HU004 How A Tesla Will Change Your Life

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We try to understand what all the electric vehicle talk is about, if an EV is a good fit for you, and explain why we are buying one as our next car.

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Daniel
0:00:00–0:00:08
Are you in the market for a new car and considering an electric vehicle or are you just wondering what all the fuss is about? We will tell you on this episode of Happily Unmarried.
0:00:10–0:00:11
My name is Daniel.
Danielle
0:00:11–0:00:13
And my name is Danielle.
Daniel
0:00:13–0:00:17
You listening to the Happily Unmarried podcast. A podcast about adulting and living your best life.
Danielle
0:00:18–0:00:26
In this episode we will try to understand what all the electric vehicle talk is about, If an EV is a good fit for you, and explain why we are buying one is our next car.
Daniel
0:00:27–0:00:38
Visit happilyunmarried.media/support to learn how you can support our podcast. So, we recently brought your Kia Soul into the garage for a smog check and they had to do a bunch of repairs it turned out.
0:00:39–0:00:43
The total cost of those repairs would have exceeded the remaining value of the car, correct?
Danielle
0:00:43–0:00:48
Correct, so economically it really doesn't make a lot of sense to make the repairs.
Daniel
0:00:49–0:00:58
Yeah and we also already knew that, we have two 5 seat cars and we knew that those most likely wouldn't provide enough space for 3 adults and
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two children with child seats and that is a situation that we will face starting later this summer when our Au Pair starts. So eventually, we would need to buy a larger car anyway.
Danielle
0:01:09–0:01:19
So after some discussion, we decided that we would not invest that money into my existing car but instead start looking for a new car.
Daniel
0:01:19–0:01:31
So now one of the questions that we knew we have to answer was,should we buy an electric vehicle? For short, EV or a regular gas car also known as internal combustion engine or, ICE car.
Danielle
0:01:32–0:01:41
I mean, you are somewhat of an EV fanboy, specifically when it comes to Tesla, you already drive a model 3.
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So
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I on the other hand was a little skeptical. I'd heard a lot of things about EV's that made me doubt whether this would be a good choice for us and our family when it was
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just you and your car that's one thing but now we're talking about a car for the for all of us.
Daniel
0:01:58–0:02:02
Right, so let's talk about those, can you share some examples?
Danielle
0:02:03–0:02:05
Sure so you know we
0:02:05–0:02:17
discussed this a lot and you know one of the first things that I think was a bit concerning for me was just how long it takes to charge an electronic vehicle. I didn't want to,
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spend a ton or our waste of time, I should say, charging a vehicle when I could be out running errands doing things that I need to be doing, specifically on the weekend.
Daniel
0:02:27–0:02:29
Let me address this,
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when we're talking about charging EV's there's three different levels of chargers. There's level 1 chargers, which is basically just plugging in your car into a normal outlet normal socket. Then there's level 2 chargers which is basically equivalent to a washer dryer outlet.
0:02:43–0:02:51
So it's 240 volts and there's level 3 chargers, you've maybe heard of Tesla superchargers right. And it's true that,
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on a level 1 or level 2 charger it'll take a very long time to charge a car, on a level one charger it can literally taking an entire day to get any significant amount of range. On a level 2 charger it will be 6 hours maybe something like that, a night, to fully charge a car.
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and most people when they buy an electric vehicle a level 2 charger is what they will have at home. So you get an electrician to install an outlet for your car in your garage on your driveway so basically,
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charging a car on a level 2 charger takes quite a while,
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so there's this misconception that you drive your car until it runs out of battery right and then you instead of going to the gas station,
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like with a ICE car you then have to seek out the charging station or plug it in at home or whatever.
Danielle
0:03:33–0:03:40
So you mentioned getting a charger installed in the house so you're after
0:03:40–0:03:54
discussion and understanding that that we would have a way to charge a vehicle at home. I was able to understand that rather than driving it and then charging it up we could essentially charge it like you would charge your phone every night
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pulling into the driveway or into the garage, plug it in, go into the house, go about your business, in the morning the car is charged.
Daniel
0:04:01–0:04:14
Yes so you will never have a car that runs out of battery basically. With a ICE car you have to do that, what weekly trip to the gas station to fill up your tank? With an electric car you will have to never go back to a gas station again.
