So I have always hated Tesla and don’t like that they’ve in a lot of way tarnished the name of electric cars. The second you say electric cars every person and their mom says OHH you’re getting a tesla! Quite annoying.
Anyways, I’d like to hear from some of you folks some models of electrics you like. I have always been a gearhead deep in the gas and oil, and I still enjoy my cars, but an electric would be fun and a cost savings for me, especially since I have a ton of roof space for solar panels if I wanted to.
It sounds superficial but a big reason I used to hate electric cars is they are for the most part, hideous. Then again, to me, most new cars are hidous, the designs are just not good. But I think i can look past that.
It would also be a huge bonus if there were any models out there with the least possible features. I prefer cars with manual locks/seats/doors and no screen, which is of course impossible with current cars (sadly). But the less digital garbage the better.
Absolutely loving my Mustang Mach-e, gets almost 400km of range, Cost’s under $40k CAD used, and just an absolute blast to drive.
BYD is very popular here in Australia. Tried one out and it just goes.
BYD is very popular everywhere, it just overtook Tesla as the biggest EV manufacturer.
Personally I avoided BYD due to the whole China data sovereignty thing, but from what I hear their cars are solid.
Buddy of mine has a Fiat 500e and it’s surprisingly non-gadgety. If you don’t need cargo, more than one passenger, or out of town range it’s probably exactly what you want.
Doesn’t have one pedal driving though. At least his doesn’t. That’s a no-brainer feature on an EV.
One pedal is one reason with so many Teslas have front collisions.
Same thing people said about automatic transmissions and cruise control. Non-issue.
EDIT: Don’t bother arguing. I get it, you don’t like Elon. Shit on him all you want. If you want to criticize a car, learn what you’re talking about first.
I only drive manual so I don’t need 1 pedal drive…I forgot fiat made the 500 electric !
I wouldn’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I would never get an EV without 1 pedal drive. The only downside is it takes a few days to get used to, which isn’t great when test driving and coming from 2 pedal. It feels weird at first.
You can always go the route of converting an older car. https://www.fellten.com/system/mini
Not a real option. Expensive and no one can fix it.
I have a 24 Aryia. I’ve got 13k miles on it and so far it’s been great.
I have over 40k kms on mine. No issues at all so far, aside from they really hobble that 400hp off the line so you don’t cook tires.
I have the mid range one but I believe the top model has AWD and so you get a lot more go from a standing start.
I have the top model and you really don’t. The power doesn’t really come on until you’re doing like 30-40 kph, even in stupid spaceship sound mode with all the traction control off.
I can’t find the data now but from memory the AWD model is supposed to do 0-100kph in about 4 seconds as opposed to the 7.5 or so of the FWD models, so I assumed you’d be able to feel the difference 😆.
It’s apparently 0-60 in 5 seconds, but the Subaru Solterra does the same with half the horsepower. They may have changed it for 2025, but you can’t melt tires on the 2024, trust me. Once the power comes on it rips, just not out of the hole
Generally, anything that isn’t a Tesla because politics aside, Teslas are built terribly and are reportedly already falling apart, so not only is the Tesla brand saddled with baggage, but the cars themselves are built like crap.
Performance-wise if you’re filthy rich, the Rimac Nevera is one of the fastest EVs in existence and snatched performance records left and right when it launched.
If you have mech and electrical skills, you could also build your own out of something like a Geo or an older Civic by swapping the gas drivetrain for the drivetrain out of a wrecked EV, although you’d need a custom controller for it.
Lucky enough to have a 2025 Peugeot E-2008 GT, and it’s a great car honestly.
I quite like the design though if you’re into the smaller and sleeker cars it may not be for you.
Chevy Bolt EUV (sorta kinda bigger than a normal Bolt) Premier without self driving: very good.
Cheap feeling like any American car. Infotainment is trash; you can’t skip tracks on CarPlay using the steering wheel controls most of the time because it’s always indexing. A problem no other OEM or even the cheapest of aftermarket radios I’ve ever touched has had. Remote climate control (essentially what we always mean when we say remote start) is locked behind a $50/mo OnStar subscription. Spies on you to sell data.
But, it costs like $30-40 a month to drive, it’s zippy enough, I’ve got front and rear seat warmers, it’s a hatch, and most importantly, it was a steal. We got it like four days before the tax credits were eliminated. Before that I’d have said EVs were the only deals to be had in the automotive space. Now there simply are no deals. My $18k Bolt Premier was the last chopper out of 'Nam for getting anything resembling a decent deal of a car.
We like it. Charging at home is nice. We hope it doesn’t break. Hybrid is a smarter buy because of the added flexibility afforded by gas but again, you weren’t getting any 2022 fully* loaded hybrid with 60k miles for $18k. Since this isn’t our only vehicle this was the easy choice.
FYI they dropped the EUV naming. The new 2027 Bolt is just the SUV version now without the distinction.
Yeah. It’s a great looking car and all the upgrades sound great. I don’t think I could go for that model though due to the lack of CarPlay. I don’t think companies replacing existing value with enshitified subscriptions should be rewarded for those decisions. Then again I could never afford a new one anyway, haha.
Of what I’ve personally driven, even for just a test drive.
Tesla S: meh Tesla 3: cramped for a tall guy Rivian truck: middle back seat is super uncomfortable. Only option is 1PD (one pedal driving) and I hated that. Everything else about it was cool Polestar: again, not good for tall people MachE: great unless you have to ride in the back seat. Plenty of room, but likely to induce motion sickness Lightning pickup: perfect, no notes except its overall bigger than it needs to be. Loading stuff up in the bed is more of a pain than it needs to be. Some people don’t like the range, but I’ve done a couple 1500+ mile road trips and never minded it.
