Are electric cars that much cheaper to operate? | Hacker News Reader

Are electric cars that much cheaper to operate?

pavlinbg.com

57 pointsPavlinbg334 comments

I own a Chevy Bolt EV, one of the less expensive EVs on the US market (after tax rebates, it was about $30k USD). I purchased it in May 2017, so I've had almost 8 years with this car.

I feel like a lot of these write ups overlook other advantages of EVs. Some of my favorite things about this car:

* It is very quiet, inside and out

* It is very torquey, moving instantly when I push the accelerator

* One-pedal driving is very pleasant

* Charging at home feels like an incredible luxury (which it is)

Occasionally I am required to drive my wife's Corolla, and despite being in good repair, it feels like driving an old jalopy; it vibrates constantly, it smells vaguely of exhaust, it moves forward on its own when I release the brakes, and it doesn't slow down much when I release the accelerator.

There is also the time factor. Stopping at the gas station costs time, oil changes cost time, etc. I had to refill the windshield washer fluid a few days ago, and the tires need to be rotated occasionally, but that's about it so far.

It is true that EVs depreciate quickly, but for someone like me, who intends to drive it until the wheels come off, that's of little concern. Also, due to the battery's thermal management, I have not observed any meaningful loss in average range yet (though I did receive the battery replacement recall a few years into my ownership, so the battery is only ~5 years old).

Your mileage may vary, as they say.

I picked up a second-hand Bolt a few months ago, and couldn't agree more. It's such an underrated car. I paid $13k for a 2023 base model. Couldn't be happier with it.

The Bolt is far and away the best value EV on the used market, it's crazy that you can get a thermally managed battery and 250 miles of range for under $15k.

I was looking at one; they are really cheap. I seen some 2 year old models for less than 20k with sub 40k miles. My wife ended up getting a new Subaru Outback so I took over her older Subaru Crosstrek Plugin Hybrid, which allows me to get to work on less than one charge.

I have a 1.5-year old VW id.4.

I cosign all of this (except the one-pedal driving - I prefer to leave mine in separate accel+brake mode), particularly the home charging - if you can get a home charger installed, it is a real game-changer. As compared to my previous (ICE) car, I never have to leave early because I'm low on gas & need to stop and fill up (or even have to go out of my way to fill up) and day-to-day I have less range anxiety with my EV because I always leave the house with a full charge.

After the one-time expense of getting a charger installed it's both cheaper and more pleasant to operate than my old ICE.

I don't have a garage, and the whole "getting a charger installed" thing was a bit of a deterrent for me getting an EV. But after getting one, I've realized Level 1 charging on a standard 110V outlet is more than sufficient for my needs. On the Bolt, you add ~4 miles per hour of charging. So if you drive, on average, under ~50 miles per day (which most Americans do), a level 1 charger should easily handle your needs.

"Installing" a charger is just plugging it into the standard 240V outlet, maybe with a screw in the wall to hold it up. The cost is getting the outlet wired, with a possible upgrade to the panel. Some dishonest electricians have "charger installation" as a much higher price.

I went with a fancy Wallbox charger at first, which promptly burnt out and was a general connection disaster, replacing it with a more consistent $60 Amazon charger. They're glorified relays, with a pulse train (no computer required) that is used to set/modulate car side power draw [1].

[1] https://www.picoauto.com/library/automotive-guided-tests/cha...

Generally speaking nobody needs a charger installed. A good three prong 110 outlet is sufficient. We found one single 110 outlet sufficient for two cars for two years with around town driving, having outside fast chargers as a backup if needed for longer trip days. One. And a 220 outlet is vastly, way beyond, sufficient for three cars. No charger. Just an outlet and a cable.

From what I've seen of EVs currently on the market, level 1 charging (standard 15-amp 120V outlet) adds 2-5 miles of range per hour. For a typical commuter who returns home at 6pm and leaves home at 7am, that allows for 13 hours or 26-65 miles of range charged overnight.

Apparently Americans drive an average of 42 miles a day[0], and I'd wager that EV owners tend to be in higher-density areas with shorter commutes, so that may be enough.

In my personal case, living in a small metro area in a state that's middle of the pack in terms of population density, my ideal would be a small EV for putzing around town (which is conservatively speaking 95% of the occasions that I get behind the wheel), and a larger gasoline car for road trips. Of course, everyone's mileage (heh) will vary.

[0]: https://www.axios.com/2024/03/24/average-commute-distance-us...

Would a plug-in hybrid be able to satisfy both needs?

My wife drives a i3 Rex, which is a plugin hybrid. We’ve taken it on a 6 hour road trip before. It was doable, though I’ll admit it wasn’t the best hybrid for a road trip.

Wasn't the best?

People have been taking multi-day roadtrips with a Yugo or a Fiat Mini.

An i3 Rex for just a 6 hour road trip? Hell, i3 would tackle a 6 hour daily commute just fine...

You can always rent a car for road trips. Yes it's not super cheap but cheaper than keeping another car around, depending on your rate of road trips. It's what I do (but I don't own any cars at all, so it's somewhat more expensive for me to rent since I need to purchase supplemental liability insurance).

Why rent a car when your regular car is safer, cheaper, and more fun? I’ve never had to rent a car as an EV owner and I’ve covered a lot of ground in a lot of states.

Even if a 110 won’t quite do it for some people’s amount of driving, 220 will generally provide more than enough. No charger unit installation needed in either case. So thanks for the wager, but the point stands.

I've just found out there's a provider that gives out 3 hours of free power (3-6AM). I'll be installing faster charger soon - it will easily cover 60% of my usage.

I have a 240v wall outlet that charges at 1.5kW and it's more than adequate 95%+ of the time.

240V is level 2 and should handle > 6kW. It's nice for the weekends, for a charge during lunch before heading out. I've done that maybe twice.

Depends on the country. Outside of North America, 240v is L1.

All of this talk of having to stop for gas instead of charging passively at each place you go sounds really strange.

I really like EV’s, but the longer stop times for when you do need to recharge a bit when you’re out are reasonable balanced against faster gas station stops especially outside of higher density infrastructure suburban/urban areas. The above sorts of comments ring in my ears along these lines:

“Oh that 7 minutes of checking my email while I refill my tank was horrible. Leaving the house so much earlier if I hadn’t done it the day before was truly oppressive. And these days I luxuriate in those rare gifted 20 minutes of leisure when I choose to recharge my battery while on the go!”

The range-recharge vs. gas station stops argument really seems pretty evenly balanced unless you don’t live where there is much charging infrastructure.

Personally, my dream balance would be something that could go 50 miles on a charge but had an ICE tank that could take me 150-200 miles. That EV capacity would cover 95% of driving, and for most people I know without long commutes, and the other 5% would just mean I had to fuel up on both ends of a 3-4 hour drive instead of just once. Or every 3-4 hours instead of 6-8 of the extremely rare longer drives. Also for those, I’d have the 50mile EV range as backup for running out of gas, not to mention a massive mobile power bank to keep heat & phone battery going if I had a breakdown somewhere.

> “Oh that 7 minutes of checking my email while I refill my tank was horrible. Leaving the house so much earlier if I hadn’t done it the day before was truly oppressive. And these days I luxuriate in those rare gifted 20 minutes of leisure when I choose to recharge my battery while on the go!”

Please avoid strawman arguments.

If you're truly curious why some people prefer longer electric charging stops on road trips to shorter bi-weekly gas station stops:

Even when not strictly necessary for refueling, my family takes a ~10 minute break after every ~4 hours of driving to let everyone stretch and use a restroom. No one has objected to extending these stops to ~15 minutes when we take the EV. The primary inconvenience has been that it has constrained where we stop, as many of our old stops do not have charging infrastructure.

Whereas a refueling stop during a shorter trip (including running errands or during a daily commute) introduces an entirely new stop that serves no additional purpose.

There is a difference between a straw man and satire presented in a clear tone that cannot be mistaken as a reconstruction of the other person’s statements.

A clearer straw man is the presentation of leaving a location a sparse few minutes earlier as significant cause and disproportionate offset of the also negligible time to pull a cable to a car to plug it in & briefly wrap & tuck it away when you leave.

I also clearly do understand that people may not mind a longer stop: I didn’t contradict that sentiment directly and otherwise expressly stated the opinion that each option seems to have somewhat equal offsetting considerations.

> There is a difference between a straw man and satire presented in a clear tone that cannot be mistaken as a reconstruction of the other person’s statements.

You are correct, my apologies. However, it's unclear to me how satire is any more useful a contribution to this discussion.

I think there is potential for useful satire in nearly any conversation where teasing out nuances of opinion and meaning are also useful. It serves as a tool for highlighting and contrast by virtue of extremes or absurdity or surfacing of illogical reasoning.

I was fine with the comment you are complaining about. Not everything is factional

As someone who takes several long road trips a year, it's wild to hear about only 10 minute breaks every four hours.

My wife and I often do at least a ten minute break every 90 minutes! The idea of just grinding on and on for hours feels like torture. My car forcing frequent stops to charge sounds great! I'd go for a nice walk, maybe find a local eatery.

I’ve also got an EV and I love it.

I installed solar panels at home and the car is now pretty much completely free to drive during those summer months where I get enough sun to supply my house and the car. I think these panels had an ROI of around 4 years for me, which is crazy good.

What panels do you have? Do you have energy storage as well?

> it doesn't slow down much when I release the accelerator.

This is mostly personal preference. I’d preferentially have auto-regenerative-braking entirely disabled - I’ve already internalized a driving style with efficient coasting where auto-regen wastes more energy.

> This is mostly personal preference

For sure! I basically went directly from manual transmission to EV, so I was already accustomed to using the drivetrain to slow the vehicle when not accelerating. For me, one-pedal EV driving feels like a natural progression from the manual lifestyle.

I was a big coasting driver before having an EV. I will admit I miss it slightly for how it feels. However, I don't find this to be genuine. Regenerative braking wastes more energy? That doesn't really add up if you're doing it correctly.

Also, for every one of us coasting drivers there are many, many, many others that accelerate all the way to the light and slam on the breaks. I see it constantly and remember because it almost always slows down traffic.

Yes, it feels wasteful compared to my previous driving, in specific circumstances. I drove a manual transmission and made it a goal to not touch the brakes at all for red lights (given acceptable traffic conditions - sometimes people would just be annoyed or confused if I did it every time). I'd see the light from far back, understand its timing, and how many cars were stopped behind it and gauge when I should disengage the clutch and coast. It frequently worked out that I was arriving at the stopped car in front of me just as they were starting to move forward. It feels particularly satisfying not to lose all your momentum just to have to accelerate again from a dead stop.

Overall, however, regenerative braking probably is better given the conditions don't always allow for this game.

I think this is a solvable problem with a control alteration. There should be a zone right at the start of pushing down the accelerator pedal that is "don't brake without brake input, but don't accelerate"

> Regenerative braking wastes more energy?

Not regen braking per se, but the lack of ability to coast. Often it's optimally efficient to coast without any acceleration or braking before you brake.

i.e. Braking turns your kinetic energy into heat energy. Regenerative braking brings that penalty down by a lot (70%, or whatever), but efficiency-wise, you're still best off to minimize braking. (Insofar as minimizing braking isn't offset by travelling at a less efficient speed.)

To be clear, I'm not opposed to regenerative braking - I just don't like single-pedal driving.

Another issue is that regenerative braking does not light up your braking indicator lights, so can be more dangerous

Teslas turn on the brake lights when regeneratively braking.

Some Non-Tesla EVs support zero regen. In fact my Kia has steering wheel paddles so you can easily switch modes and it handles defaults nicely.

Recent anecdote: I rented a Rivian R1S in Bay Area for a short trip to Santa Rosa. On the way back I charged at "Rivian adventure network" and the cost to charge was $0.68/kWh.

Now, Rivian is a big car and this basically meant you are getting about 3 miles per dollar. A full 'charge' would have cost me nearly $100!

