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Comment by logifail | Hacker News Reader

> EVs are (much) cheaper to run [..] already less expensive in TCO terms for comparable quality/comfort.

Errm, I would love this claim to be true for the smallest and cheapest new cars. Is it?

Our smaller car cost €10k to buy outright, new, a few years ago. At that time the very same car was available as an EV for €23k. I'm concerned about climate change, fairly pro-EV, but we simply didn't have €13k to spare.

We have every intention of keeping that car for another five years, unless something major goes wrong (all it's needed is standard servicing so far)

Petrol and diesel have gone up everywhere, but electricity rates are rising too.

Q: When will I be able to buy a four seater EV with similar range for a similar (inflation adjusted) price as the petrol-engined version?

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Assuming that a vehicle goes 250,000 km before hitting the scrap heap:

250,000km / 6 kWh/km * 0.30 €/kWh overnight rate = €12,500

2500 100km * 6 l/100km * 2 €/l = €30,000

You could have saved substantially more than €13k, even if you had to finance the difference.

Lifetime TCO is the proper metric, even if you only keep your car for 5 years. 2 major reasons. 1) anybody buying a used car obviously cares about costs, so is going to value fuel savings quite highly and should be willing to pay the appropriate premium. 2) In 5 years time in Europe the gasoline infrastructure will be starting to degrade and most used buyers will want EV's.

> 6 l/100km

Our of interest, where's that figure from?

We're talking a tiny car with a suitably tiny engine. I'm not exactly racing it around.

Our seven seater people carrier achieved better than that(!!) a few days ago, getting 4.7l/100km average on a 200km trip.

It's highly unlikely that most consumers will get 250,000km (150k miles) out of a vehicle. The median ownership of a vehicle is under 5 years, and the median miles per year for a non-commercial vehicle is 12,000.

Plus, you'll have to also pay the interest on that loan, and good credit is a must to avoid being stabbed in the back with interest rates with car lenders.

EDIT: This does mean that a used car market for EVs is quite viable though.

> The median ownership of a vehicle is under 5 years, and the median miles per year for a non-commercial vehicle is 12,000.

So how do the resale values for 5 year old EVs with 60k miles on the clock (or more accurately on the battery) look?

When we bought the little petrol car the salesman saw us looking at the EV and there was a brief discussion, back then he said that resale values for cars like that were "a complete unknown" ...

The little car has ~50,000km (~31,000 miles) on it so far, and even if its resale value after 5 years were to be zero I guess the most I've lost is the full purchase price, €10k.

How does that work with a EV that not only costs much more up front but probably loses fractional value faster, too?

EDIT: just checked the current prices, the latest model is (in round figures) €15,000 and as an EV it's €25,000. The trade seems to want to describe the latter as "affordable" but to me it's simply an extra €10k up front that I don't have right now. The range of the EV is basically 1/3 that of the petrol version.

Lifetime TCO is the appropriate metric. That's life of the car, not how long a single owner has it.

Median lifetime is 19 years. At 12,000 miles/year that's 228,000 miles.

Respectfully, repeating it won't make it true.

For a vast majority of car buyers, there are only two prices they will care about. How much it costs when they get it, and how much they get when they sell it.

And to the original point, a low TCO will have no impact one someone's ability to buy the car in the first place.

How much they get when they sell it is directly related to the remaining TCO of the car.

Not at all. Much like any other transaction under capitalism, it's based on what the buyer and seller can come to an agreement on. The cost to the seller is what they've paid, not how much might be saved over the coming years.

And if you include a middleman, like a dealer for a trade-in, they won't ever pay for gas or maintenance, so they're even less inclined to factor the remaining TCO into the price.

The price the buyer and seller agree on is a price between what the seller is willing to sell at and the price the buyer is willing to buy at.

The price the buyer is willing to buy at is directly related to the costs he is going to incur operating the vehicle.

In a world where electric second hand cars exist, the second-hand price of most ICE cars will be negative, sellers will have to give you money to accept the high fueling and maintenance costs.

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