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Comment by eigenspace | Hacker News Reader

> Without tax incentives EVs are far more expensive for people who only drive say 5-10k miles a year.

If you're only driving 5-10k miles a year, car ownership seems like a massive unnecessary burden, electric or ICE. But given you're measuring in miles, I guess there's a good chance you're not from somewhere with adequate public transit and bicycle infrastructure.

In my opinion, we really need to focus less on personal electric cars and more on making high quality, convenient, electric public transportation.

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Edit: 5-10 -> 5-10k

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k is kilo. As in 1000. 5000-10000 miles. UK average is about that.

But you go chuntering on about your high density living and fantasies that there will be public transport at 2130 tonight from the nearby village 8 miles away where the scout hut is back to my house.

Whenever I try to get a taxi to the station (a mere 9 miles away) it's massively unreliable, had to get a hotel in the past because they just don't exist in the real world at 3AM. We don't all live in the middle of London or Paris or NYC.

Yes, I accidentally dropped the k, I know you meant 5-10k.

> UK average is about that.

Yes, and the average UK person is driving more than they would if there was better public transportation availability.

Sure, not every household is going to be well served by public transportation, especially in very rural settings, but way more rural areas can be well served by public transport than they currently are.

If you think you need to live in London, Paris, or NYC to have good public transit, you're simply wrong. There's lots of rather rural places that actually do have quite good trains and bus options.

There'll still be lots of people for whom a car makes the most sense, but we can still strive to reduce that by giving more options and building better infrastructure.

The average car in the netherlands is driven about 8000 miles a year.

Doesn't matter how good the public transport is, it can not sustain a journey from my small village to a larger village at 10pm at night on a friday night. Nor will it meet me at 2350 from the railhead in a city a 30 minute drive away. On the way back from that station at that time of night I pass maybe 2 or 3 cars, none of which came from or go to anywhere near my house.

Even if there was some form of ondemand public transport, the carbon impact would be far more than my own car.

The reason I don't travel 40,000 miles a year by car is because I use other forms of public transport when I can. However even with 90% of my domestic (by mile) being public transport, I still need a car for the last 10%. The tax system in the UK punishes that behaviour (I pay far more in tax per litre of petrol used than my neighbour who drives everywhere), it's either all-or-nothing.

> The average car in the netherlands is driven about 8000 miles a year.

Could be (I don't know) because all the people living next to bike lanes and with good public transport have given up their cars, so the only car users left are the ones who really need to drive a lot, raising the average.

The netherlands has 520 passenger cars per 1000 people. The UK 544. Not exactly a world of difference.

https://www.acea.auto/files/ACEA-report-vehicles-in-use-euro...

It's the opposite actually. Car ownership in the netherlands is actually rather high because it's a relatively rich country where people can easily afford to own a car for the occasional convenience.

The fact that there's great public transport there makes it so that those cars don't get driven as much for day-to-day errands as cars do in other places, so they have overall less driving. 8000 miles a year is relatively low.

Yes, you may very well be in a situation where car ownership makes perfect sense for you. I guess my perspective (being originally from rural Canada) is that 5-10k miles a year is very low, and I equate that with city drivers, not rural drivers. Where I grew up, most people often do 400km day trips to the nearest city multiple times a month, in addition to regular day-to-day driving.

Rural England is a pretty different beast from rural Canada though, and also pretty different dynamics from urban Germany where I currently live.

People in your situation unfortunately probably won't benefit from electric cars for some time, because the tax incentives are generally being decreased, not increased, so we're going to have to count on competition lowering prices instead, which seems to be happening, but relatively slowly.

Not possible if you like in the sticks and want to live a normal life.

Major metropolis with lots of public transport infrastructure and an Uber only 5 minutes away at 3am, sure.

Personal experience both.

>> Without tax incentives EVs are far more expensive for people who only drive say 5-10k miles a year.

> If you're only driving 5-10 miles a year, car ownership seems like a massive unnecessary burden, electric or ICE.

This is off by a factor of 1000.

Sorry, typo I did mean 5-10k miles

There is always opportunity cost... I like having car available even if I drive very little or short distances. It is there when I need it.

And electric cars don't have same range as my cheap gasoline car. Not at least on same price point. So at times I need that range getting 160-200km to somewhere and then back without charging...

And taxis here are expensive. It would not be that many trips in a month with all the things that I consider car is nicer...

Sure, it's definitely nice to always have a car on hand to use whenever you like, but how much are you really willing to pay for that? Your milage may vary, but I've found that so-called carshare services (i.e. app based car rentals) give me a good way of having an on-demand car parked within walking distance of my home that I can use when I need, but I don't actually have to deal with the expenses and hassle of car ownership, and ends up much cheaper overall since I'm normally very well served by public transit.

Obviously this isn't available everywhere, e.g. the person I was responding to lives somewhat rurally, so probably doesn't have such services available to them.

It is not that expensive even counting depreciation. 30-40€ one way taxi rides get expensive pretty quickly and 40-60€ day rents for car is not that many uses...

Plus it really means no walking and waiting for public transport. Ofc, if you love moving stuff inside public transport and ten walking from stops to home the alternatives are great.

It really is that expensive. Car owners routinely underestimate the amount of money their cars cost to own and operate. They are very unreliable narrators when reporting how much their cars cost them. So many costs are hidden, that it feels cheap.

Once you account for

* the opportunity cost of the up-front money you paid for your car (or the cost of the loan to buy it) compared to investing that money or simply putting it in a high-interest savings account

* the cost of car insurance

* the cost of car maintenance

* the cost of depreciation

* the cost of fuel

it adds up very very quickly to gigantic quantities of money.

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> 30-40€ one way taxi rides get expensive pretty quickly and 40-60€ day rents for car is not that many uses...

Nobody is advocating you rely on taxi rides to get around. 40-60€ day rentals, or 1€/km metered rentals absolute can save you money relative to car ownership so long as you don't use them super often.

I have a "car subscription" in Germany, which is kinda like a rental car but for longer periods (mine is 1 year). The subscription covers the cost of registration/taxes/maintenance/insurance and I cover fuel and parking. 580€ a month for a mid-range SUV, or 20€ a day.

Only if those are available. €1/km is way more than I pay for car ownership including all those costs, but even if it wasn't it would be economically unsustainable to provide such a service which would always be available

Owning a car isnt a per kilometer cost. Only some of the costs are per kilometer, a lot of other costs are fixed costs.

For the amount I drive, the per kilometre cost for me would be more like 100€/km because I only drive when I actually need to, like renting a car to move furniture, or make a road trip somewhere that I cant easily access by train.

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