Danielle
0:04:15–0:04:30
So once we tackled the issue charging at home, my next question was, what about when we go on trips? You know I understand that we can charge our car but how many electric chargers are there really available,
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throughout the country if we were to say go on a road trip.
Daniel
0:04:33–0:04:42
So yeah so when you go on the road trip and your car with a full battery has depending on the car has a 200, 250, 300 mile range,
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and as you approach that limit your battery runs out and you will have to charge if your destinations is further than that. And so there are level 3,
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chargers throughout the country and most prominently there's the Tesla Supercharger Network. That network alone, they have 1500 supercharger locations and there's a more than 12,000
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charging spots on all the stations. So they're ready readily available on along all major highways and traffic routes as well as an urban area.
Danielle
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Right and then we actually got the chance to try one.
Daniel
0:05:17–0:05:27
Right we got the chance to try one and I think the interesting tidbit here is I have my car since approximately 9 months,
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and I only had to use a supercharger and wait a couple minutes, 20 minutes for my car to charge a single time and that was,
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more for trying it out.
Danielle
0:05:38–0:05:42
Right we just decide to stop and get a coffee so we figured let's see how this goes.
Daniel
0:05:41–0:05:42
So
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the reality is that for most especially for commuters and people that use their their car locally, a lot locally, that don't have to do a lot of road trips, you will probably never ever have to go and charge your car anywhere than at home when you get home in the evening.
Danielle
0:05:57–0:06:09
Yeah and I have to say that I was pretty impressed with how easy it was to charge it when we were on the road and that it was conveniently located you know near Starbucks and we were able to go kill some time, while the car charged.
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I think another misconception or miss information I've received was just around the performance of electronic vehicles and.
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comparing it to, say a golf cart.
Daniel
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actually,
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EVs perform very well compared to most ICE cars. Primarily this is because the way their engine, the electric motor is able to transfer torque,
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on to the wheels so it with a normal gas car,
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the gas car needs to spin up the engine to a certain RPM before you can really feel the power and that's not true for the electric vehicle. That it gets all the torque immediately,
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so when you put down the metal and then in an electric vehicle like you get thrown back in your car and you can immediately feel all that acceleration kicking in. There's a lot of videos on the internet of people sitting on Tesla's,
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They refer to it as the Tesla smile, the when the person puts down there the accelerator and it's not a gas pedal.
Danielle
0:07:14–0:07:18
Yes I refer to it as a gas pedal all the time.
Daniel
0:07:18–0:07:25
People just, you suddenly see a smile on their face and you can see how unexpected,
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the acceleration is. So just to give a couple of cornerstone numbers for sample the model 3 long range.
Danielle
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And that's what you have.
Daniel
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Yes that's the car that I drive it has 0 to 60 time of 4.4 seconds and horsepower of 367. If you want to look at
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the performance Spectrum. There's a performance Model 3, that has 0 to 60 time of 3.2 seconds and horsepower 473 in,
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that 0 to 60 time is quite significant and than you can get the high performance Model S and that's basically at the moment the best performing Tesla that you can buy,
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and that has a 0 to 60 time of 2.4 seconds and the total horsepower of 762.
Danielle
0:08:13–0:08:16
Clearly Teslas perform well but what about other electronic vehicles.
Daniel
0:08:16–0:08:30
One other data point for an example, the Chevy bolt has a 0 to 60 time of 6.5 seconds and 200 horsepower. But that's more comparable to maybe a two door Camry or something like that.
Danielle
0:08:30–0:08:36
I mean, again this was kind of a miss information
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this was a misconception for me before myself driving an electric vehicle. I mean my current little Kia is The Little Engine That Could. That baby can barely get up the hill so,
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putting the pedal to the metal in your Model 3 was definitely, is it's a fun car to drive.
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So then one other thing too, that kind of relates to you know having to charge while on road trips was how many times am I going to have to charge it?
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you know I remember hearing something a while back, you could only go 50 miles in an electric car before you had to pull over engine charge it.
Daniel
0:09:13–0:09:14
So
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a lot of the plug-in hybrids the battery has a, they have a battery only range of 50, 80 100 miles something like that. But if we are talking about battery electric vehicles,
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the modern cars today,
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they start out at range of 200 miles or more. So Telsas out perform most of the electric vehicles in range as well. But even none Teslas can easily achieve 200 miles or more. So my model 3 long-range has a range of,
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310 miles, the long range Model S has a range of 370 miles.
