Lessons Learned from Living with a Rivian: The Realities of EV Ownership feat. Dr. Glenn Jaffe

LeeAnn Shattuck (00:02.929)

Welcome back to The Straight Shift, everyone. We’ve got a great episode. I am so excited to have my guest and longtime friend, Dr. Glenn Jaffe. As I’ve mentioned in a previous episode, and even a couple of years ago, I did an episode dedicated to what it’s like to really live with an electric vehicle. We’ve heard all the hype. Everybody’s been super excited. And at the time I did that podcast, it was a little more theoretical.

Now EVs have been around a while and more people have been living with them. So we have some more empirical data. So I’m excited to actually hear from someone who lived with an electric vehicle for a time. Now, you guys probably heard about what happened in Chicago during the winter when it got cold and all the Teslas were dead. Nothing would charge. The recharging stations were trickling out the electrons at the rate of molasses and people started to realize, okay, electric vehicles don’t always work the way we want them to. But my guest today lives down here in the South in the Charlotte, North Carolina area with me, but he’s originally from New Jersey and the Midwest. So he is no stranger to cold weather, but then like a lot of us, he got smart and moved South.

Glenn has been a chiropractor since, what is it Glenn, 2003? And you started your own practice, Jaffee Chiropractic, in 2006 here in Charlotte.

 

Glenn Jaffe (01:36.738)

That’s correct.

 

Glenn Jaffe (01:43.278)

Yeah, we’re about to enter year 19. I can’t believe it.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (01:46.735)

I know, isn’t it amazing? All we’re really doing is admitting how old we are, but it’s wonderful that your business has been so successful and you’ve helped so many people with your chiropractic. But what I want to talk today about is you living with an electric vehicle. So tell me why you decided in the first place to go all electric.

 

Glenn Jaffe (01:50.616)

This is true.

 

Glenn Jaffe (02:09.484)

Well, I think this may come to a shock to some people listening to this, but the fact that I got an electric vehicle was not the primary reason I got an electric vehicle. So I don’t know, we haven’t mentioned said vehicles name yet. So I don’t know if we want to let the cat out of the bag here. So, so absolutely. So a couple of years ago, I guess almost three years ago now, my brother introduced me to a car company named Rivian, totally brand new from the ground up.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (02:19.514)

Interesting.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (02:25.285)

Yeah, go ahead if that’s why you chose it.

 

Glenn Jaffe (02:38.91)

started by a very, very analytical, intelligent, engineered kind of thinker. And so he looked at the landscape of what he wanted to do and build a car and he wanted to do it differently from the ground up. And he wanted to do it on an electric platform. So I started investigating this company and reading about kind of the DNA that they were coming from. And I really was intrigued by the fact that this company was kind of not influenced so much by traditional American automakers per se. There wasn’t a lot of Detroit DNA, if you will, coming through the vehicle, you know, back to Henry Ford, if you will. you know, so for the longest time, I hadn’t had an American car. My first two cars when I was in high school were American cars, but ever since then, I had either a Nissan or a Toyota or a Lexus. And so I kind of stayed away from American cars because of the quality or the assumed quality that I felt was in them.

 

And so the more I paid attention to this car company and the more that they put out there and I kind of was drawn to the, the, build the styling, the, the idea of having an electric SUV, which nobody really in the United States had kind of mastered, if you will. And so, yeah, no, no, no, it’s still a car. Right. And yeah. So, so the R1S and the R1T were the ones that they had released and seeing the mockups and everything. I was really intrigued and had, you know,

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (03:52.045)

Yeah, the Tesla Model X didn’t really count. 

 

Glenn Jaffe (04:06.582)

room for seven people, three rows if you wanted, the R1S. And obviously the fascination of having the uniqueness of an electric SUV was really kind of neat. the fact that it was electric, yeah, maybe it added to it a little bit, but I just was enamored of the styling and kind of the thought and the big picture with the Rivian.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (04:27.055)

And it is an absolutely gorgeous vehicle. And it was one of the largest SUVs that’s available in electric. So I know you have a family. So being able to cram kids and all their stuff in it is always a priority.