But, an even bigger gasoline car - Lincoln Navigator - has 16 MPG, and even with gas prices in CA (currently ~$5 per gallon) you are looking at 3.2 miles per dollar.

I was shocked by that, especially knowing that CA has excess solar capacity. Why the heck is electricity for charging so expensive? (I pay around $0.15/kWh last time I checked for my home)

rivian is overcharging a huge amount here versus base electric prices? I use L2 chargepoints for essentially all my charging and I average about 30 cents per kwh.

Maybe the overhead of building and maintaining the infrastructure for vehicle charging?

> Why the heck is electricity so expensive?

You’re paying for charging, not electricity. They charge what the market will bear.

Right now they can charge what they want because you don’t have many alternatives.

That said, CA electricity prices are high for a number of reasons. They have a lot of regulations for building anything. The red tape you have to work through to get anything built in CA is completely out of control, so anything requiring new construction (charging stations included) will have to pay off a lot of up front investment.

You’re focused on entirely the wrong problem with California. The cost of electricity purchased from a private utility here is entirely out of control. That 68 cents is mostly going to a company like PG&E.

Tesla charges 45 cents and they are not subsidizing charging.

Your comment is entirely consistent with the parent comment.

68/2=34

If electricity costs 35c/unit then T could be making 10c and R could be making 33c.

T could be choosing to take less profit.

Tesla charging rates vary per station. The cheapest we've paid at a Supercharger (when not in a promotional free charging window) was $0.11 per kWh.

100%. The CPUC is a government entity and can technically dictate power prices. Unfortunately, state engergy conglomerates are very good at regulatory capture.

I did a bit of homework. PG&E publishes their rate schedules, of which they have many, and even a fairly cursory read strongly suggests that both the cost breakdowns and the times associated with time-of-use rates are, to put it mildly, divorced from any realistic estimation of actual costs. (Check out how inconsistent the schedules are from each other!)

Here's the "Business Electric Vehicle" schedule, which appears to be the relevant one from EV charging stations:

https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED...

Roughly 38c/kWh peak and 16c/kWh "super off peak" plus $1.24/kWh monthly for maximum load. (So a supercharger would pay some $248/month for the privilege of being connected, and peak shaving can reduce this.)

Here's the current residential schedule:

https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED...

Wow, 62c/kWh peak and 30c/kWh off-peak. At least the times kind of line up.

Here's the legacy ones, with totally different off-peak times!

https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHED...

Anyway, the morning-to-mid-afternoon rates in CA for public chargers are high but not outrageous.

a) doesn’t track with how many Tesla chargers there are (and how quickly and frequently they’ve been being built over the last decade)

b) considering how many fires have been started by power lines… yeah, please regulate

Regulation is what apologists will cite but only the three large IOU (Investor Owned Utilities) have such ridiculous electricity rates.

Part of the Bay Area is served by Silicon Valley Power which is half or less of PG&E's rates. Other parts of CA (like the eastern edge) are served by private electric companies but they too don't have such high rates.

San Francisco owns Hetch Hetchy and the hydro generation plant more than covers all of SF's power usage. But for historical and regulatory capture reasons SF is not allowed to supply its own electricity despite owning both a large generator and a retail electric provider (CleanPowerSF). It is all forced to go through the "free market" and thus pay markups. If it were a municipal electric district prices would be among the cheapest in the nation. SF tried to get the bankruptcy court to let it bid on PG&E's assets in SF but got rejected out of hand.

The Investor Owned Utilities in California have unique regulatory capture, corruption (both direct and via their unions), and are just grossly inefficient.

Thankfully my solar and battery system makes me almost independent from PG&E - including 100% of our driving via an EV. We make our own fuel at home and it is a feeling of freedom you can't match with a gas vehicle.

> and the cost to charge was $0.68/kWh.

What in the world. In December, southern Norway had similar electricity prices for two hours, and caused enough of an uproar that the government is still trying to live it down.

Charging prices are not the same as electricity prices.

They’re pricing it at what the market will bear for charging. They’re recouping costs of building and running the charging station. Property and operational costs in CA are very high.

That isn't the price of electricity, it was the cost of using the charging point.

DC fast chargers tend to cost much more than level 2 chargers. They have expensive equipment, more expensive electricity (intermittent high load is more expensive than more continuous lower levels, even for the same total power), and there tends to be a limited number of them so you want to encourage people to do level 2 charging when possible, and only DC fast charging on road trips when they really need it.

So prices are much higher than for normal AC charging. Most of the charging you do should be AC charging at your home or work.

I found it interesting because $0.68/kWh is roughly what EV charging has cost at charging stations here in Norway for the past few years.

It fluctuates a bit though not much, and varies from network to network, but currently[1] the average is around $0.5/kWh if you exclude Tesla.

Now, at home I pay about $0.1-0.2/kWh these days and less during summer.

[1]: https://elbil.no/dette-koster-hurtiglading/

For those of us not in your area in Norway, where does your electricity come from in the summer that it's that cheap?

Massive amounts of hydro. I am not sure about exact rates, but my guess is that purely for electricity it is somewhere in 2-4 eurocent range.

About 90% of our energy production is hydro, and in addition our weather is such that few places are above 25C/80F during summer so it's not common to have or use AC.

Hence not a lot of energy usage during summer compared with winter, as most heat their homes using electricity.

It’s not, ladwp is ~20 cents per. Sounds like you used their charger and was taken for a ride, hah hah.

Aurornis gets to the point; there is a substantial cost (demand charges), from the utility, to ask for 200-400kw of current on demand when you plug in. Tesla uses Megapack batteries at some of their stations (Electrify America as well, using Tesla battereis) to "peak shave," whereby the batteries slowly charge, and then they blend output with utility power so the current demand peak is not so brutal when vehicles request fast DC charging.

Renewable generated power is cheap, power delivery, control, and orchestration is not so much.

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/eliminating-demand-charges-...

https://old.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/ppgbxx/megapac...

https://electrek.co/2020/09/17/tesla-batteries-60-electrify-...

https://media.electrifyamerica.com/releases/48

charging near peak times impacts the price, especially in that area

That seems problematic. If I am on a road-trip and need to charge up, am I meant to just park up for several hours until it is off-peak?

EVs already ask more from drivers, namely around planning, and stopping times. But this is a whole other level of inconvenience.

Gas stations don't do have peak/off-peak rates, even if they could.

> If I am on a road-trip and need to charge up, am I meant to just park up for several hours until it is off-peak?

No, you pay the extra $15 or whatever. If you're counting pennies, maybe charge as little as needed, so you can do more of the charge later during an off-peak time.

My home electric bill just went up, with the utility company blaming it on their providers having increased prices due to increased demand.

Apparently in some localities AI/datacenter electricity usage is already 10% of total usage, and expected to rapidly climb in coming years. It'd be nice if the cost of extra demand was met by those building the datacenters, but I'm not sure that's going to be the case.

My electric provider recently silently raised our rates. My same usage was ~ $20 less a month last year. Honestly, I'm trying to get out of the 'scarcity mentality' of worrying about these sort of little day to day costs. I set my thermostat at a comfy level, and I game on my power hungry pc without restricting myself. It is what it is.

That is the part that I worry about the long term switch to everything electric.

Already in SoCal where there is ample sun and plenty of room for cheap power, the electric rates have gone up 50% over 5 years.

Now natural gas is being phased out, gas cars are being phased out so electric companies have a monopoly to charge as much as they want unless there is competition for alternate energy sources.

We are fast approaching in SoCal the average electric bill for non solar homes will be $500-$2000/mo

And even if everyone gets solar the power company will just add fees so they retain the same profit so they can maintain infrastructure

They go up if you pay for private power. I pay like 16 cents for LADWP.

Fast charging market is a mess. Tesla is one of the cheaper ones but only slowly allowing other brands access.

The rest of the competition is poorly maintained, new, under-deployed, under-utilized, or some combination of the 4, much of which results in awful pricing.

Most EV owners home charge for most if not all charging. I have been driving EVs for 8 years and haven't used a fast charger in 18 months I think.

If you home charge your operating costs are about 1/3 to 1/5 of ICE. So as a commuter option you can cut your operating costs vs gas by a lot with home charging.

I pay $0.19/kWh in NY, which depending on your vehicle is 3-4 miles in a decent sedan/hatch EV like Tesla 3/Y or Ioniq. So call it 18miles-per-dollar. Gas near me is running $3.49/gal, use some blending 25mpg for a sedan/hatch ICE and get 7miles-per-dollar.

Obviously a different issue for renting vehicles, road trips, etc.

Rates vary depending on time, location, demand etc. I regularly charge my car all over the Bay Area on the Tesla network and it’s between $0.45 to $0.55 per kWH. I have an electric home residential electricity plan and the cheapest I get electricity at home varies between $0.34 and $0.39 during off peak hours. During peak hours it’s actually the same for meto charge at a supercharger as it is at home.

I hope you understand that this anedcote is something like "I rented a car, I bought $9.50/gallon fuel, and then did the math on how many fewer miles that fuel got me vs when I buy fuel at home for sane prices" yeah? :)

$0.68 is nuts. I am on my fourth EV, and currently I will expect 0.35-0.50 on my frequent road trips between CA and OR/WA. I also tend to favor the Electrify America stations since they're free for 30mn for me to use. In my car, that 30mn will take me from 20% charge to ~85% charge for $0.

Once the free-charging sugar high is over for a lot of EV owners, I think they will start doing the math too and prefer, strongly, to charge at home. The other problem is there are no posted rates for the charge, and once you glide into a charger down to 30mi range, you're probably not going to pick up and go to a different one.

To be fair, I have driven EVs exclusively for 8 years and I wouldn't really recommend them as a rental car in the current state to a non-EV driver.

I don't even know if I'd rent one myself as an experienced EV users. I've done it once myself and found it quite stressful.

There's just too many ways for it to go wrong with an unfamiliar EV in an unfamiliar area.

Rental company gives you a slightly different model than you expected with lower range, battery at lower state of charge than anticipated, the guess-o-meter range estimate is overly optimistic and the car burns through range too fast, chargers in region are worse/busier/etc than you expect, etc.

Yeah I've wanted to and the "bring it back fully charged" requirement is hopeless. I rent for convenience and have zero interest in solving this problem for the agencies.

"bring back >80%" would be easier and tempt me on certain missions where I have the free time to navigate Plugshare and figure it out.

In thinking about it this morning, this is probably where one could use the "prepaid fuel" upsell option. I might consider that next time I rent something away from home. There have been some really dirt-cheap "manager specials" that are apparently code language for "EV rental we can't rent out otherwise" -- like $6, $8/day cheap. :)

Oh its not even the "bring it back 100% or 80%" or whatever for me.

I rented a car in Europe , I had to drive 165mi exactly. I reserved what I expected to be a ~260mi range model - tons of buffer!

They actually gave me a ~240mi range model that was maybe 70% charged. So now I'm thinking OK very very close but I'll charge along the route if needed.. there's a few rest stops on the highway!

Unfortunately guess-o-meter was very optimistic, the in car nav did no charge routing plus gave zero "you aren't going to make it" warning, and finally a non-trivial factor - the local traffic was going about 75mph+ so after some spirited driving I realized I was in trouble.

The local chargers were on charge networks that either didn't work via apps (required NFC cards I did not possess), or took credit cards directly but not US cards, or required pre-loading Euros into the app but gave obtuse app errors with US credit cards.

The chargers themselves were in a sorry state and needed to be remotely rebooted. Finally on the phone with Ionity they remotely activated a charging session and gave me a courtesy charge so I could make it to hotel. The courtesy charge probably cost me 1 hour and $75 in overseas cell phone use.

On return discussing with the rental agency they told me they do have NFC charging cards but customers had trouble so they don't give them out anymore, lol.

Another fun fact for Americans - while Teslas in Europes use the same plug as non-Teslas (unlike here), in some countries they still maintain Tesla-only charging stations!

Why is EA free for 30 mins for you?

Electrical charging on the road is expensive, because those are fast chargers, and not normal chargers a home would have.

