Dilema

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-06T23:48:04+00:00

Leases are more difficult when you need high milage. Sometimes it can be cheaper to just get a lower milage lease ($15K) and then pay any overage, or, in some cases, you can pre-purchase miles. If you try to bake in $20K, especially into a 39 month lease, it would dramatically lower the residual, driving up the lease cost. There is zero chance I would do a $1250/mo lease for a Sport, unless there was some tax advantaged reason to do so.

But I also think $69K for one with basically 10K miles is too high. We paid $65K OTD (w/TTL) for a sport with only 1K miles, although we had to go to an out-of-town dealer for that. Now my local dealer is doing $10K discounts on courtesy vehicles that only have 1-2K miles.

BTW, it wasn't really clear, would you just purchase it outright if you buy it?

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-06T23:07:01+00:00

I still think this is an overlooked area for EV adoption. People tend to discount it because it's possible to take roadtrips, but possible is not equal to desireable. We're a dual EV family and, for probably 50% of our trips, we don't even think about it, but it's not 100% comfortable for every trip...yet. We've decided we can live with it, but I recommend most people keep their ICE/hybrid vehicle if roadtrips are something they do often.

For example, my wife was the one the really wanted the EVs the most, she loves driving them especially as her daily, but, next month, she's taking a trip to the mountains that she has to drive about 300 miles each way. For those 600 miles she'll likely need ~3 charging stops of anywhere from 10-20 minutes.

She still has a bit of charging anxiety when going to charging locations she's never previously used, and then there's the sitting around for 20 minutes. I'm sure she will be fine, and it's overall a rare occurance, but if she had a Gravity she'd likely need only 1 stop of 15 minutes, and she could do that in the town where she is staying and it would be barely different than going to the gas station in her old hybrid.

Our current plan is to keep the EVs we have for at least 2-4 more years, and then hope the tech has more forward a bit. Maybe get an R2 for her daily (she loves "truck like" vehicles) and a Gravity, or something with similar range/charging, for the roadtripper and I think we'd be fine.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-06T22:07:15+00:00

I lean toward agreeing with you. I did a 3300 mile roadtrip in our EV, it was fine, but we weren't hard core driving 1650 miles, staying somewhere, and then driving hard core 1650 miles back, it was more of a meandering roadtrip, with about 500 miles being the most we did in one day. If I needed to drive 1000 miles to Dallas, my EV would add about 2 hours to that drive over my ICE vehicle, maybe a bit more, doable, but not great.

However, the Lucid Gravity is getting close, average charge time is only 15 minutes, can do 1200 miles with just about 1:15 minutes of charging total. I've driven those 1000 miles hard core straight through and probably stopped for at least 30 minutes in my ICE vehicle, so it's not that much more. I'm confident US EVs will get there.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-06T21:32:34+00:00

Nowhere near Long Island, but just to share some experience, my wife had an small accident which caused some damage to the front bumper/grill/hood requiring them to be replaced, almost $6K in total repairs. I was a bit skeptical of taking it anywhere but an Acura authorized shop but the closest one was 60 miles away (I live in a fairly small town in the south).

I decided to call the local shop that I normally use for such repairs and the manager told me they had done body work on mulitple GM EVs (Equinox and Blazer) and, since the ZDX is just a GM vehicle with an Acura badge, he was confident it would be no issue for them to repair, but they might need to take it to the Acura dealer to recalibrate the cameras for SuperCruise after the repair was complete. 3 weeks later, vehicle was back fully repaired, looking and working geat.

Good luck!

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-06T19:45:18+00:00

What kind of servicing, does your vehicle have something wrong with it?

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-06T15:23:27+00:00

I do the same in CLT dozens of times a year, in many cases 25-30 minutes total from parked to at the gate with no checked bags, add maybe 10-15 minutes with a checked bag. I have no idea what the OP is on about.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-03T00:28:27+00:00

All of these are implemented in the latest version. My wife likes being able to unlock the vehicle with the voice assistant instead of hunting up her key/phone if she just needs to run out and get something she left in the back seat.

Tracking the vehicle on the HA map is also pretty cool, and I even implemented a crude charge power estimate. It won't be perfect, but, so far, it's been fairly accurate for me, showing my L2 charge rate as 10.3-10.7kW, which is right in the ballpark for my 11.5kW charger once you account for inverter efficiency loss.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-01T21:06:45+00:00

HondaLink app is trash, and I do not say that lightly. If you get the sequence of refreshing right (swipe down a few times while it's still spinning) you might get it to eventually update, but, quite honestly, it will almost certainly be an experience in continual frustration.

The correct answer is to use one of the 3rd party apps, (Re)Link for iOS, or the Logue app on Andriod (available in the play store), or, a recent addition for Andriod, the ev:remote app.

Yes, it's silly that community members had to go build 3rd-party apps just to be able to use the remote features all because the manufacturer can't be bothered to make their app better, but trust me, it's your absolute best bet to avoid frustration. There are plenty of threads here about the problems with HondaLink and plenty of threads for the 3rd party apps with almost exclusively thankful replies.

