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> Nail on the head. When your concern is cost, electric vehicles just don't make sense. I agree with this. Electric cars are still affordable only to the affl

by dpark 9y ago

> Nail on the head. When your concern is cost, electric vehicles just don't make sense. I agree with this. Electric cars are still affordable only to the affluent. Even a Nissan Leaf costs over $30k. > I drive 5-10 thousands miles a year, and at $2/gallon gas, I'm looking at a total expense of 4-500 dollars per year. This, however, seems really optimistic. 10k miles for $500 in gas assumes $2/gallon and 40 mpg, which is the EPA rating for highway miles in a Civic. Most people are driving >10k miles/year. Most people don't spend 100% of their miles on open highway at optimal speed, nor do most people drive a new car with max efficiency. And most people don't have $2/gallon gas even in the US (the average is closer to $2.50 currently). Driving 12-15k/year, getting 25mpg, paying $2.50/gallon, you'd be looking at $1200-$1500/year for gas. That's still not enough to offset the difference in an electric car unless you assume long ownership and no major costs to, say, replace the battery pack at 5 years.

mark242 9y ago
> Electric cars are still affordable only to the affluent. I just now ran a Carfax report and found no fewer than 7 electric Ford Focus cars within 50 miles of my zipcode for less than $15k used. Two of them are less than $10k. Not sure what "affluent" means to you.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dpark 9y ago
  Set the goalposts and we can discuss it. If we're talking new cars, I think >$30k is for the affluent. If you want to consider used cars, maybe they become more attainable, but the supply is tiny (literally 50x as many used IC focuses as used electric focuses near me) and there's still a premium for the equivalent car (~20% from what I see). I can buy a 2013 electric Focus for $13k. I can buy a 2012 BMW 328i for $14k. Are BMWs also affordable now?
  - Retric 9y ago
    Older BMW's have relatively high maintenance costs which is a real issue. Not sure about that Focus, but electric cars have vastly fewer moving parts which should help quite a bit.
    - dpark 9y ago
      Older electric cars eventually need a complete battery pack replacement which is not a trivial cost. I don't know what the lifespan of the battery pack in a Focus is, though.
      - Retric 9y ago
        On an older focus that's not nearly the issue vs longer range electrics it's ~23 kWh * $150/kwh ~= 3,450$ and dropping. I know people that spent that much just replacing a BMW's transmission. Yea, not free but everything else should be cheap so maintenance costs are likely to be far less over the next 5 - 10 years.
        dpark 9y ago
        To be clear, I'm not actually advocating that used BMWs are affordable. Edit: I do wonder how many of these "cheap" electric cars will ever have a replacement battery pack. When your car value drops below $5000, are you really going to spend $3000 (guesstimate including labor) to replace the battery?
        Retric 9y ago
        Sure, I just meant if the TCO is around 1k/year higher on the BMW they are not really equivalent options for most people. Anyway, this might change if they are more common, but for now used electrics seem to have a significant price premium suggesting people think replacing older battery packs is probably a good long term deal.
        9y ago
cptskippy 9y ago
I just bought a 2015 Nissan Leaf that just came off lease with 20k miles on it for $12000. I financed it for the credit bump and the monthly payment is $240 a month. That is about $80 more a month than I was paying on gas and full coverage insurance is about the same as my old car (2007 Accord). It has a 70k warranty on all major systems and 2 years of road side assistance. Which reminds me I can remove that from my insurance coverage and save about $15 a month. I was spending over $1000 a year maintaining my old car so for the same or less expense I now have what I consider a much nicer car and modern features. It's also a lot more fun to drive.
- dpark 9y ago
  I find it interesting that these electric cars are dropping so much and value in the first three years. More than half. And that's on dealer resell, not the trade-in value. Last time I bought a three-year-old car, the dealer resell price was about 75% of the original retail.
  - cptskippy 9y ago
    From what I understand it's partially because of the uncertainty of unproven technology, and partially because a lot of people bought them for the tax breaks. Nissan didn't (and still might not) have active cooling in their batteries and was seeing high failure rates in states like Arizona. Because of this, Nissan ended up extending battery warranties to 8 years / 100,000 miles. Basically if there is anything wrong with the battery or it's capacity drops below 9 bars (starts at 12), then Nissan will replace it. Combined state and federal deductions on EVs were up to 50% of the purchase or lease price of a Leaf and could be deducted over several years. This combined with annual fuel savings when gas was $4 a gallon meant people could drive a new car for little more than the cost of insurance since Nissan was including free charging at qualified stations for 2 years. So a lot of Leafs were bought or leased and being dumped on the market now that all the incentives are drying up.
R_haterade 9y ago
Absolutely agreed with all of this, and well done on the analysis--you backed out my back-of-the-envelope numbers. Gas has been ~$2 where I live for a very long time, and you're right, I'm closer to 5 than 10k miles, and much of it is city. I don't travel much though. :-)