Danielle
0:09:54–0:10:02
So realistically what you're saying is we could get from San Francisco to LA and only have to charge your car once.
Daniel
0:10:03–0:10:15
So for the vast majority of people the range that electric vehicles provide these days is more than enough to cover the daily driving. Most people don't have,
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100 mile commute one way. For most people this will be enough to commute to work and back, as well as run any errands or whatever in the evening that they need to and then they just park the car plug it in and the next day it's,
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to full charge.
Danielle
0:10:30–0:10:43
And then I think the I don't even really know how this came to be but this idea that an electric vehicles worse for the environment than a standard vehicle.
Daniel
0:10:43–0:10:51
Yeah this is important right because a lot of people buying an electric vehicle one of the main reasons they do so is,
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because it is better for the environment and so if it was true that it wasn't that would be a big bummer for other people and there have been some studies.
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Come to the conclusion that electric vehicles have a worse CO2 carbon dioxide balance than gas cars and,
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all of these studies they are based on incorrect data they make assumptions that are not correct.
Danielle
0:11:18–0:11:21
to the production of the vehicle?
Daniel
0:11:21–0:11:36
So there's two main arguments basically. Is A the EV requires more CO2 emissions during the production process and so over its lifetime it's reduced CO2 emission during its lifetime does not.
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Offset that again and the other argument is that when you plug in your EV in the evening at home,
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you are basically pulling power out of the electric grid and that power needs to be produced somehow and in a lot areas in this world it there's a large amount of coal energy in that and renewables have a small percentage of that,
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so basically you're powering your car with a coal power plant. All of that said there are,
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more recent studies that clearly show that this is not the case. So even if you put the worst electricity that you can buy in a public grid in the US into your car it will still burn.
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Better than a gas car. In addition to that the.
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production CO2 emissions of an electric vehicle are slightly higher than that of a gas car because the batteries require
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battery production requires a lot. But it's only very little and the reduced CO2 emissions during the last time of the electric vehicle far offsets that.
0:12:44–0:12:50
I will leave some links in the description below to those studies and rebukes of those studies.
Danielle
0:12:50–0:13:02
And then so I think the last thing this is probably the thing that held me up the most of the guys I drive a Kia Soul, that cars like $15,000.
0:13:03–0:13:10
Brand new everyone, not currently, was just the expense of an electric vehicle.
Daniel
0:13:10–0:13:23
That's probably also the best argument frankly the cheapest electric vehicle is a mid tier car so you cannot buy a $15,000 EV.
Danielle
0:13:23–0:13:29
I'm not getting an all electric Kia Soul?
Daniel
0:13:26–0:13:35
Well actually they have all electric Kia Souls. But I don't know what they cost, but I'm sure they're more than $15,000.
0:13:37–0:13:47
But the model 3 starts at approximately $36,000 the Chevy Bolt I think in the same range. That is not cheap but it is
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approximately in line with what Americans on average spend on new cars. So it's not completely out of the.
Danielle
0:13:56–0:13:57
Range of possibility.
Daniel
0:13:57–0:14:03
you can spend significantly more on an EV than that, like any other car.
Danielle
0:14:05–0:14:06
It goes up from there.
Daniel
0:14:06–0:14:15
Just to be clear for most EVst hat you by today, you still get federal tax incentives as well as get a tax credit.
0:14:16–0:14:26
$7,500 or lower depending on the manufacturer it's a little complicated I don't want to go in detail right now to it,
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you should figure out if you are interested in buying an EV what the tax credit would be for yourself and the obviously gas savings. You don't need to pay for gas anymore. Electricity is not free but it's significantly cheaper in terms off dollar per mile then,
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what you would have to put into your ICE car. So you over that's lifetime you will save a lot of money on gas.
Danielle
0:14:47–0:14:49
And the overall maintenance of the car too.
Daniel
0:14:49–0:14:56
Right actually I think this is probably a good transition even into the next section. So what are some of the benefits of an EV.
0:14:56–0:15:09
Compared to a ICE car and low maintenance is definitely one of them. An electric motor has significantly less moving parts than a gas motor has and so there's a bunch of stuff that you simply don't have to do with an EV,
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so you don't have to go and get your oil changed there's no transmission that can break down there's no crank shaft.
Danielle
0:15:15–0:15:17
Fan belts that you have to replace.
Daniel
0:15:18–0:15:32
In fact Tesla has recently announced that you don't have to bring their cars in for regular maintenance at all anymore. So they're so confident in the longevity of the engine in them. They basically,
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don't require you to have check-ups at all anymore.
