How to Shop for an EV

Whatever your motivation for buying an electric vehicle, here’s the thing: The first day you own one, you’re going to love it.

Forget the fears that come with a new technology, the negativity that stems from the politicization of EVs ownership, or the dead-and-buried stereotype that EVs are slow and boring rides for greenies only. Electric cars are zippy and fun because, unlike gas cars, they can produce a ton of torque from a resting stop. After a lifetime of listening to a car rattle and roar, I can say from experience that you’ll find driving in electric silence to be a revelation. An EV owner wakes up every morning with the equivalent of a full tank of gas because their home is their gas station.

Want a piece of this bliss? If so, then read on.

THE EXPERT PANEL

Brian Moody, an executive editor at Cox Automotive (which owns Kelly Blue Book) and an author specializing in transportation, automotive, and electric cars.

Joseph Yoon, consumer insights analyst for the automotive agency Edmunds.

Loren McDonald, CEO of EVAdoption, which provides data analysis and insights about the electrification of the car industry.

OVERVIEW OF THE PROCESS

• Assess your driving needs, research tax incentives, and decide whether to buy or lease.
• Figure out your charging situation.
• Choose your car, then either go to the dealer or select your specs online.
• Get your charger installed.
• Enjoy the ride.

THE BASICS

• When people say electric vehiclethese days, they mostly mean battery electric vehicle, the kind that runs on 100% electric power, like a Tesla. EVs have a giant lithium-ion battery, which is typically slung along the bottom of the car to give it a low center of gravity. An EV doesn’t need a lot of the parts required for internal combustion — look inside and you’ll find nary a spark plug, radiator, muffler, or timing belt.
• A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle appears to be an ordinary gasoline car under the hood. In the rear, however, and you’ll find a rechargeable battery that can also power the car. Because the plug-in hybrid has to fit its battery alongside all the typical combustion components, the battery is smaller than one in a fully battery-powered EV, allowing for just 30 to 40 miles of electric range, compared to 200 or 300-some miles for a true EV. That’s still enough for most people to complete their commute to work and back again without burning a drop of gasoline.

“That’s who the PHEV is for,” Moody told me. “You can do your errands around town with 30 to 40 miles, and when the battery runs out, you just keep driving.”

• The hybrid electric vehicle, or just “hybrid,” has been commonplace on the road ever since the Toyota Prius went mainstream in the mid-aughts. A hybrid has both a gas engine and an electric motor, but you don’t plug it in — the gas engine recharges the battery as you drive. There are multiple ways to engineer a hybrid vehicle, called series hybrid and parallel hybrid, but all an everyday car shopper needs to know is that a hybrid decides when it’s most energy-efficient to run on electricity versus gas. By doing so, it delivers mileage an ordinary combustion car can’t match — 40, 50, or even more miles per gallon.

• Buying an EV or PHEV also means you’re buying a battery. Battery life is described in kilowatt-hours, which is a measurement of how much energy the battery will hold — that is, for how many hours it could deliver power at the rate of 1,000 watts per hour.
  
• EV chargers are sometimes described by how many kilowatts they put out, and therefore how fast they’ll fill your battery, typically expressed as Level 1, 2, or 3. (More on all things battery- and charging-related later.) The 120-volt outlet in your wall puts out just 1 kilowatt. The upgraded charger you’ll want to install in the garage puts out up to 19 kilowatts, while the fast chargers you’ll use on a trip down the interstate are rated up to 350 kilowatts.
  
• Perhaps the defining stat about an EV (after its price) is its range, or the automaker’s estimate of how far the car can go on a single battery charge. Range is steadily growing as technology matures. Ten years ago, many EVs maxed out at 125-150 miles of range. Today’s typical EV makes in the mid-2000s, while some automakers allow you to get more than 300 miles by paying for a bigger battery pack.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. Will range anxiety ruin my life?

Ask nearly any EV expert and you’ll hear the same thing: “People don’t drive nearly as far as they think they do,” Moody said. Most of us put the vast majority of miles on our cars within a few dozen miles of our homes, running kids around town or driving to work. You’ll use up a small amount of your battery by the time you get home, plug in, and wake up the next day fully charged. Road trips may seem daunting to the uninitiated, but the interstates are now lined with fast-chargers and the number of them is growing quickly.

