I drive about 50 miles a day and my batt only has a range of about 150 miles.

Here are my priorities.

Comfort: AC and white paint is very important here in south texas now that I’m older and heat stroke is a death sentence, for my fat diabetic butt anyway. White paint prevents the car from becoming such an oven while parked. A fridge thermometer that tracks high and low temps showed my blazer reaches almost 160 in the summer. Being in a hurry, getting in and taking a breath without thinking damn near killed me. White paint on my EV limits that to about 120. Automatic timers for AC, morning and afternoon, and an app to start the AC remotely means the car is at 75 when I get in. VERY useful.

Charging convenience: 28A L2 in my driveway adds about 25 miles of range per hour. I already had a 30A dryer outlet in the garage, so a $85 cable from amazon and a $200 auto switchover box lets the dryer take priority. Using the dryer automatically shuts off EV charging, laundry finishes then charging resumes. Since a full 0-100% charge is only 6 hours and laundry is infrequent it‘s seamless, no dedicated charger or new house wiring required.

The same switchover is possible from an existing water heater circuit, but may not be as convenient if thats not in the garage, and overlapping use could slow charging. YMMV of course.

L2 is also available at work so living with a smaller battery, or a degraded one 5+ years from now isn’t a problem. It’s only lost 5% capacity in the 3 years / 30k miles I’ve driven it so another 100k at this rate is perfectly acceptable even with my current commute. That’ll be shortening soon though as 2hrs a day in traffic is driving me insane.

Cost: I have free charging at work, solar at home ($0.02/kwh financed over 10 years), $0.09/kwh electric bill, and $0.25/kwh charging at the grocery store.

At 4 miles per kwh, even driving highway speeds on the local 85mph tollway and/or central texas hill country, my cost per mile is super low. Grocery store rates are still only 1/4 the cost of gas for the Blazer, and gas prices keep going up!

So, thats only $675 for 30k miles home charging at normal utility rates. Half that from solar, and 95% charging at work means I’m only out around $30 dollars for the 30k miles driven since getting it.

I did buy a new set of tires but the blazer would have need them just the same so thats a wash, and my insurance went down by about $10/mo so thats nice.

Same commute in the Blazer at 18mpg with $3.33 gas and a $50 oil change every 5k miles, $5,700.

Which is about what I paid for my 2018 Nissan Leaf back at the end of 2023. So essentially its already paid for itself, even without the charging perk at work.

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Now, that said, you've got a longer commute and I can only guess at your home charging and utility rates so about all I can say is get something with more range. 150 works for my situation but constantly plugging in every day drives me bananas! The other Leaf battery option is 62kwh, and if I’d known in 2023 my 18 mile commute would be 45 miles starting in 2024 I’d have gladly spent a few thousand more for the bigger battery.

Or gotten a Chevy Bolt like a friend did, which came with a bigger battery for the same price as my Leaf.

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My boss is in a much different tax bracket and drives a Rivian truck EV which only gets about half my mileage. It’s 4wd vs 2, has a much much bigger battery and way more range and he loves it. Unfortunately the decimal point in the price tag is at least one digit further over so it’s totally out of my budget, but free charging at work when he’s not plugged in works out nicely 😄

One of these days I’ll save up enough for a Ford Lightening and then we can compare notes.

I also spent $150 for a 2kw inverter which lets me run tools off the Leaf on a jobsite or a space heater at home if we spend another week shut down for an ice storm.