A ~7kw charger you'd install in a home or a business has is relatively cheap wiring electrically, and the stalls are not that expensive.

Rivian adventure network uses chargers that have to output 220kw into the car. This requires significantly higher cost for getting electricity to each stall, the stall needs to be able to handle that much power transfer, and they must be actively cooled (since that much power causes a significant amount of heat). They also require a decent amount of maintenance.

These stalls can cost upwards of $100k per stall for installation.

This is all done so you can charge in ~20 minutes (as opposed to several hours it would take at a normal 7kwh one).

That's why fast chargers cost significantly more. They also need higher profit margins to make back the installation and maintenance cost depending on utilization rates they expect, otherwise installing these chargers doesn't make a lot of sense for businesses.

Please use correct units.

Kilowatts (kW) measure energy per time. Fast chargers (i.e., level 2, level 3) are rated in kilowatts.

Kilowatt-hours (kWh) measure total energy. If you charge at 7 kW for two hours, then that's 14 kWh in total.

my bad, I'll update

> They also need higher profit margins to make back the installation and maintenance cost depending on utilization rates they expect, otherwise installing these chargers doesn't make a lot of sense for businesses.

While I respect the right of the business to make its own decisions about what the payback time ought to be, I'd also guess that other than replacing the very cheap jack/socket and the payment tablet, these devices will last decades. The only reason they need high profit margins is a desire for a short payback time, much, much shorter than the likely life of the device.

Given the fact that the other plug is basically the standard at this point and the fact that Rivan's doing the "Rivan Adventure Network" for Rivan vehicles, what's the usage? If they're only getting used 10% of the time, some back of the envelope math says charging $0.61 per kWh is the five year to payback timeline.

What's an acceptable timeline to RoI for you that a business owner is allowed to have?

From my POV, if a business owner buys a piece of equipment that can entirely reasonably be expected to last 20 years, the timeline for ROI is on the order of 20 years. Maybe 10, maybe 15.

But I'm not insisting that this a hard and fast rule; rather, I'm suggesting that "a 5 year ROI" is also not a hard and fast rule.

Is there anything resembling a guarantee Rivan will be around in twenty years? Not just a "yeah probably", but something solid that would make you feel good about placing a $100k+ bet on them being around?

and (some) people wonder why (other) people think that charging infrastructure should be either (a) standardized to be manufacturer neutral (b) publically owned or (c) both.

Is there anything resembling a guarantee Ford will be around in 20 years? What about Nissan? Stellantis?

That's completely missing the point they're making, they weren't calling out Rivian as different to competitors it was just an example brand for the discussion of what timeline is reasonable to plan over.

Normally a long payback time is fine, but I would expect that in ~5 years, faster charging will be prevalent and the current chargers will already be obsolete, or at least less popular.

But shouldn't these fast chargers be doing much more "volume" of charges on a per-hour basis? I.e., if they can pump 3x the kWh shouldn't that somewhat alleviate the need to charge more per kWh?

No, for most people who own an electric car, its cheaper (ex. charging at off-peak, and slower) and more convenient to charge at home. I only use those super chargers on road trips which isn't my normal commute.

> That's why fast chargers cost significantly more.

Utilities also charge higher per-kW rates due to the high demand to be able to charge each car at 250 or more kW.

https://pluginamerica.org/understanding-demand-charges/

Meanwhile to fill the gas tank like in 1920 takes about a minute. And you can carry 100 miles of range in a pail.

It also likely gives you cancer over time. It likely also gives the rest of us cancer, asthma, and a number of other health conditions. It also poisons our water and air.

You also must charge at a station, whereas electric vehicles can be charged at home, so this 20 minute charging situation is generally exceptional, whereas you having to drive to a station to fill up is a requirement.

> You also must charge at a station

I know this isn't usual for most people but it's fairly common for adventure vehicles to carry extra gas with them. I have a fuel bottle I'll take on my motorcycle if I know I'm going to be out in the sticks for a while, Jeeps/off roaders will carry jerry cans/rotopax, etc.

unless you fill those containers at home, you've only decreased your number of trips

No, you do not have to refill at a station. What a ridiculous thing to even attempt to say.

The whole point of the comment was that you can refill anywhere. In the absolute middle of nowhere. Because "you can carry 100 miles of range in a pail"

You can carry gas any way that you would carry water. You can walk and carry 1-3 gallons of gas and it only weighs a few pounds to get 30-100 miles of range in a modestly inefficient car that only gets 30 mpg, forget a hybrid that gets 50mpg. It takes hundreds of pounds and idk how many cubic feet of battery to give 30-100 miles of range.

As for needing the infrastructure to produce the gas, well, A, you need equivalent infrastructure to create solar panels and copper wire, and B, you can brew various forms of deisel and alcohol from anything that grows with no infrastructure if you really had to. There are various low-tech ways to make electricity too, though you still need at least good wire which will be hard to make in a bathtub, but let's grant the wire just to be generous, so I think the whole "needing a station" is a wash on all points except the fact that there is no electric equivalent of how practical the fuel itself is to handle and transport. The closest might be, if you had extra solar panels, instead of walking however many miles to some other tank, you could sit and wait a day and get about 30 miles from solar in a day, assuming the vehicle is not in shade. .. even when I try to steel-man the other argument, it's still full of caveats for requirements and limitations that gas does not have.

And you don't lose ANY in the transfer while pouring the gas from one tank to another. You lose a lot while using one battery to charge another, or when doing any form of transmission or conversion at all.

And the tools and materials you need to accomplish the transfer are nothing. No exotic cabling to handle crazy amps without overheating, no computers to negotiate and monitor, nothing.

And for all that energy packed into that gas, it's almost as safe as an equal pail of water. It isn't trying desperately to explode itself at all times only held back by undamaged films. You can throw a lit cigarrette right into a pail of gas and it just puts the cigarette out. If you spill the gas and create an area of dangerous fumes that would be easy to ignite, that danger actually dissipates in a few minutes all by itself as the gas evaporates to nothing.

There is no comparison in utility.

The advantages of electric are obvious and can not be denied. But there simply are also serious disadvantages that have not yet found any even remotely reasonable answer.

My dude. No one in their sane mind is making their own gasoline. Like, I can get the idea that some folks want to bring extra fuel around with them for off-roading, but you're talking extreme off-the-grid use-cases and no one cares about that. Keep your gas if you're going to do that. You're in such an ultra minority that it doesn't matter if you use EVs or not.

We're talking about normal use-cases here. Like, my car is in my house attached to my wall socket vs needing to take 15 minutes out of your commute to go to a gas station. Most EV owners can avoid going to a "station" completely, for their day-to-day use, and for road trips may need to go to one once or twice, ideally charging while they eat.

> No one in their sane mind is making their own gasoline.

In your apparently limited experience.

First time I met someone cleaning biodiesel at their home was back in 1980 and since then I've met such people at least once a year or so, particularly in the off road and farming communities.

It's a neat saving for bulk fuel users to collect waste cooking oils from resturants, chip shops, etc and filter, centrifuge, tap, clean and blend into 44 gallon drums for later use.

It's entirely sane to make a bit of cash taking people's waste and saving on fuel purchases by blending in.

It's still the absolute minority of people, and they can continue using biodiesel for their cases. No one is going to force them to switch, and it doesn't change the fact that nearly all people who use gas need to go to a station.

That doesn't make them insane though, does it?

It's a minority of people that launch unicorn startups, it's a minority of people that fill 10 acres with graded rock and soil for construction sales, own second hand bobcats and excavators, make money collecting oil waste, and reduce costs by blending.

No. The point of carrying the gas is that trips that would have otherwise been impossible become possible, with only a few extra pounds of cargo.

No one is saying _you must use an EV_ if your use-case doesn't fit. That doesn't change the fact that most people aren't you. I've for example never brought around extra gas.

The goal is to have most cars shifted over to EV as they fit the common uses-cases, and to eventually expand to the abnormal use-cases.

We are paying down the capex of installing chargers, grid connections, etc etc.

It will come down over time.

Is the balance that is being paid down publicly available? Will the companies decide they like the current cash flow and find a reason for it to continue after the balance is paid off?

People say you are paying for the convenience of fast charging.

But that isn't all the picture. (in california)

PG&E has honed its regulatory capture skills and has some of the highest electricity costs anywhere.

The average cost of electricity is 33c/kwh for california customers, and as you use more it can easily reach 50c/kwh. There are some areas where PG&E is not the electric company, and they top out at 14c/kwh for electricity.

The ONLY good part I can contrive from this situation is that residential solar is "practical" and the demand is driving development of democratized power generation.

Is this a PG&E thing or a California thing ?

Put differently, where in California can one top out at 14c/kwh for electricity ?

> 14c/kwh

santa clara, palo alto, etc

EDIT: sorry 17.5 c/kwh? pg&e average is also higher:

https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees

That’s just obscene in general. I think the peak I’ve seen from Tesla in my area is less than .40/kWh. At home it’s less than .05 if you charge off hours.

Charging Costs: Home charging is significantly cheaper than public charging options.

Missing from this is the percentage of people that can charge at home. Younger generations may never be able to afford a home. Even if apartment complexes start adding chargers the renters may have to eat that cost as part of their rent for some period of time.

You can also charge at work, which is actually generally better as the grid moves to more solar as then the demand lines up with generation.

Employers need to step up their game and start offering charging if they want people in the office.

You can also charge at work

Very true. I've seen some tech companies doing this in conjunction with adding roof solar to get tax breaks. Are other industries stepping up as well?

Of course in hind-sight I recall we had about 16 chargers at the time we had over 20k employees. There were a lot of Tesla's in the parking lot but many of those people were older and had homes. Those chargers also caused a lot of drama. People would unplug other peoples cars, the other people would send videos from their Tesla to corporate security. I would just park my old ICE truck near the front door since I got to work early.

> Are other industries stepping up as well?

A lot of commercial office spaces around me (DFW) have charging stations in their parking garages as a building amenity.

In 2014 or 2015 I worked with a guy who wanted charging at the office. We didn't have it, so he just started running an extension cord from his car into the building. IIRC they got mad at him not for taking the electricity but because he was leaving the door ajar to do it.

Honestly, it's kind of blatantly transparent that corporate climate change initiatives are meaningless when they insist workers commute to the office when we just spent the last few years proving we would work from home. I'm thankful my employer still lets us WFH and it greatly helps our recruitment and retention.

Agreed. I assumed the push for EV's was to buy the US and EU time to refine their processes around CNG refinement, storage and transport and to avoid dependence on Saudi (for US)/Russian (for EU) oil. That's nearly a done deal in the US. CNG not far from me is $2.25/gallon. No idea how far along the EU is or if the plan is for the US to sell CNG to the EU.

All climate change initiatives that don't directly reduce either mass or reducing the distance the mass is moved are meaningless.

Which means, the only initiative for climate change that ever needed to happen is a higher and higher taxes on fossil fuels, and everything would flow downhill from that.

But that was never on the table, so it was always all just lip service.

> Which means, the only initiative for climate change that ever needed to happen is a higher and higher taxes on fossil fuels, and everything would flow downhill from that.

We effectively managed it in Canada, but it’s become political poison.

> Even if apartment complexes start adding chargers the renters may have to eat that cost as part of their rent for some period of time.

Why not charge EV owners directly?

Also I’m not sure if chargers are that expensive in the first place, especially considering you don’t necessarily need fast charging since you leave your car charging overnight anyways.

This is _by far_ the biggest concern. I own a home, but it doesn't have a driveway much like the majority of Brits which means I rely on public charging for my EV.

In the UK, electricity supplied to your home is charged at a 5% rate of VAT. You can also take advantage of cheaper overnight energy tariffs that keep the price per kWh down to £0.03-0.05. Public chargers will charge a minimum of £0.55 up to £1 per kWh which includes 20% VAT.

That'll need to change for mass adoption here.

