In Contract

Demand for Pacifica hybrid models is pretty strong here in the SF Bay Area, so I decided to go ahead and sign a contract to buy one even before the car has been delivered. This is somewhat risky, since I'm buying a car that doesn't exist yet! But the reviews have been pretty good, and I'm trusting that the dealer and I will be able to sort out any issues that come up with our particular car. We got the model that we were looking for, although it took a lot of back and forth with the dealer to ensure that it actually had the features we wanted.

The dealer said they've been allocated 5 hybrid models, and that 3 of them have already been sold, so they have 2 remaining, and that they don't expect Chrysler to be making them very fast. I wish this didn't seem so plausible, but Sergio Marchionne, who runs Fiat Chrysler these days, has made it clear he doesn't like EVs, because he loses money on them, and is worried that a shift to EVs would make traditional car companies obsolete. Even though the Pacifica Hybrid seems like a very useful blend of all the things we're looking for, I worry that Chrysler will not be making many of them because it's not well aligned with the company's mission and interests. Now, I'm aware that dealers tell stories. Actually, I rather hope that the dealer was telling me a story to get me to sign this contract as quickly as possible - that a year from now there will be tons of Pacifica Hybrids on the road. But I decided to go ahead and sign the contract because I'm excited about this car and I do think they'll be hard to find, especially in the SF Bay Area. I expect to wait about a month before the car is delivered. Unfortunately, it seems that Chrysler's Vehicle Order Tracking System was discontinued, so I won't be able to watch the car be built and delivered. I'll be sure to post about how delivery goes.

Minivans

The 2018 Odyssey should be great. But it's not here.

So, why did we choose the Pacifica over the other options out there? The most important reason is that it's the only plugin minivan out there. There's no other 7 passenger vehicle that can go 30 miles on electric power only but also hold 64 full size sheets of plywood.

But there are other reasons. The Pacifica has gotten great reviews from all the car publications, which praise its refinement, design, and functionality. My wife refused to try the Kia Sedona because she still has biases against Kia. We test drove a Honda Odyssey, and liked it quite a bit, although its current design is feeling a little stale - it doesn't have all the gadgets that our Pacifica does. Honda will unveil the 2018 Odyssey in a few weeks, and I expect it'll be pretty great, but I didn't want to wait until it became available. The Toyota Sienna is also needing a redesign - its major differentiator is four wheel drive, which we don't need. The Nissan Quest gets generally bad reviews, so we didn't try it out.

Overall, the Pacifica is currently the newest, most well-received minivan on the market, so it would have been under consideration even without the plug. But what really sold us was that we could get it as a range extended electric vehicle.

Tesla Model X

Brillant car. But too small.

The most exciting car that might meet our needs is the Tesla Model X. Seating for 7, amazing acceleration, the smoothness of battery power. And those falcon-wing doors! Finally, someone makes a car that escapes the sliding-door stigma of a minivan, but is also safer and easier for kids to get in and out of the back seat. It's remarkable how much hold back doors have on our collective psyche as a car-buying public.

I also love the environmental benefits of electric cars - even though I know our family's emissions are only a drop in the bucket compared to the overall world economy, I think we should do what we can to reduce them. And the emissions from electric vehicles take place generally far away from cities, which makes life in crowded places better - should help reduce deaths from polluted air. Living in California, with solar panels on our roof, the EV has compelling environmental benefits.

Two big strikes against the Model X, though: price and practicality. It's still out of reach financially for almost all families, especially if you want a bigger battery. I wanted a Model X so badly that I was trying to figure out how to justify the expense, because it's an exciting car and has a great image. But it also loses on practicality, especially for our big-for-the-SF-bay-area family. We went to the Tesla store and sat inside it, and tried to convince ourselves that we could cram all six of us and our stuff into the car for a long road trip, but realistically it would be painful. And even the $150k version has range that's short enough that it would make our family camping trips difficult - we'd always be searching for the nearest supercharger, and hoping for an open charging spot. Even worse, the falcon-wing doors make it impossible to mount a cargo box to the roof, which we would need to do for long trips. And it fails the cello + family test. Finally, our garage has a very low ceiling, with a beam running in an inconvenient place. Although I think those falcon doors would technically still open, it might be difficult to get in and out of the Model X in our house. All these things are difficult to change. So we decided the Model X wasn't the right car either.

SUV

This should have sliding doors.

Most families these days look to SUVs for their transportation. Personally, I think the SUV craze reveals a lot of self-deception about the American consumer. The difference between a crossover SUV and a minivan essentially boils down to which doors are installed on the back: sliding doors means a minivan, conventional opening doors means an SUV. 

Sliding doors are way more practical, because kids can't open them up into traffic or parked cars. But somehow the image of the minivan is one of resignation: buying one in American culture means you've given up on having a fun life and are sacrificing everything for your kids and "practicality".  

Look at the footnotes of this classic restaurant review of the Olive Garden by LA Weekly, where a restaurant critic blasts unsophisticated suburban food, surrounded by a parking lot full of "late model minivans". Or remember the Swagger Wagon campaign from Toyota - still painfully relevant to us minivan drivers.

SUVs, on the other hand, project an adventurous, rugged image, as if on the weekends you strap your camping gear to the roof and go live in a national park. The self-deception, of course, is that most SUVs are used for transporting kids and other practical tasks rather than exploring the great outdoors, marketing notwithstanding.

As a consequence of this image problem, the number and variety of minivans for sale keeps falling, while SUVs that serve the same function multiply like rabbits. We looked around at a few SUVs: the Ford Explorer, the Mazda CX-9, the Honda Pilot, the Toyota Highlander. Also thought about the Volvo XC90. But with a three year old, we weren't willing to give up on kid-proof doors.

