Electric Vehicles etc

Looking for some life advice (well on EVs at least).

Have a SUV and 4wd. Plan is to shuffle the cars around. plan is EV will be the car doing daily runs. I will inherit the SUV which is mainly used for long MTB trips out in whoop whoop. The 4wd was nice but honestly it was overkill for the roads I drive and inheriting the suv is plenty capable and will save a fair bit of fuel.

Question is the jump to EV will be a fair change and I'm not sure what to buy. Looked at plug in hybrids and that would be great if we only had one car, but I think with two cars a full EV works better (and also trying to get the novated lease subsidies).

So the shortlist is:
- Kia EV3 FWD 58.3kWh ($11,749 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- Kia EV3 FWD LR 81.4kWh ($12,607 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- Kia EV5 FWD Standard 76.1kWh ($13,263 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- Kia EV5 AWD LR 99.8kWh ($13,912 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- BYD Atto 3 Essential 50kWh ($10,353 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- BYD Sealion 7 RWD 82.5kWh ($13,533 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- Toyota BZ4X FWD 74.7kWh ($13,062 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)

Atto is the default choice but it has a pretty small battery and I'm not convinced this is a good move long term (degradation concerns affecting range). We wouldn't be able to take this car on day trips without needing to find chargers etc. However it's cheap and I'll probably hand the car back at end of lease, might even extend to 5 years if that's the case.

The kias are top of my list at the moment, EV3 LR could work for us, will have to look at it in person to see if it is big enough. Otherwise the EV5 is not much more and a bit bigger with a little less range (more than the normal EV3 but less than the LR). The EV5 LR is a monster with almost 100kWh but this just makes the awd more tempting. Car won't be leaving the black stuff, but I've grown used to awd and not sure I can go back to fwd (realise fwd EV is a different beast). That said the massive range of the EV5 could see the main car do more longer drive duties which I'd argue would help the 'business case' for the switch.

Sorry for the dump. But few questions:
- Worth it to pay a little more for bigger battery?
- At what stage does it stop being as important? (i.e. will going from 76kWh to 100kWh make that much difference in real life?)
- FWD or AWD, noting that the other car will likely still do pretty much anything dirt (i.e. remote camping etc).


*also forgot to add some considerations:
- As the main car, the EV will be mostly doing ver shorttrips, maybe max 50km per day to do kid school runs and sports etc.
- The plan is not to install a fast charger at home. Currently the maths suggests we will be able to top up snail charge with a 10A plug and be sufficiently charged most of the time.
- Currently have home solar but no batteries (also consdiering upgrading that)
- Model Y is in the mix, but for some reason my novated lease company doesn't have the numbers for it. Also seems to be lower than the Kia EV5 on the kWh stakes.

Any points tips or flaming welcome.
 
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Mate at work was agonising about Tesla ownership a bit, but decided having his Mum offer him her 2022 Model 3 with 60K kms on it for less than the $20K trade in she'd been offered was too good a deal to pass up. Just need to debadge it and put the bumper sticker on!
 
My other half has a Mini - 55kWh battery. Range is advertised as 405, does 330 on the highway pretty easily with air con running etc, a bit further in town. Turning the air con off adds 10%. Range estimate is very accurate if you put in your destination; will take into account hilly terrain for example. The only time it struggled with this was into a strong headwind.

I intended to fit a wall box but in the end never bothered. We charge it to 80% maybe twice a week overnight on a regular socket which easily covers average driving around Canberra similar to what you describe. If you want to charge making the most off your solar the maths for installing the wall box may stack up.

We take it Sydney a few times a year which just involves a 15 minute stop at the fast charger in each direction if we set off with a full charge so we don't have to charge it when we get there. This has been completely seamless, although I've yet to have to queue for a charger which might change my view a little.

But the whole thing has been a lot easier than I expected really.

In my view the car is over powered for a FWD and there's a lot of torque steer if you step on it. So I'd go with a RWD/AWD. I think Polestar have some deals going at the moment.

If you have a regular car as well I think you'll have no issues at all with an EV.
 
