The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

I took advantage of the IRA solar power and $7500 EV credit, now I have an off grid home all electric appliances and excess power for hot tubs and EV's. The Ford Lightning acts as a generator. This was the greatest most life changing and impactful legistlation ever: I've had $0 (ZERO!) in gasoline, LP, and electric utility bills since installation last year.

It's great now but when it starts to degrade and needs maintenance and replacement that's now entirely your problem, there is no utility with a huge staff of electricians and linesmen ready to deal with that on a sub-zero winter day or in the middle of a rainy night.

With this kind of setup you can stay connected to the grid. In the event that your solar and storage fail unexpectedly you can still pay for grid electricity.

The grid you've been refusing to pay to support for years, that grid is going to be your backup?

You still pay service fees to maintain a grid connection. Not to mention that many people with these setups contribute excess generation back to the grid or allow their batteries to discharged by the grid during demand spikes.

A lot of those service fees were designed to scale with the amount of electricity used. If you've got a net metered bill chances are you haven't really been paying much for service fees.

I don't know anyone who bothers discharging their home batteries to the grid. The rates they get wouldn't cover the cost of the wear and tear to their batteries.