So SUVs were out of the question. We've always been a little countercultural anyway. ;)

Chevy Volt

Ours looks just like this. At least when it's clean.

Our Pacifica hybrid story is incomplete without mentioning our other car - a Chevy Volt. I don't think we'd have gone through the trouble and expense of getting the Pacifica Hybrid over the gasoline Pacifica if it weren't for our Volt. After living with a range extended electric car for the past couple years, we appreciate the concept as a practical way to solve most of your transportation needs without using gasoline.

We really love visiting gas stations only rarely, and with solar panels on the roof of our house, electricity is cheap for us. Driving an electric car is also just a superior experience - the instant torque makes even routine errands more fun, and it's quiet and smooth. So when we heard about the Pacifica hybrid, which has a lot of similarities to the Chevy Volt, but in a big, practical minivan package, we were interested.

After our first year of Volt ownership, I found the following: During the year, I paid an extra $350 in electricity compared to the year before. Let's assume all that extra cost was for driving. I also paid $162 in gasoline, for a total of $512 to fuel the car for a year. Overall MPG: 192.

My prior car (a Chevy Cruze Eco) averaged 30.2 MPG on the same commute, and cost $1018 to fuel for a year.

So, I saved about $500 that year on fuel expenses, although that number would go down if I adjusted for varying gasoline prices over the years.

I also reduced my carbon emissions:

My prior car used 257.8 gallons during the year, which is 2.29 metric tons of CO2.

My Volt used 3.24 MWh of electricity and 46.83 gallons of gas. Since I use PG&E, thats 0.61 metric tons of CO2 from electricity, and 0.42 metric tons from gasoline, for a total of 1.02 metric tons.

This means I reduced my carbon emissions by 2.25X, which matters to me because I am worried about global warming and ocean acidification.

I also bought 5.5X less gasoline, thereby sending less money to the fossil fuel market (parts of which cause conflict, environmental damage, and oppression around the world). I'd much rather buy electricity from PG&E than oil from Putin, the House of Saud, the Chavistas, or the Canadian oil sands.

Bonuses: commuting in the carpool lane, 100% torque at 0 RPM, quiet, ice-cream smooth electric motors.

Over the 2 years I owned that first Volt, I averaged 184 MPG. Then I upgraded to a 2016 Volt, which has a bigger battery and a more efficient engine, as well as being faster and having an extra seat belt. I've had that one for about 6 months, and so far am averaging 288 MPG. During the summer, the electricity for driving my Volt is free, because the solar panels on the roof of my house produce more electricity than we use. This is not true during the winter, since the sun doesn't shine very much then. ;)

Our Volt experience has been very positive, to the point where every time I get in a gas powered vehicle, I'm always bothered by the engine noise, because I've gotten used to the idea that cars should be completely silent and smooth. At the same time, having the freedom to go on a road trip anywhere you'd like, without having to worry about finding a quick charger, is also really important, especially for our family's main car. So the Pacifica Hybrid's design is exactly what we're looking for. (Mostly) fully electric for the first 30 miles or so (as long as you don't floor it), and then good gas mileage afterwards sounds like a great combination. I still have a lot of questions as to how it will work out in real life - and I'll let you know how it goes. I don't expect the efficiency to be as high as my Volt, after all, it's a much larger and more capable vehicle. But I do expect a superior driving experience. The Volt has spoiled me for that.

Saying goodbye

Lots of memories in the Mazda5 - this boy is now a teenager

We've been searching for a replacement for our beloved Mazda5 for quite a while - with four kids, one of whom is a growing teenage boy, our old Mazda is just too small. It was a tough search - as we were looking for something practical, fun to drive, and environmentally friendly. 

We've had the Mazda5 for 8 years - bought it at the height of the 2008 recession. It is fun to drive and easy to park on the crowded streets of Berkeley, California, where we lived at the time, and since it's so small, it gets decent gas mileage. But its limited cargo and passenger space, especially when loaded with 6 people and their stuff, made for some frustrating compromises. 

One of our children plays the cello, and it's not possible for us to take the family to one of her concerts while also bringing the cello, for example. My grandma wanted to give us her beloved heirloom china while we were visiting last Christmas, but there was just no way for us to fit anything else inside the van, so we had to decline. The final straw was that our three year old toddler keeps turning on lights inside the Mazda, and somehow we don't notice until the battery runs out. I suppose if we were more observant parents, or if we would just put duct tape over all the light switches, we could solve the problem, but it's been progressively more irritating. I'm especially irritated because I feel like this is a design problem could have been solved with a simple timer that wouldn't allow the car lights to stay on all night, but for some reason Mazda didn't include that circuit. The car is also just getting older - the suspension makes strange noises when we go over bumps, it doesn't have any USB ports, etc. So we've been looking for a replacement for a while.

I should say that the Mazda has been generally trouble-free for the 8 years and 72k miles we owned it. On long drives through the Nevada desert it would yield 25 MPG while cruising at 85 MPH with a cargo box on the roof. It's been parallel parked all over the SF Bay area, without problems. It's heard a good share of tears and laughter. We'll miss it.

Introduction

We just signed a contract to buy a new Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan. It's still a rather unusual car, so I want to explain what makes it a good fit for our family, and also give some perspectives about what it's like to live with from a real-life owner's perspective: what is real-world fuel economy, how is maintenance, what do I love and what I wish could be changed. There's not a lot of information out there about this car outside of professional reviews - although those reviews are useful, I'm always interested in more in-depth information, so I figure I should just put it out there. This blog is where I'll do that.