Car Adventures (part 4)

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I’m almost to the finish line.

I got some helpful input from my relatives on which cars they had good opinions of. After reviewing my options I have finally settled on the 2020 Chevy Bolt EV.

The Bolt gets 259 miles of range with a 66kWh battery. It has all the technology I am looking for with Android Auto, a nice console screen, a backup camera, and safety features.

I found a nice dealership in Virginia that will be able to deliver the vehicle to me for $300. There are processing fees of $699 plus the cost of the vehicle itself, which is $16,000. The EV Tax credit will help a bit next year.

I have $11.5k in the bank and I have a one-year, 0% Balance Transfer offer on my US Bank Altitude GO card. I can probably get another 4-5k from that card without pushing the minimum payments too high.

My limit is 9k for that card and the BT fee would be about $199 for a $4,000 transfer. I am also getting 3k from my father as an early graduation gift.

So that should be about $18.5k available to cover the cost of the purchase plus registration fees. I will also need to get the car added to the household insurance policy. I was added to the policy earlier this year as a requirement to take the NC driving test.

I had dithered some time on getting a Kia Niro PHEV which has excellent mileage. The main problem I ran into with the Niro’s was that most were priced at 20k+ and often had 60-100k miles on them. I didn’t want to get something that was nearing the end of its life (or midlife).

I will be losing the larger trunk space that the Niro (19.4 ft³) has to offer if I go with the Bolt (16.9 ft³), but I think that is an acceptable trade-off if I can get a vehicle with 20-30k miles on it instead.

Another car I was looking at was the Nissan LEAF. The dealership only had the SV model (40kWh) available and I really wanted a Plus model which has a larger 62kWh battery. The trunk in the LEAF is much bigger (23.6 ft), this is despite having the wheel wells constricting the space.

So for now I am just getting my funds together to make the purchase. If a LEAF Plus shows up before I make the call, then I may switch to that vehicle instead. Otherwise, I expect to be driving sometime in May.

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Thanks for reading, I appreciate your taking the time to be here. If you have any questions or comments for me, be sure to leave them below, and have a great day!