For those involved in the Buyback program: what are your plans after?

Excellent post.

I've thought about a PHEV myself, and of course like anything else there are plusses and minuses.

My largest concerns are the complexity of PHEV (nothing beats the simplicity of EV), but of course if you buy a Hyundai/Kia product you have long term warranty protection. And I assume a PHEV requires as much maintenance as any ICE?

One question...with a PHEV if you make almost all short trips, could it be weeks if not months between the times the ICE engine starts? Is that problematic at all? I assume if you were not going to use a tank of fuel at least every couple of month you would want to use fuel stabilizer?

 

I went with VW ID.4 myself. I had to wait a good 5 months or so to get the thing, and my wife and I were sharing one car for 3 of those months. I put in the reservation shortly after reservations opened, and that was while the Kona was still in the shop awaiting a new battery.

I briefly considered getting another Kona, but ultimately decided that the tech in the Kona is already several years old and there were other shortcomings. The 2019 Kona had no battery heater, so winter charging was frankly awful. The max charge rates in the best case is substantially less than any new design, the back seat was uncomfortably small for adults, and the cargo capacity was quite limited.

There are tons of EV options coming to marking now. VW, Ford, Nissan and Hyundai are the main ones.

I know someone who has the Volt, and he is diligent about charging the car when available. His car keeps track of the age of the fuel, and when it gets too old, it forces him to burn it off and refuel. So fuel stabilizer is never really required as the fuel never gets old enough. I assume that other PHEV have similar features.

 

I've sworn off oil changes and gas pumps for the future, so I'm sticking with EVs going forward. I ended up ordering a Mach-E and am looking now to see if I can "skip the line", as the order queue is likely >6 months, and I suspect the buyback will complete in the next month or 2 maybe. Being without a car wouldn't be a disaster (we can share the other car in the family), but it's certainly inconvenient.

 

the main reason I wouldn't want to go PHEV or Hybrid route, is the maintenance. it still has an engine that you will have to maintain and an electric battery that you will eventually also worry about. I pretty much do all the basic routine maintenance of my cars and got really tired of doing it. EV route is what I chose because of this. my 2019 Kona EV has a great battery replacement warranty and has very little maintenance... suits my needs.

but IF I were to get a PHEV, the RAV4 Prime is my main choice (for the performance), then the Hyundai (for the warranty)...

 

For all of these, it is easy to make a reservation, and easy to get your money back if you change your mind. So keep an eye out for cancelled reservations. When you are ready, you can start calling around to see what might be available.

For VW, the dealers aren't allowed markups for people with reservations. If someone cancels, the dealer can sell for whatever they can get for the car. I don't know if something similar applies to Ford.

 

Ford corporate apparently discourages dealers from ADM (Dealer Markup), but it does still happen. A dealer near me added nearly $10k to the MSRP. I laughed at them and told them I would never do business with them just because of that. Others have reported the dealers that do this to Ford and in some cases the dealers removed the ADM and sold the car. Not sure what happened with this one, but the car did disappear from their site. So I suppose someone may have bought it for $10k over.... (or they caved)

 

After my buy back, I'll have my older 2009 CRV to fall back on until I decide what to do. My daughter was using it, but she'll be going off to college so it just would've sat idle.

I will, however, eventually buy another EV. Right now, I'm considering a Tesla Model Y or maybe the new Ioniq 5. Either way, I'm not going to rush it for the following reasons:

1. I want to wait for the Green New Deal legislation to see if they restore the federal rebates for the Teslas. There is a good chance that they will by the end of the year (though I hope Tesla doesn't take advantage of that and hike up the prices)

2. Tesla will eventually start manufacturing their Model Y's with the new 4860 cells (starting in Germany first, then Texas). Don't know the exact time lines yet, but this could bring some additional improvements such as longer range and faster charge times.

3. I want to see what the Ioniq 5 is all about. Dealers should start getting them later this year.

Overall, I think spring of 2022 will probably be the earliest that I purchase a new car.

 

Bottom line up front: I'll probably look for a great deal on a 2021 Kona EV, and figure that the $7500 tax credit will pay for the cost of switching cars again in a year or so. I wonder if the $3000 cash back will increase on June 1, or decrease.

I will stick with an EV. I'm with Jamas in thinking that some time in 2022 would be a better time to make a choice, with the Ioniq 5 and other new cars coming out. But that's not an option; Hyundai will want my car back in about a month.

