We’ve had a few posts on the site recently about the downside of owning an electric car. For example:

• California warns against recharging EVs while moving to ban gas cars
• Electric vehicles not working out for many renters
• EV fEVer fervor will EVentually EVolve into destroying EVerything we love
• Electric cars: sure, charging sucks, but you meet cool people as you wait

Basically Jazz, Beege and David have all hit on this topic in the past few months and in the spirit of a friendly collegial back and forth, I wanted to present the alternative case. In other words, I want to make the case that owning an EV makes a lot of sense right now. Not for everyone certainly but probably for more people than you might think.

But first an admission. I don’t feel compelled to make this case for owning an EV purely out of academic interest in representing all sides of an argument. It’s also not merely because I enjoy stirring the pot a bit (though that is sometimes true). It’s mostly because earlier this month I bought a Tesla Model 3 and I’m convinced it was a good choice, at least for me.

So, full disclosure, I don’t own any Tesla stock so I’m not trying to boost the price by writing about it. This is just my view on the topic as a car buyer and obviously as a driver. I’ve owned a lot of cars over the years. My first car was a Ford Mustang but not a cool one. It was one of the early 80s models when Ford was still recovering from the late 70s and before they put out the 5.0 that was sort of a return to form for that car. I had a Honda CRX 2-seater in the 90s that I loved. I had a new Honda Civic in the early 2000s and then a Hyundai Sonata which I bought new. I bought a new Chevy Camaro when they released the new models about 13 years ago. Then I traded that in on an Audi S4.

During this time we also had family cars which my wife usually drove. We owned a Honda CR-V (which got totaled by an irresponsible driver). A Nissan minivan. A Honda Odyssey minivan. And more recently a Honda CR-V Hybrid. I have two adult kids who also have cars, a Toyota Prius and a Ford Escape, both bought used.

So I’ve owned and driven a bunch of cars by several manufacturers. I really liked my Audi S4 a lot. List price was $55,000 new but I bought it from the dealer when it was one year old with just 10,000 miles on it. If you’re not familiar with the S4 it’s just like an A4 for the most part except the S4 is supercharged (newer models are turbo). So it’s got a 3 liter V6 that puts out 333HP matched to a 7-speed automatic. It’s not as quick as a BMW M3 but it will do 0-60 in around 5 seconds flat and you get that power at pretty much any speed.

I’ve owned that car for 10 years and only had one major problem which, luckily, was under warranty. It was a $6,000 repair but I paid $0. While there’s nothing wrong with the car even now, I decided it was time to upgrade before there was just no sale value left in it. Also, to be honest, I was getting a bit tired of putting premium gas in it. I live in California where the price of gas is always higher than anywhere else in the country. Last year when gas prices went crazy, premium gas near me was over $6 per gallon. Even now when AAA says nationwide gas prices are down to about $3.36 a gallon the average price in CA is $4.76. It’s a bit cheaper near my house but not much. And because the S4 is a performance car, it doesn’t exactly sip gas. I could get 30mpg on the highway but driving around town, which is 90% of my driving, I was getting about 16mpg. But more than anything, 10 years is long enough. I wanted a newer car.

So I arranged to test drive a Tesla Model 3. They only let you test drive the base model which has one motor in the back. It’s surprisingly quick even in that configuration but I really wanted the dual motor car which they call the long range. Tesla stopped selling that model a few months ago for reasons I won’t go into and the Tesla salespeople told me they weren’t sure when it would come back. So I had a choice between the base model which I could buy new or the long range model which I’d have to get lightly used. I found a used 2021 with 18,000 miles. It had everything I wanted except it was only available in white or grey. I really wanted red but settled for white with the white interior.

The car also came with acceleration boost (a $2,000 option) and enhanced autopilot which will handle all the driving including lane changes on the freeway (about $4,000 I think). The total cost of the car was almost exactly what I paid for the Audi 10 years ago. Accounting for inflation since then it would be less.

What I got was a basically new car that doesn’t require oil or gas and which probably has never needed new brake pads and won’t for some time. The regenerative breaking in the Tesla means you almost never use the brakes. You just learn to let off the accelerator at the right time and the car stops on its own. No brakes. No brake dust. No scraping noise to tell you the brake pads are nearly gone. No need to turn or replace the brake rotors because they wore unevenly.

And my new car is quite a bit quicker than the Audi. The 0-60 time is 3.7 seconds which is absurdly fast. Tesla doesn’t release horsepower estimates for their cars but some enterprising car enthusiasts have put them on a dyno and long range is probably about 360hp from the factory. With the acceleration boost (which is a software upgrade) it’s probably around 410hp. Granted not everyone feels the need for that amount of power (and for some that’s barely a starting point) but there aren’t many cars on the road that are quicker. The new Corvette would leave it behind and a Mercedes AMG would probably beat it to 60 by a hair as would any of the exotic cars you could name. Still, it’s a hilarious amount of power. It made me laugh out loud the first time I stepped on it. It feels like cartoon physics.

At the same time, it’s by far the cheapest car to operate that I’ve ever owned. The first week I had it I kept a careful measure of how much power it took to charge. A “full tank” for the Model 3 gives me almost exactly the range as a full tank in the Audi (about 300 miles). The Audi was costing me ~$75 per tank. Even with our expensive California electricity which is .27 cents a kilowatt hour, a full charge would cost me just under $12. However, as some regular readers may know, I bought Tesla solar a couple years ago. So if I charge the car in the middle of the day when the sun is high, a little more than half of the power needed to charge it comes from the panels. So my actual cost for a “full tank” is approximately $6. Show me another car that will do 0-60 under four seconds and a can go 300 miles for $6 of energy. Unless it’s another Tesla, I don’t think it exists.

If you live someplace where you’re paying more reasonable rates for electricity, say .12 cents a killowatt hour at off-peak hours, then you could get the same “full tank” for $6 without the solar panels.

Anyway, this is one of those issues on which people have very definite opinions. I don’t really expect to change anyone’s mind, but I did want to say that from a price/performance, cost-to-operate and safety point of view, I really do think this is the best you can do right now.

I will say that I haven’t made any cross country trips at this point. I did drive about 120 miles to Burbank, then to Hollywood and home a couple weeks ago and I had range to spare when I got home. Driving 1,000 miles might be a different experience but I sort of doubt it’s a deal breaker. Tesla has charging stations everywhere at this point. The car will automatically find the nearest ones as your battery gets low. And with the high level chargers you can get a half charge in about 10-15 minutes. Granted it’s not as convenient as a gas fill up but for me those kind of trips are maybe 5% of my driving, something I do 3-4 times a year. Why not get the car that makes sense for 90-95% of your actual driving?

Again, I’m sure everyone including my colleagues has thoughts on this. At a minimum what I’m saying is there really is a lot of upside to owning a Tesla, enough that you should really take a close look if you’re in the market for a new or newer car.

Update: Thinking about this last night and there’s something I left out. I take day trips to LA (about 50-60 miles each way) about every 6-8 weeks. In my Audi those trips are usually just under a half tank of gas round trip. It doesn’t stop me from going but I do think to myself ‘there goes $35 worth of gas.’ But when the same trip works out to $3 you don’t even think about it. The little accountant in the back of your mind just takes a coffee break. It feels a little freer. And that’s not an easy feeling to get in California.