has a sump pump that needs to run every hour. Not everyone even has a basement. If we keep throwing out qualifiers we end up with a scenario that is not relevant to many people.
> 5-speed Civic for $2500
Good grief, what year is that Civic from? LOL. I just bought a 10 year old Corolla for my kid and it was 12 grand. Civics aren't much cheaper.
Out of curiosity, what do you normally do about the gasoline? I ask because I had a crappy little generator, and it seemed like my most common issue was old gas in the thing. Wasn’t a big deal or anything, just curious… stabil and run them regularly whether you need it or not?
Fortunately there's a couple (literally 2) gas stations near me that sell ethanol-free 91 octane gas, which has a shelf life of ~1 year. Sta-bil in theory extends that substantially longer. My solution is Sta-bil in the E0 gas, which gets used throughout the year for small engines (lawn mower, snowblower, pressure washer) and the generator if needed. I power up the generator once a month to make sure its battery stays charged and fuel keeps flowing (probably overkill). My power goes out 2-3 times a year, so that combined with the small engine stuff is enough to cycle through the gas in ~1 year, but if it isn't, I'll either burn it in the generator or just run it in one of my cars.
If you live in an area where you can only get ethanol gas, then you definitely don't want it sitting more than 6 months, even with Sta-bil (in my experience). So that means yeah, you gotta cycle through the generator's tank twice a year, which if you live in an area with reliable power, means spending more money than you need to on gas and oil. Also, keep all containers (including fuel tanks) as full as possible, to minimize the amount of air in the container, to minimize the amount of moisture the ethanol can suck out of the air.