Among what's out there today, the only other one I'd consider is the Ford Mach-E. After several test drives, including an AWD, I feel it doesn't handle as well as the Kona, which was the only car that put a smile on my face in late 2019. It's got some features I'd like, but I'd miss the heads-up display and cornering lights, and Ford's nav system is brain-damaged.

I wish the 2022 Kona EV were out now, just so I could compare prices and see if there's any new features on the U.S. model that I'd really want. But I'm guessing not, and dealers should be really eager right now to move the 2021's out.

 

I'm spoiled on gas now. The maintenance seems so archaic. My Tundra is in the shop once every 3 months or so for oil and various other needs. I'll replace that with electric when I can.

So, definitely replacing the Kona with another EV. Something with faster DC charging would be my only wish, otherwise the Kona is perfect for us. Probably, when we compare the numbers, it'll make the most sense to just get another Kona, but I've reserved an ID4 as well, and I'd certainly look at an Ioniq 5. Bigger is nice, but are we willing to pay an extra 5 or 10 grand for extra space that we mostly don't use? Probably not.

 

Waiting for further developments makes some sense, but I think that'll always be there. In 5 years stuff will be more advanced. 5 years after that other stuff will have improved. Until then, I'm really happy with where the current tech is, and I know I'm reducing carbon and saving on cost of ownership, over any other kind of vehicle.

 

FWIW, I loved our EV but wasn't convinced it was a viable car for long road trips until the last couple months. In that time we've done a bunch of 600 mile drives, and while it's not without a couple minor early-adopter moments, the trips were great. Those experiences really increased my conviction that full EV is the way to go, when at all possible. Our family will go EV as soon as we can - the thing that holds us back from only having EVs is simply charging infrastructure to our north. We live on the edge of hundreds of miles of deep wilderness, and we do a fair amount of adventuring up there. Driving 2 hours on a dirt road without seeing electricity of any sort is not uncommon. When I can charge at a few more places in towns at the edges of those forests, I'll replace my truck with an EV pickup or tow-capable SUV.

 

I (very) briefly drove a company BMW i3 with the range extender, and it did this too. It actually drove me crazy and I would never buy one. I _would_ like to replace my Forester with a PHEV minivan... but my wife will only buy Japanese and they still haven't quite gotten there.

I just started the buyback process on my 2019. I was actually intending to replace it in the next 12 months to size up... but my timeline might be a bit messed up now.

• Tesla -- I intensely dislike the interior/control scheme of the Model 3/Y. Although their fit and finish has supposedly improved, it is hard to just forgive a company for things like "seatbelts aren't attached" and "oops, the roof fell off". I know way, way too much about some of their other extremely questionable SW and HW engineering decisions. So yeah, no Tesla.
• Volvo XC40 Recharge -- I test drove the XC40 Recharge a few months ago and liked it, but it had a bunch of issues that were hard to live with on a $55k+ car. The software was totally unfinished, though supposedly this is improving. No Carplay (apparently fixed now), no HD Radio (but I guess they give you unlimited LTE so you can just use Tune-In?), no power button (trying to get the climate control to come on and stay on after the driver gets out is very awkward). My main issue was the consumption. I ran a 80mph test and got less than 2 mi/kWh (which, in another gripe, they only display as kWh/100mi... which is back-asswards as you want that number to be low...). That's really low. So much so that I probably couldn't go see my in-laws in the winter without a charge stop.
• Volvo C40 -- This looks promising in that it probably gets better highway mileage than the XC40... but that's not for sure and there isn't a release date yet.
• VW ID4 -- I was interested in this... until it came out. I'm really not a fan of all the capacitive buttons combined with lack of physical switches. Also, the AWD model is delayed until... Q4?
• Audi Q4 etron -- I think this is my top choice now. It is looking as pricey as the XC40, but is larger interior, better range and probably fixes the interior/controls issues of the ID4.
• Toyota BZ4X -- After the numerous issues with the Kona, my wife is really pushing for us to go back to Japanese cars. But this has zero technical info, and no release date.
• Ionic 5 / EV6 -- As much as I'd like an 800V platform, I'm having a hard time going with Hyundai/Kia again. Will I need to travel 2 hours just to see the car? With the dealership experience still suck? Will it have issues that the manufacturer and dealership refuse to acknowledge?

 

I look for a real life 300 Mile range, heat pump, adaptive cruise control with automatic Regenerative braking, D/C charge capability, full safety features, navigation.
Tesla has all this but the lease was awful. Residual at 50% when real world Tesla are selling at 70%, no chance to buy car after lease, etc..
So far the only car close is the Kia Niro, but maybe I missed one?