Danielle
0:15:35–0:15:37
What about your breaks? You still have to get your brakes done.
Daniel
0:15:37–0:15:39
you don't.
Danielle
0:15:39–0:15:41
What are the brakes electric too?
Daniel
0:15:41–0:15:44
Yes and they charge the car when you break.
Danielle
0:15:44–0:15:50
So you never have to get your brakes done rear or.. OK I just learned something new.
Daniel
0:15:49–0:15:57
So electric vehicles have what's called regenerative braking when you release the foot from the gas,
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now I did it as well, from the accelerator, the car will immediately.. So basically, in the motor you have your magnets and if you stopped accelerating those magnets will start,
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taking velocity energy out of the vehicle and,
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putting it back into the battery, So basically the car slows down and charges the battery doing so. There's no mechanical parts touching each other doing this so this is simply magnetism slowing down the car and charging a battery. So what happens is the,
0:16:27–0:16:34
car functions more economically and you don't have any wear and tear on any breaks or anything like that.
Danielle
0:16:34–0:16:38
Okay so I literally just learned something new,
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what you're telling me is we don't have to do any maintenance on the car. Because, I was under the impression that while yes it's an electronic,
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motor there were still other parts on the vehicle that would have to get serviced. I never fully, I mean, I understood what regenerative braking was in that it charged the vehicle but I didn't understand how it did it. I didn't realize that it wasn't,
0:17:01–0:17:05
an actual break which as you explain it makes sense now.
Daniel
0:17:06–0:17:12
So I briefly talked about that there's no transmission in the car that needs to get serviced Another thing,
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another benefit of this is that there's no transmission tunnel in the car either so that is in most ICE cars you have that,
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with a center console sits and where the middle seat in the back row is you have that weird little hump and makes it very uncomfortable to sit in the center seat,
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with electric vehicles you generally don't have that because there is no transmission and if there's rear wheel drive.
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you generally have a second motor or the motor directly in the back. The electric motors, they're so small they're the size of a shoebox maybe two shoe boxes or something you can just put the motor where the wheels are so that gives you a lot of more space in the back.
0:17:51–0:17:52
comfortable sit there.
Danielle
0:17:52–0:18:02
Have a question or something to say, join the community discussion by following us on Twitter @unmarriedmedia use hashtag hu004 to discuss this episode.
Daniel
0:18:03–0:18:05
We touched on the fuel cost.
0:18:06–0:18:16
So it depends a little bit on your car's efficiency both the EV as well as the the gas car and it depends on how much you pay for electricity where you live,
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in general across the US EV's are significantly cheaper to fuel then gas cars. So,
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it's easy 50% or more that you will save on fuel even 75% or more, and if you are lucky enough to have solar on your roof,
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you can get away entirely for free with charging your car. There's a pretty neat web app,
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created by Ben Sullins from Teslanomics. You can basically plug your numbers for how much you drive, how much you pay for gas, where you live,
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and it will calculate for you how much money you can save from switching to an EV. I'll put the link in the description for that as well.
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EVs are also incredibly quiet. The engine barely makes any noise. There's no big kind of like explosion firing machine thing in the front of the car.
Danielle
0:19:05–0:19:17
They're freakishly quiet it's like a ninja car. It can sneak up, like yeah you better watch out if you got teens living in your house because they'll easily just sneak that car out of the driveway.
Daniel
0:19:17–0:19:29
Yeah the only thing they can do they can hear is like if you really put down on the accelerator and they go quick you can hear that the hype is kind of like electricity sounds like bzzzzz.
Danielle
0:19:29–0:19:34
If you like our podcast please leave us a review on iTunes and don't forget to subscribe.
0:19:36–0:19:44
So I did mention earlier that you are somewhat of a Tesla Fanboy and I may not know a lot about EVs but I do know that Tesla's are without a doubt,
0:19:44–0:19:52
the best electric vehicles currently out there so I think it makes sense if we talked in detail a little bit about what.
0:19:53–0:19:54
we like about Tesla specifically.