> Minimum of £0.55

Where are you getting this from? Just checked my nearest public charger and it’s £0.45

It's very location dependent. All of the chargers owned by my local Council are currently 63p. Average nationwide is 53p. https://www.zap-map.com/ev-stats/charging-price-index

However you look at it, it's a heck of a lot more than charging at home. Intelligent Octopus Go is currently charging 7p per kWh overnight.

> Even if apartment complexes start adding chargers the renters may have to eat that cost as part of their rent for some period of time.

Homeowners also have to eat the cost of installing a charger and paying for electricity.

I think you’re exaggerating the issue. Many people charge at apartments, rental houses, or work and it’s only becoming more common.

The claim that younger generations will never afford homes has also been extremely exaggerated. Millennial home ownership rates are actually quite high and growing, not far from previous generations. Houses are more expensive, but claiming entire generations won’t afford homes is just doomerism.

receipts, please

You also don’t need to own a home to charge a car where you live.

I met an uber driver who drove a Tesla Model 3 and they charged at an apartment tower garage.

The best part for them was the landlord offered it for free, no electricity charge.

I also know someone who just ran an extension cord out to their parking spot in their apartment.

It really isn’t that hard to imagine a situation where street parking has overnight charging infrastructure. Streets where people live already have electricity running to all of them.

> It really isn’t that hard to imagine a situation where street parking has overnight charging infrastructure. Streets where people live already have electricity running to all of them.

I've read that while this is true, the power capacity of this existing infrastructure is far, far from what would be required. Even the cable sizes are frequently inappropriate.

Gasoline cars were sold before gas station networks existed. We didn’t always have a gas station around every corner.

The same argument about capacity could be made for other modern appliances like air conditioning and electric dryers.

Most EV buyers barely need level 2 charging for their daily average driving distance.

Of course if we are going to get deep in the weeds I’d say that most places where the majority of peope live including suburbs can be made far more conducive to cycling and transit without that much of an investment and more of a mindset change to how we approach city development.

> The same argument about capacity could be made for other modern appliances like air conditioning and electric dryers.

Oh sure. My point wasn't that "it cannot be done" - it clearly can. My point was that this is not as "ready to go" as some people suggest sometimes.

> Millennial home ownership rates are actually quite high and growing, not far from previous generations.

Incorrect. Millennial home ownership rates are 10-15% lower than previous generations. They are growing in absolute terms simply because millennials are reaching middle age and getting more accumulated wealth - but there has been and remains a gap. The gap widens for Gen Z.

https://youngamericans.berkeley.edu/2024/01/breaking-down-th...

It costs about $600 for a home EV charger and should cost around $800-1800 for installation, approximately $200 of material and 4-6 hrs of labor.

A single commercial three-phase EV charger in a multi-tenant building plus installation costs at least an order of magnitude more when you include the electrical switchgear, charger, larger wiring, permit, conduit, utility costs, et

> It costs about $600 for a home EV charger and should cost around $800-1800 for installation, approximately $200 of material and 4-6 hrs of labor.

Reasonably, I’d need a panel upgrade and an upgrade to the underground feed... for which, the lowest quotes I’ve received have been $10k+. (More than I paid for the entire car that I’ve been driving for the past 12 years.)

I think people get "install a home EV charger" mixed up with "install a fast home EV charger".

If your goal is to full-charge a multi-hundred-mile EV in 8 hours, then, yes, you're looking at a significant installation with a new circuit, maybe a new panel, and maybe a new main feed from your utility. This could cost as much as the car!

If your goal is to charge enough overnight to make up for 2x your average daily commute, then you're talking about a much smaller installation. It could potentially even be done with through an existing 120V, 12A wall outlet. Many plug-in hybrids and EVs come with a dinky wall charger like this, and they are enough 99% of the time. External DC fast charging can make up for the rest.

Everyone's needs are different, but I think too many people rush in and go too far with electrical upgrades.

Yeah, like you say, everyone's needs are difference, but from my vantage point, an EV isn't really workable for my household without a home Level 2 charger, which isn't really workable without a panel/feed upgrade for my house.

My comment should’ve been prefaced with “Assuming you have an existing 200A service,”

A new service drop and panel shouldn’t be $10k, but lots of residential electricians are greedy. 4/0 4/0 2/0 aluminum triplex cable isn’t that expensive but if they included directional boring instead of trenching, $10k makes more sense. A fully loaded resi panel with the correct AFCI and GFCI breakers is around $2500 or so. If you happen to live in MN or WI, I can give you a better quote.

Yeah, it's the hydrovac that adds most of the cost. Not my blog, but I'm with the same utility provider in the same area: http://www.titam.ca/2021/05/cost-to-upgrade-underground-elec...

Oh yeah any time you roll a hydrovac truck, things get REAL expensive very quickly.

I wonder what happens to the old homes. Are homes being razed on a massive scale? If the population almost doesn't grow anymore, and some houses are still being built, where the heck all those house disappear? Owners or renters, but SOMEONE has to be living there.

Tons of homes in the US are kept vacant, either because landlord( companie)s want higher rents that what's achievable by renters in the market, or because property is a reliable asset to hold that will increase value.

It doesn't work this way because vacant homes in some place decrease values and rents on ALL the homes in the same place, and it hits the pockets of everyone really hard.

> If the population almost doesn't grow anymore

The overall population isn't necessarily growing very much. But populations of the different areas throughout the country are pretty different from even a few decades ago. Many old towns (and old homes) are just no longer economically viable after the industries that gave people jobs in those towns moved away.

Lots of extremely cheap houses in certain places. Good luck getting decent city services or a well-paying job anywhere nearby.

So it's about concentration, not overall price growth? That's natural then - it also means incomes in those few places are much higher too that people are moving there. And yes they might have to endure hardships to do so.

I mean, in Europe however socialist, no one is asking for affordable housing on Avenue Foch. Affordable housing must exist, but by definition it can only exist in places where only people who live there are those who "remained", i.e. left out when all active ones are excluded.

Yep. I rent and for me that makes EVs not an option. I do see two people in my parking garage have plug in hybrids and charge from 120 volt outlets. I don't know if they actually have permission to use the outlets.

Sounds like EVs are an option for you.

plug in hybrids are but a lot of EV purists despise them.

They have a lot of added mechanical complexity, which makes them likely to have shorter lifespans than pure EVs, but they can be quite good in the right circumstances

They make a lot of sense when the battery range is more than your round trip commute OR one way commute and you can charge at work.

I know several people that charge their EV's from 120V outlets and do just fine. They planned on installing a faster charger, got an expensive quote for the installation so delayed and then just realized that 120V was good enough for them.

We got our first EV last month (2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5) and we are currently doing this. It is just barely feasible if you don't drive much (< ~30mi / day?) and are home quite a lot (at least 10 contiguous hours daily, i.e. overnight). This describes us, and honestly probably a fair number of people. It also works if you are willing to stop by a fast charger for 20 minutes once or twice a month to top it back up.

I was kind of expecting it to be more feasible, but after our experience, I think most people would be much happier with a L2 charger installed. We plan to have one installed once the weather warms up.

120v is normally about 1 mile of range per hour which isn't great but is OK if you don't have to drive much. I have a 40 mile round trip commute to work.

You should be able to get 3-4 miles of range per hour out of 120V.

I have never seen anyone say they get more than 1.5 miles of range per hour.

We get 7km an hour of charging in the summer time at 120V. It's lower in the winter as some of the power goes to keeping the battery warm. It's not completely lost, though -- starting out with a warm battery results in much greater range than starting with a cold battery in the winter.

what car?

Overall I average ~3.2mi/kWh on my Mach E.

The charger that came with the car has a 120v 12A mode. That's ~1.4kW. Add some charging losses, at least 1.2kW probably makes it into the battery. 1.2 * 3.2 > 1.5.

Even a Lightning averages about 2mi/kWh.

The Mach E isn't even that impressive in efficiency.

Unless you live in a very cold environment, or drive a very inefficient/large EV, a standard 120V outlet is good for 3 miles of range per hour. If you can find a 20A outlet, usually that jumps to 5-6mph due to less overall fixed charging overhead.

For 14 months, I charged my 2023 Bolt EUV via the Chevy EVSE plugged into a wall outlet. I was getting about 2 miles of range per hour. There's a setting in the Bolt for a "home location" where you say you have a dedicated outlet and that increases the draw from 8A to 12A. That got me to 3 per hour.

We knew we were moving and I have a 240V EVSE at the current house. I found the 120V worked for me with very rare DC fast charging necessary, mostly when I visited a family member downstate. This, though, was a stage of my life where 2 kids were in college and the other had his own car. Much different than when they were on 3 different soccer teams, different schools, etc.

50 miles is the commonly quoted range for overnight level 1 charging. You're exactly the target demographic.

Condominium complexes often have trouble pushing through new investments like this, as some residents will push back against any new expense.

In my parents building the anti-EV expansion proposal was blocked in part by the people who already had chargers for themselves!

Yep, when I go to my annual hoa meeting for my condo complex, it's all very old people that have absolutely no interest in paying a penny more. I even offered to pay the entire cost to have a charger put in for my parking spot but it was shot down over concerns of having to drop wiring out to it.

In the UK (and probably most of Europe) there is already regulation requiring new residential parking and garages to have a grid connection installed, to be able to easily add chargers at residents' request (even if they're renting).

If someone can afford a brand new mid-range car, they are probably doing well enough to buy a home or live at a place with charging options.

> Missing from this is the percentage of people that can charge at home.

In the US[1], about 70% of homes are detached or attached single-family homes[2]. The vast majority of those will be able to support charging one or two cars at home. How to address the remaining 30% is definitely an issue worth discussing, but it's not an issue for the majority of people who live in the US. If we could get to 70% of cars to being EVs, that would be a huge dent in our emissions, still worth celebrating even if it doesn't work for absolutely everyone.

> Even if apartment complexes start adding chargers the renters may have to eat that cost as part of their rent for some period of time.

What I've seen around here (Twin Cities, MN) is apartments just have some charging company put about 4~8 of their fast chargers in their parking lot. I would guess those companies pay the installation costs and charge the users directly, so the apartment owners don't have to deal with it at all.

[1] The article is about Europe, but I don't live there. Maybe someone else can find stats for Europe.

[2] Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1042111/single-family-vs...

From https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2020/hc/pdf..., out of ~80m non multi-unit homes, only about 50m have a garage, with about 30m without a garage and about 40m living in a complex where garages aren't expected.

That's not exactly a vast majority that could support charging at home.

Good find! Interesting data in that. I don't think a garage is a requirement to charging at home, but that's still a fair point and a lower number than I expected.

Garages aren't necessary for charging. There are outdoor car chargers that can mount on pole. It is a little harder to run the power to them but not that expensive.

Similar chargers would work for apartment complex parking lots. It would even be possible to put chargers on street parking.

The way I interpret it, if you don't have a dedicated exclusive access to a parking space, you don't really have at-home charging, because the exclusive access is what gets rid of the need to negotiate with other people for access to the charger.

I expect almost all detached homes to have a driveway, even if they do not have a garage.

Exclusive access is nice, but not necessary.

BEVs used just for city driving need to be charged about once a week, so you just plug in when there's an opportunity. A basic 7kW charger is enough to charge full battery overnight.

There are a lot of houses near me without garages but with covered carports with space to park 1-2 cars. So, some percentage of those 30m without a garage would still be able to have at-home charging. No idea on what that percentage would be though.

> In the US[1], about 70% of homes are detached or attached single-family homes[2].

Wrong statistic. You need the percentage of the population that lives in such a home vs. other arrangements.

You would never want to buy an EV if you can't charge where you sleep.

Maintenance is an interesting piece to consider to this. I also just love the quiet of my EV. Got it used and paid cash, still under $100k miles. We charge at home for the most part and have experienced broken charging systems.

Some of these EVs are dead simple to maintain - are the tires inflated? Did you get the breaks checked? Is it charging okay?

Obviously, if you start having electrical system problems, it can get pricey. Nice to have a warranty of some kind then.

