Hacker News Reader

Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

I agree. I didn't buy my first EV until I bought my house. (And now we are all in, a two-EV household)

I have a garage and I made a conscious decision to buy an ICE car over a BEV, even though I could afford it.

Last time I ran the numbers is was 8 to 10 years before I hit break for an ICE vs an equivalent EV (in feature set that I cared about) given my driving habits and operating costs for either. And there's some electrical work that needs to be done to properly support charging a BEV without juggling what's drawing power when all the time. Upgrades to happen either way but they'd have to be rushed if I had bought a BEV, vs taking the time over the next few years.

So at least to for my situation it makes more sense to stick to ICE for now. If the BEV evangelists are right and battery prices drop down to the point where the purchase price of a BEV is the same as an ICE, then it makes more sense to wait. Buy ICE now, get everything in place, evaluate everything again in a few years.

> Last time I ran the numbers is was 8 to 10 years before I hit break for an ICE vs an equivalent EV

That assumes your time is worth zero.

The best feature about having an EV or plug in hybrid is that if you can charge at home, you never have to waste time going to the gas station, except for road trips.

That's an odd way of looking at it, and I don't it's terribly valid but sure let's run with it for a bit.

The gas station is right on the route home. Any which way I used to go home, it's on the route on the right side of the road. When I was commuting every day it I was refuelling roughly every 3 weeks taking 3 to 6 minutes depending on if I had to wait for a gas stall to open. I work from home now so it's not entirely valid but use this for the sake of easy comparison.

Let's say it takes 10 seconds to unplug/close door/stow cable when you leave, and another 10 seconds when you get back. 5 days a week plus weekend trip for errands or whatever, so 6 minutes every 3 weeks. In other words, about the same as buying gas.

But then that leaves out the issue of DC fast charging, which inherently does longer, even when everything is working. Right now, the fast chargers not named Tesla are a bit of a gamble and now you have to consider time spent looking for an alternative charger if the one you want is occupied or out of order. Then throw in that my problems with locating a fast charge are made more so because I don't have a data plan on my smartphone, which limits which chargers I can use and cuts me off from knowing chargers are working and well...

So I'm not overly keen on that argument.

This math works as long as you don’t care about your personal contribution to climate change.

I remember from the Obama "cash for clunkers" that the CO2 emissions from constructing a car was about the same as the CO2 emissions for driving 20,000 miles on it.

This foundered the entire rationale for "cash for clunkers" to switch to more fuel efficient cars, but facts didn't matter. Politics did.

This was a choice between a new ICE and a new EV so your point is meaningless

A lot of millennials and gen Z's are choosing to not have kids. No real reason for those without kids to give a fuck, and those with kids have a larger carbon footprint than those without children.

The math works because I don't drive much.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com