The major payback of buying an electric car is that it creates knock-on effects by (a) causing battery and charging technology to accelerate more quickly than a

The major payback of buying an electric car is that it creates knock-on effects by (a) causing battery and charging technology to accelerate more quickly than any other consumer dollar expenditure can, which will have other benefits ranging from grid storage to electrified public transit, (b) demonstrating to automakers that ICE cars are a dead end, and they should accelerate their plans to move to electric (which they are doing more rapidly now, thanks to consumers buying so many EVs), which hopefully (c) leads to a virtuous cycle in which ICE deployment drops, governments legislate against gas cars (at least in Europe and China at first), oil demand drops, investment in oil exploration drops, refining pollution drops off a cliff, and maybe we have a fighting chance of making it through the next few decades. Obviously none of this is sufficient on its own, but certainly a better way of spending consumer dollars than buying a petroleum car. Also, from a selfish perspective, EVs are almost infinitely more fun to drive. Don’t even get me started (as someone who has a parking spot with a charger) about this ridiculous historical idea of going to buy my fuel at some “gas station” instead of having it delivered to my house while I sleep.