Haakon said:
Mate at work was agonising about Tesla ownership a bit, but decided having his Mum offer him her 2022 Model 3 with 60K kms on it for less than the $20K trade in she'd been offered was too good a deal to pass up. Just need to debadge it and put the bumper sticker on!
Click to expand...
If you don't need a lot of range, or have time up your sleeve and chargers available along your roadtrip routes (and some spare time to allow charging)- used EV's can be such a bargain. Most BEV's with a water-cooled battery pack seem to maintain pretty good battery health over time, and being able to buy tens of thousands of dollars cheaper is probably better than marginal gains of of some tax savings at purchase time.
 
beeb said:
used EV's can be such a bargain
Click to expand...
I'm firmly in the used car camp. New cars are such a rip, would happily novate lease a used EV.

Those BZ4x toyotas are stupid cheap used - can be had for $40k with zero kays on them. Is there somethign wrong with them?
 
beeb said:
If you don't need a lot of range, or have time up your sleeve and chargers available along your roadtrip routes (and some spare time to allow charging)- used EV's can be such a bargain. Most BEV's with a water-cooled battery pack seem to maintain pretty good battery health over time, and being able to buy tens of thousands of dollars cheaper is probably better than marginal gains of of some tax savings at purchase time.
Click to expand...
He has a Navara for his boat and longer trips, and this will be his wife commuting across Hobart. Pretty ideal.
 
Calvin27 said:
I'm firmly in the used car camp. New cars are such a rip, would happily novate lease a used EV.

Those BZ4x toyotas are stupid cheap used - can be had for $40k with zero kays on them. Is there somethign wrong with them?
Click to expand...
Nothing terribly wrong with a BZ4x, just not a very good effort by Toyota - poor value and performance if buying new at retail price. Treat them like a Leaf - not cutting edge by any stretch, but at the right price and aware of its limitations it would be a good thing.
 
Calvin27 said:
Looking for some life advice (well on EVs at least).

Have a SUV and 4wd. Plan is to shuffle the cars around. plan is EV will be the car doing daily runs. I will inherit the SUV which is mainly used for long MTB trips out in whoop whoop. The 4wd was nice but honestly it was overkill for the roads I drive and inheriting the suv is plenty capable and will save a fair bit of fuel.

Question is the jump to EV will be a fair change and I'm not sure what to buy. Looked at plug in hybrids and that would be great if we only had one car, but I think with two cars a full EV works better (and also trying to get the novated lease subsidies).

So the shortlist is:
- Kia EV3 FWD 58.3kWh ($11,749 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- Kia EV3 FWD LR 81.4kWh ($12,607 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- Kia EV5 FWD Standard 76.1kWh ($13,263 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- Kia EV5 AWD LR 99.8kWh ($13,912 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- BYD Atto 3 Essential 50kWh ($10,353 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- BYD Sealion 7 RWD 82.5kWh ($13,533 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- Toyota BZ4X FWD 74.7kWh ($13,062 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)

Atto is the default choice but it has a pretty small battery and I'm not convinced this is a good move long term (degradation concerns affecting range). We wouldn't be able to take this car on day trips without needing to find chargers etc. However it's cheap and I'll probably hand the car back at end of lease, might even extend to 5 years if that's the case.

The kias are top of my list at the moment, EV3 LR could work for us, will have to look at it in person to see if it is big enough. Otherwise the EV5 is not much more and a bit bigger with a little less range (more than the normal EV3 but less than the LR). The EV5 LR is a monster with almost 100kWh but this just makes the awd more tempting. Car won't be leaving the black stuff, but I've grown used to awd and not sure I can go back to fwd (realise fwd EV is a different beast). That said the massive range of the EV5 could see the main car do more longer drive duties which I'd argue would help the 'business case' for the switch.

Sorry for the dump. But few questions:
- Worth it to pay a little more for bigger battery?
- At what stage does it stop being as important? (i.e. will going from 76kWh to 100kWh make that much difference in real life?)
- FWD or AWD, noting that the other car will likely still do pretty much anything dirt (i.e. remote camping etc).


*also forgot to add some considerations:
- As the main car, the EV will be mostly doing ver shorttrips, maybe max 50km per day to do kid school runs and sports etc.
- The plan is not to install a fast charger at home. Currently the maths suggests we will be able to top up snail charge with a 10A plug and be sufficiently charged most of the time.
- Currently have home solar but no batteries (also consdiering upgrading that)
- Model Y is in the mix, but for some reason my novated lease company doesn't have the numbers for it. Also seems to be lower than the Kia EV5 on the kWh stakes.

Any points tips or flaming welcome.
Click to expand...
I like EVs as much as anyone but have you looked at the actual operating costs of a suitable vehicle rather than simply repayments? Or am I the only one spending my own money around here?

