Almost exactly two months after buying a cheap pick-up truck, it catastrophically broke. It was parked in my driveway (with me actively working on it) when a branch from one of the trees along the street broke, fell through the windshield, and smashed the dashboard. This was exactly one week after I paid Best Buy …
Continue reading "My truck got a little smashed"
Back in May 2020, I bought a VW e-Golf and got rid of my trusty Subaru Impreza. Since then, I had been living without an ICE car in my life. For the most part, it has worked out well but the extreme cold and deep snow over the past month had gotten me thinking. More …
Continue reading "I bought a cheap pick-up truck"
As I mentioned back in May, I bought a new electric car this year. As the weather began to turn cold, I noticed the effective range go down. It is generally ok, though because everything that I would really need to drive to is within 20 miles of my house. I did find myself needing …
Continue reading "Living with an electric car in Wisconsin: Winter 2020 Update"
One of the really nice things about buying an electric car is that you don’t need to repair it as often. When fewer things move, there are fewer things that can break. Thanks to regenerative braking, even the brake pads are expected to last a freakishly long time. The big question is what to do …
Continue reading "Living with an electric car in Wisconsin: Repairs"
Back in May, I drove my new 2016 e-golf out to Madison and it left me thinking that it’s not a great option for that drive. With the 24.2-kWh battery pack, my car has an EPA estimated range of 83 miles (which should be plenty of range to get there). In practice, the range is …
Continue reading "Living with an electric car in Wisconsin: The Range"
One of my big concerns when I bought my 2016 VW e-Golf was how long the battery pack would last. As we established in the previous e-Golf post, if it lasts as my daily driver for 5 years, it should effectively pay for itself. I’m not terribly worried about the battery degrading that fast. Fully …
Continue reading "Living with an electric car in Wisconsin: The Battery"
As I mentioned in a previous post, I bought my 2016 VW e-Golf for $10,640 but it wasn’t the first electric car that I looked at. Before that, I tried to lease a 2019 Hyundai Ioniq EV but no dealer anywhere near me was willing to provide one. At the time, they were offering them …
Continue reading "Living with an electric car in Wisconsin: The Price"
Back in May, I bought a 2016 VW e-Golf (my first electric car). Before I bought it, I did a ton of research and I knew theoretically what I was getting into but really needed to figure out a few things in practice. Two weeks after it arrived at my house, I tried a roadtrip …
Continue reading "Living with an electric car in Wisconsin: The Heater"
Last week, I drove from Milwaukee to Madison and back again in the new car. The 2016 e-Golf has a stated range of 83 miles between charges. I wanted to see what that looks like in real life. A level 2 charger needs roughly four hours to fully charge the battery. A level 3 charger …
Continue reading "I tried to do a roadtrip in the new electric car"
I have wanted to get an electric car for a while now. With their supercharger network, a Tesla Model 3 would be the logical choice but it’s $36k and I wouldn’t want to spend any more than $15k on any car. Two years ago, I put down a deposit (that they never gave back to …
Continue reading "I made a big hardware purchase"