Thinking about buying an EV?
What sort of vehicle do you want?
You can get a fully electric car or pickup; new models of these typically go a couple of hundred miles on a charge. Or you can get a plug-in hybrid; these typically go from 30 to 50 miles on a charge and then run on gasoline like a Prius. PlugStar has a webpage that lets you specify a lot of different things about the sort of car you’d like, and shows you all the currently available new cars that match your choices. The Department of Energy has a page that includes older models as well as new ones and lets you compare the costs and emissions of driving them the way you would, using our local costs for fuel and electricity. (Its results for the total costs of ownership over time assume that you’re getting a loan to buy the cars… It uses state wide values for the emissions from the grid; to use values roughly like our local utility’s in 2023, you can say you’re in Georgia.
What incentives are available?
Currently, you can get a Federal tax credit of up to $7,500 when you buy most new plug-in cars, and a credit of up to $4,000 when you buy most used ones from a dealer. (These may well be reduced or eliminated early by President Trump’s administration.) The IRS has a webpage with the details about the rules for new cars, and one with the details for used cars. The DOE has a page that lets you look up particular models to see the credit for which they’re eligible. You should get a Time of Sale report from the dealer to file with your taxes.
Note that the rules for new cars about final assembly, critical minerals and battery components don’t apply if you’re leasing the car, since the dealer is actually buying it, and those rules don’t apply to commercial vehicles. If you’re not going to owe enough on your income taxes to use the full credit, you might want to transfer it to the dealer and get it deducted from the price, since the dealer can certainly use the full credit.
In 2024, Washington State offered income qualified households additional rebates of up to $9,000 on the lease of new EVs, up to $5,000 on the purchase of one, and $2,500 on the lease or purchase of a used EV. The program’s $45 million in funding was used up very rapidly, so the rebates may be offered again at some point.
How do I charge the car?
Car & Driver has a good introduction to the different kinds of EV charger. If you’re going to take long trips, you’ll need to stop and use a fast Level 3 440 volt DC charger every so often. You can find chargers on the way or in advance using PlugShare’s software, or A Better Route Planner’s, which is more powerful but more complicated. People generally figure on charging while they stop for lunch or shop or take a walk. On overnight trips, they stay at a hotel or motel with charging.
People who commute significant differences and can’t charge at work, or who want to be sure to have their car fully charged all the time generally install a 240 volt Level 2 charger at home. If you already have a 240 socket for something like a dryer close to where you’ll park the car you can share that power with the car charger. Otherwise, you’ll need a new circuit. (It’s cheaper to have one added as part of some other project if you’re hiring an electrician for something else.) A Federal tax credit will cover 30% of the cost of installing a charger in our area, with a cap of $1,000. PSE will give you an additional $300 or $600 rebate (depending on your income); their Flex EV program, which gives you different rates for using electricity at different times of the day, might also save you money on your power bill.
If you’re mostly going to be driving the car around town, or not commuting too far, you may well be able to simply plug the cable that comes with your EV into a regular household socket. This 110 volt charging will only add 25 or 30 miles of range to your car overnight, and more if its sitting there on the weekend, but that’s more than many people drive on most days, and if your car will go 200 miles or more on a full battery, you can just keep topping it up like this, and take it to a public Level 2 charger somewhere around town if you ever need to use up most of its range at once and don’t have time to gradually fill the battery again over a few days.