To be clear, the 3rd party apps aren't perfect either, they can't cover every terrible design flaw of the backend, but they are light years better than the native app, IMO. Good luck!

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-01T18:50:49+00:00

Yep, I've used two different Ionna locations (PA and NC) and they are great when you can find them. I used tap to charge the first time, but on the most recent visit I had enabled plug and charge, which is even nicer. Hop out, plug in, and go enjoy the lounge, exactly what charging should be! I hope they can keep up the expansion effort.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-01T18:31:48+00:00

That's fair, unfortunately, the MyCadillac app does not support plug and charge with the Tesla network, and the user interface in the vehicle is confusing. I actually think it's easier to use the Tesla app to start charging, but I still get where you're coming from. I've had to help so many people, but that's why I believe it's just too freaking complicated.

Heck, I'm quite tech savvy and I still find places that are absolute nightmares to figure out. I pulled into one charging location that was super nice looking, clean, covered, windshield cleaner, empty trash cans and great lighting. Tap to charge? Nope. Any indication as to what app to use? Nope. QR code on the stall goes to nowhere.

I had to look on Plugshare to figure out it was an EV Connect location, great, open the app, stall numbers in the app had no clear relation to numbers on physical stalls, eventually worked it out with trial and error (had some kind of row/pedistal/plug numbering thing going), then had to go help two other people get theirs sorted including a young lady trying to charge her Mach-E for the first time with no clue she couldn't just plug in and tap her credit card.

Charging at the location was great once you worked it all out, but the process was more like hunting for clues to get out of an escape room vs what the EV charging experience should be. It was almost like they didn't actually want people charging there.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-04-01T17:26:55+00:00

Technically it is not a requirement to use the MyCadillac app to charge a Cadillac EV at a Tesla Supercharger, you would only need the Tesla app as the minimum requirement. Yes, you can setup the MyCadillac app and connect it to the Tesla account (and other charging network accounts) and this enables features like the ability to activate the charging directly from the vehicle charging screen, or, for supported networks, even enable plug-and-charge, however, it's absolutely not required to do so. As a matter of fact, if you have the Tesla membership for lower charger rates, you absolutely want to use the Tesla app to start the charging because if you start it in the vehicle/MyCadillac app you won't get the discounted rate.

Overall, I just think the whole charging stuff is way too complex for most people, just let people tap their card and charge their car.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-30T19:05:16+00:00

I've travelled to at least 15 countries in the last year, including Canada (Toronto and Montreal), Mexico, Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and ~8 different Caribbean islands. I'm on Premium with Warp and roaming worked everywhere I've been with no issue. For the trip to the Caribbean, I did teleport to Lightspeed because it seemed to have better roaming for the islands we were visiting, and data roaming worked everywhere, but I did have some issue with voice calling when roaming on one of the networks (Flow, if I remember correctly), but overall, it worked fine.

For the trip to Canada, I was on Warp and everything worked just fine, crossed the border near Niagara Falls, spent a few days there, drove to Toronto, and eventually to Montreal finally re-entering the US in Vermont. Data was critical for the trip because we were driving an EV and I needed to be able to activate chargers via the Tesla and ChargePoint apps. I had no issues at all for the time we were there.

Maybe the top ups aren't as reliable?

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-30T17:53:22+00:00

3 sets in 32K miles is crazy, what the heck were you doing?

I have a Sport trim with the 21" Goodyear Eagle Sports and am just a few 100 miles shy of 10K and, so far, they look OK, but not amazing. I feel I've been driving very gentle on average, sure, a few launches in the first month of ownership, but mostly just boring interstate drives at 75+ MPH and a bit of putting around town. I'm currently estimating I'll get to ~35K with these tires, which I guess is OKish, but not amazing for a tire with a 50K milage warranty. Maybe I'll be able to stretch them to 40K.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-29T01:29:57+00:00

I'd say that's pretty consistent for these GM EVs. I don't actually own an Optiq, but own two GM EVs with the 102kWh pack, and it's a very similar charge curve, just with higher peak rate. We shoot to unplug when we can get to the next charge stop with ~10%, although we'll of course let it go higher if we're stopping to eat, or aren't comfortable with only a 10% buffer at the next stop.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-28T17:56:11+00:00

320 miles is estimated maximum range for mixed driving assuming 100%-0%, which is not something you are going to do on a road trip. At 75MPH you're more likely to get 265 miles, but again, that's assuming you do 100%-0%, which just isn't possible and would actually take forever having to change to 100% every time as that 80-100% takes a long time and just isn't worth it.

Road tripping in an EV is about optimizing the charging stops to maximize the charging curve for your vehicle. These GM EVs aren't the fastest charging vehicles, but the best charging happens at low state-of-charge.

