6 ms·

I'm not sure. Don't underestimate the power of inertia. I bought an EV last year and it's definitely been a "good idea" for me. Luxurious ride, fuel costs a te

by pmg101 6mo ago

I'm not sure. Don't underestimate the power of inertia. I bought an EV last year and it's definitely been a "good idea" for me. Luxurious ride, fuel costs a tenth, doesn't stink. Seems such an obvious upgrade it slightly confuses me take-up hasn't been quicker among people who like me can charge at home.

IshKebab 6mo ago
> it slightly confuses me take-up hasn't been quicker among people who like me can charge at home No big mystery: a) most people keep cars for 20 years or more, b) most people don't buy new cars - they're too expensive.
- Tepix 6mo ago
  What‘s the source for the 20 years? Seems unlikely to me. b) You can also buy used EVs. I bought one last year, 2 years old, for 56% of the original price.
  - zigman1 6mo ago
    How is the battery?
    - Sohcahtoa82 6mo ago
      I roll my eyes at this question because it's often framed as good faith curiosity, but it's often asked in bad faith by people that think it's a "gotcha" question, because they have this incorrect notion that EV batteries need to be replaced frequently. They see the warranty is 100K miles/8 years or whatever and think that means they have to replace the battery after 100K miles/8 years, yet fail to recognize that they don't apply that same logic to combustion engines with 30K mile/3 year warranties.
      - antonkochubey 6mo ago
        In my country it is 8y/160k km for batteries and 5-10y/150-200k km for ICE cars. That being said, when a battery fails, it’s a €20,000+ whole unit replacement (e.g. for Audi e-tron 55 it is €26,500 in my country), while ICE failures very rarely need a whole unit replacement, usually it’s a €1700 turbocharger or a €400 injector or something of that caliber. Personal anecdote: my 12 year old 262k km BMW did not need any engine repairs until now, except for free manufacturer recall on the EGR cooling system. And it still has 1000 km highway range in the winter.
      - zigman1 6mo ago
        Unfortunately, I don't know how else to ask something I am genuinely curious about.
    - Tepix 6mo ago
      Well the car has done 50,000km before I bought it and tbh in the winter it lost quite a bit of range (I've had a different EV previously and its range didn't decrease as much during the winter). The car has a warranty on the battery valid for 8 years or 160,000km (whatever occurs first), the manufacturer promises it will have 70% or more capacity at that point. ADAC did a test with a vehicle that reached 160,000km and its battery was at 91%.
  - pmg101 6mo ago
    Yes mine was used. Battery is fine. Of course I made sure to buy one with a suitable range for my needs. There's lots of options.
  - IshKebab 6mo ago
    My source is just personal observation, but I'm clearly not far off: https://www.scrap-car-dealers.co.uk/latest-news/post/average-lifespan-of-a-car https://www.scrap-car-dealers.co.uk/latest-news/post/average... > As of 2025, the average age of a scrapped car in the UK is between 16 and 20 years old! ... > You can also buy used EVs. True, but you're quite limited there since good EVs have only been around for a very small number of years. Maybe you can get an old Tesla for not too much but that's pretty undesirable for obvious reasons.
    - jstanley 6mo ago
      If most people kept cars for 20 years, and the secondhand market exists, then by the time an average car is scrapped it must be substantially over 20 years old.
    - pjc50 6mo ago