 

Glenn Jaffe (04:40.556)

Yeah, and you go from little kids and strollers and car seats and you know, minor teenagers now and so it’s softball bags, school bags, lunch bags, camp chairs to sit at athletic events and you know when you go on a road trip, I’ve got two girls so you know there’s a lot of luggage that we take.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (04:54.183)

Yes, we do tend to pack a little bit excessively. I will admit to doing that. Well, given how different Rivian is, did you, even though you did all of that research, which I commend you for doing, did you still have any reservations about going with a brand new, very different company that did not have a track record? Did you worry about what the reliability would be and the support for it?

 

Glenn Jaffe (05:20.748)

I did, but I was surprised at how less of an issue I felt that was going into it. felt confident. think I have to give Rivian some credit here. I think they did a really nice job of allaying those kinds of concerns leading up to the rollout of the vehicles. There was a lot of delay from the date of when they were supposed to be released until they actually got out there. And I think that, yeah, yeah.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (05:46.411)

Not entirely their fault. We had this little thing called a pandemic.

 

Glenn Jaffe (05:49.622)

Yeah, you know those stupid computer chips among other things, but but I think that helped them with their with their quality and the the major now, of course, everybody’s going to complain about something and you know that it’s not that they didn’t have any issues, but I felt pretty confident just some of the initial reviews and people that got their hands on them at first. Just the build. They kept going back to how well built they were and how Rivian didn’t seem to cut corners with things and didn’t get cheap with things and I think.

 

They learned a lot of what they saw Tesla do the first couple of generations where it was either to speed up production or to keep costs down. But there was a lot of corner cutting, I think, in the early Teslas. I didn’t feel that. Yeah, I didn’t feel that in Rivian. anything, you you probably can appreciate this, Lee, and I think the Rivian was over engineered.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (06:27.739)

Yes, still is.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (06:37.445)

Well, you I drive German cars, so over-engineering is just a way of life for us. you know, what was the experience like actually buying it? Because Rivian has a direct consumer model, which is similar to Tesla. I think they do it a lot better, but they don’t have dealerships all over the country. In fact, they just have a handful of what they call spaces because, you know, that just sounds so much more.

 

Glenn Jaffe (06:38.538)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (07:06.407)

classy and very non dealership like for their brand. So, but they only have a handful of these spaces all over the country. There’s one in Southern California, there’s one in Texas, there’s two in New York, there’s one in Atlanta. So what was the process and the experience like to, from the time you ordered one to how you actually took delivery of it?

 

Glenn Jaffe (07:29.026)

Well, it was interesting because I bought it almost sight unseen, if you will. And I never test drove on until my brother got his. so, you know, I got that far in the process. He got his about six months before mine was delivered. So I never went to, you know, the space to see it in person. I never got to sit in it until I got to sit in his. And so it was a really kind of an interesting perspective because you didn’t really see a lot of them on the road. So I didn’t really get a visual.

 

compare it to. So a lot of it was what I saw on social media and in emails and then different articles and different pictures that got shared. So it was there was a lot of trust, I guess, built into this process, which I it was. again, I’ll give I’ll give them credit. You know, their their process, I think, allowed that trust to be built because they had no reputation. And so I think they did a pretty commendable job of founding

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (08:11.943)

quite the leap of faith.

 

Glenn Jaffe (08:26.89)

a good base underneath of that to get the people comfortable enough to spend the amount of money that the R1S or the R1T originally cost to get it without really getting in and checking it out.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (08:40.967)

That makes sense. So how did you take delivery of it? Did you have to go to Atlanta to get it or did it show up on your doorstep?

 

Glenn Jaffe (08:47.992)

So they gave me the option, I could go down to Atlanta and get it, which is over four hour drive from here and then drive it home. Or for not small but not a large amount of money, they would deliver it to my house. And so I chose that option because I just didn’t wanna spend an entire day going down and back to Atlanta. I traded in my old vehicle and Rivian made it very easy to trade the vehicle in as well. And they took it away on the car carrier when they delivered it. So there was this 18 wheeler car carrier

 

running around my neighborhood with five Rivians and a Toyota Sequoia on it. So kind of neat. But yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was really cool because they have they have a guide that comes to to go over the vehicle with you when they deliver it. And so I felt I felt like they took care of me. It was really nice. It was it was definitely higher end concierge kind of feel, which I appreciate for sure. You know, being busy and having a family, I don’t

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (09:22.919)

I remember that old Sequoia.

