Adventures of our Grabber Blue Space Pony...

[SpaceEVDriver]

The snow started yesterday and continued through the night and I went grocery-getting this morning.

It was about -2 C this morning, so I set the car to precondition about 10 minutes before I planned to leave. Got busy doing other things, so extended the preconditioning.

Went out about 15 minutes later. There was still a lot of snow on the windows, so brushed that off.
The car was toasty warm, probably did not need to extend the warm-up time.

Did not brush off the snow on the hood...I'm thinking I may need to install a secondary battery with a heating blanket attached to the underside of the frunk hood to melt that snow. We get 100+ inches of snow a year, but it comes in big storms so I think I'm right on the fence about whether I want to do this.

I didn't brush off the snow on the roof, and that was a mistake. That warm glass is very slippery and all the snow came sliding onto the windshield at the first stop. Much more than in my pickup. So, lesson learned: brush off the snow on the roof too. I usually do this when there's a foot of snow, but even the six inches or so that we got overnight was enough to clog up the wipers.

The car handled fine on the icy roads. AWD is awesome, but we already knew that.

While I was in line for checkout, I warmed up the car again. That was totally unnecessary. It was too warm when I got in.

Summary:
All season tires did fine on our icy roads.
Brush the snow off the glass roof.
Consider a frunk hood warmer, but it may not be necessary.
Don't need to warm it up a second time if I'm not gone for more than an hour.

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[cknasaboy]

I have the same car waiting to be built!! Thanks for posting all the photos, it’s awesome to see the real world color of Grabber Blue.

Ironically enough, mine will also be a “Space Pony” since I’ll be using it to commute back and forth to JSC for work!

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

I have the same car waiting to be built!! Thanks for posting all the photos, it’s awesome to see the real world color of Grabber Blue.

Ironically enough, mine will also be a “Space Pony” since I’ll be using it to commute back and forth to JSC for work!

Awesome!

We ALMOST took it to Houston this weekend for the LPSC conference next week, but I have too many family responsibilities to elderly to take a chance going to a large conference with the bug still running amok.

 

[IamIA]

After ordering, we settled in for the long wait.

And have you or your partner considered the Rivian R1T?
It would have been the sort of truck that your partner would have liked because it is smaller than F150 and is definitely going to take you places where the Mach-E wont.

I realized that my Mach-E is too fragile for off-roading and placed a reservation for a Rivian R1T.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

And have you or your partner considered the Rivian R1T?
It would have been the sort of truck that your partner would have liked because it is smaller than F150 and is definitely going to take you places where the Mach-E wont.

I realized that my Mach-E is too fragile for off-roading and placed a reservation for a Rivian R1T.

We did consider it. We happened across one a few weeks ago on an adventure in Utah.
We placed an order that evening.

And then we cancelled it when Rivian jacked up the price by 23%. We decided not to renew the order after Rivian backed off on its price hike. We're just not feeling very trusting of them. I hope we're wrong and others get the price they thought they were promised, but we're back to waiting for something that's a reasonable BEV truck for a reasonable price from someone we feel we can trust. We're not in a hurry. Our Tacoma doesn't have very many miles and we are driving it far less now that we have the Mustang.

https://www.macheforum.com/site/threads/rivian-r1t.14723/

 

[IamIA]

continue posting about the fun adventures

no no, don't write about fun adventures and instead show us the Monte Carlo piece.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

no no, don't write about fun adventures and instead show us the Monte Carlo piece.

You asked for it!

Here's a (not-quite) total cost comparison between an Escape Titanium and a Mustang Mach-E.
The OTD price for the Escape would be approximately $45k.
Our OTD price for the Mustang was approximately $61k, and I *did* include the $7500 tax credit.
They're not kitted equivalently, but close enough to consider "competitive," IMO.

Assumptions:
Both:
Miles driven: 12000 (9000 - 18000; non-symmetrical because we are more likely to drive more miles than fewer)
Length of ownership: 1-15 years (average of 6, but wide range so we can get a more realistic understanding of when there's likely to be a break-even point)


Escape:
MPG: 23 +- 25%
Yearly maintenance: $700 +- 50%
Cost of gas: $4/gal -$1/gal +$2/gal (non-symmetrical because the cost seems likely to go up but not down)
Resale value: 45.75% to 91.75%, average of 61%.

Mustang:
Mi/kWh: 2.25 - 4.5, average of 3.0
Yearly maintenance: $50 - $150
Cost of electricity: $0.09 - $0.18 per kWh
Resale value: 36% to 72%, average of 48%, based on comparisons in various publications. I suspect it will ultimately be higher, but I wanted to try to stick to published estimates.

Each of these parameters has an associated distribution (normal in my model), so the ranges are the first standard deviation around a mean, not the hard cut-offs for possible values. That is, there could be some wild thing that happens that pushes gas prices above or below the range I set up. Similarly for any of the other parameters. (For example, in this Monte Carlo run, the gas price maximum was $6.38/gal and the electricity price maximum was $0.223 / kWh)

Some parameters depend on others. For example, the resale value is dependent a bit on miles driven by comparing the actual miles in the run with the 12,000 average miles.

After setting these parameters, their averages, 1-sigma ranges, and their possible distributions, I run this for 5,000 runs for the Mustang and 5,000 runs for the Escape (that is, these are independent runs).

For the plotted runs in the attached image, the break-even cost is around 4.5 years of ownership. Note that if someone is especially careful with the Escape or lucky that gas prices and maintenance prices don't get too high, there are times when the Escape could be the much better buy. The thing about the Mustang's approximate total cost is that it's pretty tightly clustered compared with the Escape.

[edit]
I edited this to state that in this run I DID include the $7500 tax credit for the Mustang EV.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Note that I had originally stated I did not include the $7500 tax credit. In some runs I did not, but in the plotted run I did, in fact, include the $7500 tax credit. Apologies.

 

[Jbkimmel]

Ha! I was literally going to ask about that. Thanks for sharing.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Ha! I was literally going to ask about that. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah, I was looking at the plot and the Mustang's numbers just looked a bit too low.
Not getting the tax credit pushes the break-even point about 18 months into the future.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Also note: This assumes you paid cash, that there's a minimum of depreciation, and that you own the vehicle for at least 1 year.

It also doesn't say anything about what you do with the difference in cash price (i.e., it doesn't try to predict your additional "savings" if you invest that money you saved by buying the Escape).

 

[IamIA]

Cost of insurance between the two vehicles was not taken into consideration i take it?
I like the steady and small incremental cost for the Mach-E and the much higher slope for the ICE car. Hopefully all these extra hoses in the Mach-E wont need maintenance.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Cost of insurance between the two vehicles was not taken into consideration i take it?
I like the steady and small incremental cost for the Mach-E and the much higher slope for the ICE car. Hopefully all these extra hoses in the Mach-E wont need maintenance.

Correct. Insurance is such an individualized thing that the range of costs would be so broad I don't think it would help inform. Our insurance costs are nearly identical between the Mustang and any other SUV we've owned.

 

[Gopher Adventure]

Subscribed! I have the same car on order. Glad to hear it performs well in snow and cold. We get a lot of both where I live.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Subscribed! I have the same car on order. Glad to hear it performs well in snow and cold. We get a lot of both where I live.

I think we don't get the same well-below-freezing cold you get, but I'm willing to be we get similar amounts of snow (100+ inches per year on average). We do lose that snow very quickly to the dry air.


(Also, welcome to the adventure!)

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