      > True, but you're quite limited there since good EVs have only been around for a very small number of years You'd think that, but (I am shopping at the moment) it is routine to see last year's EVs on Autotrader, at 30-50% off list price. That does make me a little suspicious (is this being got rid of because it's a lemon?), but they're there. I think we can narrow the statement to "if you are buying a new or nearly-new car, or leasing, and you can charge at home or work, you should seriously consider an EV". Fleet and business use should definitely be thinking very hard about it.
    - Tepix 6mo ago
      There is a huge difference between these two statements: > most people keep cars for 20 years or more and > the average age of a scrapped car in the UK is between 16 and 20 years old Because the second fact doesn't tell you whether or not the 1st fact is true. After all, there is a second hand market where you can find cars of every age.
- n4r9 6mo ago
  Is there not a big image factor? Like, people don't want to be seen as the type of person who'd drive an electric.
  - pmg101 6mo ago
    Mine is a model available with different power trains, so nobody knows. Or cares, I'm sure!
    - n4r9 6mo ago
      I don't know about you, but as soon as a car starts I'm pretty sure I know whether it's an EV or combustion engine.
      - pmg101 6mo ago
        Oh I see. So yes, for pedestrians standing nearby when you start up. That probably represents 0.01% of the people I encounter on my drives. The other 99.99% don't notice.
  - throwaway27448 6mo ago
    I'm sure this impacts certain cultures in the US, but I've got to imagine that's a pretty tiny impact compared to pragmatic concerns like "where can I charge this" and "how often do I need to charge this".
  - IshKebab 6mo ago
    Maybe in the US. The rest of the world doesn't hate the environment quite so much.
- pjc50 6mo ago
  The average car in the UK is ten years old: https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/average-car-in-the-uk-is-oldest-it-has-ever-been https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/average-car-in-th... ; while I have an 18 year old car, I'm an outlier on my street. It's true that most people don't buy new, but there's still 20% of purchases new, and a steady flow of EVs into the used market.
  - IshKebab 6mo ago
    https://www.scrap-car-dealers.co.uk/latest-news/post/average-lifespan-of-a-car https://www.scrap-car-dealers.co.uk/latest-news/post/average... > As of 2025, the average age of a scrapped car in the UK is between 16 and 20 years old!
- Tade0 6mo ago
  There are very few 20yo+ cars on the road, mostly because the probability of a totalling over the course of this many years is pretty high. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/123niq7/age_distribution_of_passenger_cars_in_europe_oc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/123niq7/ag... I know for a fact that the figure for Poland is exaggerated, because plenty of cars which are currently shaving people's beards and have been performing this duty for years now remained in the registry and were purged from it only in 2024. That was 7 million out of 41 million originally there and most likely there's many more, as the criteria were set to avoid false positives.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
ErroneousBosh 6mo ago
I looked into buying an EV but it turns out it would be a little over four times as expensive as running an old Landrover with a massive V8 engine. So I still run an old Landrover with a massive V8 engine.
- Schiendelman 6mo ago
  Would you be willing to share your math?
  - ErroneousBosh 6mo ago
