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That has to be a good portion of the cost of the car. Electric cars are still not a cost effective form of travel, especially when if they break you can be hot with a bill like this. Fixing that car cost 5k more the my current car cost in full. Ridiculous! As is the fact normal Scottish weather broke a Tesla.

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I disagree. Electric cars are expensive but that's because there's not really a second hand market. You're paying new car prices. When you compare them to a new ICE car you're paying maybe £10-20k extra, but then you don't have to pay road tax (in the UK at least) or for expensive petrol. I expect they probably last longer too though that remains to be seen.

Overall I doubt a new electric car is more expensive than a new petrol car.

I'm curious, have you done the math for UK given current electricity and petrol prices?

This is highly region specific, but with the current prices of electricity across most parts of Europe, I'd be surprised if you could break even before the battery goes.

MG4 EV is £30k new (for the "SE Long Range). Let's compare it to a Ford Focus which is probably roughly equivalent? That's £28.5k for the base model.

So you don't need to save a lot. Even at today's prices you will save that in a few years depending on how much you drive.

I didn't know EVs in that price range existed to be fair, when I was comparing different options, it seemed like a common gap between ICEs and EVs was at least 10k, usually 15k.

I'm not a car nerd so I don't really know if those two options are comparable without diving into it, but if the gap really was that small, I'd definitely change my mind!

The chinese ones are incredibly cost effective. Our government just decided to ban them.

Are they constructed better too?

No. But they are on-par for the most part. Often with better more 'featureful' software.

But have fun getting them repaired as they have even less infrastructure then Tesla.

Ukraine has shown us we can't take dependencies on non-democratic countries like Russia and China.

and yet we continue to be dependent on both

Russian sanctions cannot last forever, they have too many resources the West needs

and as for China, tell me where your Apple products are made

> Russian sanctions cannot last forever, they have too many resources the West needs

Do they though? I'm not trying to be snarky, I really don't know what you're referring to. Russia's main exports are weapons and energy products. The west doesn't need their weapons. They might want their fossil fuels to lower prices, but that's not essential.

> Electric cars are still not a cost effective form of travel,

In my experience when you buy an electric car you are buying a battery.

The car is "thrown in". So an important cost is amortising the cost of the battery

So I really do want the battery protected.

And if battery technology improves and cheapens weird things are going to happen in the car market

The biggest manufacturer is BYD (?) and they are a battery maker

Interesting times

Once you factor in the externalities, private motor driven vehicles are not a cost-effective form of travel.

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