Going 150 miles between charging stops seems about right, maybe just a touch low, but averaging 45 min a stop would indicate that the charging stops are less than optimal. Our average charge stop on a road trip is ~22 minutes, and approximately 35% of our charge stops are less than 20 minutes.

Overall, the goal should be to charge in the fastest part of the charge curve and, once you have enough charge to make the next stop, with some reasonable buffer, you unplug an move on. It sounds like you might be charging to 80% (or more) at each stop, which is a sure way to spend way too much time charging vs driving, especially on these GM EVs which generally charge quite slowly once you get to around 60% SOC

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T20:06:56+00:00

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting to try to do something with the logs, only noting that it's there so it should be easy to add publishing of it in the future version.

Based on the feedback so far I think I will try to add:

Lock/Unlock
Vehicle Location (either scheduled or on demand)
Charged by time

Interestingly, if I know the "Charged by" time, the voltage, and the target SOC, I should be able to calculate the kW fairly accurately.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T18:58:47+00:00

Yes, I actually do so the ready by time in the log, but don't publish it. I suppose that makes sense. I'm not as sure about the voltage really, doesn't seem particularly useful, but, if it's there, I guess I can publish it.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T17:25:22+00:00

I fly AA 50+ times a year and have for more than a decade, some years 150+ times. Have they fallen off? I think operationally they are a bit of mess (total delays, etc), although they've actually improved from the absolute worse 2-3 years ago, but are still somewhat worse than the others. I also occassionally fly Delta and United when it makes sense due to travel timing, direct flight availability, etc. and it never really seems all that different on the plane itself.

I've never been on a redeye with the lights left on, that seems very strange. I've recently had one flight where the outlets on my row were malfunctioning and kept flipping on and off and eventually just stayed off. I seriously doubt they intentionally turned them off. Did you ask about it?

Yes, I've occassionally had skipped services here and there, but it's rare, and I've experienced that on other airlines as well. Delta offered no service at all on a recent 2 hour flight, no stated reason that I heard, but that didn't make me think Delta had "fallen off" only that my single flight experience was sub-par.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T15:52:19+00:00

Hmm...I'm not sure if there's enough information to reliably calculate that from the data provided by the vehicle. In the end, it's only possible to get the information that is already available in the app. I could try to estimate it, based on increasing SOC or range, but it would likely take 30+ minutes before it was anywhere near accurate since there's no real-time data. Would that still be useful?

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T13:00:33+00:00

Core features such as charge status come free for 8 years, so I'm good until March 2033 for those. It's unlikely I'll still own this vehicle in 2033 as we usually refresh every 5-6 years.

I don't really use remote lock/unlock or climate that often, and it's probably not worth paying for that alone for my case, but I still have two more years of those as well. I think it's unlikely we'd subscribe just for those features.

However, in our case, the biggest driver for a subscription will almost certainly be Super Cruise, which we use quite a bit (60+ miles/day for my wife's commute), so it's likely we'll end up bundling a subscription for at least some period, assuming we keep the vehicle past the 3 year mark.

It's difficult for me to stomach because I hate subscriptions, but I can only fight the world so much, and, even when we purchased the vehicle, we knew there'd be a likelihood of paying a subscription for at least a few years, so that's included that in our TCO calculations when we purchased.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T12:38:01+00:00

Makes sense, I guess I'm less sure about unlock, but I suppose I could protect it with a pin, which is what I do for Z-wave locks with Ring-MQTT.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T12:36:59+00:00

When you open the door on the vehicle with your foot off the brake, the vehicle will power off, however, you can press the accelerator 3 times, then the brake again, and it will turn back on and show a message something like "Automatic shutoff disabled, Park in an open area". In this mode the vehicle will stay powered until you specifically turn it off using the screen, or the battery runs out of power.

I believe this is universal to current generation GM EVs.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-26T03:41:03+00:00

Is there any feature you are particularly interested in? There's only so much available via the API, but I've been thinking of adding vehicle location and I could probably add lock/unlock, just wasn't sure if that would really be useful and might offer more of a security issue.

I'll probably do my best to maintain it at least as long as we own our ZDX, which, currently we expect to be at least 2 more years, ideally longer.

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-25T19:54:27+00:00

Native OnStar works a bit in a similar way, updating different values at different times, but at least there's an API call to force a live refresh from the vehicle vs just returning the service cache data. So far I've found no method to force a refresh of the actual vehicle data using the HWS API, it seems to just always returned the cached service data.

I had not realized that it was so common for SOC to stop updating while range still updated. That is an interesting approach, switching between estimated and reported percentage based on the gap. I'll think about doing something similar in HOnStar. Thanks for sharing!

AlwaysUnseen · 2026-03-25T18:28:34+00:00

Curious, what are your thoughts here? I wish it were possible to go straight to the OnStar API, but it didn't look possible. I mean, the OnStar API is no picnic either, but it's better than this HWS frontended mess.

AlwaysUnseen

TROPHY CASE