 

Glenn Jaffe (09:46.978)

I don’t have time to, you know, run to Atlanta, figure it out, drive home and then like, all right, what’s going on here and get on an internet or a chat board or somewhere and figure out, you know, what does this mean and everything. So he spent, you know, probably better part of 90 minutes going over the vehicle with me. I had a little bit of a headstart because my brother started, you know, showing me some of the things that are, that are unique to it. but it was a really great experience. And then he took care of all the paperwork, almost all of it was digital. we, got the temporary tag.

 

It was interesting. was the temporary tag was issued out of Illinois and I took delivery in December and the tag expired, I think at the end of March. So there was a lot of time built into that temporary tag, which was kind of cool.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (10:30.609)

That’s impressive. Most temp tags are only about 30 days. So I understand why you didn’t want to not only waste your time driving all the way down to Atlanta and back, because we know that drive down 85 is so much fun, but you don’t want to have this first time driving a vehicle that’s radically different from anything you’ve ever driven to be through Atlanta. And it’s nice that, you

 

Glenn Jaffe (10:33.174)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Glenn Jaffe (10:54.188)

That’s true. That is very true.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (10:58.379)

There’s often an option, and I do this a lot with my clients, of having a vehicle delivered to them, especially during the pandemic when we had to source cars from all over the country and we’re shipping things everywhere. But normally when that happens, the person that delivers it has nothing to do with that car. It’s a trucker or it’s a retired person who drives it. They have no idea how the vehicle works. So you are left to read the manual.

 

watch the YouTube videos. So the fact that you actually had the car delivered by someone who knew how the car worked, who could teach it to you and go over all of the crazy features that it has, that’s just fantastic. And what I would expect from a company like Rivian and for the price tag of their cars.

 

Glenn Jaffe (11:42.37)

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (11:44.293)

Now, how long did you have it?

 

Glenn Jaffe (11:48.238)

Let’s see, almost nine months, ten months, nine or ten months.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (11:53.745)

So not even a year. So let’s start with what did you like about it?

 

Glenn Jaffe (11:59.854)

Well, 835 horsepower is pretty freaking cool.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (12:04.687)

You know, I cannot argue with that. That’s kind of ridiculous. And especially out of an electric motor, which also gives you this wonderfully flat torque curve. So you hit that pedal and whoo, instant speeding ticket.

 

Glenn Jaffe (12:19.084)

Yeah. Instant power. Yeah. Well, I didn’t get any of those, fortunately, but instant power to, you know, to get on when you’re merging on the interstate or there’s a, you know, a truck you need to get past and the spot is closing. You can punch it and just kind of get out in front of it. So it was really nice to have that. It’s also, you know, the R1S that I had, it was four motors. So you could put it into conserve mode and it would shut off two motors. And so you would lose, you know, know, half, essentially half your horsepower, but it, you know, it’s still

 

plenty of power in there. Yeah, yeah, was so that that was probably one of the most fun things about driving it. And you put it in sport mode, drop it down all the way to the lowest height. And it was really cool. It auto adjust the height of the vehicle depending upon your speed and conditions. But you drop it down, the suspension tightens up a little bit, the steering tightens up a little bit. And it handled better than than some sports cars I’ve been in in those big I had 22 inch tires on it. So it gripped and

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (12:48.615)

You still had over 400.

 

Glenn Jaffe (13:17.474)

And it was great. I think there’s McLaren DNA somewhere in the suspension of the R1s. And you could feel it. It was just really, really well built. Yeah, yeah.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (13:25.137)

Yep. And they learned a lot from Porsche too. you know, that German over engineering, you know, they learned from the best.

 

Glenn Jaffe (13:32.29)

Yeah, absolutely. Yep. I tell you the other, thing that I really thought was, really well designed and worked really well was the app, which sounds kind of silly, but, you know, I had it long enough. You don’t need a key. You just use your phone. And so it had proximity sensor. You walk up close to it in the parking lot, the lights come on, the handles pop out and unlocks. walk away from it like 10, 12 feet away from it and it locks.

 

You don’t have to think about it. You don’t have to put the phone in a special place in the, vehicle. You just get in and it’s ready to go. you don’t have to start it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And you can, no, no, not yet. They probably came up with an update for that. yeah. Yeah. Right. I think the other thing that I think was surprisingly interesting that I come to came to appreciate was the frunk.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (14:04.027)

Like it’s just waiting for you. Did it say, hello Glenn, welcome back?