2. Don’t EVs have environmental drawbacks, too?

Building an EV generates more carbon emissions than building a gas car, a difference that’s due to mining and creating materials for the battery. But that’s just manufacturing a vehicle; once it’s built, it has a decade or two of driving ahead of it. A combustion car constantly spews carbon as it burns fossil fuels, which dwarfs the amount it takes to make an EV. Don’t forget: An electric car gets greener as the grid gets greener. The more clean energy is added to the world’s electrical supply, the better EVs get in comparison to gas cars. You’d need to live in a state with an especially dirty energy grid, such as Wyoming or West Virginia, for an EV not to be a much better option than driving around on gasoline. Furthermore, McDonald said, you can forget the propaganda that suggests EV batteries wind up stacked in a landfill somewhere when the cars meet their end. A growing number of companies are ready to recycle EV batteries and retrieve the precious metals therein, while it’s likely that lots of batteries will find a second life in applications such as grid storage.

3. Aren’t EVs expensive?

It’s true that price has long been one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption. Even though tax incentives — together with savings on fuel and maintenance — make many electrics cost-competitive with their gas counterparts in the long term, their high sticker price keeps many people away. But more electric models are beginning to creep down toward the cost of entry-level gasoline cars.

BEFORE YOU GET STARTED

As with buying an old-fashioned gas-guzzler, going to the dealership to get an EV means dealing with pushy salespeople, confusing specs, and haggling over the price. The process can be doubly frustrating for the EV shopper given the relative unavailability of some electric models and reports of some car salespeople who know frustratingly little about the very EVs they hock.

If you live in a market where EVs have taken hold, like the San Francisco Bay Area, expect knowledgeable salespeople who can walk you through the EV buying process. If you live someplace where few electrics are sold, then the experience may be hit-or-miss. Do your own research, and prepare to be your own advocate.

1. Research tax incentives.

For a long time, things were simple: If you bought an electric vehicle, then you could take a $7,500 credit on your taxes for that year. But things have gotten murkier in the past year or two — in a bid to protect domestic manufacturing, Congress passed new rules stating that a certain amount of the car and its components had to be made in the U.S. to qualify, leaving a confusing, shifting picture of which EVs qualify and which don’t. (To wit: Many Teslas qualify, Hyundais and Kias don’t, while Rivians receive only half the credit because they’re so expensive.) The upside of the changed rules is that buyers are now allowed to get tax credits on leasing an EV, or to receive the credit as an up-front discount on their new EV. Many states have generous incentives, too. Washington, for example, will give up to $9,000 in rebates for buying an EV. “There are enormous discounts on basically every EV on the market, even before we count the $7,500 with the federal tax credit,” Yoon told me.

2. Assess your actual driving needs.

Before you take the plunge, take a moment and really think about how you drive — because lots of people overestimate what they need. Maybe even keep notes and check your mileage every day for a week or two to find out how much you really use the car versus how much you think you do. If you find that you could get around town on a few dozen miles of charge but road trip every other weekend, then you might consider a plug-in hybrid. If you’ve already got a gas car or hybrid to handle longer trips and are shopping for a second vehicle, there’s no reason not to go for an EV, assuming you can afford one. If you just need basic transportation to take you a few miles to work, hate the idea of ever buying gas again, and want to spend as little as possible … maybe you should get an e-bike.

3. Decide whether to buy or lease.

A refresher: When you buy a car, you typically put a downpayment on the vehicle, and then borrow enough money from the bank to pay off the rest of its price (plus interest and sales tax) in monthly payments over the course of four, five, or even more years. Leasing is like renting an apartment. You put down a deposit and then pay monthly over the course of the lease, typically three years. But like your rent, those payments don't go toward owning the car. At the end of the lease, you give it back. With EVs especially, there are some serious advantages and drawbacks to each approach you should keep in mind.

4. Figure out where you’re going to charge.

If you live in a century-old house that would need to have significant rewiring done to accommodate an EV charger, then installing a Level 2 charger might be too expensive, so you might want to stick to a plug-in hybrid. (Again, more on charging below.) Does your office have a charger? If you live in an apartment, does the parking lot have chargers?

“How you refuel your EV is similar to how you charge your smartphone — you do it either throughout the day or at night before you go to bed. You plug in, you wake up, and it's full,” McDonald said.

HEATMAP RECOMMENDS

If you want to devote the least amount of time and energy to this decision as possible, get a Tesla Model Y.

“The first thing I tell people? You should probably get a Tesla,” Moody told me. Still, Elon Musk’s electric car company isn’t the darling it once was. Tesla has squandered a huge lead in the EV market by focusing on vanity projects like the Cybertruck and lost a chunk of public goodwill through Musk’s misadventures in politics and social media. But the company still has an ace up its sleeve with the Supercharger network, which is better and more reliable than the competition. This will change in the coming years, as the other automakers have adopted Tesla’s plug and their future cars will be able to use Superchargers. But for now, it’s a major advantage that makes owning a Tesla a lot less stressful than trying to get by with a competitor’s EV, especially if you make road trips. For this reason, Tesla’s Model Y — the best-selling car in the world in 2023, and the best-selling EV in America — remains a compelling choice for anyone who wants an EV to be their only car and have it go nearly anywhere.