Daniel
0:19:55–0:20:04
I think one of the most important things when looking at Tesla specifically and in the context of other EV's is how far ahead
0:20:04–0:20:12
Teslas are. So the electric motor their battery technology is significantly more efficient, cheaper to produce, more lightweight,
0:20:12–0:20:21
and generally better than that of any other EV automaker out there currently. So they achieve significantly higher efficiency,
0:20:21–0:20:32
There's this this really cool chart that shows battery electric vehicle efficiency compared to each other and Tesla far out performs all the others. I'll put a link in description for that,
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and then Teslas by far have better range, better performance and better charging the battery.
Danielle
0:20:40–0:20:42
So there's the superchargers.
Daniel
0:20:42–0:20:53
So yeah for one Teslas have access to the supercharger network which is a big boon but also they can simply charge faster. One other amazing thing about Tesla,
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and this is true compared to any other automaker out there. Not just other EV auto makers is the fact that they get over the air updates.
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Tesla develops and improves the software that runs in the car,
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so you may have seen like a model 3 has a big center display. In in fact it doesn't have any,
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dashboard all your controls all the current speed,
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your indicator information what not. All of that information is in the center console and so the car runs software runs the infotainment system software,
0:21:31–0:21:33
but it also runs,
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the autopilot software and since the entire motor is entirely electric it's basically just.
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A big piece of software as well.
Danielle
0:21:44–0:21:46
It's a computer on wheels.
Daniel
0:21:45–0:21:52
Right, the entire car is basically a computer on wheels. But the amazing thing about this is now Tesla can actually update,
0:21:52–0:22:04
the car and each of those components that includes the software for the motor the software for the autopilot as well as the infotainment software over the air. So you will wake up one morning and the car will say hey there's an update do you want to install it?
Danielle
0:22:05–0:22:06
And you do it from your phone.
Daniel
0:22:06–0:22:14
yeah so you hit a yes button and then the car installs your update and then you go to your car and it has new software.
Danielle
0:22:14–0:22:28
So it's not going to do what Windows does though and in the middle of driving your car it's going to say time for Windows update and then you say no Tesla I don't want an update and then says sorry we're going to update anyway and then turn off your car.
Daniel
0:22:28–0:22:32
That's not going to do that but this is the thing when you hear,
0:22:32–0:22:38
software update. You think oh yeah, I'll get a new button here in my infotainment system or something right but what it can also do is
0:22:38–0:22:51
again update the software for the autopilot or update the software for the motor. So I have recently installed a software update to the car got in the 5% performance improvement of the car. So my car now it's 5% quicker than it was before,
0:22:51–0:22:53
which is mind-blowing.
Danielle
0:22:51–0:23:02
actually get added value to your vehicle after you've purchased it is pretty much unheard of and non-existent when you're talking about a gas car.
Daniel
0:23:02–0:23:11
Tesla is the only automaker that currently has the ability to do over-the-air software of the car. Every other automaker, if they want to do any software update you have to bring it into the garage.
0:23:13–0:23:23
of the mainstream cars the X the S and the model 3 been rated the safest cars ever so,
0:23:23–0:23:34
they all got a lowest probability of injury in the NHTSA crash tests out performing every other car. So the top three cars on that list,
0:23:34–0:23:36
are all Tesla.
Danielle
0:23:36–0:23:38
Safest vehicles out there.
Daniel
0:23:38–0:23:46
They all have 5-star crash test ratings and because of a lot of their safety features both in terms of structural,
0:23:46–0:24:00
so not having a a motor in the front of the car so basically if you crash another car into a wall there's a big chunk of metal that will like penetrate into the driver cabin and do a lot of damage. No such thing with the Tesla.
0:24:01–0:24:04
Right it jsut crunches and then the battery pack that is in the floor,
0:24:04–0:24:16
is in a very solid rigid case. So it actually absorbs a lot of the impact as well. Then it has a lot of software features, it has automatic emergency braking and stuff like that that increase safety significantly as well.
0:24:17–0:24:23
I'll put a link tosome of this data in the description as well so you can check it out,
0:24:23–0:24:38
in terms off safety features I briefly mentioned the battery pack. The battery pack is really heavy, so in fact electric vehicles in general are significant a heavier than ICE cars because of the batteries and you would assume that this makes the car very sluggish and slow and
0:24:38–0:24:46
not very nice to drive but the reality is that because the battery pack is in the floor it actually has a very very low center of gravity,
0:24:46–0:24:56
and a low center of gravity will actually give the car a much better handling it will give it really nice cornering performance you can fly around corners with a Tesla no problem,
0:24:57–0:25:05
there's actually this video which was from one of the crash tests of a Model X where they they basically accelerate the car sideways,
0:25:06–0:25:12
and a lot of SUVs have this problem that when they, when when they turn onto two wheels it tips over.