But the same is true of ICE vehicles if you start leaking oil, have electronics fail, and so on. I still remember spending so much time getting a motherboard component replaced in a 1994 Ford Thunderbird that was exhibiting bizarre behavior.

Just had my trusted 2009 Mazda 5 blow a head gasket outside of Santa Fe over the winter break. I'm grieving. But no, I'm not going to buy a new engine for that car and probably had spent too much already on it over the years. Sigh.

> Just had my trusted 2009 Mazda 5 blow a head gasket outside of Santa Fe over the winter break. I'm grieving. But no, I'm not going to buy a new engine for that car and probably had spent too much already on it over the years. Sigh.

...why would you need a new engine if your head gasket fails? Did you keep driving after it failed?

We were on the interstate. It happened so quick. Coolant somehow mixed in with the oil, engine seized. The car had almost 180k miles on it. It is what it is.

Apples/oranges/not my car, but I had a similar situation in my 2011 Impreza and was staring at a $3500 repair bill for the head gasket. If you get the work done, there’s a litany of other things you really ought to do while you’re there (water pump, belts, etc). Sure, it’s not a new engine, and it’s certainly less than a new engine would cost, but either would be nearly as much or more than the vehicle is actually worth. For a 16 year old vehicle, almost any repair other than basic tires/brakes/etc can be “fatal” if you’re not doing your own wrenching. If you do opt to pay, you’re gambling on what else might be lurking around the corner.

You are effectively paying $3500 for a car. If you want a new car now you have to pay for it, probably more than $3500 I'm guessing, and it too will amount to a gamble of what else is lurking around the corner just with a different car.

My take on this has made it usually worth paying the $3500, since I know that otherwise, maintenance and repairs are up to snuff.

Exactly. I am the only person I know who actually keeps a maintenance log. I've never bought a car that had one before either. Never seen one advertised with one. It has always been guesswork when you buy a car even new considering issues out of the factory and the headache of dealing with the recall process if they even sufficiently offer one.

Hi! I keep a maintenance log too. The next owner probably won't benefit from it though, since I plan to run my vehicles until they're ready for the scrap heap.

When a head gasket fails, it's usually accompanied with the engine overheating, which often warps the engine block.

I appreciate the discussion about total cost of ownership. My family is looking into our first EV mainly because of the impression of lower running costs. However, the more I read, the more I realize that a fair comparison is far more complex than just fuel savings.

One thing I keep wondering, especially with the high break-even numbers, is what about battery life and replacement costs. That could really wreck any savings forecast, or am I missing something? Also, our family does not drive a huge amount each year, so figuring out if we would even hit that break-even point is still on the table.

I also noticed depreciation for EVs can be more aggressive, so buying a 2-year-old car could, in theory, significantly lower your break-even point compared to a new one, without increasing maintenance costs too much.

The thing with EVs is that there is so much uncertainty in the platform. Is this an actual reliable car or will it crap out due to some byzantine electronics issue in 5 years?

Meanwhile a 4 cylinder dead simple economy gas car is pretty much commodified by automakers at this point. You change the oil, timing belt, brakes, tires, and live somewhere where they don’t salt the roads that car can probably run for half a century making 30mpg costing you pennies in comparison in insurance and registration because its small and slow. It is a known quantity. 4 cylinder ice with same old 4spd auto or 5spd manual is a solved science like a hammer or a tube amplifier is at this point.

First and second generation Teslas are definitely to be avoided, but even 3rd gen is super cheap now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu97Hq-KoBo

Yes and no.

Ask Hyundai / KIA owners about the oil consumption in their brand-new engines. Or even 2012-2015 Prius owners about the new head gaskets they will eventually all need.

Even brand-new ICE cars are not without their risks.

Battery life seems to be looking good on modern cars - better than expected by all accounts. I've been looking at the UK second hand market for ~2-3 year old cars (mostly Autotrader) for Kia Niros, and the hybrid and electric variants are pretty indistinguishable on price, which makes EVs far more attractive. I don't know if this is true for other car types.

Only problem with the Niro is that depending on which year you get, it's not possible to get a proper read on how much the battery has degraded with an OBD dongle - something the E-GMP based cars in Kia and Hyundai's lineup allow you to see quite easily.

But yes, my car is now almost 2 years old (Kia EV6 AWD GT Line) and so far when its lost around 600Wh of capacity, so less than 1%.

EV leases are super cheap in the US right now (YMMV). That’s what we’ve done. With the gas savings (we only charge at home at night and we have very low night rates) we’re paying very little for our car. No maintenance so far. When our lease runs out we’ll either buy or lease again.

I just picked up a used 2021 Hyundai Kona EV back in December. It had been leased for a corporate fleet and only had 28K miles on it. After the federal tax credit for used EVs ($4000, paid directly to the dealership so they just applied it like a discount), it was less than half of the original price of the car.

I reckon a good chunk of the depreciation is due to the original federal tax credit of $7,500 for new BEVs was also applied to the lease costs, so all-in-all roughly half of the ~$20,000 of depreciation was from tax credits in my case.

Electricity costs vary region to region, as well as the proportion of clean energy sources that power the local grid. I am lucky to live in the US Northwest where there is a very high percentage of hydro-electric and wind powering our grid and our electricity costs are comparatively low (now ~$0.20 per kwh) -- note the large number of data centers headquartered in Central Oregon. Also note, the region (Oregon and Washington principally) is a net exporter of electricity. I drove a Nissan Leaf for 8 1/2 years, and have driven a Tesla Model Y for 4, and the cost of ownership for both vehicles are significantly less than any ICE vehicle I have ever operated. Surprisingly, the Tesla is actually somewhat more efficient in my experience than the 2012 Leaf, particularly on the highway, despite weighing considerably more. I almost always (95%+) charge at home. Admittedly, our electricity costs were significantly lower (~$0.12) for many years before the recent rate hikes.

In Washington, at $0.10 per kWh, over 200k miles, the Model Y at $42k was the same cost as a Highlander or equivalent $50k to $60k car. Due to higher tire costs and depreciation. And Washington has some of the highest gas prices in the country.

However, Model Y was still preferable to buy since it's so convenient to charge at home, and it is convenient to never have to do oil changes and all that crap. Plus it drives much better than a Highlander or equivalent ICE. If only it had CarPlay.

But if my electricity costs were like California or NYC, I would easily opt for a hybrid ICE.

Am paying 0.044 per kWh with super off peak timed home charging 11pm - 7am in Washington.

Some places in eastern Washington only pay $.02/kwh! I'm in a medium sized city in the northwest I pay $.08/kwh. It's substantially cheaper to operate my Model 3 than my previous BMW 335d ($.02/mile vs $.16/mile)

> Some places in eastern Washington only pay $.02/kwh! I'm in a medium sized city in the northwest I pay $.08/kwh.

Is that after delivery costs? Half my bill is paying for the delivery.

For me it's Energy Charge: $0.045351 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for all energy consumed. Delivery Charge: $0.038207 per kWh for all energy delivered. Customer Charge: $17.90 per month for single residences and individually metered apartments. Douglas county PUD in eastern WA is Basic Charge: $15.07 per month. Energy Charge: $0.0233 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for the first 25,000 kWh per month.

Renewables (but solar in particular) and EV's are a marriage made in heaven.

Where I live electricity is about $0.32/kWh. But if you sign up for the EV plan, charging the EV costs $0.07/kWh. It's because of renewables. Their unreliability means they over provision. Over provisioning means were I live they drive the wholesale cost of electricity negative most days (but it skyrockets when the sun ain't shining and the wind ain't blowing).

The $.07/kWh plan charges EV's when the electricity wholesale price is negative (so you have to hand over control of the charging port to the electricity company). If you live in an area with a lot of solar, the solar duck curve means most days the price does indeed go negative.

Check if your provider offers time-of-use rates. We pay $0.07/Kwh to charge at night. Full charge is ~$5 or 10x less than a tank of gas. Never going back to ICE.

Which geography was this analysis made for? It seems model market share is for the US while prices are listed in EUR in the first part and USD in the latter?

A German perspective: Households pay between $0.30 and $0.40 per kWh, Diesel is at around $1.60-$1.70/l and it is safe to assume 6l/100km for a Diesel car. I was never able to consistently drive an EV at < 20 kWh/100km, in Winter it's more 25kWH/100km for certain ones (I look at you Mercedes EQB) it was closer to 30kWH.

To account for the full cost of car ownership I can recommend the methodology of the ADAC (German Automobile Club, Germany only: https://assets.adac.de/Autodatenbank/Autokosten/autokostenue...).

Not just that, the BYD Song which is listed in the first chart isn’t even available for sale in the US.

Your numbers are a bit higher than what I get here in NL. Even in winter (0-5°C), my EV stays below 19 kWh/100km, and in ideal conditions (20-25°C), it’s around 15 kWh/100km. Data from Teslamate (sorry for the ugly format):

I would assume at least some of the difference comes from the autobahn conditions.

Also, from what I have been able to observe, EVs are absurdly underrepresented in the autobahns.

That's from driving VW ID3s, Cupra Borns, Polestars mostly in a city with shorter trips outside. I admit the Mercedes EQB included a trip on the Autobahn with the occasional 90-100 mph.

I know people hate electric-ICE combos, but charging at home for next to nothing, running 90% of local trips on battery only, and not having any charging downtime if we go somewhere that hasn't caught up with EV charging is pretty nice.

I am on record as loving our BMW i3 and its Range Extender. :)

The German over-engineering of stupid things has been it's primary downfall, not the ICE+EV combo. We are approaching the end of our extended warranty period, and we have had two failures -- electrically actuated rear trunk latch and our electrically actuated charge-port-cover latch. Both ridiculous and unnecessary. Both about $4K at the dealership, with no real viable alternatives. Unfortunately, we are likely to replace it due to the obscene repairs of minor and unnecessary components.

I don't think there is anything else similar coming out. We won't be considering the RAMCharger, which is at least the same idea :)

There are a lot of semi-consumable ICE components that these comparisons often omit: mass airflow sensors, oxygen sensors, gaskets/seals, emissions components, starter batteries. These often cost in the $100-500 range/ea and the labor to replace them is at minimum $100/hr in my locality.

Those definitely can be issues, but I can’t remember the last time, if ever, I had any of those other than a starter battery replaced before 100k miles.

Smog checks, brake replacements and all the fluid/filter replacements are nontrivial regular costs. EVs have only wiper fluid, 12v batteries and air cabin filters to replace regularly. Brakes literally last the life of the vehicle.

Don't some electric cars also have 12V batteries? At least Porsche Taycan had one. And they can go bad and also might be drained more than on ICE.

Practically all EVs commonly sold have 12V batteries.

They do, but most of the time they are smaller and cheaper. No need for huge cranking currents, really. The replacement for a Model 3 battery is about $90, for context.

I bought a 1 year old low mileage Kia EV6 (AWD GT Line) - 3500 miles on the odometer.

This means I avoided the first year depreciation.

But having an EV also allowed me onto the Intelligent Octopus Go tariff ... which gives the entire house electricity for 7p per kWh during intelligent dispatches (half hour blocks where the grid is greenest and if you're plugged in they'll charge your car) but also between the hours of 23:30 and 05:30.

Because I have a PV array + battery storage, and can charge from the grid, in the winter I charge the battery overnight, and most days get to 23:30 with charge left in the battery because the Solar has been enough to keep me topped up during the day. So my cost for electricity over the winter, because I have an EV, was about 6.9p per kWh.

This all factors in to make it a no-brainer for me. Driving for around 2p per mile (versus 20p per mile in my previous car, a 1l Focus Ecoboost), but also my household usage even in the winter is much cheaper. And then during the summer I build up a big buffer of credit by exporting excess Solar.

This is a better analysis than most.

Most analyses by Consumer Reports etc try to compare 5 year costs. But when you try and do that, your answer becomes dominated by the trade-in value of a 5 year old EV vs a 5 year old ICE. That's a really hard, highly political task.

Lifetime cost eliminates that and gets down to true costs.