I’m sorry, how TF does one pedal driving work? That sounds terrifying
Instead of a brake pedal, you take your foot off the go pedal with the electric wheel motor slowing the wheel down and stealing its energy
Is there any way to control how fast you slow down?
Taycan 4S Cross Turismo (wagon). Absolutely incredible car all around. Competent on a racetrack, comfy on long roadtrips, tons of cargo room, easy installation of a roof box for even more cargo, very fast DC charging.
Ain’t perfect and I could rant about software/infotainment but I’m not paying for the now-expired internet connectivity and it’s been totally fine not having that, especially with Android Auto working with GrapheneOS.
I have been seriously looking at one of these, what’s your experience with maintenance costs?
Did my own cabin air filter replacement, fairly straightforward. I run separate sets of summer and winters on their own sets of wheels so I swap those out twice a year myself.
Only big ticket item so far was replacing brakes at 20k miles since I wore through them with five full track days. and I mean FULL, like every lap HARD braking from 140mph down to 65-75mph, and going as long each day as possible while leaving to recharge after 20-35 minutes of pushing it each session.
No real other maintenance so far and I’ve had it 3.5 years and its a tad over 30k miles. There have been a few scary error messages that all went away after the car was shut down and left for a few minutes, mostly camera/ADAS stuff but one time it was an error about the chassis leveling or something. AC stopped wotking once during a road trip but came back after the next charging stop.
One warranty repair done for a proximity sensor that stopped working well. And a few recalls. But the brakes have been the only spendy bit, that and it’s the last season for this set of winter tires so tires and brakes basically!
Nice thanks for the info!
There are no good electric cars.
Do not buy the Hyundai Ioniq. The car itself is great (although it has a lot of modern features you dont want) but dealing with Hyundai is such a nightmare that I will never again buy a Hyundai.
A few years ago I got into a wreck in an Elantra (only me, no one else harmed) and none of the airbags went off. If I had been forward thinking enough to document it, I’d have filed a lawsuit immediately.
The car was great while I had it, all the bells and whistles, great mileage, everything. But I won’t ever get one again for safety reasons.
Modern airbags only go off if you crash in a direction that they can help, e.g. if you slide sideways into a pole, you’d only expect curtain airbags to go off, not the one in your steering wheel. Airbags are dangerous so you only want them to go off when they aren’t going to make things worse.
Though by the way you italicised “none”, perhaps the car is full of airbags all over and they still didn’t go off?
I also seem to remember a massive recall from a decade back because the world’s biggest airbag manufacturer found many of their airbags didn’t go off properly.
Dunno about the recall, but you’re right in that I had airbags all around me. I hit a tree in the driver side door, neither airbag around the doorframe went off. I’m lucky I made it out with just a broken shoulder bone, among the other injuries I could have/did sustain.
Allegedly it was a spinout caused by over correction (I got knocked out by the impact and don’t remember most of that night), so maybe the spinning motions fucked with the directional sensors, but I would expect in the event of a spinout collision, every airbag should go off, at least programming wise.
I don’t know if airbags are connected enough to coordinate with each other, but you kind of expect they should err on the side of going off if unsure rather than not going off!
Just looked up the recall, apparently 100 million airbags recalled starting from 2013. It seems to have resulted in the bankruptcy of the company!
It might be a little early to be related to your crash if it was just a few years back. Hopefully you’re doing ok now!
Very much might be then, it was a 2012/2013 Elantra, wish I’d known about the recall.
The ford lightning has been a very good truck for me so far.
Range is a bit less then I would like but having all the plugs and the capacity to move things around are things I use every day.
I got a 2021 Chevy Bolt. Insanely cheap, has worked great. We have the highest trim model, but you can get lower ones with less features.
In the peak of used car nonsense post covid, we traded a 2012 Nissan Sentra (no trim level) with 80k miles for the 2021 Bolt with less than 3k miles. After tax incentives, I think the difference was $2,500. It didn’t make sense at the time and still doesn’t. But people were really afraid of electric cars then.
I don’t recall special EV fear at that time. I recall insanely cheap gas prices in the summer of 2020 and a drastic reduction in commute demand. Once the excess oil was depleted and production hadn’t come back up to speed by like summer of 2021, gas prices shot up. I’m deep in a sub/urban mix, so that affects my experience, I’m sure. While all cars had their market value increase at that point, used EVs and Hybrids had an additional 50%+ markup, comparatively. I was shopping for them and ended up passing on the idea due to excess price. I vaguely remember prices being about $12k for ~2010 Priuses and $5k for 1st gen Leafs with deteoriated 50-mile batteries. I don’t recall Volt/Bolt prices and was already disinterested in Teslas.
I’ve got a first-gen 2017 Chevy Bolt, battery upgraded by recall in the 2nd year we had it (price of being an early adopter). No complaints, no issues beyond having to tape over the chrome on the dashboard so I don’t get blinded.
The only maintenance so far has been tires; brakes last forever thanks to one-pedal driving. Eventually we’ll have to do the regular chassis stuff like bushings and struts, but at 60+k mi we’re still a little ways away from that.
Srsly the best car I’ve ever owned.
Bolts live up to their name too. Much quicker than you’d suspect.