0:25:13–0:25:27
his kind of tests that behavior. So the model X is accelerated sideways and basically pushed into a stand bank and it starts tipping over and it stands on two wheels and goes back down again.
Danielle
0:25:26–0:25:28
Because it pulls it down with the weight of the battery.
Daniel
0:25:28–0:25:38
Yeah another great thing about Tesla and I think this is probably the most out there Sci-Fi but also kind of like most amazing thing is there.
0:25:39–0:25:52
The autopilot system. So every Tesla you buy today comes with the autopilot by default. So autopilot basically is a advanced lane keeping assist as well as adaptive cruise control system,
0:25:53–0:25:53
with,
0:25:54–0:26:06
navigate on autopilot which is part of the full self-driving package. It can also do other things, for example, that can automatically overtake traffic on the highway if the other traffic is slower.
Danielle
0:26:06–0:26:12
That means change lanes for my fellow Americans.
Daniel
0:26:13–0:26:15
can change lanes to,
0:26:16–0:26:30
drive around slower traffic and it will navigate for you so you if you put in your destination in the navigation system the car as long as all the roads are highways will automatically take off and transfer road to get,
0:26:30–0:26:37
to the destination that you have typed that you've put in without you needing to do anything. The only thing that you need to do is.
0:26:38–0:26:47
keep your hands on the steering wheel and pay attention because the system right now as it is is not yet full self-driving in the sense of that you can just go asleep or pass out whatever.
Danielle
0:26:47–0:26:59
I think what that we hear a lot of miss information to about electronic vehicles specifically Teslas and autopilot, and kind of that people thinking that that's something that they can do like like sleep and eat and watch,
0:27:00–0:27:07
TV while they're there driving but to ensure that you are driving safely you do need to keep your hands.
0:27:08–0:27:11
On the steering wheel and you need to be alert and aware.
Daniel
0:27:11–0:27:12
That said,
0:27:12–0:27:23
if you commute a lot and I have a 45 to 60 minute commute each direction everyday. It's great, it's so much easier than than driving yourself even if you have to pay attention,
0:27:23–0:27:27
get to work and you are so much more relaxed than if you drove yourself. So all of that said
0:27:27–0:27:41
the car technically has all the hardware to do full self-driving. Meaning you can pass out in the car and you do not have to pay attention. So it has all the sensors that are required for it,
0:27:41–0:27:43
as well as,
0:27:43–0:27:57
the newer model 3, Model S, Model X they have an upgrade computer system that is 10 times more capable than the previous computer system that has also the processing power to deliver on this. So Tesla is currently working on this,
0:27:57–0:28:03
and have announced that they want to roll this out with an over-the-air software update by the end of the year,
0:28:03–0:28:09
they're obviously still legal limitations and Tesla is notoriously known for,
0:28:09–0:28:13
missing its own deadlines so maybe it'll be next year instead of this year.
Danielle
0:28:13–0:28:16
Under-delivering over-promising.
Daniel
0:28:16–0:28:26
Exactly but this is going to come and it'll be game-changing and mind-blowing. This will allow you to do incredible things,
0:28:26–0:28:34
for example we have this problem where you need to take your car to the train station everyday and then you park it and it sits there for the entire day,
0:28:34–0:28:44
costing you money because you have to pay for that parking and then you get home the evening to drive it back home so you drive it like for 2 miles a day or 3 miles,
0:28:44–0:28:52
the car is being used the entire day. Switch in full self driving, you get into your car, and if you fancy you drive yourself to the train station,
0:28:52–0:29:06
but instead of parking it, you just drive up at the train station, you get out and the car and it drives back home by itself. Now, I who leaves the house a little bit later can take the car to work basically what it does, it improve the utilization of the cars that you have,
0:29:07–0:29:17
a lot of families have two or three cars these days. With something like this you can probably get away with only one or maybe two cars for most families.
0:29:18–0:29:21
We talked about all these benefits of.
0:29:22–0:29:31
the EVs and Teslas in general but driving the Tesla, the one thing that it will do for the rest of your life and it's the one thing that,
0:29:31–0:29:33
nobody will ever be able to give back to you again.
Danielle
0:29:33–0:29:38
And this is what you struggled with the most I think when we talked about needing to buy a new car.
