6 months of driving an EV - my thoughts & review

Before buying my EV I knew nothing about it besides that it’s an environmentally conscious thing to do, but after 6 months of driving it has blown my mind how much money it’s saving me and it’s also pretty fun to drive as well!

Here are some things I love about driving an EV:

1️⃣ Gas savings:

Before getting my EV I was paying $300 a month on gas living in a HCOL area, and now I don’t have to go to a gas station again and I’ve never looked back! We’re lucky because we have free charging at work, but even charging at home the electricity costs are very minimal (my roommate’s EV costs about $30 of electricity bill a month).

2️⃣ No maintenance required:

I’ve always hated getting oil changes and getting maintenance done on my old car. So not having to do those is a major plus for me :) EV’s require little to no maintenance (mainly just tire rotation and windshield wiper fluid refills).

3️⃣ Tax credits:

The government is currently highly subsidizing EV purchases through the new Inflation Reduction Act. Many US made EV’s have a $7,500 federal tax credit + another couple thousands of state tax credit based on each state. In California, I was able to get a $2,000 state tax credit making it a total of $9,500 of free money you can get back in your tax return!

Note that you can only get the tax credit up to what your tax liability is. For example if you owe $8,000 in tax liability, you can get the $7,500 tax credit but if you owe only $2,000 in tax liability, you can only get $2,000 back.

The cons:

The time it takes to charge can be a little inconvenient. I mostly feel it during road trips where I have to stop by to charge pretty often and sit for 30 mins to an hour to wait for the car to charge up.

Despite the minor inconveniences, I love my Chevy Bolt and would 100% recommend it because it’s actually a really nice EV without the price tag of a Tesla, and the range of 250 miles is pretty high as well.

Do you drive an EV or are you considering it? Let me know your thoughts on it!

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