EV discussion - hate or love?

[BlkGS]

Is the bolt.pattem fairly standrd for the Rivian? Or did they decide to use some odd ball bolt pattern (like the TBSS lol)?

I wouldn't buy wheels unless I was certain that they had a use on the next vehicle if it's a lease. Moreover, keep in mind that EVs are largely leased right now, and it's highly probable the second hand market for expensive wheels that fit only a Rivian could be small.

Here's my litmus test. Can you, right now, find a set of used fancy Rivian wheels at market price and them sell before you can act on them? If not, well, you're probably going to be dealing with a set of wheels for a truck you no longer own in circa 2 years.

Leasing probably has helped too because you feel more "locked in" and have an end date. If you had bought, all these issues would be weighing on you more about how many issues it'd have later on, after all it's under a year old now and has this many issues, who wants to deal with that outside of warranty? But in a lease you're like "well, if I want rid of it, that costs me money, and I won't have to care about it after warranty". Kind of a nice feeling honestly.

 

[2kwik4u]

@BlkGS Not sure how standard anything is anymore.

Looking at these Atomic wheels and these Goodyear Tires. Put togethor a quick chart on wheel/tire weights. I know rotating mass isn't the only consideration here, but it's about the only good data I have, and it can stand as proxy for some other things like sidewall stiffness, and such.



You can see the Atomics and the Goodyears are considerably lighter than the factory setup. Even the factory wheels with Goodyears shave about 6lbs a corner. I'm not autocrossing this thing, or worried about accel/deccel performance, I'm thinking more around letting the suspension do it's job better and take some of the "reverb" out of the suspension feel. There's a couple guys running the Atomic/Goodyear package and reporting back good results. I would go "full street" setup, however I want to keep the 3PMS rating for the absurd snow I'm in now. Otherwise I would be chasing down some 22in sport setup of some flavor. I also don't really want to keep two sets of wheels/tires going all the time. The whole winter/summer tire setup feels excessive to me, but I'm honestly not far away at this point. WHICH, is why I might just throw new tires on it for winter and call it done, without getting the new wheels.

In terms of resale. These wheels show up on the forums every 3-4 weeks and are typically sold within hours. I don't think I'll have an issue unloading them when the time comes. Won't get 100% of my money back, but maybe 50-60%.

As for leasing, I agree mostly. I definitely have a feeling of "well, don't need to solve everything if I can live with it for another 2yrs" going on. The service hasn't worried me even a little, because, if I stay with the brand (unlikely at this point) I won't keep this example of the vehicle. This one has issues, from the start, and is going back when it's time. Might get another (maybe they have insane incentives again?) as the feature set it pretty hard to duplicate, and I'm pretty sold on BEV over ICEV at this point, but it won' t be this example. We'll see......I also have to watch my mileage. Bought 45k miles, and I'm already 17k into it in less than a year. Miles are $0.35/ea at the end of the lease, and I budgeted to be about 15k over, but I'm trending towards closer to 18k over.

 

[BlkGS]

I've never heard of atomic wheels, but there's lots of new wheel brands out there. Seems like every week there's a new forged wheel brand being advertised on the Corvette forum... They're all basically drop shipped from suppliers in China. But dropping 15 pounds per corner of wheel mass is pretty huge. Almost too huge for a what, 7000lb vehicle? I would definitely want to understand what kind of process controls and testing they do. The last thing you want is a cracked wheel under the weight of an EV truck (or any vehicle for that matter).

So how does the mile thing work with the lease? Is there a point where buying miles is more expensive than turning in early with whatever fee that is? Or are you not able to turn it in like a year early for a penalty? If you decided you wanted a Hummer truck or something, couldyou trade it in to them and they terminate the lease? Or does it have to be two separate transactions?

 

[2kwik4u]

I've never heard of atomic wheels, but there's lots of new wheel brands out there. Seems like every week there's a new forged wheel brand being advertised on the Corvette forum... They're all basically drop shipped from suppliers in China. But dropping 15 pounds per corner of wheel mass is pretty huge. Almost too huge for a what, 7000lb vehicle? I would definitely want to understand what kind of process controls and testing they do. The last thing you want is a cracked wheel under the weight of an EV truck (or any vehicle for that matter).

Atomic wheels seems to be pretty well trusted in the Rivian circles. Lots of guys off roading with them. Met a couple in PA when I went offroading. I agree though, it's a significant weight loss for a 7k lb truck.

So how does the mile thing work with the lease? Is there a point where buying miles is more expensive than turning in early with whatever fee that is? Or are you not able to turn it in like a year early for a penalty? If you decided you wanted a Hummer truck or something, couldyou trade it in to them and they terminate the lease? Or does it have to be two separate transactions?

Ideally, I would have bought more miles up front. They're like $0.25/mi on the front end typically, and $0.35/mi on the backend. Chase wouldn't negotiate the mileage, so I stuck cash aside anticipating the overage. I knew I drove alot, and that's OK.

I can't "turn it in", but I can "buy it out", and there is a payoff amount listed right on the website. Just like an auto loan, if I buy it out today it would be something like $58k, which is the residual value (pre-negotiated number), and the remainder of all payments. I wouldn't pay a mileage penalty if I bought it out, as I would be taking on the risk of the additional devaluation from the mileage. From there, it's like any other car, I own it. SO....If i want to buy a Hummer EV tomorrow, GMC would "buy out" the lease from Chase, give me trade in credit against the truck, then sell me the Hummer. Just like any other used car transaction.

The real benefit of the lease, for me anyway, is the clear residual value at the end. I don't have to try and time the market and guess and check the value at the end. I know the mileage penalty, and the residual value. I can py my $495 "turn in fee" and my mileage overage and walk away, or "buy it out" a month ahead of time for the residual value and pay no fees. If the market is high, I'll buy out and and resell to Carvanna, etc. if the market is low, I'll pay the fees and walk away.