Daniel
0:29:38–0:29:52
Right is it will completely spoil the driving experience of any other car than an EV for you. If you've driven an EV for a couple of weeks and you get back into a gas car you like,
0:29:52–0:29:53
what is this shit.
0:29:55–0:30:04
Join us next time and we'll discuss Au Pairs and the value that they add to your family. To not miss that or any other episode subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or wherever else you listen to podcasts.
Danielle
0:30:04–0:30:09
In the end we decided you know based off all this information and the discussions that we had that we're going to go ahead and,
0:30:09–0:30:21
look to purchase an electric vehicle however we were then confronted with the fact that we want a very specific configuration of being able to fit three adults and two children in a car.
Daniel
0:30:21–0:30:29
And so we looked at the options in the EV market for crossover SUVs with 6 seats or more,
0:30:29–0:30:36
and it turned out that all the crossover SUVs that are on the market are coming to the market soon in the EV Market that is,
0:30:37–0:30:43
none of them have 6 seats or more with one notable exception which is the Tesla Model X,
0:30:44–0:30:48
that's why we decided to move forward and buy Model X.
Danielle
0:30:48–0:30:55
Yeah but before you go and put in your order for your EV there are a couple things that you should consider.
Daniel
0:30:56–0:31:04
Yeah so we talked about a bunch of the preconceptions and they generally don't stand up to scrutiny but there are a couple of things that.
0:31:05–0:31:18
differentiate EVs from normal gas cars. If you've never bought one before you may not know what you should be looking for and what you should keep in mind. So we want to briefly go over some of those things so that you do not get blindsided by any of them.
Danielle
0:31:18–0:31:27
So one of the first things that you'll want to consider when you're shopping around for an electric vehicle is just the overall range so two hundred miles or more,
0:31:28–0:31:40
should be enough. If you feel that 200 miles or more are not enough you will want to go with a longer range options. So for example that you know the Model S long-range would cover that,
0:31:40–0:31:47
the other thing would be you know your ability to charge your car at home you'll want to install some kind of,
0:31:47–0:31:51
charger whether that's in the driveway or in your garage.
Daniel
0:31:52–0:31:59
I think this is this one is the important one. If you do not have the ability to charge your car at home owning an EV become significantly more cumbersome,
0:31:59–0:32:10
so if you do not have a garage or driveway and maybe you have a shared parking spot or something. Maybe you you live in an apartment you can always try to get your,
0:32:10–0:32:24
landlord's to convince them to install EV charging but if you do not have the ability at all to charge at home or some people have the ability to charge at work so if you don't have a convenient place to charge daily the EV option,
0:32:24–0:32:26
may not be the right choice.
Danielle
0:32:26–0:32:38
But if you do have a place to install a charging unit then an electrician can come and easily install a 240-volt outlet or wall charger for a couple hundred dollars.
Daniel
0:32:38–0:32:52
Another aspect that you want to consider is if your EV supports DC fast-charging. So that's the level 3 charging that we talked about briefly earlier if you ever want to go on a road trip or exceed,
0:32:52–0:33:01
the rated range of your vehicle in a single day without being able to park it for the night and charge it for the night you will need DC fast charging,
0:33:01–0:33:13
and not all electric vehicle support that. For some they don't support it at all, some have it as an upgrade as an option, that said Teslas, all of them support DC fast-charging in addition to that,
0:33:14–0:33:20
Teslas also have access to the Tesla Supercharger Network which is the largest and most.
0:33:21–0:33:30
accessible fast charging option in the world. The last thing, if you want to buy a Tesla please use our referral code,
0:33:31–0:33:42
t'll give you a thousand miles of free supercharging. Actually will give both of us, you guys and us, a thousand miles of free super charging and a chance to win a another Tesla,
0:33:42–0:33:48
so I'll put the referral link in the description below we would love if you could do that.
Danielle
0:33:49–0:33:54
So thanks a lot for letting us inform you a little bit about Tesla's and EVs in general.
Daniel
0:33:54–0:34:01
Are you considering buying an EV or even already driving one? What do you like best about them? let us know on Twitter @unmarriedmedia.
Danielle
0:34:02–0:34:09
And if your batteries haven't run out yet make sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
Daniel
0:34:10–0:34:11
I am Daniel.
Danielle
0:34:11–0:34:13
And I'm Danielle and we're Happily Unmarried.
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