 

It reminds me the old Knight Raider series. Hello, Michael.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (14:27.079)

you

 

Glenn Jaffe (14:27.146)

It was huge. And I remember the first time we took it to school to drop my kids off and you know, they put their backpacks in the front and I, know, we get to school and you put it in park and you open up the hood and then they walk out to the front and like everybody’s looking at it. It’s like, what’s wrong with your car? And then they see the girl pulling their backpacks out of it. what is that? So that was kind of neat, you know, being the, being the first person that one of the first people probably around here to have one. mean, you know, it a couple of runners.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (14:40.135)

you

 

Glenn Jaffe (14:57.806)

I think that was it. yeah.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (14:57.965)

For those of you who don’t know what a frunk is, it is a front trunk because you didn’t have a big motor up there under the hood. You open the hood and you have storage space. Now I had that in my old Porsche Boxster because the engine was right behind my seat being mid-engine. So I had storage space the size of a Coleman cooler in the front and then a small boot in the back. So I could store, you know, four grocery bags.

 

Glenn Jaffe (15:12.622)

Mm-hmm.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (15:25.721)

Yours, I imagine, was a little larger.

 

Glenn Jaffe (15:26.094)

Yeah, no, this trunk it was big enough. I remember my brother got it. I was at his house that his two sons crawled in the front and were sitting in it, you know, seven and four at the time and don’t store them in there. But they had fun getting in there and getting back out. it was I mean, it’s big. There’s even a drain plug in it so you can use it as a cooler. So I never did this, but you can put ice in there.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (15:39.515)

Don’t recommend storing your children in the frunk, but you know.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (15:51.247)

Okay, that’s awesome.

 

Glenn Jaffe (15:52.44)

Put your tailgate supplies in there or your fish when you go fishing. mean, it’s a really. Yeah, I mean, Rivian will tell you that they designed this thing for the outdoors and you know it’s the National Park crowd and everything else and I’m like, that’s great. But I think the reality of it is is 90 % of these Rivians are driving around the suburbs. Toten kids doing think that I did it. It is what it is, right?

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (16:10.759)

But they’re great for tailgating! And with that huge battery pack, you can tailgate all day long.

 

Glenn Jaffe (16:15.234)

They are great. See you know good for tailgating. Yeah. Yes.

 

You can, and you can also run refrigerators off of it when hurricanes come through and knock out the power. so unfortunately, a few weeks ago, Helen came through here in North Carolina and I’m sure everyone’s aware of what it did out out Western North Carolina, but we didn’t have power for almost day and a half. And so I just ran an extension cord from the Rivian into the kitchen and plugged the fridge in. And fortunately we didn’t lose any of our food.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (16:28.013)

I heard you had to do that.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (16:47.879)

See, that’s fantastic. And the last episode, we talked about the impacts of hurricanes, Helena Milton, on the automotive industry and people specifically. And my sister had to run that extension cord from her generator in her home in Hendersonville to her fridge and also to her neighbor’s fridge. But you just had to run it from your car. You had a generator in your driveway. That is cool. So let’s shift gears a little bit here and talk about what

 

Glenn Jaffe (16:56.31)

Mm-hmm.

 

Glenn Jaffe (17:06.723)

Yep.

 

Yeah, that was pretty neat.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (17:15.375)

you didn’t like about it and what ultimately led to your decision to selling this car when you didn’t even own it a year. I mean, it sounds like it was awesome.

 

Glenn Jaffe (17:23.682)

Yeah, it was for the most part. And I’ll tell you, one other thing we didn’t talk about was it was really neat not having to go to the gas station. I’ll say that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. We had the we had the wall charger installed in the garage about a week after we took delivery of it, which was nice. So, you know, the part about running around town, parking at your house every night and charging, you know, plugging in every two or three times a week just to keep it at 80 percent.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (17:32.635)

Now you recharged it at your house. Did you have a charging station at your home? Okay.

 

Glenn Jaffe (17:52.366)

was fantastic, very convenient, very cost effective. did an analysis on how many kilowatts we used over the course of the time that we had it compared to the year before. so I, yeah, I know, know. There was a spreadsheet involved. My wife is recovering accountant that she is, makes me do things on Excel spreadsheets now. But I looked at it we spent about $160 a month. The electric bill jumped $160 a month.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (18:01.831)

Of course you did. You and I, you’re my people, Glenn. You’re my people. We love a good spreadsheet.

