How to Become Clean Energy Evangelist

A recent piece makes the case for switching more of your household to electric power, and it's mostly personal opinion rather than new policy, but a few concrete numbers are worth noting if you're car shopping. The writer, a longtime electric vehicle owner, says he financed a new base Tesla Model Y at 1.5% interest with payments around $559 a month, and a Model 3 at 2% interest for about $529 a month. A new long-wheelbase, six-seat Model YL runs about $992 a month. Full self-driving software costs $99 a month on top of that. He also points out that used EVs can be much cheaper — his son bought a seven-year-old Model 3 Performance with battery warranty remaining for $15,000 — though he warns that used-car lots often don't know key details like remaining battery range or which hardware version a car has, so you may need to check the car yourself. The Chevy Bolt EV starts at $27,600 and comes with a plug that works directly with Tesla Superchargers, no adapter needed.

Beyond cars, the other concrete tip is about light bulbs: LED bulbs use about 10% of the energy of old incandescent bulbs for the same brightness, cutting lighting costs by roughly 90%, and they're rated to last around 20 years. He mentions buying 60-watt-equivalent LEDs online for about $1.28 each. The piece also flags future articles on switching gas water heaters and furnaces to heat pump models, which move heat rather than burning fuel to make it, but gives no details yet on cost or savings for those upgrades.