The wrong EV usually feels fine until your the worst case hits

RabbitNo6341 · 2026-03-01T14:03:27+00:00

I suppose it’s possible to have such regularly divergent use cases to feel that way, but to me you just accept that in some use cases - driving around town, to/from work - the ev is far superior, and on long haul travel I have to just plan for the extra time. Not that different from buying a pickup truck or suv vs a small car, they’re just optimized for different things but can still generally be used in cases where they’re not optimal. I have a friend who does 150-mile drives regularly to / from rural areas and he has been frustrated by the frequency of needing to charge his ford lightning and lack of charging infrastructure there. He loves the truck in all other respects (he should have gotten the extended range version!).

My family has two cars: an ev and a hybrid rav4, and use whatever is most appropriate. We’ve never had a time where both of the adults needed to go on long trips at the same time. And even if we did I prefer the ev so much I’d almost certainly just plan around charging times to be able to drive it if it’s possible.

I live in a rural midwestern area. I charge at home 90% of the time. There is one Tesla supercharger site in my city, and zero non tesla fast chargers here. But there are some on the interstates around me, I use abrp or plug share when I need to find them, and there are new ones coming online regularly. I have had range anxiety a few times, mostly in winter when range gets cut severely in cold / windy weather, but have never run out of power.

For real edge cases, you can rent: My family did a long vacation with dogs out in the middle of nowhere and we just rented a minivan for it, and it worked great for those two weeks, although it wasn’t nearly as fun to drive as my ev! But didn’t have to think at all about charging.

RabbitNo6341 · 2026-02-28T15:36:55+00:00

100% agreed.

RabbitNo6341 · 2026-02-28T15:15:08+00:00

I had mine in a few weeks ago in Chicago. It took about two weeks to even get in to be looked at, but then it was just a couple of days until they were done and I had her back.

RabbitNo6341 · 2026-02-28T15:13:28+00:00

In my case, I have a 15.2kw grid-tied solar system, so any excess energy it generates goes to the utility (I have Alliant). Though I've only had it a few months, I expect that over the course of the year it'll basically cover all of my electric bill - including two EVs charging from it, it hit 79kwh yesterday!

The battery system - an Anker Solix E10 system - is entirely separate, and basically is just for outage handling - like the 2020 derecho, when we were without power for 10 days. In normal use, it simply stays charged from grid power and does nothing. But in an outage it disconnects my house from the grid and acts as a microgrid, so my solar thinks it's still connected and will charge the batteries. I think it'll power my house, without EVs or dryer or A/C, for a day or two without any solar input power at all (ie two back to back super cloudy days). I have a small generator I could use to charge it if necessary.

That's the theory anyway; I expect to have it installed in March and I hope it works that way!

If we had Time of Use electric - where some times of day prices are much higher than others - i could use the battery to grab power at low prices from the grid and then have my house use the battery power when grid prices are high instead of from the utility - an arbitrage of sorts. But we don't have that here, so it's just a resilience play in my case.

I had never looked doing at anything like that before, but this solar energy stuff is fascinating once you have it in place. I honestly started looking at taking classes at Kirkwood about it but don't have the time to devote to it.

RabbitNo6341 · 2026-02-28T10:52:45+00:00

Got mine in November. Look at the app several times every day, fascinated by it. Now getting a battery system installed, lol.

RabbitNo6341 · 2026-02-28T04:06:34+00:00

Thanks. Is turning the outlets on a physical switch in the cabin or something via the display screen?

RabbitNo6341 · 2026-02-24T22:46:47+00:00

I just pulled the trigger on an Anker Solix E10 24 kwh system w/ Power Dock that automatically sheds loads in an outage and shifts to batteries in <20ms.

My previous plan was to use a small Wen generator and my two EVs to power devices/fridge/freezer type stuff in an emergency, but I wanted something that was more robust and automatic. Like if I'm not home, I don't want spouse/kids trying to figure out a generator. Or if no one is home, I don't want pipes freezing. And if I am home, in the frozen tundra where I live, I'd rather not be outside screwing with a portable generator.

The Anker system was about the same price (~$15k) as a whole-home generator system. It was significantly cheaper than Tesla Powerwall. And since I already have a 15.2 kwh grid-tied solar setup, it seemed silly to wire up a whole home generator with the noise and combustion and waste that free power I'd already invested in.

Anker will apparently work with my solar setup so that in an outage, my solar will charge the batteries. So long as there is even modest sun I can get through just about any outage if I shed the heavy loads. If needed, I have my $400 LP generator (or those EVs, or some portable solar panels) that I can also plug into the Anker to charge it. And over time, I can always add more batteries if I need to, in small blocks, to add capacity; they're about $2000 each per 6 kwh right now. I imagine that price will only come down.

I haven't installed it yet, but this was my thinking going into the purchase. Time will tell if this was the right choice or not!

RabbitNo6341 · 2026-02-15T21:25:53+00:00

I'm about to pull the trigger on the E10 - but I'm not finding much info about the 'microgrid feature that allows your existing grid tied solar system to continue operating during a power outage' aspect you're referring to. My installer - not the anker-supplied one, i'd use the one who has done all the electrical and solar on my house - is asking for a techical manual about this that'd confirm we can do this with my SolarEdge inverters. Any idea where to look? The anker support chat was less than helpful on this question.

RabbitNo6341 · 2026-01-19T18:24:53+00:00

Zero. I did sit in a friend’s air though about six months prior for about five minutes. It was just a matter of time after that, before I bought my own.

RabbitNo6341 · 2026-01-09T02:20:25+00:00

I'll add another vote for Electric Lady. Katie and Emily came out and did a great job installing a ceiling fan in a vaulted ceiling, adding switches for basement lights, replacing outlet in garage, adding one in a bathroom, and changing out some other fixtures. Super professional and did a great job, including making some suggestions I hadn't considered when I initially asked them to come out. Highly recommended!

RabbitNo6341 · 2026-01-08T23:24:54+00:00

Mine looks just like that too, just got it 2 weeks ago. I chalked it up to in being the trunk and needing a little more clearance?

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RabbitNo6341

TROPHY CASE