    Okay, it immediately costs more to buy an EV than it does to run my existing car. The monthly payment to buy an EV is more than I spend on fuel. Then I'd be paying roughly ten times as much for insurance, because it's a new and valuable car, and being "keyless" it cannot be secured in any meaningful way without locking it in a garage, which I don't have. Because I don't have a garage or a driveway I can't park right at my house, so I would not be able to charge at home. So I'd have to park an EV up at the nearest charging point several miles away, cycle home, and then cycle back to the car to retrieve it. This would then be costing roughly the same per mile to charge it up as it costs per mile for propane (my car is dual-fuel). That's before you add in the exorbitant cost of servicing an EV, which can only be done at a dealer. All told, I'd be spending a grand a month to replace a vehicle that costs a couple of hundred a month, that - crucially - wouldn't allow me to actually do the things I need it to do.
    - zigman1 6mo ago
      > among people who like me can charge at home OP said this, you clearly don't fall into this category. And if servicing an electric car costs more than servicing an old Landrover I will not eat for a week
      - ErroneousBosh 6mo ago
        At the dealer it costs about £300 to get a Kia Niro EV serviced, which needs done every year. It just cost me £75 to service my car, of which nearly £15 was just the cabin air filters which have got bizarrely expensive since last year.
imtringued 6mo ago
EVs got really good in the last two years. If you bought anything that wasn't a Tesla ten years ago you were faced with some pretty bad compromises if you insisted on driving an EV.
- pjc50 6mo ago
  The original Leaf looks like a Nokia 3210 compared to a current-gen iPhone. The tech has been moving at high speed and continues to do so.
  - Schiendelman 6mo ago
    I don't think it's a tech issue. I have a Tesla, it's a few years old now, and it's still better than most of what legacy car makers produce. The tech has been mature for several years. I think legacy car makers have been slow rolling. They might have to in order to allow their organizations and customers to adapt.
thinkingemote 6mo ago
What are the arguments being used to sell electric cars? I would say that investing oneself and one's money in an idea changes how one feels about the choices that was taken. I would say that those not invested might think that some of the arguments might have untruths more than those who have invested. (For me inertia does play a role too! "Why fix what's not broken")
pjc50 6mo ago
This feels irrelevant - it's not an idea about which lots of lies are being told in favor? (quite a lot of .. misapprehensions against, though)
- pmg101 6mo ago
  Yes. It's a good idea, therefore should not need lots of lies, indeed lots of lies aren't told, and so the idea should just catch on of its own strength? But it doesn't seem to and I'm identifying that as due to inertia. You may disagree
  - pjc50 6mo ago
    The contrapositive of "Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance" is not "good ideas will succeed without any messaging at all".
eleveriven 6mo ago
Sometimes good ideas just have to fight habit
randusername 6mo ago
EV marketing in the US is super dumb. We get these ads emphasizing the luxuriousness, the status, the high-tech, the exclusivity of EVs. Meanwhile... BYD. Surely it can't be entirely conspiracy to bludgeon the public with messaging that EVs are premium goods and ICEVs are for the mass market. Could it be that the maxim should really be something like "bullshit too often and too greedily and you forget how to sell something that sells itself"...?
- throwaway27448 6mo ago
  That's not just marketing; that's a reality of the market. A corolla is cheaper than any EV on the market, so why would I even consider them? They might as well be luxury cars.
- SpicyLemonZest 6mo ago
  Perhaps you're just not used to US car advertising? Even the cheapest cars are always advertised as though they're cool luxurious status symbols. The Bolt and Leaf match the price point of the RAV4 they're competing with. (Genuinely budget-conscious buyers don't buy new cars at all in the US.)

