My 2015 Chevrolet Spark EV – The EV Relapse

By 2015, my automotive life had finally reached a stable and sensible place. We had a comfortable daily driver, a paid-off weekend convertible, and a financial plan that actually worked. Naturally, that’s when I decided to derail it slightly by chasing another electric car. The culprit was a ridiculously cheap lease deal on a new Chevrolet Spark EV — a tiny hatchback with limited range, a surprising amount of technology, and enough instant electric torque to turn every stoplight into a fun ride. As it turned out, however, bringing home the little EV would also lead to the first genuinely serious disagreement of our marriage.

At the time, Courtney was driving the leased 2012 Chevrolet Volt, I was daily driving the 2005 Acura TL, and the Mercedes SLK had settled into being our fun car—the top-down escape machine for date nights and weekend drives. The Mercedes was paid off, my credit card debt was gone for good, and we had settled into a plan that made sense. Courtney hated leases and payments, and while she tolerated my enthusiasm for cars, the agreement had been pretty clear: when the Volt lease ended, we were moving on with our sensible, paid-for Acura. The problem was that I still loved the Volt. The TL was a very good car—comfortable, reliable, smooth, and practical—but emotionally, it felt like a compromise. I missed driving electric.

A few months earlier, I had driven a Chevrolet Spark EV, and the experience had stuck with me. The thing was hilariously quick. It felt like somebody had taken a drivetrain from the future and stuffed it into a tiny economy hatchback. It was cheap, goofy, and way more fun than it had any right to be, so naturally I had started casually browsing Spark EV forums.

That’s when I saw it.

Wentworth Chevrolet was advertising an absolutely insane lease deal on new 2015 Spark EVs: $99 a month for 36 months, with no money down and 30,000 miles included in the lease. At the time, that was less than my cell phone bill—for an entire car. Sure, it only had about 80 miles of range, and yes, it was basically an economy car with an EV drivetrain shoehorned into it, but it was an EV. It had a touchscreen, instant torque, and all the futuristic charm I missed from the Volt.

I called Wentworth Chevrolet assuming there had to be some catch. There wasn’t. They confirmed the deal and told me they still had several cars left in various colors. Some were nicer 2LT models with leatherette seats and the optional CCS fast-charge port, but for probably the first time in my life, I had absolutely no problem going with the base model.

CCS charging was still brand new, there were no CCS chargers on the Oregon Coast yet, and I already knew this wasn’t going to be a road-trip car anyway. This was going to be a tiny around-town EV commuter. In my mind, I had already basically convinced myself it was a brilliant idea. Now I just had to convince my wife.

I was smart enough to know I probably shouldn’t buy another car without talking to Courtney first, so I called her at work:

“I found this amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to lease this EV. It’s only $99 a month, and they only have a couple left, so I need to act NOW!”

There was confusion on the other end of the line, followed by a brief back-and-forth. Finally, in the tone of somebody trying to process this conversation while also wrangling kindergarteners, she basically said, “I have to get back to teaching. Do what you think is right.”

Twenty-six-year-old freshly married me interpreted this as a green light. I called the dealership back, gave them my credit card to hold the car, and told them we would come pick it up after work.

When I showed up at Courtney’s classroom later that afternoon, excited and ready to head to Portland, she seemed surprised to see me. I cheerfully explained that we were going to pick up the Spark EV. We climbed into the Volt and started heading toward Portland with the passenger seat remaining almost completely silent.

Even with my limited relationship experience at that point, I knew this was not a good sign. Eventually, I pulled over, and what followed was our first real marital disagreement. We sat there for probably half an hour having a tense but honest conversation. Eventually, though, we reached a compromise. We would lease the Spark EV, Courtney would take over the Acura, and we would sell the beloved SLK.

As much as it hurt, the Mercedes had already started hinting that expensive repairs probably weren’t too far away, so it made sense to let it go. With that settled, we continued on to Portland.

The dealership process was surprisingly painless, and while signing paperwork they explained why the lease deal was so aggressive: Chevrolet dealers who leased more Spark EVs would receive larger allocations of the upcoming Bolt EV. Portland was an EV-friendly market, and Wentworth wanted as many Bolts as they could get.

The dealership staff was mildly concerned about whether I would actually make it home on one charge. Tillamook was about 70 miles away and required crossing a mountain range, which was a little ambitious in a first-generation compliance EV with only about 80 miles of rated range.

