[daverp]

I think you've gotten a lot of great advice so far, just want to make sure you don't get your hopes up based on your statement of a August arrival, and you have to make a decision soon. Are you basing plans off an agreement with a dealer and not just what you're seeing on their website? It would be unusual for one to be arriving in August that isn't spoken for, it's also unusual that you have time to make a decision. These cars are largely spoken for many, many, months ago, they only come up on the lot when someone backs out of a reservation, when that occurs they are usually sold quickly, like the first person to answer the phone gets it.

 

[daverp]

I completely understand. This is a salesperson that I've been working with for a while. He called me on Friday and said he has an ID4 Pro coming in sometime in August and said he would reserve it for me. I've worked with him before and he has always been straight forward with me. He emailed me a PDF of the car's sticker so I assume it is coming it. I do, however, know someone who's been waiting 10 months for an order he placed on an ID4 so this certainly could happen. I'll let everyone know how it goes assuming I can get the wife on-board.

I sincerely want to thank everyone for all of your knowledge and advice. It has helped me with making my decision.

Sounds like you got a good sales person. He must of had someone cancel on a confirmed reservation and he's going to sell you that car. Having a good, long, relationship with a dealer is a good thing.

 

[daverp]

That’s less than my current gas fill ups. Thanks.

What are you driving now? Trying to guess an ICE car with less than 275 mile range.

 

[daverp]

Driving a 2021 Subaru Crosstrek Sport. It can get up to 33 mpg on highway driving but for the kind of driving my wife and I do, I'm averaging about 23mpg. It's not that I dislike the car at all, but $160 monthly gas bills are becoming common but besides that, I've been looking at moving to an EV for over a year now.

In that case so you can have the right expectation based on the rated rang of that vehicle, if you drive the ID.4 in similar fashion, you should expect to need to charge about twice as much as you gas up currently. Since you live near an EA fast charger you'll save the $160, but you'll lose some time.

 

[daverp]

Even my average home L2 cost is $6 per 100 miles, and I don't have anywhere near the lowest rate 'round here. And then the folks with solar cells...

'course all-EA DCFC and/or local free L2 is the optimal ROI.

Also 70/69, so we have time (although I rarely waste it driving to my not so convenient nearest EA).

Agreed, L2 home will always be cheepiest (excluding free options), I didn't mention that as DoubleNicks mentioned home charging is not on option for him at all.

 

[daverp]

It's a shame your condo association made the decision not to install an EVSE for people to use. ..

It's going to be an increasingly touchy situation as adoption increases. I've seen them at recently built properties but they are pretty rare at older properties. It's much easier for a developer to install them when a property is being built and using them as a selling point than convincing all the owners at an existing building to pay to add them, considering the vast majority won't have an EV.

 

[daverp]

My cousin lives in a building where they have reserved parking - there each owner foots the bill for installing their own EVSE, but the garage seems to be relatively well provisioned so the cost to each owner isn't prohibitive. I saw at least two the last time I was there.

I have an employee in New Jersey who's building is like that. If you purchased an indoor parking spot you can have an EVSE added for your space for a small fee. I think it was around $3k, which isn't too bad all things considered.

 

[daverp]

Thank you for your feedback. I live in NJ and with millions allocated to charging station buildout, it amazes me how few there are. You would think that grocery stores, gyms, restaurants, etc. would take advantage of no cost plus an added incentive to visit those establishments. I’m still waiting on the ID4 to arrive at the dealer so still considering the decision.

We just hit a 6% EV adoption rate which many pundits predicted will be an adoption tipping point. The focus to date for DC Fast charging has been to build them along major highways. Costs needs to come down DC Fast charging to come to local locations. L2 chargers you see at hotels, malls, and grocery, can cost on average $5 to $15k to install. DC Fast chargers are expensive and require high current 480v power, I've seen numbers that the cost to install each DC fast charger is around $80k for a 150kW and around $140k for 350kW, d to the need for the 480v 3phase high amp power.

Millions doesn't go as far as it sounds. A million dollars buys you about 7 of the 350kW chargers being installed today. As the adoption rates climb you should large companies start building more charging stations modeled off gas stations, than the 4 charges in a back of a Walmart parking lot we are seeing today. Higher adoption rates and lowering costs of the tech, should start making building gas stations style charging locations more economical than building a actual gas station.