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If all your journeys are under 200 miles, that makes the case for an EV (financially) less plausible, not more. If you are an Uber driver who does 200 miles dur

by HWR_14 3y ago

If all your journeys are under 200 miles, that makes the case for an EV (financially) less plausible, not more. If you are an Uber driver who does 200 miles during morning rush hour and 200 miles during evening rush hour, it doubles your fuel savings. If you only drive say 20-40 miles a day, that's a ~600-1300 difference a year. That's nice, but it seems it would take years to offset a claimed 4x in the price of a car. It seems unlikely you would even own the EV long enough to pay the difference.

brewdad 3y ago
If you are comparing comparable vehicles, EVs don't cost 4x ICE vehicles. It's closer to 1.5x and maybe 2x at the worst.
- al_borland 3y ago
  As apples to apples as we can get is probably the Hyundai Kona. They have an ICE version and an electric version. ICE = $24,100 for 35mpg EV = $32,675 with 261 miles per charge The price difference is $8,575. The average price of gas right now is $3.15/gallon. To make the math easy, let’s say a person drives 35 miles per day (1 gallon of gas in the ICE car). It would take 2,722 days to make up for the added cost of the electric car, even if the charging was completely free. That’s 7.5 years. When looking up how long people tend to keep cars, the numbers varied, but they seemed to fall right in that same ballpark, 6-8 years. So right as a person is about to break even, they are going to get a new car. This also assumes both cars are new. The person who started this was talking about getting a used ICE, which saves a lot of money. I think people are much more comfortable buying a used ICE car over a used EV, as there is still a lot of uncertainty around the old batteries… decreased range and replacement costs. So I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people were debating between a used ICE car or new EV, with the justification that they will make up for the extra cost on gas savings, which they probably won’t.

by HWR_14 3y ago

brewdad 3y ago

If you are comparing comparable vehicles, EVs don't cost 4x ICE vehicles. It's closer to 1.5x and maybe 2x at the worst.

al_borland 3y ago
As apples to apples as we can get is probably the Hyundai Kona. They have an ICE version and an electric version. ICE = $24,100 for 35mpg EV = $32,675 with 261 miles per charge The price difference is $8,575. The average price of gas right now is $3.15/gallon. To make the math easy, let’s say a person drives 35 miles per day (1 gallon of gas in the ICE car). It would take 2,722 days to make up for the added cost of the electric car, even if the charging was completely free. That’s 7.5 years. When looking up how long people tend to keep cars, the numbers varied, but they seemed to fall right in that same ballpark, 6-8 years. So right as a person is about to break even, they are going to get a new car. This also assumes both cars are new. The person who started this was talking about getting a used ICE, which saves a lot of money. I think people are much more comfortable buying a used ICE car over a used EV, as there is still a lot of uncertainty around the old batteries… decreased range and replacement costs. So I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people were debating between a used ICE car or new EV, with the justification that they will make up for the extra cost on gas savings, which they probably won’t.