by pmg101 6mo ago

IshKebab 6mo ago

> it slightly confuses me take-up hasn't been quicker among people who like me can charge at home No big mystery: a) most people keep cars for 20 years or more, b) most people don't buy new cars - they're too expensive.

Tepix 6mo ago
What‘s the source for the 20 years? Seems unlikely to me. b) You can also buy used EVs. I bought one last year, 2 years old, for 56% of the original price.
- zigman1 6mo ago
  How is the battery?
  - Sohcahtoa82 6mo ago
    I roll my eyes at this question because it's often framed as good faith curiosity, but it's often asked in bad faith by people that think it's a "gotcha" question, because they have this incorrect notion that EV batteries need to be replaced frequently. They see the warranty is 100K miles/8 years or whatever and think that means they have to replace the battery after 100K miles/8 years, yet fail to recognize that they don't apply that same logic to combustion engines with 30K mile/3 year warranties.
    - antonkochubey 6mo ago
      In my country it is 8y/160k km for batteries and 5-10y/150-200k km for ICE cars. That being said, when a battery fails, it’s a €20,000+ whole unit replacement (e.g. for Audi e-tron 55 it is €26,500 in my country), while ICE failures very rarely need a whole unit replacement, usually it’s a €1700 turbocharger or a €400 injector or something of that caliber. Personal anecdote: my 12 year old 262k km BMW did not need any engine repairs until now, except for free manufacturer recall on the EGR cooling system. And it still has 1000 km highway range in the winter.
    - zigman1 6mo ago
      Unfortunately, I don't know how else to ask something I am genuinely curious about.
  - Tepix 6mo ago
    Well the car has done 50,000km before I bought it and tbh in the winter it lost quite a bit of range (I've had a different EV previously and its range didn't decrease as much during the winter). The car has a warranty on the battery valid for 8 years or 160,000km (whatever occurs first), the manufacturer promises it will have 70% or more capacity at that point. ADAC did a test with a vehicle that reached 160,000km and its battery was at 91%.
- pmg101 6mo ago
  Yes mine was used. Battery is fine. Of course I made sure to buy one with a suitable range for my needs. There's lots of options.
- IshKebab 6mo ago
  My source is just personal observation, but I'm clearly not far off: https://www.scrap-car-dealers.co.uk/latest-news/post/average-lifespan-of-a-car https://www.scrap-car-dealers.co.uk/latest-news/post/average... > As of 2025, the average age of a scrapped car in the UK is between 16 and 20 years old! ... > You can also buy used EVs. True, but you're quite limited there since good EVs have only been around for a very small number of years. Maybe you can get an old Tesla for not too much but that's pretty undesirable for obvious reasons.
  - jstanley 6mo ago
    If most people kept cars for 20 years, and the secondhand market exists, then by the time an average car is scrapped it must be substantially over 20 years old.
  - pjc50 6mo ago
    > True, but you're quite limited there since good EVs have only been around for a very small number of years You'd think that, but (I am shopping at the moment) it is routine to see last year's EVs on Autotrader, at 30-50% off list price. That does make me a little suspicious (is this being got rid of because it's a lemon?), but they're there. I think we can narrow the statement to "if you are buying a new or nearly-new car, or leasing, and you can charge at home or work, you should seriously consider an EV". Fleet and business use should definitely be thinking very hard about it.
  - Tepix 6mo ago
    There is a huge difference between these two statements: > most people keep cars for 20 years or more and > the average age of a scrapped car in the UK is between 16 and 20 years old Because the second fact doesn't tell you whether or not the 1st fact is true. After all, there is a second hand market where you can find cars of every age.
n4r9 6mo ago
Is there not a big image factor? Like, people don't want to be seen as the type of person who'd drive an electric.
- pmg101 6mo ago
  Mine is a model available with different power trains, so nobody knows. Or cares, I'm sure!
  - n4r9 6mo ago
    I don't know about you, but as soon as a car starts I'm pretty sure I know whether it's an EV or combustion engine.
    - pmg101 6mo ago
      Oh I see. So yes, for pedestrians standing nearby when you start up. That probably represents 0.01% of the people I encounter on my drives. The other 99.99% don't notice.
- throwaway27448 6mo ago
  I'm sure this impacts certain cultures in the US, but I've got to imagine that's a pretty tiny impact compared to pragmatic concerns like "where can I charge this" and "how often do I need to charge this".
- IshKebab 6mo ago
  Maybe in the US. The rest of the world doesn't hate the environment quite so much.
pjc50 6mo ago
The average car in the UK is ten years old: https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/average-car-in-the-uk-is-oldest-it-has-ever-been https://www.racfoundation.org/media-centre/average-car-in-th... ; while I have an 18 year old car, I'm an outlier on my street. It's true that most people don't buy new, but there's still 20% of purchases new, and a steady flow of EVs into the used market.
- IshKebab 6mo ago
  https://www.scrap-car-dealers.co.uk/latest-news/post/average-lifespan-of-a-car https://www.scrap-car-dealers.co.uk/latest-news/post/average... > As of 2025, the average age of a scrapped car in the UK is between 16 and 20 years old!
Tade0 6mo ago
There are very few 20yo+ cars on the road, mostly because the probability of a totalling over the course of this many years is pretty high. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/123niq7/age_distribution_of_passenger_cars_in_europe_oc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/123niq7/ag... I know for a fact that the figure for Poland is exaggerated, because plenty of cars which are currently shaving people's beards and have been performing this duty for years now remained in the registry and were purged from it only in 2024. That was 7 million out of 41 million originally there and most likely there's many more, as the criteria were set to avoid false positives.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]

ErroneousBosh 6mo ago

I looked into buying an EV but it turns out it would be a little over four times as expensive as running an old Landrover with a massive V8 engine. So I still run an old Landrover with a massive V8 engine.

