Heyo! How’s it going? Wanna buy a car?
No, really: Do you want to buy a car? Like, in the next few months? It’s vehicle-buying season in the U.S., and I’ll make the low-risk bet that any car-shoppers here are at least casually fantasizing about life with an electric vehicle. The smooth power. The inexpensive fill-ups. The futuristic hum that confuses UFO-hunters in grocery store parking lots. Yup, electric life is pretty awesome.
The no-help, gas-huffing sales goons I recently ran into at every dealership I visited were less awesome. I just bought a new EV, and even as a Professional Environment Guy™️ whose resume is peppered with automotive journalism, I could have used more help and knowledge than they had on offer. I made it through, but we wanted to be sure that anyone who reads one5c has a better experience. So I called our friend Patrick George, editor-in-chief of InsideEVs, to help us create a handy-dandy downloadable cheat sheet anyone can reference when shopping for their first electric car.
We crammed most of his advice into the graphic, but I’ll leave you with my favorite of his wise one-liners: “Americans tend to buy cars for the worst day of the year.” This is so damn true. You don’t need a three-row SUV just because your sister visits every six months. You probably don’t need all-wheel drive, even if you live where it snows. Buying for “what if” is impractical no matter what you’re browsing, but EVs come with special compromises and considerations that make that mindset particularly tricky.
We hope our guide is a helpful antidote to all that—and more. If you like it, pass it along to anyone in the fast lane to electrification.
