Way back during the last week of 2022, I bought a Chevy Bolt LT from Carmax for just under $10,000.
It took them over six months to get the title because Florida DFCS had a lien on the vehicle for unpaid child support. The prior owner ended up agreeing to add the balance he owed to the vehicle he bought at Carmax, so right around July of last year, I finally got the title for the vehicle.
If I had the title back then I could have cleared about a $5000 profit but my wife during that time fell in love with it... which she never does. To her cars are like rolling appliances. But she does a healthy amount of dog sitting and even with a level one charger, she still has all the car she needs for her daily driving.
Two years. 15,000 miles. Our expenses look like this...
$40 for two new tires - I noticed a bulge on each of the front tires and they were a Walmart brand. Our dealership actually uses the nearby Walmart because there also is a car wash next door that we use for late model units, and their oil change prices make it cheaper for us to simply use them on our late model vehicles. The folks there replaced it for free. I just paid for the installation and incidentals.
$110 for fueling - About half the time we use the level one home charger and our electric rate has been between 6 to 7.5 cents per kWh. We average 5 miles per kWh and about half our charging is free thanks to a nearby Level 2 charger that gives us two free hours.
That's pretty much it. The Bolt has a regenerative setting where you push back the shifter and it'll go into a heavy braking mode. So a brake job will be a long while. The cleaning and detailing supplies I already have a ton of, and a Amazon $1 store seems to have a ridiculous amount of the stuff. I'm probably set until 2030.
All this makes me realize how, for most drivers who live and commute around town in temperate climates (and have reasonable charging costs), a cheap EV is likely going to become their new mode of daily transportation.
You can't beat the economics of owning one if they are built to ICE levels of economies of scale. There's a lot of doom and gloom about the Chinese dominating the global car market. But I think it will get a lot more complicated. Not just with tariffs, but I can see American, German, Japanese, and Korean governments continuting to provide massive grants and possibly wiping out certain debts to keep the jobs in their countries.
Who am I kidding? It's already happening.
It took them over six months to get the title because Florida DFCS had a lien on the vehicle for unpaid child support. The prior owner ended up agreeing to add the balance he owed to the vehicle he bought at Carmax, so right around July of last year, I finally got the title for the vehicle.
If I had the title back then I could have cleared about a $5000 profit but my wife during that time fell in love with it... which she never does. To her cars are like rolling appliances. But she does a healthy amount of dog sitting and even with a level one charger, she still has all the car she needs for her daily driving.
Two years. 15,000 miles. Our expenses look like this...
$40 for two new tires - I noticed a bulge on each of the front tires and they were a Walmart brand. Our dealership actually uses the nearby Walmart because there also is a car wash next door that we use for late model units, and their oil change prices make it cheaper for us to simply use them on our late model vehicles. The folks there replaced it for free. I just paid for the installation and incidentals.
$110 for fueling - About half the time we use the level one home charger and our electric rate has been between 6 to 7.5 cents per kWh. We average 5 miles per kWh and about half our charging is free thanks to a nearby Level 2 charger that gives us two free hours.
That's pretty much it. The Bolt has a regenerative setting where you push back the shifter and it'll go into a heavy braking mode. So a brake job will be a long while. The cleaning and detailing supplies I already have a ton of, and a Amazon $1 store seems to have a ridiculous amount of the stuff. I'm probably set until 2030.
All this makes me realize how, for most drivers who live and commute around town in temperate climates (and have reasonable charging costs), a cheap EV is likely going to become their new mode of daily transportation.
You can't beat the economics of owning one if they are built to ICE levels of economies of scale. There's a lot of doom and gloom about the Chinese dominating the global car market. But I think it will get a lot more complicated. Not just with tariffs, but I can see American, German, Japanese, and Korean governments continuting to provide massive grants and possibly wiping out certain debts to keep the jobs in their countries.
Who am I kidding? It's already happening.
