3 ms·

This is the barrier for me too— my family lives in a walkable, downtown community and our overall driving is 5-10k km/yr. It would be fun to have an EV, but fro

This is the barrier for me too— my family lives in a walkable, downtown community and our overall driving is 5-10k km/yr. It would be fun to have an EV, but from both a $$ and eco point of view, I think if you're already committed to a low car lifestyle, your best option for some time yet is to carry on buying lower-efficiency vehicles that are at least 4 years old. This prevents an existing vehicle (for which the carbon cost to manufacture it is sunk) from being abandoned, but using it as a backup vehicle means it won't be driven more than a minimum, and having your gas be "expensive" on a per-km basis creates the proper incentives to avoid driving except where necessary.

emj 6y ago
Just commit and sell the car, our driving was about double that and we do not miss it a bit now. Still drive about 1000 km/year in rentals, but we are trying to minimize that.. It's especially nice as a family to primarly transport yourself in other ways were you get to spend time together interacting freely instead of being stuck in a car. Economically it's more or less the same, but a better quality of life.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  We've thought about it. One of the main barriers is honestly the combo of a) out of town family and b) young children. Installing carseats and boosters in a rental is a giant pain, and the train/coach schedules aren't dense enough to permit a reliable day trip to a location that's a 60-90 minute drive away. We do have another family in our circle are are carfree and they make it work with a combination of rentals and every now and then they borrow our car in exchange for babysitting and other favours.
  - olau 6y ago
    Depends on the seats. We have seats that you just put in. They are held in place by the seatbelt. So there's a bit of extra carrying the seats, that's all. We bought them because they were top scoring in a crash safety test.
    - mikepurvis 6y ago
      The real gap is with short-term car shares where you want to walk to the car, do your errand, and then walk home. Most carseats aren't great for being carried on foot or taken on public transit. So that leaves you with only doing rentals when the time period is long enough to make it "worth it" to bring the car home on either end of the trip for seats in/out.
UncleOxidant 6y ago
We're in a similar situation. Can walk to everything we need so we only end up driving about 3500 miles (about 5KM) per year. I've got an old 98 Honda civic which "only" has about 130K miles on it (meaning it's good for at least another 70K miles) and still runs great. I can't justify the expense of an EV given these criteria, though I'm looking forward to getting one someday.

emj 6y ago

Just commit and sell the car, our driving was about double that and we do not miss it a bit now. Still drive about 1000 km/year in rentals, but we are trying to minimize that.. It's especially nice as a family to primarly transport yourself in other ways were you get to spend time together interacting freely instead of being stuck in a car. Economically it's more or less the same, but a better quality of life.

mikepurvis 6y ago
We've thought about it. One of the main barriers is honestly the combo of a) out of town family and b) young children. Installing carseats and boosters in a rental is a giant pain, and the train/coach schedules aren't dense enough to permit a reliable day trip to a location that's a 60-90 minute drive away. We do have another family in our circle are are carfree and they make it work with a combination of rentals and every now and then they borrow our car in exchange for babysitting and other favours.
- olau 6y ago
  Depends on the seats. We have seats that you just put in. They are held in place by the seatbelt. So there's a bit of extra carrying the seats, that's all. We bought them because they were top scoring in a crash safety test.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    The real gap is with short-term car shares where you want to walk to the car, do your errand, and then walk home. Most carseats aren't great for being carried on foot or taken on public transit. So that leaves you with only doing rentals when the time period is long enough to make it "worth it" to bring the car home on either end of the trip for seats in/out.

UncleOxidant 6y ago

We're in a similar situation. Can walk to everything we need so we only end up driving about 3500 miles (about 5KM) per year. I've got an old 98 Honda civic which "only" has about 130K miles on it (meaning it's good for at least another 70K miles) and still runs great. I can't justify the expense of an EV given these criteria, though I'm looking forward to getting one someday.