The 5 year value of the car shouldn't be in the calculations IMO. It has no impact on lifetime costs -- since it's subtracted from the costs of the original owner and added to the costs of the second zero, netting to 0.

Also, people buying 5 year old cars tend to be more cost sensitive than those buying new cars. The value of a used car is primarily in the cost savings, so as consumers become more familiar with the costs & benefits of EV's, the trade in value should converge on a price which makes lifetime cost analysis and 5 year cost tradeoff analysis give similar answers.

Nowadays, people probably haven't paid off their car in 5 years either. Average new car loan is 68 month term.

https://tucson.com/news/nation-world/business/personal-finan...

Anecdotally, many people start considering trading in their cars once their loan is no longer underwater, not after it's paid off. Myself, I'm hoping to enjoy not having car payments as long as I can...

Yes, the used EV market is still young. The oldest Model Ys are from 2020, and Model 3s go back to 2017. Consumers do not have much experience with used EVs, so they are cautious and prices are low. As time goes by, if older EVs prove to be reliable, used prices will go up. There is already evidence that battery replacement is rare:

https://www.motortrend.com/features/ev-battery-lifespan-degr...

> As time goes by, if older EVs prove to be reliable, used prices will go up.

I’m not sure they will - if there remains a cohort of people who keep buying a new car every x years regardless of the mechanical reliability of their old car, and there aren’t many old cars getting taken off the roads (because they’re highly reliable), it’s plausible that the value of old cars gets pushed down from the oversupply.

It could be that the price of used cars goes down due to oversupply, but the price of used EV's relative to the price of used ICE vehicles goes up.

I'm fairly confident the price of used cars is going to go down. Who's going to buy a 5 year old Camry for $20k if the price of a brand new equivalent EV is $20K?

> It could be that the price of used cars goes down due to oversupply, but the price of used EV's relative to the price of used ICE vehicles goes up.

Maybe? I think the best driver of that would be regulation that internalizes the externalities of gas cars, but that doesn't seem to be workable politically.

> Who's going to buy a 5 year old Camry for $20k if the price of a brand new equivalent EV is $20K?

That's a bit of a funny example, because a lot of the value in a $20k used Camry is in the fact that it says "Toyota Camry"... so really, the only "equivalent" EV for $20k is going to be a $20k mid-size Toyota EV. I think we desperately need cheaper EVs, but I don't see a short-to-mid-term reality where Toyota starts selling an EV Camry for 30% less than the current hybrid Camry MSRP.

For used pricing to come down, EV vs ICE is nearly irrelevant - we just need cheaper new cars of whatever people are buying, and I don't see anything especially promising to bring down the cost of new cars.

Given this analysis it sounds like the sweet spot is getting a used-but-still good EV. EVs suffer from extraordinary loss in resale value, almost on the scale of luxury vehicles. This actually works out though, if you can get something like an old Nissan LEAF for approximately $10k or so. The aggressive devaluation in price tips the scales of this analysis -- but of course not everyone can go and get a good deal on a used EV. (and of course, they need to have a place to charge it at home.)

>EVs suffer from extraordinary loss in resale value

do they? when I was shopping for EV, used Tesla mY were not much cheaper than new ones, especially in my needed configuration (3rd row seat). I ended up buying new to get federal and state tax credits that have made it no brainer to buy new.

if you can qualify for tax incentives (federal and state) then buy new, otherwise buy used

imo Teslas depreciate more based on the year (meaning features and design/hardware inside), not the actual mileage, because EVs dont have components with mechanical wear & tear

I picked up a used 2021 Kona EV in the Ultimate trim that had been a corporate lease previously. 28K miles on it. The original cost for it new was around $46K. I got it for ~$18,500 after the $4,000 federal used EV tax credit.

I think part of the depreciation for the Kona in particular is due to its lackluster DC Fast charging top speeds, but if you plan to charge at home 99% of the time it's a phenomenal deal.

Tesla and Nissan definitely are not equivalent in resale value, but you raise a good point; some brands are doing better than others in this case.

Do you get usage out of the 3rd row? I've had mine for almost 4 years and there has been exactly twice that I put someone in the 3rd row, and that person never wants to do it again.

it is mostly for kids really, they have fun in the 3rd row

I see. My kids are still too small to be there. There’s this sweet spot of maybe age 6-11 where the kid can sit there safely and also isn’t big enough to hate the lack of leg room. And when you have two kids that overlapping window is even shorter.

> EVs suffer from extraordinary loss in resale value, almost on the scale of luxury vehicles.

This is only due to the tax credit.

Everyone can benefit from a reduced cost EV - ID4s, Leafs and EV6s have great pricing for near-new vehicles.

For me, it's not just a question of cost, it's also a question resiliency. I am totally willing to 'spend', making a financially sub-optimal decision if it means that I'm reducing my dependence on external inputs to live my life.

When I think of my 'forever home' I intend to have enough solar capacity to cover my needs, even in winter, a battery bank, a simple, no frills, dead reliable ev (toyota get on this!), an ebike, and even stuff like a greenhouse and aquaponics setup. Think solarpunk show home, lol.

Now, will the above have a financial return on investment? Probably not. Will it help me sleep at night, comfortable in the knowledge that I'm at least a little more insulated from unexpected events than the average person.

I think reliability was one important part missed by the analysis. If the car has to go to the shop, no matter how cheap or insignificant the job, that's still half a day lost.

One thing this article doesn’t account for: American dealership model.

I was fully onboard with buying a new ICE car because it was supposed to be cheaper. Enter the American car salesman. Dealerships refused to give you a final estimate without you walking in into the dealership. When you did, they often want to sell you cars that they have on the lot over what you want. The feature packages they have are designed to maximize money: want blind spot detector, you need to buy premium leather seats as well. Then finally once you decide on everything, the car is $10k more expensive and financing is very scummy if you don’t do the math yourself.

Compare that to Tesla. You can schedule an online test drive. When you arrive your car is prepared and preloaded with a route, you check in and someone will verify your id and. Answer any of your questions. Once you’re done with the drive, you can order the car online. The price you see is the price you pay. They don’t finance the cars themselves, they field quotes for you and get you the best APR. And occasionally they’ll have 0% APR on financing.

In the end, it cost me less money to buy a EV than an ICE, for the same amount of specs. All because of the American dealership model.

The last time I bought an ICE car 15 years ago, I browsed online, found some cars I was interested in, emailed their sales team and said 'I'm choosing between x,y, and z, give me your best out the door offer and you'll get my business'. A couple dealerships tried to pull the 'come in and let's talk' but a few just gave me a price. We went back and forth for a day or so and I eventually got them to a price I was happy with.

I then replied 'Ok, I'm coming this friday with a cashier's check, if the price isn't exactly what we agreed when I get there, I'm walking out the door'.

Best car buying experience I've ever had. You just gotta set boundaries and enforce them.

Dealers right now would rather not sell than put up with boundaries. Unfortunately the experience has gotten only worse.

Then they won't sell to me. My car is 18 years old, but I wfh and don't drive much. If my car died and dealers didn't want to play ball, I could easily manage. There are lots of options these days. I could buy something private party, swap a lease, or even just rent a car and take transit

I have done the same, but it still takes a few hours of your time.

In comparison, you can buy a Rivian or Tesla from your couch in 15min on your phone, and picking it up at the service center is another 15min at most, with zero employees trying to screw you.

I don’t see the point in wasting my time dealing with a parasitic middleman in 2025. It would be nice if we could buy cars that cost less than $80k that easily and avoid a company led by a guy that makes Nazi salutes, though.

I only recently started my car ownership journey. My first car is a 2023 Toyota Corolla.

I would have liked electric, but options for a small/basic/simple/cheap electric sedan are very few, leaving you pretty much with only one brand that has some serious QC issues among...other...problems.

I considered hybrid - but given the amount I drive I felt the break-even was very far away, if you accounted for any additional costs in maintenance in the long run (like eventual battery replacement). Now I think I regret that choice because eventually the resale value would have been better from what I understand, but oh well.

I think by the time I get my next car in ~10-15 years, I'll go electric - assuming there's a product that fits my needs. By that time hopefully most of the manufacturers will have gotten a handle on it, working out the kinks and making the experience better. Right now it feels like they're all still floundering a little. Prices are too high, all of them seem to be having technical problems, and the product selection is a bit weak.

This article doesn’t cover depreciation.

Much harder to model but I’d assume quite important to consider.

That's why the sensible buy their EV second hand. I got a 1 year old demonstrator with low miles (3500 on the clock) for 30% less than buying a brand new one.

With an OBD dongle to check the true state of the battery, it's not a risky proposition, and the 7 year warranty on the car and 8 year warranty on the battery means I have some peace of mind.

I bought a new vehicle for 25% off MSRP, 30% off for a used one is not a good deal.

Whilst I understand the intention in comparing the average ICE to EV in order to get the larger upfront cost for the EV, I've never known anyone to shop like that. This argument was used against the Prius as well, "it's a 40k car where you could get something comparable for 25k, you'll never make up the cost of gas between the two". But that's not how the high majority of people shop for cars. They figure out their budget, then go around that. If you're in the market and can afford a 40k car, it's unlikely you'd go and get a 25k one, and vice versa, if you're looking for a 25k car, you're not going to go spend 40k because it's an EV.

So while it's nice to known that a more expensive EV will recoup its costs compared to a lower priced IC, for most, they're looking at a 40kIC vs a 40k EV, (post savings, rebates, etc) that hit the monthly payment they're looking for, and in that instance, the EV is going to win 99% of the time.

I mean, I bought my car based on it being the cheapest option that met my needs. I have friends/family who’ve done the same.

140,000k to 200,000k to break-even just on operating costs is insane. That's much longer than I would expect. Keep in mind some of these models would also lose 60% in depreciation in that time.

On the other hand, I would like a realistic cost-of-ownership for used EVs. You can pick them up cheap as chips and that would make the equation very favorable.

The article says kilometers, not miles. That’s about 86,000-125,000 miles.

I don’t think that sounds insane. Every car I buy new I intend to keep for at least 100,000 miles. Otherwise, buying new is something of a waste of money in itself.

And like you said, used changes the equation quite a bit.

Sure, but the difference is the selling feature is the economy!

OP is presenting nearly identical cars. If you just step back and think of it as an upgrade that won't save you money for 8-10 years, and will make your car's resale value lower. Add in the fact that the average buyer is financing, the savings are going to get eaten by the interest.

If you do the same math for a hybrid or PHEV, the numbers come out much better.

This logic doesn’t make sense. We don’t prescribe the same selling point of a vehicle based solely on its power train type.

Are the BMW i8 or Acura NSX “economy” cars because they have hybrid engines?

Is the selling feature of the Lucid Air Sapphire the economy? I don’t think so, it’s designed to be the fastest sports sedan on the track.

Is the selling feature of the VW ID Buzz the economy? No, it’s designed to be the most stylish, colorful, and best driving minivan on the market. It’s a fashion statement more than a practical vehicle. While it is practical, the practicality/economy of it isn’t why people buy it.

Is the Hummer EV’s main selling point economy? Of course not.

Again, same thing with gasoline cars. They are sold on all kinds of different attributes and not all of them are 100% about dollars per mile.

if you want a math-checks-out cheap EV, just get an older leaf.

* less than $3k *

use it around town for grocery-getting.

It won't have the original range, but for convenience it is very nice. Never visit the gas station. charge with 110. You can leave the AC on while you're in the store. very few things to maintain.

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cta?auto_make_model=niss...

EDIT: actually a couple years back ~2015 or so, a 3-4 year old leaf could go for $7-8k because people were afraid of used EV batteries.

In comparison, used teslas seemed to hold their values better. But that was mostly because tesla understood and sort of propped up their used ev market. I think if tesla didn't buy back their cars, used EVs would have been less expensive all along.

A Leaf was our first EV. I still maintain that if I had kids of driving-age, this would be my ideal first-car for them. Short leash, easy to drive around, room for friends, but not much scope to get into big trouble with.

