Growing up in the bay area was great I am 71 and left in 2000.Yes indeed, a beautiful town. I go so far back in Los Gatos that I remember parking with my girlfriends on the hilly parts on Shannon Road, which was out in the middle of nowhere and virtually undeveloped at the time. I had my first bicycle crash with injuries on Kennedy Road. Later in life Sue and I looked to buy our first home on Pennsylvania Ave - an old rundown victorian. Back in my much younger days those same victorians on Pennsylvania were occupied by biker gang drug dealers. No kidding! Over the decades I'd venture to say I've ridden my bicycles over 2 or 3 thousand miles just within the city limits of Los Gatos alone. I drank my first alcohol on the shores of Lexington Reservoir - sharing a glass gallon jug of Cribari Burgundy with friends. @JeffKeryk, Wedgewood didn't even exist back when I was a young lad riding my bikes. How times have changed. We left LG over 20 years ago but it still feels like home when I'm back there. Maybe one night I'll have to take Sue up on Shannon Road.
Scott
Edit: If you want to see the Los Gatos I grew up in, visit the Testarossa Winery and check out the pictures. I'd pay five figures to go back in time and ride one of my modern road bikes for just one weekend in the area I grew up in. The area was literally an ocean of orchards. I'll never forget the smell of springtime blossoms.
I used to ride for hours and hours with 3 or 4 quarters in my pockets...
View attachment 231534
This was a common sight...apricots EVERYWHERE!
View attachment 231535
First Half California all-electric EV sales update
- Thread starter Snagglefoot
- Start date
You didn't answer my question about what you consider to be affordable. If I subtract .28 from .655, it's 37.5, and you said that's "average" I never went beyond pre-calculus, but, 37 cents and 37.5 cents don't seem to be too far apart.
Regarding the topic at hand, I suspect the government of CA will try to meet their EV adoption goals by both by further raising the gasoline/diesel tax(es) and putting state level incentives on EV purchases.
My parents are about your age but left in the 70s. We lived mainly in rural Oregon when I was growing up, with some brief stints back in CA and in Portland.
28 cents per mile for the car is what the government conisders average for the car. The rest of the money is for insurance, fuel, etc. You don't need to do any math, I did it for you.
37 cents per mile is well above the 28 cent average, and more than most normal households can afford using traditional measures.
Buy or lease whatever you like. I was replying to the topic at hand - electrification of California's vehicle fleet, and your comment on affordable which doesn't match public norms.
Where did you live, if I may ask? I imagine you know my neighborhood; near the La Rinconada Golf Course. I flat out love it here!
Most households that I know of base what car they can afford on how much the monthly payment is. Cost per mile is a relevant metric, but it does not control for amount of miles driven. That is the bottom line, and I mentioned it before with lack of acknowledgement.
It could cost a dollar a mile and if you only drove 300 miles a year and only had 360 miles a year on your lease, it would still cost less than 37 cents a mile at 7500 miles a year. That's why cost per mile is not always relevant for everyone's use case. Obviously an extreme example, but whatever.
Normalize your data, and then get back to me.
To be honest the main people I see talk about cost per mile drive a lot, like 20k+ miles a year. I get close to it sometimes, which is why I tend to bring up that metric. I did more than 20k miles last year in the GTI alone and that doesn't account for when I drove the Tesla. When I did 5k-7k miles a year I never gave it a second thought. I always bought smaller performance cars, muscle cars, and eventually started getting into bigger vehicles. The peak was an F150 5.0. I initially bought the GTI for fuel economy. I would say it takes an initial trigger to be cognizant of the cost per mile. For me it was averaging $400 a month in fuel in my F150 which triggered a change because I really didn't like owning a truck anyway.
I went from the F150 and a Ford Edge to a Model 3 and the GTI. My cut in fuel costs was like getting rid of an additional car cost wise. We became very aware of the additional monthly cost.