Schiendelman 6mo ago
Would you be willing to share your math?
- ErroneousBosh 6mo ago
  Okay, it immediately costs more to buy an EV than it does to run my existing car. The monthly payment to buy an EV is more than I spend on fuel. Then I'd be paying roughly ten times as much for insurance, because it's a new and valuable car, and being "keyless" it cannot be secured in any meaningful way without locking it in a garage, which I don't have. Because I don't have a garage or a driveway I can't park right at my house, so I would not be able to charge at home. So I'd have to park an EV up at the nearest charging point several miles away, cycle home, and then cycle back to the car to retrieve it. This would then be costing roughly the same per mile to charge it up as it costs per mile for propane (my car is dual-fuel). That's before you add in the exorbitant cost of servicing an EV, which can only be done at a dealer. All told, I'd be spending a grand a month to replace a vehicle that costs a couple of hundred a month, that - crucially - wouldn't allow me to actually do the things I need it to do.
  - zigman1 6mo ago
    > among people who like me can charge at home OP said this, you clearly don't fall into this category. And if servicing an electric car costs more than servicing an old Landrover I will not eat for a week
    - ErroneousBosh 6mo ago
      At the dealer it costs about £300 to get a Kia Niro EV serviced, which needs done every year. It just cost me £75 to service my car, of which nearly £15 was just the cabin air filters which have got bizarrely expensive since last year.

imtringued 6mo ago

EVs got really good in the last two years. If you bought anything that wasn't a Tesla ten years ago you were faced with some pretty bad compromises if you insisted on driving an EV.

pjc50 6mo ago
The original Leaf looks like a Nokia 3210 compared to a current-gen iPhone. The tech has been moving at high speed and continues to do so.
- Schiendelman 6mo ago
  I don't think it's a tech issue. I have a Tesla, it's a few years old now, and it's still better than most of what legacy car makers produce. The tech has been mature for several years. I think legacy car makers have been slow rolling. They might have to in order to allow their organizations and customers to adapt.

thinkingemote 6mo ago

What are the arguments being used to sell electric cars? I would say that investing oneself and one's money in an idea changes how one feels about the choices that was taken. I would say that those not invested might think that some of the arguments might have untruths more than those who have invested. (For me inertia does play a role too! "Why fix what's not broken")

pjc50 6mo ago

This feels irrelevant - it's not an idea about which lots of lies are being told in favor? (quite a lot of .. misapprehensions against, though)

pmg101 6mo ago
Yes. It's a good idea, therefore should not need lots of lies, indeed lots of lies aren't told, and so the idea should just catch on of its own strength? But it doesn't seem to and I'm identifying that as due to inertia. You may disagree
- pjc50 6mo ago
  The contrapositive of "Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance" is not "good ideas will succeed without any messaging at all".

eleveriven 6mo ago

Sometimes good ideas just have to fight habit

randusername 6mo ago

EV marketing in the US is super dumb. We get these ads emphasizing the luxuriousness, the status, the high-tech, the exclusivity of EVs. Meanwhile... BYD. Surely it can't be entirely conspiracy to bludgeon the public with messaging that EVs are premium goods and ICEVs are for the mass market. Could it be that the maxim should really be something like "bullshit too often and too greedily and you forget how to sell something that sells itself"...?

throwaway27448 6mo ago
That's not just marketing; that's a reality of the market. A corolla is cheaper than any EV on the market, so why would I even consider them? They might as well be luxury cars.
SpicyLemonZest 6mo ago
Perhaps you're just not used to US car advertising? Even the cheapest cars are always advertised as though they're cool luxurious status symbols. The Bolt and Leaf match the price point of the RAV4 they're competing with. (Genuinely budget-conscious buyers don't buy new cars at all in the US.)