24 Simple Tips For New EV Owners (everything you wish you knew BEFORE buying an electric car)

This is the video for you if, as I was feeling not long ago, you're a little anxious about what it's like to drive, charge and care for an

electric

vehicle Now, if you're really familiar with

electric

cars, this probably isn't the place . video for you so a couple weeks ago we bought our used 2015 nissan leaf and it's the best I love it but there are certainly a couple of things that are different than driving a conventional car things to think about so I thought in you. I know what I'm going to put together all the things I've learned all the

tips

things I'd like to know before

buying

this car into one giant list so here we go, there seems to be a fairly common misconception that eevees are highly impractical, that They're not useful, that you can't drive them very far, that you can't trust them, and that couldn't be further from the truth, if you have a car like this, an older model with a small battery, I mean, it's true even certain point, but most of the newer electric vehicles have a much longer range, like 200+ miles, and with that you can definitely have it very normal, you need to charge it at home, I mean, you don't need anything but life.

It's going to be a lot more annoying if you don't have a place to charge. Ideally you want level two charging, which will be much faster than level one charging. To do it, first you need a place to charge and you need to do that work, so you need to hire an electrician to bring you 240 volts or you can do it yourself. I made a video about it, so there is a cost, but you will most likely get that money back within the time frame. The first year without

buying

gasoline, not all loads are the same.

There are three different basic types of cargo. There is level one charging, which is a standard 120-volt outlet like any you have in your home and that will only give you about a kilowatt. it is level two charging which is a 240 volt outlet and then you have fast charging so ccs or in this situation chademo when it comes to the fast charger you will get between 50 and 350 km depending on your car and the condition of things. You know you're probably going to charge your car at public charging stations very rarely or maybe even never, especially if you have one charging at home and if you have a relatively new electric vehicle with decent range, so let's say you don't have 200 miles.

This, I mean, is a used Nissan Leaf with a small battery. I have a range of about 70 miles, but if you have one of the newer models, then 200 miles is plenty, so you'll probably never need to charge it. on the go, but let's say you don't need to charge when you're out and about. Did you know that there are many free charging features available? No. I think it's great, basically you can use an app like plug share, it finds your area and you can see what the charge is available here and it will show you exactly what kind of charge, if it's free or not, in general though you can wait a free charge at car dealerships, some medical centers, some universities, that kind of thing and The good thing about them is that they are free, like any, there is no app that you have to install, you don't have to enter any credit card, but in my experience, I don't do it in different places and the other thing, as far as I know, is like car dealerships.

I know they're not exclusive where you know if you have a Chevy Bolt you can go to a Nissan dealership and have it charged there for free. They aren't exclusive where we only accept our own brand so there are plenty of free charges available if you just look for it, it's pretty neat, most EVs come with a portable 120 volt charging plug like this guy that you can keep in your car and always be ready in case of an emergency or something, you are out and need to charge. at a friend's house or something, this just plugs into any standard outlet you know.

Now there is actually the option to buy an adapter so you can do the same thing with 240 volts, but let me explain what you need it for. That's an adapter and you need a 240 volt outlet to plug it in, but let's say you go to your mom's house for the day and she has a dryer in her garage and you know you go there and you can use it. that outlet to charge this car if you get that adapter um or you know you go to a friend's house and he or she has a woodworking shop so they get 240 volts in the shop the same thing applies there could you know carry?

Charge the car using 240 volts and I mean level 2 charging is much more efficient than level one charging 85. The batteries in the car will charge at different rates depending on the state of the battery. So for example if you have a battery at 40 it will charge much faster from 40 to 80 compared to 80 to 100. I mean that's how lithium ion batteries work and different electric vehicles will have different charging profiles , but something to realize it's not a straight line in terms of how fast these batteries will charge, don't try to charge up to 100 at public charging stations for the reasons I just mentioned, charging from 80 to 100 will take a long time. longer and if there are other people who are waiting to use this charging station, you know they will be a little bothered waiting, especially since it is something that is not necessary and takes a long time only if there is no one there, should you even consider charging up to 100 and You know, it may not even be a good idea, so I'm currently charged at 85, that's the range we try to stay in when we're charging it, unless we plan on going somewhere or a little further. but you really want to try not to charge your car at 100 all the time, the battery doesn't really like that, especially if it's sitting still for a while, so ideally you want to charge your battery at 85, you know, something like that, um In some cars like the Tesla, for example, you can set the charge limit through the car or the app, so you don't even have to think about it, but it will be different from car to car.