Holy cow they're cheap now. Note that they can be absurdly bad in cold/rainy weather -- which prompted the sale of ours in Portland. Our ostensibly "80mi" EV got about 22mi once before howling for a charge, and that spelled "Adios Sparky" for us :)

Another factor worth considering is that the cost of fuel is almost certainly going to go up substantially over the next decade due to dwindling oil supplies, ever increasing fuel taxes and possible global supply-shocks, but the cost per KWH of renewable power generation is effectively halving every year or two, so while the cost per KM traveled with an ICE vehicle will most likely range from remaining relatively the same to increasing substantially, the cost per passenger KM traveled of electric vehicles will likely range from staying relatively flat to decreasing substantially.

Personally I'd much rather buy an (electric) vehicle that at least has the potential for operating costs to decline year over year, than an (ICE) vehicle that's almost certainly going to see operating costs increase year over year as fuel prices inevitably go up.

The biggest question for me is depreciation. My 2022 Model Y in perfect condition with 50k miles on it is probably worth less than 1/3 of what I paid for it. That’s very tough to stomach.

As we think about offloading the Tesla, I’m left wondering if this is a point in time issue (due to Tesla dropping prices so dramatically, their brand being in the gutter, lingering post-pandemic market effects, slowly evolving consumer hesitations about EVs) or a permanent reality where EVs will just never command the resale value that ICE cars do.

On the other side of the equation, there are some great deals to be had in the used EV market. We added a second EV last year and saved in the neighborhood of $20,000 on a Volvo XC40 Recharge that might as well have been new.

Besides cost, joy, the environment, home charging, another often overlooked benefit is: resilience to an oil crisis.

Unlike the US, Europe doesn't have a shale gas industry. What if there is a conflict in the middle east, or worse.

Sadly, the world feels a lot less peaceful these days.

It can be significantly hard to get home charging in Europe, however. There is also a much better, more environmentally friendly option available in Europe: extensive public transport. Moreover cities are dense here. So a bike is more useful and much quicker than waiting in tens of traffic lights. Average income of Europeans is lower too. So I think it is way better to invest in better public transport is a much better deal for everybody.

I think to a different energy need I have - heating - and how much substantially cheaper it is to heat my home with gas than electricity in Southern California. That despite much of our energy being generated with natural gas, probably in a much more efficient way than my furnace does. The problem is how incredibly greedy California electric companies are. Hearing about PG&E’s and SDG&E’s profits is depressing. A serious proposal to lower electric costs in California could turn this state slightly less blue. That bad.

> That despite much of our energy being generated with natural gas, probably in a much more efficient way than my furnace does.

Assuming modern equipment and California weather, your gas furnace will be more efficient at gas to heat than a gas plant supplying electric resistive heat, but less efficient than a gas plant powering a heat pump.

After this sentence: "Are they truly the environmentally friendly option they claim to be?" I expected to see at least some comparison of the effect on the environment.

They have gotten a lot more environmentally friendly as we've started to retire coal plants for natural gas, but the uncomfortable thing folks don't want to admit is that ICE cars have cleaned up their emissions a lot, and a big source of pollution generated from driving now days is actually particulates from the tires. That's something that's at least as bad, if not worse with EVs given they weigh much more than your standard ICE vehicle and thus have more tire wear.

I understand there are lots of factors involved in the comparison, I just found it weird that the article used that sentence, and then never mentioned anything about environmental comparisons after that.

There's a joke that goes something like "how long is a piece of string".

In order to figure out how much it costs to own a given car you have to create a model you can plug a bunch of numbers into. For our cars, fuel and electricity is not what drives cost since we don't drive all that much. The petrol car is about 5-6 times more expensive to service per year and it is about 3 times as expensive to insure.

Owner of high-end hybrid EV. Hybrids are still new to many car garages, which means skills to fix issues are not optimized. It took 3 weeks and $9k to figure out my hybrid wouldn’t start due to a faulty basic EV component (fortunately under warranty).

In addition cost of fuel cell replacement pushes up cost and risk of ownership and can be common at 70-80k miles.

I hate to say it, but I am actually considering a trade in for gasoline.

Battery-only EVs have a much simpler drive train, and longer-lasting batteries.

Hybrids are not simply EV+ICE, they have very different kind of batteries (low-voltage, high C-rate).

In a hybrid, you have a battery that is 1/10th of the size, so the battery works 10x harder – needs to discharge at higher rate to move the car by itself, and usually there's no room for proper cooling of the battery.

In a BEV you have 10x more modules working at 1/10th of that rate, and there's battery management system keeping it at optimal temperature.

Batteries live longer when they're kept in 20-80% state of charge, and don't like to be cycled deeply. Small hybrid batteries get charged and discharged fully quite regularly, while the same distance needs only 10% of BEVs battery.

> EVs typically require 30% less maintenance than their ICE counterparts. In terms of cost

followed by

> Consumer Reports conducted a comprehensive survey... their findings confirm that BEVs and PHEVs typically incur maintenance costs that are approximately half that of ICE vehicles over the first 200,000 miles.

Those numbers seem at odds with each other.

Anecdotally, after 20k miles with a Tesla Model Y, the only maintenance required so far has been windshield wiper fluid.

I have a Honda Civic. 50k miles in and I’ve only spent on oil changes (and related minor work), which have been less than the cost of new tires and inspections. The 30-50% range sounds reasonable in this context.

200k on a Honda Fit. Oil, tire, wiper changes. 1 repair which cost about $2600.

What about the air filter, engine coolant, brake fluid, in cabin air filter, transmission fluid, and spark plugs? :)

Managed to skip all that so far (the spark plugs (and coils) were the one repair).

Oh, you're right, there was a transmission fluid change somewhere along the way.

I drove a Civic for 16 years or so. Great car, no major issues. I traded it in for a EV and I couldn't believe how much more convenient it was, starting from the buying experience. No car salesmen / dealership fee. Never go to a gas station again (and rarely need to go to a charger). No more maintenance every 6 months, some of them fairly expensive if you follow the manufacturer's maintenance schedule.

I don't know if the finances actually work out to be cheaper but at this point I don't care. The regained time is worth it.

I'm at 80k miles on my Model Y, I've changed 1 set of tires and few sets of wiper blades.

I have owned two different Teslas since 2020 and the only maintenance I have had to perform is new tires, tire rotation and adding wiper fluid.

I went back to diesel and can say for certain the EV was more expensive to operate and buy (at least in the UK) than my new diesel pickup.

One solution for people who don't have driveways or garages is that the cars drive themselves to fast chargers. This can be done while people are at work, or sleeping etc.

They would probably have to be wireless/inductive charging, which is very efficient with correct positioning (which can be achieved using RF technology for positioning - similar to AirTags).

> With two oil changes needed per year at an average cost of $100 each, the additional expense shortens the break-even period by approximately 0.5 years.

Add 10 mins there and back, the booking and you're looking at 1hr for this event. If it costs $100 and you consider your time, gas too and from... You could easily bump this cost to $200, or double in real costs.

I was hoping for hard data, this seems like a lot of simply simulated assumptions instead.

Also, €100 is not "30% less" than €300, it's either just "30%" or "66% less" (~)

The labels on all these charts are almost impossible to read in dark mode.

Does anyone know of a US based service/platform to connect apartment dwellers with nearby homeowners for EV charging? None come to mind but that seems like a way to bridge that gap.

>Average Mid-Range EV Cost: €45,000

That's a fairly expensive mid-range EV.

Wrong metric to be optimizing for in the short term. Widespread adoption will drive down costs and is necessary to greatly reduce net GHG pollution.

Article doesn't seem to mention tire cost or resale value at all?

There was a much more detailed analysis (including insurance, etc.) of ICE vs. BEV on HN previously.

We have an ICE mid-sized SUV and a model Y. Costco installed tires are within a few dollars of each other. There were more options for the ICE vehicle was the main difference. There are a lot of variables to really make a detailed analysis, it's a personal thing. If you ask 100 people on HN how much electricity costs at their home, you'll probably get close to 100 different answers.

Good data point. Tire sets are similar prices, but EV tires tend to have to be changed more frequently because of vehicle weights and higher acceleration (driver dependent).

Depends on the EV and how you want to compare. Tesla's are running 19's stock which are gonna be a whole lot pricier than, eg a Honda Civic's 14's, no matter the rating (of which the Tesla's is gonna be higher rates).

What is the source of the most popular cars dataset? BYD Song isn’t available in the US, maybe it’s a worldwide dataset?

Not all EV models depreciate at the same rate, compare a Tesla Model 3 to a Nissan Leaf and draw your own conclusions.

It doesn't really make sense to bake depreciation into this sort of comparison. It's a loss on paper only until you realize it, so it should be its own separate item. That way you can factor it in (or not) depending on whether you plan to keep the car or sell it.

They won't be when they will get taxed. Governments won't just give up revenue from fuel tax.

I can imagine many governments introducing new taxes to both ICE and BEV vehicles to make up for the lost revenue. Specific sales taxes/VAT, per mile road pricing, and annual road taxes are all options.

Unless you live in a 'green' state that taxes them more than gas cars, yes.

Lmao where are you getting these figures? EVs basically don’t need servicing. It’s not 30% cheaper, more like 90% cheaper. My car’s manual only has 5 components listed, and two of those are fluid changes.

I bought a top spec 50k EV for 18k with 16000 miles. It averages 4 miles/KWh. Run the numbers on that and tell me I’m losing out.

>50% of servicing costs in my ICE have been components that an EV would have too. Suspension components, a button on the steering wheel controls, a seatbelt latch, an exterior rubber trim piece, the wiper fluid squirter things on the hood, etc.

Why is that pie chart so heavy?

IMHO elective cars don't make sense to buy unless you can charge it at home almost always.

That's my plan. I don't really want one unless I can plug it in at home, but I also want a plug in hybrid van and ... neither Toyota nor Honda make one.

I keep hearing this as if everyone buys cars purely based on cost and economics.

EVs are held to this higher standard as if no other types of cars are purchased out of want more than need.

Do off-road trucks driven in suburban areas make sense to buy?

Do suburbanites driving F-150s but not doing any work with them make sense when a minivan is more economical as a family hauler?

Does a two door sports car make sense?

Does a big SUV make sense when you don’t take it to Home Depot every day and you would be just fine driving a small car like a Corolla?

Do cars with extraneous features like massage seats and airbag suspension make sense?

Jeep Wranglers? Ford Raptor? Dodge Charger Scat Pack?

What if the owners just like to drive EVs and aren’t buying it to save money on fuel cost?

charging an electric car at a public charger is MUCH more expensive than doing it at home.

Yes I’m aware. And what does that have to do with my comment?

There are probably a non-zero amount of EV owners who solely charge with public chargers. Those owners probably don’t care about cost. They want an EV for the other things they enjoy about it.

Just about 100% of gasoline car owners don’t fill up at home.

"Just about 100% of gasoline car owners don’t fill up at home."

because most people don't have cheap gasoline piped to their houses. Charging a EV at home is much cheaper than gas BUT charging and EV exclusively at commercial charge points is very expensive, almost as expensive as gasoline.

some people have option to charge in office garage (often for free)

Don’t forget, that EV-s can depreciate faster than ICE-s (mainly because of innovation and price cuts). So you can loose more money on EV-s than you think.

The value drop is huge and makes EVs pretty much never better economically. There are some edge cases but then those cars don't have range. Or don't survive in winter.

Of course the flip side is that nearly-new low-mileage EVs can very good value economically.

> makes EVs pretty much never better economically

Then buy one of these “huge” depreciated ones and end up massively better economically? Why is this even an argument?

Because the car is worthless after the battery dies.

Just as an ICE is “worthless” when the engine dies, I’m not sure where the argument is here unless you are going to claim they fail quickly in which case I’d be asking for data to back this up. Note that the data will have to show them lasting more than 8 years / 100,000 miles since that is a standard warranty these days.

Engine lasts usually longer than many other parts in the car.

