as i only have 2 weeks left on my Volvo PHEV Lease i am in the process of test driving cars …
actually there is 95% probability i will just buy out my Volvo because in my contract it says i can buy it out for $29,000 whereas the current market value ( due to inflation ) is $36,000 …
even so i am still researching other options and last week i went to Mercedes dealership and just told them i want to test drive an EV - i don’t care which one - just has to be fully electric. i needed to know what EVs feel like.
now that is one fucking ugly car ! i expected it to drive like shit ! but it literally drove better than any car i have ever driven in my life.
i was so shaken by the experience that i almost ran over a pedestrian on my way back from the dealership because i couldn’t even see that person in the middle of the road - my mind was elsewhere.
since then i was thinking about EVs the whole time and my plan is to test drive a few more soon.
Problem w Benz etc, its not that they are ugly but also slow, they are purposefully handicapping them. Tesla is hit or miss w its quality control issues, but still bang for the buck and performance cant go wrong, also its tech on another level compared to regular car companies. The self driving on the highway when in traffic alone is pretty badass so you dont have to fume while in one. Of course nowadays you probably dont have to stand in much of a traffic but still.
anyway i test drove three more EVs - all of them Audis. reason being i find Audi seats most comfortable. in fact Audi is the ONLY company that has interiors more comfortable than Volvo’s ( though i never tried Porsches ).
i test drove Q8 E-Tron, SQ8 E-Tron and RS E-Tron GT
the Q8 is slow compared to my Volvo. they made it this way on purpose to try to upsell you the SQ8 E-Tron …
SQ8 E-Tron is just about perfect - significantly faster than my Volvo, quieter and roomier and just better all around, but has no lease deals … it costs DOUBLE to lease compared to regular Q8 E-Tron even thought it’s the same car with one extra motor.
RS E-Tron GT is honestly too much for the road - you can’t even get it to lean in the corners. the steering is precise but heavy as lead. I didn’t ask about prices for the RS version, but i did ask about the regular E-Tron GT ( which i did NOT test drive because they didn’t have one )
the regular E-Tron GT actually has great lease deals - i was quoted under $1K / month for a car with $120,000 MSRP. basically Audi has conceded that the car isn’t worth $120,000 and i was offered almost $30,000 discount towards the lease to come to that sub $1K monthly payment …
but even though you could definitely daily the E-Tron GT ( the seats are very comfortable ) i think the SQ8 E-Tron beats it hands down as a daily driver for a number of reasons …
but $1,600 / month is baller territory and i’m not a baller. in fact even the E-Tron GT i felt was too much of a baller car even though the actual lease rate for it was sensible. i just felt like E-Tron GT would mis-represent who i actually am. I already had that with BMW 550i back in the day. I feel like Volvo is more who i really am but after 3 years i’m ready to try something different.
i also visited both Polestar and Lucid showrooms, but didn’t test drive them.
i found both Polestar 2 and Lucid Air too small for my liking and in case of Lucid i also thought their quality wasn’t good enough.
Lucid had a demo of a naked chassis of their car in the showroom and when i examined it i felt like the material used was too thin - clearly to minimize the weight to extend the range of the car. i feel like this is the wrong approach - if you care about the range that much just get an ICE car.
Lucid would like you to believe their AIR competes against Mercedes EQS but the EQS is a full thousand pounds heavier - as it should be ! Aluminum Castings on the Lucid are so thin you can probably break them with your bare hands and those are chassis parts where shock absorbers mount !
i also was driving behind a Rivian today and it had a visible asymmetry to the way the suspension was holding it up … one side of the bumper was lower than the other - amazing !
anyway i’m not interested in Rivian because it is an off road vehicle and i don’t go off roading …
Polestar interior was fairly clever in use of materials and space but in the end was just too small … and frankly i don’t see what it brings to the table that you can’t get from Audi E-Tron for example …
i will not consider Lucid or Tesla as i see them prioritizing gimmicks and specs over quality …
the only car i want is SQ8 E-Tron but it’s too expensive …
about 100 miles a week. most of my round trips are under 20 miles. occasionally i drive to NYC or Philly which is about 100 - 150 miles round trip.
either EV or Plug-in Hybrid would work for this, but i will be moving out of here as soon as i can decide where to.
i was living here with my Grandma and as she was almost 100 years old it was very hard to find a place that could accommodate her many needs. this house did it, but it was hardly optimal for me, so now that she’s dead i intend to move somewhere else - but i still can’t decide where to.
realistically i will probably stay in vicinity of NYC even though i had considered other places like Florida, Texas and even New Zealand.
but my point is i can’t really say YET what my driving pattern will be going forward.
i do think, however, that EVs are the near-term future ( next 10 - 15 years ) and as such i should probably pick a location for my next place based on EV range.
actually the place i’m in now ( which i hope to move out of ) was chosen based on what i thought Plug-In hybrid range would be. i expected Plug-In hybrids to eventually reach a range of about 50 miles but what happened instead is the Plug-in Hybrid range only reached 40 miles and then everybody just switched to EVs instead of developing Plug In Hybrids further …