The enemy of lithium ion batteries is heat and cold and changing the state from heat to carbon quite quickly and for example when it comes to charging, if it is very cold outside, say zero degrees, the batteries will take much longer to charge, in fact, most electric vehicles prefer to be charging in warmer temperatures, like 75 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, so keep in mind that if you plan to charge the car very quickly and you are somewhere and it is taking much more than I expected, that could simply be because it's cold. Outside, if you've never driven an EV before, you might be a little surprised at how quick they are, you have this instantaneous torque, so when you step on the accelerator, if you're standing still, you go forward depending on what type of car you're in.

If you were driving before this could be a big improvement and this is true for all EVs, they are all very fast and a lot of fun to drive. The range that the car tells you you have available to drive is calculated based on how you have been. Driving previously I have 85 left in my battery and 68 miles to go so it tells me I'm averaging 3.8 miles per kilowatt hour, that's something to keep in mind because if you've been driving at 50 miles per hour for quite some time . At some point it tells you that you have a wide range, but suddenly you get on the highway and you're driving 70 miles per hour or you're going really like a familiar landscape up and down or you turn on the heater, the expected driving range is going to be change, so it's a constantly changing type of equation, so I don't like to look at it as an absolute number.

All electric vehicles have regenerative braking, meaning the car takes back some of the kinetic energy that would otherwise be converted to heat and converts it instead. into electricity, so the motor drives the wheels during acceleration, but the wheels drive the motor while decelerating. Basically, what that means in practical terms is that you can drive with just one pedal when you take your foot off the accelerator. Basically, the car doesn't brake very hard. but it starts to brake, so if you're going down the road and you know there's a curve coming up, just lift the pedal and you'll be able to slow down, okay, let's play, let's not try to use the brake at all.

One thing about this is that you have to think about it a little bit in advance, you have to do it, it's a different type of driving, it's more conscious, of course, if you hit the brakes, you're going to get into a much more difficult situation. stop, but you can practice to drive more and more with one pedal which is fun, in fact the bigger the car the more energy it uses and this may seem pretty obvious but just because it's electric doesn't mean it's necessarily really efficient and in the same way, if I fill all the seats in this car and put a lot of things in the trunk, I'm not going to drive as efficiently and this is true, you know, in a conventional car like Well, but I don't think you're so aware of it because here you get constant feedback about how efficiently you drive and all that, and you look at that information so that it becomes more visible, more obvious. in a way cold temperatures will affect your range so we recently bought this car it's spring early summer so I know it will affect it when it gets colder but I don't know how much you know I think range anxiety might be a bit of a stretch, especially if you have a newer EV, let's say you have a range of 200 miles or something, that's a pretty long distance to drive.

I mean, chances are, unless you have a really long commute every day, you'll be fine. driving to and from work or running errands or whatever you're doing with that many miles now, on the other hand, if you have something like this only 28, let's see if we can get home, I used to, you know, ev With a really small battery, I have a range of about 70 miles, so in that situation you may be a little more anxious, but if you have a newer EV with a longer range, you'll probably rarely run out of power. using a lot of electricity unless you're actually moving unless you're actually driving so this is an ideal car if you find yourself in traffic a lot if you're in a city-like situation if you know the traffic is stops a lot, think about This way, most electric vehicles use about 1500 watts when idling if the air conditioning or heat is on.

