Originally Posted by
bae
My timing, as usual, is spot-on.
Two weeks ago I bought an electic vehicle to use as my mostly-island car. Right before the market crashed, gas prices plummeted (elsewhere, it's still > $4.50/gallon here), and the world fell apart from the virus.
Some fellow here is buying up just-off-lease EVs in California, and shipping them up here to the island and selling them for a teeny markup.
I got a 2017 Fiat 500E, a cute little clown car, with about a 90 mile range. With ~20,000 miles on it, and several years of warranty left, and looking brand-new, it cost me, well about as much as I paid for my last (quite nice, but not insane) bicycle.
It's reasonably zippy and sporty - the 0-30 times are ~2 seconds, and it handles great with the low center of gravity. Top speed here is 35mph, so that's good enough.
As a "California Compliance" car, Fiat lost about $15k on each one of these they provided in California. And with California tax policies, nobody buys these when they come off lease, they just lease a new one again, so there is no market for the used ones. It is however absolutely packed with technology - good brake regen, battery pack heating/cooling, etc. etc.
If I go to the village once a day, basically once a week I have to plug it into a regular wall outlet in my garage overnight. It recharges a fair bit just going *down* the mountain to the village.
Anyways, even with recent events, I'm pretty happy - I couldn't have got this rate of tax free return on any other sensible investment before the Great Financial Kablooie, and now it is even better.
It is essentially zero maintenance, and we have free public chargers around the island.