We looked hard at an EV3 LR at AgQuip this year. It's not inspiring but it's big enough for a family car and the range is not to be sneezed at. The lack of spare tyre is a pain in the arse. But at least there's room for one.
 
I bought a second hand hyundai ioniq 6 for 30k about a month ago and a i love it.
Mostly just bought it because the price was right for the fbt rebate vs continuing to fuel my ancient triton.
I really dislike all the safety features, but everything else is awesome. Its the bottom grade single engine version, and its so rapid that for a minute there i thought the dealership had somehow mistaken it for a twin engined one.
 
silentbutdeadly said:
I like EVs as much as anyone but have you looked at the actual operating costs of a suitable vehicle rather than simply repayments? Or am I the only one spending my own money around here?
Click to expand...

Yeah the numbers are tricky but effectively would go on a novated lease for about 4 years (maybe 5, not so much because of the payment but because the residuals are more favorable at year 5 when most of the depreciation has already happened). In terms of cash flow, accounting for everything including fuel, maintenance insurance rego etc, it comes out at around $4k more per year compared to BAU (approx $10-12k out of pocket per year vs about $6k running the current car). The residuals would be paid with the cash from the proceeds of the car we sold in the first place. The other thing is the car is getting tired and will likely need expensive service items in the next few years. The numbers work, I'm more thinking about what happens at the end of the lease - probably get stuck in lease trap and lease another car but the FBT discount would probably be gone by then.
 
Calvin27 said:
Looking for some life advice (well on EVs at least).

Have a SUV and 4wd. Plan is to shuffle the cars around. plan is EV will be the car doing daily runs. I will inherit the SUV which is mainly used for long MTB trips out in whoop whoop. The 4wd was nice but honestly it was overkill for the roads I drive and inheriting the suv is plenty capable and will save a fair bit of fuel.

Question is the jump to EV will be a fair change and I'm not sure what to buy. Looked at plug in hybrids and that would be great if we only had one car, but I think with two cars a full EV works better (and also trying to get the novated lease subsidies).

So the shortlist is:
- Kia EV3 FWD 58.3kWh ($11,749 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- Kia EV3 FWD LR 81.4kWh ($12,607 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- Kia EV5 FWD Standard 76.1kWh ($13,263 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- Kia EV5 AWD LR 99.8kWh ($13,912 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- BYD Atto 3 Essential 50kWh ($10,353 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- BYD Sealion 7 RWD 82.5kWh ($13,533 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)
- Toyota BZ4X FWD 74.7kWh ($13,062 per year out of pocket, 4 yr lease)

Atto is the default choice but it has a pretty small battery and I'm not convinced this is a good move long term (degradation concerns affecting range). We wouldn't be able to take this car on day trips without needing to find chargers etc. However it's cheap and I'll probably hand the car back at end of lease, might even extend to 5 years if that's the case.

The kias are top of my list at the moment, EV3 LR could work for us, will have to look at it in person to see if it is big enough. Otherwise the EV5 is not much more and a bit bigger with a little less range (more than the normal EV3 but less than the LR). The EV5 LR is a monster with almost 100kWh but this just makes the awd more tempting. Car won't be leaving the black stuff, but I've grown used to awd and not sure I can go back to fwd (realise fwd EV is a different beast). That said the massive range of the EV5 could see the main car do more longer drive duties which I'd argue would help the 'business case' for the switch.

Sorry for the dump. But few questions:
- Worth it to pay a little more for bigger battery?
- At what stage does it stop being as important? (i.e. will going from 76kWh to 100kWh make that much difference in real life?)
- FWD or AWD, noting that the other car will likely still do pretty much anything dirt (i.e. remote camping etc).


*also forgot to add some considerations:
- As the main car, the EV will be mostly doing ver shorttrips, maybe max 50km per day to do kid school runs and sports etc.
- The plan is not to install a fast charger at home. Currently the maths suggests we will be able to top up snail charge with a 10A plug and be sufficiently charged most of the time.
- Currently have home solar but no batteries (also consdiering upgrading that)
- Model Y is in the mix, but for some reason my novated lease company doesn't have the numbers for it. Also seems to be lower than the Kia EV5 on the kWh stakes.

Any points tips or flaming welcome.
Click to expand...
If you do plan on using the car for longer trips, I would personally go with largest range possible. Especially if going a duel motor car. It's very easy to use that extra power and by nature are not as efficient as the singe motor cars even if trying to drive efficiently.

