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> This is going to shock people, but the days of buying a new car every 3-5 years is over. The average age of a car on the road in the US is about 11 years. A

by htag 4y ago

> This is going to shock people, but the days of buying a new car every 3-5 years is over. The average age of a car on the road in the US is about 11 years. As that is the average age of a car on the road, it suggests the lifespan of a typical car is much longer. I've look at the TCO of electric vehicles every year or two. The math always pencils out that it's far cheaper to keep my 4 door Japanese sedan another year, as I drive it less than 5,000 miles/yr and maintenance is minimal with that little use. I think most people trying to minimize their transportation costs would do better with a corolla, unless their drive more than average. Of course, no one looking at minimizing their TCO buys a new car every 3-5 years.

rootusrootus 4y ago
As long as maintenance isn't yet eating you alive, there's no new car at any price that is going to have a better TCO. But if you were getting a new car to last a long time, it's tough to beat a compliance EV. Chevy Bolt, 260 miles of range, small but not tiny, great utility, and 26K before rebates. $11K after rebates if you're an Oregonian. Fuel is much cheaper, TCO is basically impossible to beat.
- sbierwagen 4y ago
  As long as it doesn't burst into flames: https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/bolt-recall https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/bolt-recall Tesla famously started building their packs out of laptop 18650 cells. To keep the voltage out of the kilovolt range while still being able to draw useful amounts of power you have to connect huge numbers of them in parallel-- the old model S had 74 in parallel. DIY battery pack HOWTOs will flat out tell you that you can't connect cells in parallel at all, while Tesla is connecting dozens of them together. Presumably they have to go to great and awful lengths to characterize/bin the cells, maintain QC during manufacture, keep pack temperature constant to avoid hot spots from aging single cells, lots and lots of balance wires to carefully charge sub-sections, etc etc etc. GM saw all this early adopter crap, and all the extra weight from the redundant steel casings on each cell, and say screw that, let's use really big lipo cells. Well, you still have all that variability and inconsistency... just hidden inside a big polymer pouch where you can't see it. Recipe for unexpectedly going fwoosh in the middle of the night while charging. GM's new Ultium platform still uses LG lipo cells. Let's hope they worked out the kinks!
throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
> it's far cheaper to keep my 4 door Japanese sedan another year This is like saying it's cheaper to wait a year before contributing to retirement because you'll have more money in checking if you don't contribute to retirement. Average lifespan of an ICE car is around 14.8 years. For an EV it's 22.2. They last longer, and break down less often, and fuel is cheaper. Over a period of 20 years, it does not matter how expensive the EV was when you paid for it. After 20 years, there is more money in your bank account, with the EV. So buying or keeping a used corolla is pretty much guaranteed to leave you with less money after those 20 years. No matter how cheap the corolla is now, keeping ICE cars will add up to a higher cost. The longer you wait the more you lose in the end.
- fbdab103 4y ago
  >Average lifespan of an ICE car is around 14.8 years. For an EV it's 22.2 I am going to need to see some figures on that. How many electric cars were even made 22 years ago?
  - throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
    The average expected lifespan of an ICE vehicle is 200k miles, and the average expected lifespan of an EV is 300k miles. The average ICE vehicle in the USA is driven between 12k and 15k miles per year. So for an ICE vehicle that averages out to 14.8 years to reach 200k, and an EV, 22.2 years to reach 300k. On average.
- jjav 4y ago
  > Average lifespan of an ICE car is around 14.8 years. For an EV it's 22.2. Citation definitely needed for those figures. There are no mass market EVs that are 22+ years old, let alone old enough to make their average lifespan be 22.2 (which obviously implies some EVs lasted a lot longer than that). > So buying or keeping a used corolla is pretty much guaranteed to leave you with less money after those 20 years. That's clearly not true in the absolute. Might be in some cases. For instance my parent has a 1998 Corolla which works perfectly well and requires minimal maintanance. There is no conceivable scenario where it'd be cheaper to buy a new EV vs. just keep driving the old car.

by htag 4y ago

rootusrootus 4y ago

As long as maintenance isn't yet eating you alive, there's no new car at any price that is going to have a better TCO. But if you were getting a new car to last a long time, it's tough to beat a compliance EV. Chevy Bolt, 260 miles of range, small but not tiny, great utility, and 26K before rebates. $11K after rebates if you're an Oregonian. Fuel is much cheaper, TCO is basically impossible to beat.

sbierwagen 4y ago
As long as it doesn't burst into flames: https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/bolt-recall https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/bolt-recall Tesla famously started building their packs out of laptop 18650 cells. To keep the voltage out of the kilovolt range while still being able to draw useful amounts of power you have to connect huge numbers of them in parallel-- the old model S had 74 in parallel. DIY battery pack HOWTOs will flat out tell you that you can't connect cells in parallel at all, while Tesla is connecting dozens of them together. Presumably they have to go to great and awful lengths to characterize/bin the cells, maintain QC during manufacture, keep pack temperature constant to avoid hot spots from aging single cells, lots and lots of balance wires to carefully charge sub-sections, etc etc etc. GM saw all this early adopter crap, and all the extra weight from the redundant steel casings on each cell, and say screw that, let's use really big lipo cells. Well, you still have all that variability and inconsistency... just hidden inside a big polymer pouch where you can't see it. Recipe for unexpectedly going fwoosh in the middle of the night while charging. GM's new Ultium platform still uses LG lipo cells. Let's hope they worked out the kinks!

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

> it's far cheaper to keep my 4 door Japanese sedan another year This is like saying it's cheaper to wait a year before contributing to retirement because you'll have more money in checking if you don't contribute to retirement. Average lifespan of an ICE car is around 14.8 years. For an EV it's 22.2. They last longer, and break down less often, and fuel is cheaper. Over a period of 20 years, it does not matter how expensive the EV was when you paid for it. After 20 years, there is more money in your bank account, with the EV. So buying or keeping a used corolla is pretty much guaranteed to leave you with less money after those 20 years. No matter how cheap the corolla is now, keeping ICE cars will add up to a higher cost. The longer you wait the more you lose in the end.

fbdab103 4y ago
>Average lifespan of an ICE car is around 14.8 years. For an EV it's 22.2 I am going to need to see some figures on that. How many electric cars were even made 22 years ago?
- throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
  The average expected lifespan of an ICE vehicle is 200k miles, and the average expected lifespan of an EV is 300k miles. The average ICE vehicle in the USA is driven between 12k and 15k miles per year. So for an ICE vehicle that averages out to 14.8 years to reach 200k, and an EV, 22.2 years to reach 300k. On average.
jjav 4y ago
> Average lifespan of an ICE car is around 14.8 years. For an EV it's 22.2. Citation definitely needed for those figures. There are no mass market EVs that are 22+ years old, let alone old enough to make their average lifespan be 22.2 (which obviously implies some EVs lasted a lot longer than that). > So buying or keeping a used corolla is pretty much guaranteed to leave you with less money after those 20 years. That's clearly not true in the absolute. Might be in some cases. For instance my parent has a 1998 Corolla which works perfectly well and requires minimal maintanance. There is no conceivable scenario where it'd be cheaper to buy a new EV vs. just keep driving the old car.