 

Glenn Jaffe (18:22.454)

And so I know I was spending way more than $160 a month putting gas in the Sequoia. So, you know, can say confidently that if you just look at the fuel versus the electric expense, it definitely was a savings by using the electric vehicle. I didn’t charge it a ton using a third party or even Rivian’s Adventure Network. Every now and then I would if we were on a road trip or going somewhere and we just needed to make sure we got home. So I can’t really tell you.

 

the cost comparisons there. So that was nice. However, that comes with a price, if you will. And it was interesting because it was it was about a month after I got the Rivian and here in North Carolina, we don’t have terribly cold winters, but we have a week here and a week there where the temperature will drop and it gets nasty and you think you’re in the Midwest again. And so, yeah, yeah, exactly. And so we were driving to Greensboro, which is about 90 miles or so from Charlotte. It’s slightly uphill.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (19:11.946)

You’re like, wait a minute, I moved south for a reason, what happened?

 

Glenn Jaffe (19:21.87)

And it was the middle of January. And so we left in the morning. It was about 37 degrees. We had a little bit of a headwind and I charged it at 100 % because I knew we were, you I wanted to make sure that we had, you know, 320, 330 miles of range, you know, just no problems. No, exactly. Exactly. By the time we got to Greensboro, the range on the, on the, on the, battery was about 170 miles. It went from 320 to 170.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (19:37.115)

Don’t want that range anxiety to kick in.

 

Glenn Jaffe (19:50.078)

on 90 actual miles. And so the computer was telling me on the way home that we were going to have to stop and charge for 15 minutes to get just to get home. So was a hundred and what at 90 180 mile round trip made, you know, with a stops in there, but I shouldn’t have had to charge on the way home, but it was that much of a drain when it was that cold and that much of a headwind and going uphill a little bit. And I was really surprised at how much loss I got when it was cold.

 

And as we came into the spring and we started to get above about 50 degrees, you could tell that it was almost a one to one. you weren’t really losing that conversion with the cold, but that was really striking. I was really surprised how much range you lose in the cold. And obviously I can imagine if you live in Michigan or Chicago or Minnesota, you have one of the R ones, you’re going to struggle with that in the wintertime for sure. So that was part of the biggest thing.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (20:39.985)

Yeah, and it takes so much longer to recharge it because the whole system, it literally is like molasses. You know, it’s great when that syrup is nice and hot and you pour it on the pancakes, but when it’s been in the fridge, it’s… So that’s… And battery range is not like your fuel tank range. You know, know your fuel tank takes, say, 15 gallons, you know, as long as your car’s running well. You know approximately what your…

 

Glenn Jaffe (20:54.604)

Yep, very, very thick. Yeah.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (21:08.357)

miles to the gallon are gonna be. So, you I know that I can make it to Winston-Salem and back, you know, in one tank of gas in my car. But with the battery, that range that they tell you that it gets is like the ideal range. It’s like, you can get up to this amount, but you might not, depending on all these factors, and cold is the single biggest one.

 

Glenn Jaffe (21:34.06)

Yeah, yeah, and then, you know, were four of us in the car. had some stuff in there. So yeah, it all added to that drain on the range for sure.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (21:42.767)

Right, because it’s not just the motors that are draining the battery, it’s everything else you’re running. Are you listening to the radio? Heaven forbid, are you running the heater, the air conditioning? All of those things that require computer chips are sucking up those electrons. Now, was that the main reason that you ditched it? Because granted, we only get cold weather for two days every three years down here. And everybody shuts down and just doesn’t go anywhere. So maybe that was your fault for not staying home, Glenn.

 

Glenn Jaffe (21:57.676)

Yep, yeah, fortunately we didn’t have to plug in.

 

Glenn Jaffe (22:03.137)

Yeah.

 

Glenn Jaffe (22:10.85)

Maybe, for sure. No, that wasn’t really, I don’t think that was the biggest reason. don’t know that, I think the biggest reason, Leanna, the more that I look at it, I think the combination of the fact that I just don’t think we’re quite ready for EVs yet in the United States. And what I mean by that is, I’ll give you the example of another road trip we did. We drove to Wilmington, which is about three and a half hours from Charlotte, and it was in April. And that drive is,

 

relatively flat. It’s a little bit downhill. Obviously we’re heading toward the coast and so it was warm. It was probably in the high 60s, lower 70s and we got down there. Didn’t have to charge the whole trip. I struggled to find a place to charge the Rivian in Wilmington because there just weren’t a lot of level three chargers. There were several level one chargers, which if you’re not familiar with the level one, it’s about one to two miles per hour. It’s like plugging into a 20 in your house and so

 

That was the only thing that really was available. Now, Rivian has a relationship with Tesla and the fact that the Rivian vehicles are supposed to be able to use Tesla chargers, but the adapters that we were supposed to receive to get from the Rivian adapter to the Naxx never arrived before I sold the Rivian, so I never did it. However, if I remember correctly, there were only two Tesla chargers and neither of them in Wilmington area were anywhere close to be convenient to where we were staying at the hotel. So I parked.