If you want to be able to haul around an entire youth soccer team, get a Kia EV9.

Don’t want Musk to get your money? Fret not. EV offerings from legacy car companies and new automakers are leaps and bounds better than they were five years ago when Tesla took over the industry. Hyundai and its subsidiary Kia, in particular, have outpaced other carmakers in offering fun and practical EVs. The new Kia EV9 is the best choice for buyers who want a true EV with three rows so they can accommodate six or seven passengers, and it’s a sleek-looking vehicle for its size. Its $57,000 starting price is not cheap, but it’s probably the best deal you can get for a true three-row electric vehicle right now.

If you want an EV that screams, “I know how to have a good time,” get a Hyundai Ioniq 5.

The Ioniq 5 is a quirky mashup of a crossover and a hatchback. It’s got enough space to be practical as a family vehicle, but its dimensions aren’t quite like anything else on the market. In the EV-laden part of Los Angeles where I live, it’s the most common non-Tesla electric I come across.

If you’re a prepper, get a Ford F-150 Lightning.

Introduced in 2021, the F-150 Lightning’s game-changing feature is two-way, or “bidirectional,” charging — you can plug into your house and use the energy stored in the truck’s battery to back up your home’s power supply in case of a blackout. Chevy is following suit by putting this tech into the Silverado EV. But even if you’re just driving and not powering your home, the Lightning is impressive — its standard battery produces 452 horsepower, but that number can climb to 580 on more expensive versions, and both offer a ton of torque.

If you want the Range Rover look without the Range Rover emissions (and are okay with the Range Rover price), get a Rivian R1S.

Today’s Rivians are luxury lifestyle vehicles, but they offer a lot for all that cash. The R1 vehicles are spacious and well-appointed on the interior while offering lots of power and range for the off-road lifestyle the brand projects — the high-end version of the SUV gets 410 miles of range with 665 horsepower. Other excellent luxury EVs at the top end of the market include the Lucid Air and Mercedes EQS, but the Air has the space limitations of a sedan (though it is a large one) and the Benz is likely to cost more than $100,000. Rivians are pricey, but they’re not that pricey.

If you need a car that can do it all for not much money, get a Hyundai Kona EV.

The people’s affordable EV champion, the Chevy Bolt, got the ax last year, but GM has promised to bring it back for people who want a smallish EV that doesn’t cost a fortune. In the meantime, the “SE” version of the Hyundai Kona EV, a small SUV, starts around $36,000 and gets 261 miles of range. (There’s an even cheaper version with 200 miles of range, but trust me: Don’t buy any new EV with less than 250 miles of range — e.g. the Nissan Leaf, Fiat 500, Mini Cooper, or Subaru Solterra — unless you really, really like it.) Chevy finally electrified its huge-selling SUV and rolled out the Equinox EV; while it starts at $41,000 now, GM promises a $35,000 version soon to come.

If you’re still working through your range anxiety, get a Prius Prime.

There are a wide variety of PHEVs that are worth a look, but an especially compelling option is the Toyota Prius Prime. The entire Prius family of hybrids and plug-in hybrids just got a facelift for 2023 that is miles ahead of the frumpy, aging look the car previously had. And where the previous Prius Prime was limited to a puny 25 miles of electric range, today’s will do 44 — enough for lots of people to do their daily city driving without burning any gas.

WHAT’S NEXT?

1. Become a charging virtuoso.

Some vocabulary to get you started:

• A Level 1 charger is your everyday household power outlet that provides 120 volts. Plug your car into the wall this way and you’ll get little more than a trickle, perhaps 3 or 4 miles of driving range per hour. This isn’t enough to charge your EV overnight (it might be enough for a PHEV, however), but it just might save your butt in a pinch — say if you’re camping in the boonies, use more electricity than you expected while you’re out there, and need just a few more miles to safely make it to the next high-speed charger.

• Level 2 is what most EV drivers use for the charger in their own garage. With the power stepped up to 240 volts, a Level 2 charger can add in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 miles of driving range per hour. That’s enough to take a typical electric vehicle from mostly empty to mostly full overnight — or during the course of a workday, if you’re lucky and your employer has plugs in the parking lot. If you’ve seen a charging station in front of your local Whole Foods or noticed a few EV charging spots in a parking garage, they’re likely Level 2 plugs. You’ll find them at some hotels, too, which is helpful since you can start the next day of your trip on full if you can snag a spot.