Now when you accelerate you use between 50 and 100,000 watts so in comparison 1500 watts is nothing unless you are actually driving a distance that We are not actually using much electricity unlike a gasoline engine which It's continuously on, even if you're sitting still, so the car is currently on, look how quiet it is, but that means I could go to the drive-in. movie right now keep the car on keep me nice and cool inside if I wanted to do that and no one would know the car was on similarly I could take this to the garage and you know, keep the car on if I wanted to there's no fumes it's very safe already that there is no engine or transmission there is much less maintenance and upkeep you don't have to think about oil changes because there is no oil to change there is no possible expensive transmission repair because there is no transmission i I mean, obviously, some things will still wear out, some things stay the same, the wheels spin so the tires will need to be replaced, the brakes will wear out, things like that, but there are no engine seals to break, there is no heat buildup, there is just a lot less of it. stress on the car because of that, mileage on an electric vehicle should be considered differently than a conventional vehicle and this is something you should keep in mind if you are going to buy a car because there is much less stress when driving many miles in an electric vehicle because there is less shaking, less movement, less heat, all those things that wear down a car over time, that just doesn't happen here, so driving many miles in the marina doesn't have the same effect, so if you are buying a used vehicle, You should look at the number of miles on it a little differently than you would if you bought a conventional car, it's a lot cheaper to run in the marina I mean, but if you're curious, how much gas would you use? compared to electric, let's do a little example, you know, here, let's take the new mustang machi, nice new electric vehicle, and compare it to a corresponding car, like a traditional new mustang, most people drive, let's say, about 10,000 miles per year, so the mustang moves forward. 20 miles per gallon, that is 500 gallons of gasoline at current prices of approximately four dollars and fifty cents per gallon, of course, this will vary, that is equivalent to two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars that you would spend on gasoline for a year.

Driving 10,000 miles now the maquis gets 2.6 miles per kilowatt hour which is honestly a little low, mostmodels actually do better than that, but it's a powerful car, so let's do 10,000 miles at 2.6 miles per gallon, that's 3,846 kilowatt hours. The national price of electricity is about 15 cents per kilowatt hour, which is equivalent to $577, so you have $2,250 compared to $500 and $777, about a quarter now if you were to take both on a road trip, what would it cost? be the answer, so let's say you're taking a thousand mile road trip but now you have to pay for electricity on the road just like you pay for gasoline, let's say 50 cents per kilowatt hour, something like that equals $192. and today's price Gasoline prices would be 225, so now the difference is not that big, so it obviously makes a lot more sense to charge at home or try to find free charging stations when you're out and about.

Electric vehicles Newer ones can be useful during an emergency like a power outage or something, because for some models and this will vary depending on your electric vehicle, you can buy a directional charging port that basically allows you to power things. through your car, so let's say the power goes out and you know, oh, I have a big battery in my car stored in the garage, you could plug in an extension cord and you know, power your refrigerator or something, um, that's something great. Feature: Some people seem to think that there are so many electric vehicles out there and you'll never find a spot at a charging station, and if you were out of California and the big cities, when you look at the numbers, there aren't that many electric vehicles.

I live in the Richmond area so we use this as a medium sized American city and in my experience so far there are very few electric vehicles and at these various charging stations there is almost never anyone there, of course this could change and it might be slightly different from area to area, but when you look at the numbers, there aren't that many EVs in the US right now outside of California and some different, you know, larger areas, I think one of my Other favorite parts of this is that I don't have to think about buying gas, like, okay, the cost of gas is one thing, but just the action of having to stop by the gas station on the way home or, oh no , I forgot to buy gas, I have to get up earlier. tomorrow to go to the gas station to fill up before we leave or you know those kinds of things that are out of your equation like you don't have to think about it as long as you know, get in the habit of always charging it at home so you don't forget, it's like one less place you have to go and think I think that's it thanks for watching guys um if you have any advice you know things you thought were interesting.

I didn't realize before I got an ev, so share them in the comments below. Oh and I want to say a big thank you to our sponsors for supporting the channel um and just for yeah thank you so much if you want to become a sponsor and encourage and support this type of content in the future then check out the link in the description. I'll also put links for you to check out the products I mentioned throughout this video if you're curious, so thanks for watching guys and see you soon, bye. I almost feel like we've gone from a two car family to a one car family because we have the truck but we don't currently use it, it seems like a waste and with all these gas prices going up so much, I don't want to go to the gas station, obviously, I don't want to go fill this up, so we're just driving this car right now, which means it's almost like a waiting list on its own.

We are three adults in your family. It's me, my husband, my mother-in-law and everyone wants to drive the car and of course once we've driven it we need to charge it for a while but it's like we used to have two cars that were available to drive and then we pretty much only have a car that everyone wants to drive. I would love to have another electric car.