We are 39 1/2 months into a 36 month lease on a 2016 Kia Soul EV (we extended the lease 6 months hoping to bridge to the new version of the Soul EV, which now won’t be coming to the US until “sometime in 2021”
). It has just under 39,000 miles on it now.
The near term plan is to purchase the current one, which we love dearly and I would keep until it wore out if it had twice the range, off the lease extension and then turn it over maybe in late 2021 or early 2022. By then the new-generation Soul EV, as well as the Tesla Model Y and the Ford Mach-E should all be available. The hatchback/wagon form factor suits our needs well for both rocket stuff (including club GSE) and things like my wife’s full-sized lever harp.
In the time we’ve had the Soul EV, we’ve charged it almost exclusively at home (I had a level 2 charger installed shortly after we got the car which can fully charge it in ~4 hours, though we seldom run it that far down). A power company rebate basically paid for the charger (but not the electrical work to install it).
Since we’ve had the Soul EV our electric bill increased ~$40/month. For that we drive the car 800-1000 miles a month. It is always the first choice for either my wife or myself unless we are going different directions or we’re going on a road trip (say, going over to fly with Rich in eastern Washington). Our other car is a 2013 Mazda3 5-door. When we are going two different directions the rule in the house is that whoever is going the furthest (but within the range of the the EV or handy fast charging) gets it, as we both really enjoy driving it.
It has had exactly one “scheduled maintenance” visit to the dealer, which consisted of rotating the tires and putting in a new cabin air filter. It’s a bit overdue to do these again. It has had one serious issue—the onboard charger died—but that was fixed fairly promptly under warranty and the only cost was putting gas in the loaner Soul the dealer let us use while our car was in the shop. Even then, it could be fast charged (as that process bypasses the onboard charger on an EV).
It will need new tires in the spring if we do keep it as planned. But any car needs tires eventually....
As boatgeek said, we’re never going back. We would like to see more charging infrastructure in the US Southwest as that is where we are both from and we still visit there when we can. There is more than enough charging available around here and sometimes we do use it for trips that are outside of the round-trip range of the Soul EV. We will likely be going to NSL this year and then going into NM to visit family. This time that trip will have to be in the Mazda. I hope in a few years we’d be able to do that trip comfortably in our next EV.
Rich is correct in that Washington State is “ahead of California” (as if that were a good thing) in EV fees. Some of them may or may not stand thanks to a voter initiative from last fall (and subsequent court wrangling). At the same time, the state in the last legislative session, reinstated the EV exemption for the sales tax up to, I think, $35K of vehicle cost. And this time they extended it to used EVs as well (which may figure into our buying the current Soul EV off the lease). So they are sending profoundly mixed messages about EV use.
The federal credit will figure into our next purchase I am sure - Tesla no longer is eligible, but both Kia and Ford will likely still be. For the current lease, that benefit went to the leasing company, which is one reason the lease deal was such a good one.
If a plug-in hybrid that has an EV-mode range of ~60 miles appears in the next couple of years, that will also get a good hard look, if it’s a hatchback and comes with an interior color other than black. That would be a good way to do our in-town EV-ing and not worry on multi-state road trips such as the trip to NARAM in Muncie this past summer. I do worry that PHEVs would be “interesting” maintenance-wise since they essentially have two complete power trains in them. As noted above, one of the real beauties of BEVs is that there is essentially no regular maintenance to do.
