Garage Cleanout Day

We said goodbye to our 2017 Subaru Impreza Limited today; Carvana came and picked it up. They said it would be going to a farm in the country or something like that. :-)

I’d used the Leasehackr online purchasers list to get bids for the car before we tried to trade it, and I’m glad we did. The Kia dealer wanted to give us about $15.4k; CarMax offered $16k; Carvana offered $18.5k. I could have tried some of the other companies on the list, but I was happy with $18.5k from a company with a good reputation. We’d paid $27k for the car six years ago, so it had held its value pretty well (Subaru might not agree – their “Guaranteed Trade-In” offer was $12,850).

Selling the car was pretty simple; I had to give them information about the car (mileage, condition, color) to get their bid. Once I accepted it, I had to upload the title and our drivers licenses and e-sign a few forms; the next day (yesterday), they confirmed the price and told me to set up an appointment. I wanted to drive the car over to their office (about 7 miles away), but I would have had to wait two weeks to get an appointment; they offered next-day pickup for $290, and I took it.

The driver texted me today, told me when he’d be here, and reminded me to remove the plates and any personal items. He arrived on time, took a few photos, verified the mileage, had me sign a few forms, and put the car on his truck and took it away. The whole process took about 15 minutes.

I celebrated by getting rid of a bunch of old boxes in the garage – monitors, air purifiers, receivers, and more. That was fun – except for having to break up the Styrofoam they’d used to protect things during shipping; I ran out of room in our garbage can before I ran out of Styrofoam!

Climbing the learning curve

One of the reasons I liked the EV-6 when I test drove it is that driving it isn’t markedly different than driving other cars: the speedometer is in front of you, not on the right; there are knobs and buttons to do things, not just menus and joysticks; CarPlay works.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a lot to learn.

The EV-6 is a few inches bigger in all dimensions than the Subaru. That makes it a little harder to get in to and out of the garage, but not impossibly so – but it does mean that the Parking Distance Warning system goes crazy because there isn’t a lot of room to spare. Today I found out how to shut off the system (it’s a button right by the gearshift) and now I can get in and out of the garage in peace.

The garage door is barely tall enough to clear the trunk lid when it’s fully opened, and if I’m not careful in lining up the car, the lid would hit the door hardware when it opens on its own. But I just discovered how to limit how far the lid opens, which should solve that problem.

I am very glad we got the Technology Package, including front and side cameras and visible blind spot monitoring. The visibility on the driver’s left rear is not good; the camera makes all the difference. And the other cameras are a great help in parking, especially backing into a narrow spot (like the garage).

I wanted to try charging the car before I actually needed to fill it up, so I stopped at the EVgo charger near me. I couldn’t get it to work – and neither could the person trying to use the adjacent charger. But I did discover two interesting things about EVgo: they have time-of-day pricing in California, so charging the car between 4-9pm costs a good bit more than it does at other times. I also found out that AAA provides a free membership in EVgo’s plan, which means I won’t have to pay their per-session pay-as-you-go charge or a credit card surcharge.

Later, we went to an Electrify America charger to take advantage of Kia’s deal with them for 1000 free kilowatt hours; it took 18 minutes to add 30 kWh to the car (bringing it from 52% to 90%) and would have cost $14.75 without the deal. That’s enough energy to drive about 120 miles; the Subaru would have burned between 4 and 5 gallons of gas to drive that distance, or $20-$25. Electrify America doesn’t seem to have time-of-day pricing, either.

So much to learn!