 

the vehicle across the street in the municipal garage that had an EV charger. I plugged in Thursday night when we got there. By the time we were ready to leave Sunday morning, it was only at like 80%. So yeah, and it wasn’t even cold. So it was, you know, and we didn’t drive anywhere. We couldn’t like, can’t unplug the car for three hours because you know, I need to keep charging it. and so we, you know, we had to stop on the way home. Fortunately there was a

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (23:48.754)

my goodness. And it wasn’t even cold!

 

Glenn Jaffe (24:05.634)

I think it was a shell charger, which I had never used before. And so, you know, you’re sitting there, you got to download the new app, wait for that, put your information in, wait for that. And then fortunately there were two, two chargers at this place and it was at this little tiny town. Literally the town is, is, is one stop light. And we pull up and I get all this set up and I plug it in and it won’t talk to it. Like the, the charger and the car wouldn’t talk to each other.

 

I’m like, okay, I’m gonna delete the app and start it again. I restarted the Rivian, you like your computer, did a boot, reboot. And I’m like, all right, let’s try the other charger. So I moved it over and I plugged it in. Unfortunately, this one would talk to the Rivian. So we were able to charge it. But you know, I’m sitting there spending half an hour, 40 minutes doing all this stuff. And my kids are like, we go home? Yeah, I’m hungry. Where’s the bathroom? You know, all that stuff. So that was kind of annoying. And I know that sounds like petty, but.

 

It was kind of an example of, the issue that I’m seeing with this is this vehicle is great if you’re running around town. If you’re not too far from home base and you go home and you charge on your own charger, which at home is a level two charger, we’re getting about 24 miles per hour charge. And so that, that works. You know, that, that, makes a lot of sense. But I think the, the fact that the infrastructure is still not there, it’s not as efficient as it needs to be, especially in the cold weather. It doesn’t, I just don’t.

 

I wasn’t comfortable with it. didn’t give me anxiety necessarily, but it was definitely gave me pause to make those kinds of trips. And then you factor in the cost and these they’re not cheap. put my deposit down. No, no, right. I put my deposit down on the Rivian. It was the summer of 21 and that locked in the price and which is a good thing I did because when I paid for it, when I got it delivered in December of 23,

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (25:44.463)

No, you didn’t buy a Nissan Leaf.

 

Glenn Jaffe (26:01.39)

It was 20 almost $20,000 less than what they were selling them if you went in and bought up. So I I you know, save some money if you’re not looking at the video. I’m air quoting saving money. Yeah. I thought about that too. I should have done that or you know, but. Yeah, so the the car payment was a lot higher than I think I wanted to keep going with and the car insurance is.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (26:05.383)

Woohoo.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (26:11.175)

know a lot of people that took delivery and immediately resold them and made a killing during the pandemic.

 

Glenn Jaffe (26:30.702)

You know, everybody’s car insurance has gone up, but I mean, it was almost $2,400 a year for car insurance for the Rivian. yeah, and I think it’s a combination. There’s just not a ton of Rivians on the road yet, right? So there’s not a lot of parts. There’s not a lot of understanding, but there’s also so much technology in this car that it’s, that’s the expensive stuff to fix. so those, those were probably the biggest reasons why we decided to move on. And, you know, again, financially,

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (26:36.391)

Whoo! Ouch, that’s like teenage boy rates.

 

Glenn Jaffe (27:01.398)

I was able to get out of it and not lose money. And you know, the value of them, unfortunately, is going to start to really kind of dive because the next generation is starting to roll out. There’s more EVs, more people are wanting EVs. So the used market is probably going to start to fluctuate like that.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (27:18.883)

It will. And that’s one thing that I talked about with the change in consumer behavior and just the more availability of EVs on the market. Those values are dropping. And that was why I was trying to figure, OK, we’ve got to get Glenn’s Rivian sold before it drops. Because I did see a $2,000 drop in the values over the summer. I’m like, gosh, we’re waiting for this. We want this other car that’s hard to find. But I don’t want to lose any more value on the Rivian. So was kind of this juggling game.