100 000 miles is like 4 years of driving for anyone who drives a bit more. This is about 70% battery capacity in most cases. Your car is already useless in winter.

With reduced capacity the cold hits even harder. And only way to fix it is to buy a new battery for a one-third price of the new car.

> 100 000 miles is like 4 years of driving for anyone who drives a bit more. This is about 70% battery capacity in most cases.

Are you just making stuff up?

https://insideevs.com/news/723734/tesla-model-3y-battery-cap...

> According to Tesla's 2023 Impact Report, the average battery capacity loss of the Model 3 and Model Y Long Range versions after 200,000 miles is 15%.

And this isn’t even LFP, which will get 2-3x the number of cycles.

> Your car is already useless in winter.

Yep, hate my scheduled pre-heated, defrosted car that’s fully charged every morning at 1/5th of the price per mile and does all the journeys I need. Wish I was spending 5x to stand at a pump once a week. Totally useless.

> With reduced capacity the cold hits even harder. And only way to fix it is to buy a new battery for a one-third price of the new car.

Battery prices are falling every year. You will not pay today’s prices when you might need to replace it after 200k miles.

Sorry, the 70% generic capacity was information from bad sources. But currently I personally still consider the battery as too high risk for an used EV vehicle that does not have warranty left. 85%-90% seems to be closer to reality among all brands.

The issue is that we don't have actually that much data available to say anything for sure for the newest cars. Variance is too high for battery failures: https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batter...

> Yep, hate my scheduled pre-heated, defrosted car that’s fully charged every morning at 1/5th of the price per mile and does all the journeys I need. Wish I was spending 5x to stand at a pump once a week. Totally useless.

This is kinda too big generalization. Not everyone has access to heated garage nor charging station with personal electric plan.

EVs bring out the strangest comments. People who normally buy 3 y/o cars and keep for 3 are worried about 8 year old cars. People who normally couldn’t care less about anyone else start to worry about others people garages, or people who live in flats, despite themselves having a viable charging option. Not saying you fit this personally but I’ve seen this countless times. People find reasons that don’t apply to them as reasons not to like them.

Anyway, I don’t have a heated garage and I couldn’t see evidence of a “high variance” in battery failures in the article.

I suspect innovation on EVs will also cause a lot of ICEs to depreciate. When the market is flooded with 5 year old teslas that will also drive down the cost of second hand corollas

For context, there are a bit under 300 million IVE vehicles on the road in the US, compared to a bit over 3 million EV's.

I'm sure the eventually there will be a shift, but I doubt it's going to be soon, and it certainly won't be a flood of 5 year old Teslas.

In the future, we're going to hit a point where most new cars sold will be EV's.

At that point, most of the used cars available for sale will be ICE's. Do you think it's likely that the majority of new car drivers will prefer EV's but the majority of used car drivers will prefer ICE's? I don't. That effect should drive up the relative cost of a used EV relative to a used ICE.

I agree that it's in the future, but the key is how far in the future? Because if it's 5 years in the future then it's very relevant to people buying cars today, but it's 20 years in the future... not so much.

And as a purely academic point freed from the constraints of *when*, it's not interesting at all.

The predictions for hitting the 80% EV mark range from 2028 - 2035.

Well I think intuitively it should be obvious that we aren't getting from 3.3 million EV's in the US to 228 million EV's in 3 years, so that really makes me question where you're coming from. Doubly so when ICE vehicles are still being sold at quite a pace, with 20 million more expected by 2030.

Given all of that you'd need to see sales of EV's leap into the range of 23 million per year, every year from now until 2035 to reach 80% of what's on the road.

If you just mean "x% of vehicles sold will be EV" then... it's a bit less absurd, but also much less meaningful in terms of the original discussion.

I said "At that point, most of the used cars available for sale will be ICE's."

So it should be obvious that I'm talking about the "X% of new vehicles sold will be EV" point.

It's a less unlikely result, but you're still talking about going from around 7% of the market to 80% in as little as 3 years. That doesn't feel tethered to reality IMO. It seems to be a "line going up must continue along roughly the same slope" situation, which I don't think holds true in most cases.

Not in the US, no. But worldwide EV market share of annual sales is already over 20%. The rest of the world is much more cost sensitive than the US, so once EV's are cheaper than ICE I expect a rapid transition. It'll follow an S curve, and we haven't hit the second knee of the S curve.

I doubt it'll be 3 years, but that seems a reasonable lower bounds to me.

I'm not sure about this. At least not here in Europe. Once new ICE cars are banned in 2035, prices for used ICE cars could go up.

That indeed, is the biggest factor that hinders EV adoption today. People who bought electric cars 5 years ago, are massive bagholders today. And that could repeat with those buying today.

Not a problem per se - it indicates a good thing: EVs are getting better and cheaper, quickly. But still doesn't help how badly it hits the owners' pockets.

as adoption of EV rises in society, there will be a time point, after that time, ICEs depreciate faster than EV

the rapidly iterating EV market will severely impact the used car market

Funnily something odd happened in mid Covid and my diesel has lost only around 15% of its value over past 5 years. Now ten years old.

Something odd being gas prices didn't rise with inflation, work equipment tax breaks + tariffs added to a materials / chips supply chain shortage, mortgage + student loan deferment + COVID stimulus + ppp loans boosted spending power.

Led to increased demand of used cars.

It’s funny to see how people jump on comments like this. Say something which goes against their religion-like beliefs and they have to proove that they are still right and the commenter wrong. —— Of course in the long run this depreciation trend might change. Plus it’s good for you if you buy an used EV. But still applies and should be said.

Used EV can be a decent risk gambling if the battery is out of warranty. But if you are lucky, it can be great.

I was originally worried about depreciation when I bought my EV six years ago, because I feared 5 years later all the cars on offer would have 500mi range and charge in half the time.

I realized I generally hold my vehicles for life, (because it's the most cost effective thing you can do), and it really doesn't make any difference what happens as long as I'm happy with the features at the point I bought them. If you don't want to hold onto a vehicle for life, you should strongly be considering used or lease.

Another thing to note is that EV depreciation is being wildly exaggerated. The resale value of my EV is right in line with other comparable ICEs (actually better, depending on the comparison). Most of the misleading reporting uses data from the COVID era where vehicle pricing was wildly whack. At that time I could sell my 3 year old car for more than I paid new - something I had never seen in my lifetime and suspect I will never see again.

I'm referring more to the risks involved here. It happened not so long ago, when Tesla decided to cut prices of their vehicles, which resulted in huge price dropping of other EV-s (you could loose few thousand Euros here in Europa). Of course, this doesn't happen every day, but events like this can happen. Especially in the EV market, as lots of innovation is happening at the moment, e.g. solid state batteries will be ready for every day use. What would happen to the current EV-s on the market? Their price will drop significantly. If this is fine for you, no problem. But it's better to know about it, than to act like such things will never happen.

Right, my point is that "holding for life" means you never "lose" anything, regardless of how the market performs. This isn't hypothetical for me. I've never sold or traded-in a functioning vehicle (only gifted). You can also purchase used or lease to similarly mute market effects.

News flash: buying new cars and getting rid of them early comes with market risks.

The electric grid cannot support everyone driving EVs and even if it could, the electricity is usually produced by coal plants or rare earth mined renewables that have an even greater environmental burden, just shifted out of cities and out of sight.

The reason to use EVs is not just based on the source of electricity. In a traffic jam, the quality of air I breathe would be so much better if all vehicles were EVs.

And all home heating used to be coal or wood but things seem to just keep changing.

We're not going to instantly switch to 100% EV's. Even if every single car sold in 2025 was an EV, most cars on the road would be gasoline.

Doing the math, you find that grid requirements will increase about 1% per annum for about 20 years on a switch to EV's.

Which is less impact than air conditioning and crypto/AI.

If we can't expand the grid 1% a year, we've got other problems.

My local electric company is advertising that they install chargers.

I suspect they can handle any realistic levels of adoption.

I'm not sure that a hypothetical of an immediate switch with all the required vehicle and charger purchases and deliveries / installs happening like magic over night ... means anything.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

60% of US electricity is fossil fuels, and that's one of the higher mixes. Canada is 60% hydro for example

And even if it were 100%, the efficiency of a power plant + electric network + electric car is higher than equivalent petrol transport + petrol car

Coal is now the third largest energy source in the US behind nuclear and natural gas. Solar accounts for 60% of added capacity. It’s just wrong to say that rare earth mining has more impact than energy production. And the grid needs shifting, so what? It needs to be updated anyway.

As soon as burn cash and govt subsidies run out, with lithium and electricity demand rising, EVs will be far more expensive to operate.

Chinese government subsidies, even for their own citizens' (i.e. non-exported) cars, which are sold to Chinese people in China at about half the cost that Europeans pay for the same models when imported, which is still enough undercut local brands, and European cars are mostly cheaper than American cars?

There's a lot of room for cheap EVs even without subsidies.

BYD Dolphin sells new in China for just under 100k yuan, which is about $13,800.

A. Do you believe that they are not researching and developing ways to improve the grid for an increase in demand from EVs?

B. Coal has massively been replaced by Natural Gas. Regardless emissions outside of cities is better than emissions inside cities. There are growing alternatives that are either carbon neutral or produce no greenhouse gasses to generate electricity.

C. How is mining material worse for the environment if it lowers the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted?

This is complete FUD.

Even when charging on pure fossil fuels, generating in large plants with efficient turbines and delivering it to efficient electric motors is more efficient than pumping, refining, and delivering gasoline to millions of tiny piston engines.

But we don't charge on pure fossil fuels. The grid is increasingly powered by renewables and nuclear, which are less harmful to the environment than fossil fuels. Anthropogenic climate change could lead to mass catastrophe if we don't get it under control; it's already costing us billions and killing people worldwide.

And while our electric grid couldn't handle everyone switching to electric vehicles over night, the transition takes time, and we can invest in grid improvements as energy demand moves towards greater electric usage due vehicles.

> the electricity is usually produced by coal plants or rare earth mined renewables that have an even greater environmental burden

Renewables don't typically rely on rare earths, maybe small amounts in some wind turbine magnets.

This is changing rapidly all over the world. UK hit a peak of over 90% renewable on one day last year, and that's only going to increase. Almost no coal generation left in the UK.

https://www.greenintelligence.org.uk/news-and-resources/news...

As of Oct 2024, there are zero coal power plants in Britain. It’s quite a remarkable feat.

https://www.wri.org/news/statement-uk-eliminates-coal-power-...

This is by far the most persistent piece of misinformation about EVs. In the US in 2020, on average, EVs co2 emissions corresponded to an average ICE vehicle that got 91mph. On the highest carbon intensity (ie dirtiest) grid in the country that figure was 44mph in SERC Midwest. The best was in upstate NY at 246mph. So, even in the worst case when driving like vehicles its a lot cleaner to drive an EV. It is true that the dirtier the grid the longer it takes to overcome the higher manufacturing emissions.

The Union of Concerned Scientists had a study which shows the math on all this. Of course these are the 2020 numbers so everything is better now than it was then.

https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/driving-cleaner

https://www.epa.gov/egrid/power-profiler#/SRMW

It’s actually impressive to be this ill informed at this stage of the game.

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/ele...

> The simple answer is yes. The highest peak electricity demand in the UK in recent years was 62GW in 2002. Since then, the nation’s peak demand has fallen by roughly 16% due to improvements in energy efficiency.

> Even if we all switched to EVs overnight, we estimate demand would only increase by around 10%. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002, and this is well within the range the grid can capably handle.

> In the US, the grid is equally capable of handling more EVs on the roads – by the time 80% of the US owns an EV, this will only translate into a 10-15% increase in electricity consumption.

> More and more of our electricity now comes from renewable, green or clean energy sources, and zero-carbon power in Britain’s electricity mix has grown from less than 20% in 2010 to nearly 50% in 2021. With the growth in onshore and offshore wind farms and the closure of a number of coal plants, transport is now the most polluting thing the UK does as a nation.

Only 16% of electricity in the US comes from coal.

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