I drive a duel motor 84kwh and still find it a pain on occasion for longer MTB trips, especially once loaded up with bikes on the roof. Just falls short of a return day trip without needing a top up.

My wife has a single motor 66.5kwh, that is much easier to drive efficiently to max the range out. Despite it being an SUV vs my sedan.
 
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Calvin27 said:
Yeah the numbers are tricky but effectively would go on a novated lease for about 4 years (maybe 5, not so much because of the payment but because the residuals are more favorable at year 5 when most of the depreciation has already happened). In terms of cash flow, accounting for everything including fuel, maintenance insurance rego etc, it comes out at around $4k more per year compared to BAU (approx $10-12k out of pocket per year vs about $6k running the current car). The residuals would be paid with the cash from the proceeds of the car we sold in the first place. The other thing is the car is getting tired and will likely need expensive service items in the next few years. The numbers work, I'm more thinking about what happens at the end of the lease - probably get stuck in lease trap and lease another car but the FBT discount would probably be gone by then.
Click to expand...
Similar path to what I have just gone through. 5 year lease and will still have warranty/pre paid service after this so see where the tech is and whether to re-lease or pay out and hold onto for a few more years. Also see how the car is holding up as well being a new brand to Aus.
 
Calvin27 said:
Atto is the default choice but it has a pretty small battery and I'm not convinced this is a good move long term (degradation concerns affecting range).
Click to expand...
Bigger battery is betterer.... But don't worry about degradation. I am 62,000kms in with my Seal and last full charge I had prediction of range had dropped by 3 kilometres.
80kWh should be fine.
I have rwd so cannot comment on the awd but it is fine.
Range anxiety you will get over.
The cars are good, I am sure they will all be fine.
Mine is great, love the Seal.
I have roof racks on mine for the MTBs and the drag is easy to live with.
I went a 3 year lease and will extend and then maybe buy unless I can get something for trade in.
Insurance is not heaps more - just shop around.
 
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Chriso_29er said:
If you do plan on using the car for longer trips, I would personally go with largest range possible. Especially if going a duel motor car. It's very easy to use that extra power and by nature are not as efficient as the singe motor cars even if trying to drive efficiently.
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I'm in brainstorming mode right now. I think the primary use will be local runs, maybe some family trips, but unlikely to ever carry a mtb as I will use whatever car I get left with for mtb trips. Dpending on how broke I am after this ordeal (also getting home battery and air con upgrade) I may sell both cars and get a diesel 4wd for that sort of thing.

indica said:
Bigger battery is betterer.... But don't worry about degradation. I am 62,000kms in with my Seal and last full charge I had prediction of range had dropped by 3 kilometres.
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Yeah good to note. I think I am ok with fwd, but based on the leasing numbers, once you hit a about $250pw it's not much more to get the awd version which also usually has longer range.
 
Down to the last 2:

Sealion 7 RWD / Sealion 7 awd (add pretty much nothing but awd and a way faster launch time)
Tesla model Y RWD.

Specs aside, my main uncertainty is what happens at end of lease. I am still undecided if I will keep the car at the end of 5 years or sell it. So basically the car with better resale prospects will win. Tesla has more market brand value but the BYD will hae an extra year of warranty. Tesla pretty much don't do expensive services, but BYD charges like a wounded bull (not a problem during lease but will b if I decide to keep it). Thoughts?

On a side note how the heck does Tesla get away without a HUD or some kind of in front display of the speedo? Surely this does not meet ADR having to look to the main screen off the side?

On another side not, if you are trying to buy something cheaper, the mG S5 is absolutely ridiculous value.
 
Calvin27 said:
Specs aside, my main uncertainty is what happens at end of lease. I am still undecided if I will keep the car at the end of 5 years or sell it.
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I had that thought and still do.
Resale is really not a lot so I will re-lease and then keep I guess?
Tech is changing too but how fast?

I like the car too so happy to keep and run it until it dies I guess?
 
indica said:
I like the car too so happy to keep and run it until it dies I guess?
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Even then I'm not sure. Tesla will sting you less for servicing (there is technically no servicing) but the insurance costs more. The BYD has cheaper insurance but has ridiculous annual serviing to the tune of $800 each shot (to do nothing but look at the car lol)
 
servicing is for any evs bar tesla's seem to be just a gigantic rip off to maintain your warranty.

realistically most, if not all evs could easily get away with one major service every 3 years.
 
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