 

of getting that timing right so it would work out financially. But I’m glad you had that toy to play with while you did. But I think the reasons that you decided to get rid of it are the same reasons that a lot of Americans are falling out of love. The glamour of owning one of these cool new cars isn’t quite as cracked up as it’s supposed to be in reality because

 

Glenn Jaffe (27:53.89)

Yeah.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (28:17.199)

You just yeah, the just the charging situation. If I didn’t just have the ability to stop at a gas station and literally spend four minutes filling up my tank and boom, I’m back on the road. You know, that alone would probably drive me crazy.

 

Glenn Jaffe (28:33.164)

Yeah, what I knew going into this, Lee Ann, you know, I thought about this is an electric vehicle. This is a new behavior for me. I’m going to have to adapt. I’m going to have to change the way we do things and understand that. And I was willing to do that going in. And I think a lot of people who complain about like complain, complain about that. I don’t think they thought about the fact that this was new. They just applied the same thought process of the gas station access and the gas tank. it’s just charging. It’s the same thing. Well, it’s not.

 

requires a different sets, you know, kind of understandings and parameters and how your behavior has to change. And so I was aware of that going in.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (29:09.927)

That’s good. So, you know, and what I tell people when I have clients that say, I want an EV, you know, if they live in California or the New York tri-state area, I kind of assume they’re a little more education simply because they have so much more infrastructure than we do down here in the South. I mean, good grief. mean, how long did it take us to get, you know, a Trader Joe’s and a Whole Foods, you know? Or just to finish the freeway. Yeah, that’s a never ending project.

 

Glenn Jaffe (29:33.73)

or to finish 485, right?

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (29:39.975)

In those other areas where you have so much more infrastructure, it’s so much easier. yeah, you get out, you know, in Wilmington, you’re lucky if you have cell phone signal, you know, much less someplace to charge your electric car. So you have to be aware of where you live. And even, you know, can you get your car to the nearest service center on one charge? Little things like that. So.

 

I understand why, I’m sure it was a difficult decision to get rid of the ribbing because it was really cool.

 

Glenn Jaffe (30:11.426)

Yeah, it was. And you know, and you brought up the service center thing and you know, that was another thing. You know, when you buy a brand new car, you’re like, I’m not going to really have to take it in. It should be fine. Well, when you buy it by the first generation of a first, you know, brand new car company, you know, and it wasn’t anything, you know, there were, there were things that needed to be addressed. None of them were, you know, deal breakers or anything that made the car inoperable. But, you know, over the course of the first three, four months, the list of little things here and there started to really kind of get long.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (30:26.339)

Anything?

 

Glenn Jaffe (30:41.548)

And Rivian sent a mobile repair technician with a van out a couple of times that addressed some of the things, but we ended up, the list was long and unfortunately distinguished where it had to get down to Atlanta. And so I drove it down to Atlanta, which we talked about was four hours. And I dropped it off at the service center down there, picked up the loaner and I drove home in the same day. And then, so, so that was fun, you know, and I did, I did the whole trip in about

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (31:05.319)

Ooh, that is a long day.

 

Glenn Jaffe (31:12.142)

11 hours so Not much not much getting out of the car time and then so I had the rental car for almost five weeks Because I wasn’t able to get down there in time You know when they finished so that it kind of sat there for about a week before I could get back down there and then turn Yeah, and it was it was funny because the rental car that I had was a 2024 Toyota excuse me 2024 Chevy Tahoe, which

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (31:27.269)

At least they let you keep that loaner. That was nice.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (31:37.735)

Yeah

 

Glenn Jaffe (31:39.052)

which was extremely comfortable and very thirsty compared to a Rivian. But it was kind of.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (31:43.335)

How many times did you have to refill just coming back from Atlanta?