• If it’s fast enough to fill up your whole battery in an hour or less, it’s a Level 3 charger, also known as a DC fast charger. Tesla’s Supercharger stations belong in this category, as do the fast-charging stations by companies like EVgo and Electrify America that service non-Teslas. EV owners who charge at home will visit Level 3 chargers only when they stray far from home on a road trip. Older Level 3 chargers from the 2010s topped out at 50 or 72 kilowatts, providing around 300 miles of range per hour. New stations, though, can deliver 250 or even 350 kilowatts, enough to take most EVs from 10% to 80% charge in just about 20 minutes.

Since charging at home is the make-or-break feature that will make your electrified life more convenient than your gas-burning days, your first order of business is getting a Level 2 charger installed. You’re going to need an electrician for this one, since it requires stepping up the voltage (and might require installing a new breaker panel or running new wiring, depending upon your home). Be sure to get multiple quotes so you can compare work estimates and prices.

“When you buy from an EV dealer or Tesla or whomever, they might refer you to an electrician or an installer. There are companies that have services and websites where they do all the work for you. You plug in your address and information, and they'll recommend and refer you to an installer,” McDonald said.

How much this’ll cost you varies by where you live and how much work it’ll take to set up your home, but the national average is $1,200 to $1,500, McDonald says. The exception could be older houses that were not set up for anything close to the electrical load it takes to charge a car, so if you own a hundred-year-old home in New England with lots of original wiring, you might be in for a shock. Don’t forget, however, that lots of incentives are available for setting up EV infrastructure at your home. You might be eligible for a tax credit equal to 30 percent of the cost up to $1,000.

As far as charging away from home? Most EVs automatically show nearby charging stations on their touchscreen navigation systems and will route you to the necessary stops along a long drive. Teslas will even show you how many stalls are available at a given Supercharger and how many other cars are en route. As an EV driver, you’ll get to know the fast-chargers in your neighborhood and along your familiar highways, but you’ll also get to know sites like Plugshare that will display every charger of every speed and every plug throughout that country — invaluable for planning a journey.

As you get comfortable with your own driving habits, you’ll figure out whether you need to expand your choices by purchasing adapters or dongles that let your car charge at different kinds of plugs. For example, today’s non-Tesla EVs eventually will be able to charge at Tesla superchargers, but because they are still being built with the competing CCS standard, you’d need an adapter to allow today’s Ford Mustang Mach-E to use a Tesla plug. I have an adapter in my Tesla Model 3 to use the “J1772” plugs you find on the Level 2 charger at the grocery store, and I bought one for the NEMA 14-50 plugs common at an RV campsite — just in case I really get into trouble out there.

2. Embrace the zen of regenerative braking.

When a car brakes to slow down, energy is lost. But in an EV, some of it can be recaptured via regenerative braking, a system that captures the energy from waste heat and puts it back into the battery. This allows for an experience unavailable to the gasoline motorist called one-pedal driving: Take your foot off the accelerator and the car immediately slows itself down via the regenerative braking system. When I drive my Tesla Model 3, I only hit the brake pedal when I need to slow down in a big hurry; otherwise, I let off the accelerator and let the car coast to a stop. This system can add several miles of range back onto the battery if you’re coasting out of the mountains on a steep downgrade.

A word of warning: Many people don’t like regenerative braking, at least at first, because it feels jerky to have the car instantly slow itself down when you let off the accelerator. But trust me, you’ll get better and better at letting off the pedal slowly so you don’t make your passengers nauseous. It’s also possible in many vehicles to turn down the regen so it’s less aggressive.

3. Revel in the many lifestyle benefits.

For starters, think of all the car vocabulary you won’t need anymore. An EV’s power output can be measured in torque and horsepower, but say goodbye to combustion-specific vernacular like spark plugs, cylinders, pistons, or liters as a measure of engine size (unless you get a plug-in hybrid). No more mufflers, no exhaust or timing belts. An EV has no use for miles per gallon, though carmakers and the EPA try to measure an electric car’s efficiency in miles per gallon equivalent as a way to compare them with gas cars.

As the months and years go by, you’ll appreciate a number of differences in the EV owner’s lifestyle. Drivers needn’t bother with remembering the pesky oil change every 3,000 miles, nor with worrying about the lifespans of thousands of moving parts that come with internal combustion. (On the other hand, today’s EVs burn through tires faster than gas cars do because of their weight and their performance.)

There’s a lot more to learn, of course. Just remember: The first time you bypass the gas station — with its stinky fumes and pesky commercials screaming at you — to refuel your car in the comfort of your home, you’ll wonder why you waited so long.

SEE YOU AT THE CHARGER!