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Comment by natch | Hacker News Reader

It’s not premature because savvy buyers are going to soon start realizing that ICE car resale value will plummet fast and hard as good electrics roll out with good infrastructure.

As someone buying today, I have to factor in that (say) five years from now when I sell, the buyers at that time will be thinking about their resale prospects (say) five years from that date. And for ICE cars, it’s not going to be pretty.

I would suggest, if you have an ICE car, trade it in now while you can still get more money for it.

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The average car is over 11 years old and many of us drive a car for 15 or so years until it basically has no value. Resale value doesn’t enter into the buying calculus of a lot of people.

In the UK most new cars are bought on personal lease plans, fairly short and the cost is dependent on the resale value of the car at the end of the lease.

Yes ymmv but it’s something that some people will consider.

That only means it will get less expensive to buy and operate an ICE vehicle, especially as the demand for fuel decreases and the price for it goes down as well. For those using an ICE vehicle for transportation and not as investment that is only a good thing

The fact that you will be subsidizing other people's transportation costs in the future is little consolation for the loss. Particularly when you're subsidizing pollution.

I imagine there will be taxes and fees coming along to make the cost of ownership quite different from what you think.

It could go the other way, if there are enough electric cars on the road the infrastructure for ICE cars will shrink and get more expensive.

> I would suggest, if you have an ICE car, trade it in now while you can still get more money for it.

Just as soon as I can get a low-cost, 300 mile range 4wd vehicle, that I can put on 30+ inch tires and a 3-6 inch lift.

Until the battery tech gets a helluva lot better, that ain't happening.

Furthermore - even if it does happen (which it probably will at some point - I'm optimistic) - it still doesn't fix the next problem:

How do I tote along an extra "10 gallons" of electric fuel with me?

You see, when you are off-roading, you typically will take extra fuel with you. An extra 5 or 10 gallons of gasoline can mean the difference between hiking out or getting back to pavement with your vehicle, depending on what happened to get you stuck to need the fuel. It can also mean extending a trip, or seeing side trails you normally wouldn't be able to. Or being able to do a much longer trail and having the fuel to take you to a nearby gas station at the end.

But I can't see with current battery technology - nor even future technology - being able to do anything like that. You'd probably need a trailer or something to haul around the extra batteries, or you'd have to haul a generator (which would also require fuel...). Forget solar panels, because you wouldn't be able to carry enough panels to be able to charge up the batteries in the same amount of time you could pour a tank of gasoline - no where close to it. Heck, even if you had 1000 watts of panels with you, it would still take at least a day or two to recharge the pack, most likely.

I'm not sure what the solution is for that situation. Maybe a battery that got you double the miles (4-600 miles per charge?), or what I suspect a lot of people would say (don't go off roading...)

For now, I'm sticking with my ICE vehicles until that problem is solved; there may come a time when I'd have an electric just to get to work and back, but that'd be about it for now.

If you think about what you’re doing to the land you rip up while off-roading, the don’t-go-off-roading solution merits a look. As a hiker, if you could see yourself from my eyes, you would not like what you see. [Edit: ok there are better and worse practices of off-roading and maybe I shouldn’t assume you are not responsible... so disregard that if it doesn’t apply]. But yeah it would mean giving up some kinds of pleasure you’re indulging in now. That’s for you to decide.

As for the dream vehicle you describe, yeah electric won’t deliver that because for example the Tesla pickup and the Rivian won’t be cheap (one of your requirements). But there are costs you aren’t accounting for and probably never will if you’re this deep into it.

BTW Tesla AWD is insane and a step beyond normal AWD you are used to. So (when the truck comes out) the extra money is getting you something. The AWD is not the only thing of course but it is holy shit crazy good in their sedans, I can only imagine how it will be in the pickup.

You've already touched on it a bit, but yes there are responsible off-roaders out there that work to minimize the amount of impact that they have on the lands that they traverse through. A lot of these folks will avoid areas that hikers and horse riders frequent. Of course, there are also asshole off-roaders too but the same can be said for everyone.

Agreed. And I should have taken more care to say that I don’t look at all off-roaders the same way.

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