 

Glenn Jaffe (31:47.502)

Yeah, well, yeah, it was, it was very thirsty. was like, where’s the external gas tank? I, you know, I need to get home here, but, it was very, it was strange going from an EV to a, to a, you know, a VA, in a big, big vehicle like that. But, and then I had, you know, four, four and a half, five weeks later, I’d drive back down there and do it all again. And so I drove down there and turned around and drove home. So that, that in itself was probably a big thing too.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (31:53.927)

You

 

Glenn Jaffe (32:16.499)

that I wouldn’t even realize if I hadn’t had to take it down there.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (32:20.827)

Right, absolutely. So instead, you decided to get something that was a balance, got you a hybrid. So you have good fuel economy, but you can still just pull up and take four minutes to fill up the tank and doesn’t even give the kids too much time to complain. And then you’re back on the road.

 

Glenn Jaffe (32:21.612)

Yep. Yep.

 

Glenn Jaffe (32:27.63)

Yes.

 

Yes.

 

Glenn Jaffe (32:40.15)

Yeah, they probably won’t even notice they’re busy looking at their phones.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (32:43.815)

Well, that and their lounged back in those swanky reclining seats. it’s like the second row captain’s chairs were a lazy boy because we got the new Kia Carnival hybrid top of the line. And that’s a pretty sweet ride too.

 

Glenn Jaffe (32:45.996)

Yes.

 

Glenn Jaffe (32:55.896)

Yeah. Yes. Yes. We, we put those seats to rest immediately after getting it had another road trip, which was fascinating because that was a, it was down to the coast as well. And that was about a three and a half hour drive. and got almost 35 miles to the gallon. And it was so weird to fill up when we left Charlotte and not have to, I had, didn’t fill up until probably Tuesday after we got back from that trip. It was really kind of interesting to put that many miles on it.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (33:20.551)

That’s amazing.

 

Glenn Jaffe (33:24.696)

without having to go to the gas station.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (33:26.607)

Right, I mean, I expect that in my mother’s Corolla, but to do it in a family-sized vehicle is pretty amazing. And that’s why I am a big fan of hybrids. And I think that that’s a more practical solution, given where we are technology-wise today, for the United States and just the size of our country and our propensity to love to jump on the road and actually go places and not having a cool train system like Europe does yet.

 

Glenn Jaffe (33:34.99)

Mm-hmm.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (33:53.111)

So, I think you made an excellent choice. I’m sorry you don’t have the Rivian anymore, but I’m gonna be interested in just continuing to watch the technology, both in the vehicles and in the infrastructure. But I think if any of the electric vehicle companies are really going to succeed and thrive and create very usable and excellent vehicles, I think Rivian’s gonna be one of the leaders for that. At least they’re not filing bankruptcy like Fisker.

 

Glenn Jaffe (33:57.71)

Yeah.

 

Glenn Jaffe (34:21.996)

Yeah, yeah, that’s for sure. And you know, we put a deposit down on the R2 and you know, that’s still a couple of years away. So it gives us time to kind of study and see the trends and see how Rivian does with things. But I’m still very intrigued by Rivian itself and the products and everything. So I haven’t written it off for sure, but I think the pause button being pushed, I think is the accurate description of where I am right

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (34:22.727)

you

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (34:45.467)

And I think a lot of people are in the same situation and making similar decisions, given the demand for hybrids in the US is the highest of anything. Well, thank you so, so much for sharing your experiences. I know I learned a lot. And hopefully other people who are considering electric vehicles will, this will give them some things that they might not have considered. And then they can take maybe that second thought before they take the plunge. And hopefully they won’t make a decision that they end up regretting. So Glenn.

 

for especially for anybody who’s in the Charlotte area who might be looking for an awesome chiropractor, how can they kid a hold of you?

 

Glenn Jaffe (35:21.484)

Well, it’s really easy if you go to JaffeyCyroPractic.com. You can find us there on all your favorite social media channels. Just go search for JaffeyCyroCLT. And even if you don’t live in the Charlotte area, I can help you find a great doctor near you. So if you need some help, just let us know.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (35:38.181)

That’s awesome. And Jaffee is spelled J-A-F-F-E for those of you that are just listening and not on the YouTube channel. Again, thank you so much, Glenn. I really appreciate it. And if you are one of those people who’s considering, should I buy an electric vehicle? Should I not? My online car buying course goes over. We have a whole lesson on electric vehicles and the pros and cons and things you need to consider when you’re selecting the vehicle for yourself. So.

 

Check out my online course at carbincourse.com or you can get to it on my website, thecarchic.com. Until next week, folks, drive safely.

 

LeeAnn Shattuck (36:20.088)

Where’s the stop button? Stop. There it is.

 

Alright, we need to stay on.