Before heading home, Courtney and I stopped for dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Then we climbed into our respective EVs—her in the Volt, me in the Spark—and headed back to the coast. I’m happy to report that I made it home successfully, although only with nine miles of range remaining. It was my first real experience with range anxiety.

Now that the Spark was home, we temporarily found ourselves in possession of four vehicles. For a brief moment, my driveway looked like a car guy’s dream. My wife was significantly less impressed by this than I was.

The first to go was the Volt. The lease ended in May of 2015, and returning it was a very sad day for me and a very happy day for Courtney. It had been an incredible first new car. Practical, futuristic, efficient, and genuinely fun to own, it completely changed the way I thought about cars and driving.

I’m also proud to report that I returned it with about 29,800 miles on it—just squeaking in under the 30,000-mile lease limit—and avoided any excess charges. While $400 a month had absolutely been a lot of money at that point in my life, I don’t regret leasing the Volt for a second.

Around the same time, both my mom and my sister ended up leasing Spark EVs too after seeing mine and realizing how ridiculous the deals were. Somehow I even got referral money for both of them, which felt absurd. Apparently I had become an unpaid Chevrolet EV evangelist.

The next to go was the SLK, and that one hurt almost as much as the Volt. It sold quickly to a couple from Utah who happened to see it parked on the side of the road with a For Sale sign while vacationing on the coast.

As much as selling the Mercedes hurt emotionally, it ended up being an incredibly good decision, because just a couple of months later, we unexpectedly found ourselves buying a new house.

Sometime around July of 2015, I happened to see a fairly new house pop up on Zillow out in a newer subdivision in Netarts. There really aren’t that many newer homes in Tillamook County. The house itself was very nice, but the layout wasn’t quite what we thought we wanted. Still, it got me into the dangerous habit of checking Zillow more frequently. A couple of weeks later, another house popped up for sale directly across the street from the first one, and this one immediately felt different. It was only a couple of years old, beautifully built, and far more polished and custom-feeling than anything else we had looked at.

Naturally, I dragged Courtney out to see it “just for fun.”

That turned out to be a mistake.

The house was breathtaking, and surprisingly, it wasn’t outrageously expensive. Still, we tried to be rational about it, so we walked away. Then it sat on the market. And sat. And sat.

About a month later, we went back to look at it again, this time bringing my dad along. He agreed that it was an exceptionally nice house, and by that point the price had also dropped by around $15,000. Then the seller’s real estate agent contacted our agent and asked whether we were planning on making an offer because the sellers had already purchased another house in Salem and were becoming increasingly motivated to move this one quickly.

Well… that changed the equation a bit.

We made a low but not unreasonable offer. They countered. We countered back. Eventually, we ended up purchasing the house for roughly $30,000 less than the original asking price—which, in 2015, represented a pretty significant percentage of the value of the home.

Then we had to decide what to do with my old house in Tillamook, and eventually decided to keep it and rent it out.

Ironically, none of it would have been possible if we had kept the Mercedes. The bank required us to have six months of mortgage payments for both houses sitting in savings after closing on the new place. Without the money from selling the SLK, we simply would not have had enough cash reserves to make it happen.

We closed in October of 2015 on the two-year anniversary of officially becoming boyfriend and girlfriend, which was going to be pretty hard to top.

Life settled into a really happy rhythm after that. We thoroughly enjoyed the dual-income-no-kids stage of life, traveled frequently, and I aggressively used my computer-service income to pay down the mortgage.

The Spark and Acura ended up being a pretty good pair. The TL was comfortable, reliable, and easy to live with. Aside from a starter replacement, my dad and I knocked out in under an hour, it never really asked much from us.

The Spark, meanwhile, was everything I hoped it would be. It was the perfect little electric runabout—cheap to operate, easy to park, and ridiculously fun around town. We even took it over to Lincoln City a few times, which felt slightly absurd in a car with only about 80 miles of range.

The torque was incredible. That little thing launched away from stoplights like an electric go-kart. In fact, it had so much torque that I managed to destroy the front tires in only about 9,000 miles.

Oops.

Still, over time we realized the Acura left something to be desired in our “one gas car” equation. If we were only going to own one gasoline vehicle, maybe it should be something a little more practical. Something that could haul more stuff and fit Oregon life a little better.

So around July of 2016, our automotive orbit began drifting toward a different planet entirely.

 

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