by dpark 9y ago

mark242 9y ago

> Electric cars are still affordable only to the affluent. I just now ran a Carfax report and found no fewer than 7 electric Ford Focus cars within 50 miles of my zipcode for less than $15k used. Two of them are less than $10k. Not sure what "affluent" means to you.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dpark 9y ago
Set the goalposts and we can discuss it. If we're talking new cars, I think >$30k is for the affluent. If you want to consider used cars, maybe they become more attainable, but the supply is tiny (literally 50x as many used IC focuses as used electric focuses near me) and there's still a premium for the equivalent car (~20% from what I see). I can buy a 2013 electric Focus for $13k. I can buy a 2012 BMW 328i for $14k. Are BMWs also affordable now?
- Retric 9y ago
  Older BMW's have relatively high maintenance costs which is a real issue. Not sure about that Focus, but electric cars have vastly fewer moving parts which should help quite a bit.
  - dpark 9y ago
    Older electric cars eventually need a complete battery pack replacement which is not a trivial cost. I don't know what the lifespan of the battery pack in a Focus is, though.
    - Retric 9y ago
      On an older focus that's not nearly the issue vs longer range electrics it's ~23 kWh * $150/kwh ~= 3,450$ and dropping. I know people that spent that much just replacing a BMW's transmission. Yea, not free but everything else should be cheap so maintenance costs are likely to be far less over the next 5 - 10 years.
      - dpark 9y ago
        To be clear, I'm not actually advocating that used BMWs are affordable. Edit: I do wonder how many of these "cheap" electric cars will ever have a replacement battery pack. When your car value drops below $5000, are you really going to spend $3000 (guesstimate including labor) to replace the battery?
        Retric 9y ago
        Sure, I just meant if the TCO is around 1k/year higher on the BMW they are not really equivalent options for most people. Anyway, this might change if they are more common, but for now used electrics seem to have a significant price premium suggesting people think replacing older battery packs is probably a good long term deal.
        9y ago

cptskippy 9y ago

I just bought a 2015 Nissan Leaf that just came off lease with 20k miles on it for $12000. I financed it for the credit bump and the monthly payment is $240 a month. That is about $80 more a month than I was paying on gas and full coverage insurance is about the same as my old car (2007 Accord). It has a 70k warranty on all major systems and 2 years of road side assistance. Which reminds me I can remove that from my insurance coverage and save about $15 a month. I was spending over $1000 a year maintaining my old car so for the same or less expense I now have what I consider a much nicer car and modern features. It's also a lot more fun to drive.

dpark 9y ago
I find it interesting that these electric cars are dropping so much and value in the first three years. More than half. And that's on dealer resell, not the trade-in value. Last time I bought a three-year-old car, the dealer resell price was about 75% of the original retail.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  From what I understand it's partially because of the uncertainty of unproven technology, and partially because a lot of people bought them for the tax breaks. Nissan didn't (and still might not) have active cooling in their batteries and was seeing high failure rates in states like Arizona. Because of this, Nissan ended up extending battery warranties to 8 years / 100,000 miles. Basically if there is anything wrong with the battery or it's capacity drops below 9 bars (starts at 12), then Nissan will replace it. Combined state and federal deductions on EVs were up to 50% of the purchase or lease price of a Leaf and could be deducted over several years. This combined with annual fuel savings when gas was $4 a gallon meant people could drive a new car for little more than the cost of insurance since Nissan was including free charging at qualified stations for 2 years. So a lot of Leafs were bought or leased and being dumped on the market now that all the incentives are drying up.

R_haterade 9y ago

Absolutely agreed with all of this, and well done on the analysis--you backed out my back-of-the-envelope numbers. Gas has been ~$2 where I live for a very long time, and you're right, I'm closer to 5 than 10k miles, and much of it is city. I don't travel much though. :-)