Why Electric Cars Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think | Hacker News Reader

Why Electric Cars Will Be Here Sooner Than You Think

wsj.com

82 pointsjseliger156 comments

I was talking to my father a few weeks ago about electric cars, and I wanted to quantify how much going electric would save him so I ran some numbers. Where he lives gas is currently somewhere around $2.20/gallon. His car gets around 30mpg combined, so he's paying ~$0.073/mile.

Tesla's website contains a "charging estimator" for the Model S, which estimates a cost of $12.04 for a total charge of 300 miles in a 90D. In the fine print, they state that the calculation is based off of the assumption of $0.12/kWh cost for electricity, which works out to a total of 100kWh to fully charge a 90D to 300 miles of range. However, he pays far more than $0.12/kWh - he actually pays $0.22/kWh. This means that the fuel cost of the Model S for him is exactly the same: ~$0.073/mile.

I write this to say that I had always assumed that electricity was far cheaper than gasoline, and I was surprised when I ran the numbers and saw that it wasn't. It seems that articles like this assume that of course people will switch to electric cars in droves once the cars get cheap enough and the range is good enough, but unless electricity becomes cheaper or gas becomes more expensive, many people, like my father, will choose to continue to drive gas-powered cars.

Bigger issue seems to be people overestimate how much they spend on fuel. You buy the car once, but you refuel it hundreds of times over its lifetime, giving the impression that fuel is a big expense.

For example, if you assume $0.073/mile, for 100,000 miles, that is $7300. If going electric cuts that in half, you save only $3650, which is only ~10% of the cost of the vehicle.

Looking at total cost of ownership (car + maintenance + fuel) makes much more sense than just fuel.

It's even worse than that, because eventually the battery pack will have to be replaced.

While Tesla may cover that under some warranties, people who bought something like a Nissan Leaf are SOL. Their cars start losing range much quicker than a Tesla, because of the need to charge almost daily due to lower range.

Google shows the replacement cost for a Nissan Leaf battery at $5,500. Going by your calculations for 100k miles (which is Nissan Leaf's warranty range for the battery), the electricity cost will have to be $1,800 for it to make sense to buy. That's going to be nearly impossible to achieve.

The math starts to become a bit better at $4/gallon, though.

Does that replacement cost for the Leaf battery include the core credit for returning the old battery? Those batteries still have value, and if they can be re-manufactured or re-purposed as stationary storage batteries, that could reduce the cost significantly.

How much is this credit?

Depends on how much the old battery is worth. It's like replacing your transmission in an ICE. When you replace your transmission, you get a rebuilt one for like $1k. The actual price for a transmission is like $2, but if you send them the broken one from your car to rebuild for the next car, you get a Core credit.

I did a similar calculation (CA power is wayy expensive). There are additional considerations however, which is 'overhead gas' (or gas spent going to and from the gas station) not a lot but its something you don't buy if you charge at home, and "price fluctuations", buying gas has literally gone from $2 to nearly $5 back to nearly $2 over 5 years. My electricity has gone up slightly over those same 5 years. From a "predictive" point of view, it helps that it doesn't fluctuate as much.

Under the category of 'hacks' is the story of the guy who uses heating oil from the house boiler to run a generator which charges his electric car. Heating oil is generally sold without any of the associated gas taxes and so cheaper per gallon than #2 diesel at the pump.

I guess it makes a lot more sense to own an electric car in Europe, where gasoline prices are around 1,50 euro per liter, or $6,50/gallon, while electricity prices are around $0.20/kWh.

Still, recharging an electric car is still a lot more inconvenient than refueling a normal car.

Only on road trips or if you have an extremely long commute. The vast majority of the time with an electric car it's much more convenient because you charge overnight. You never have to go to a gas station again.

I think it makes a lot more sense to switch to electric car right now. But taxes contribute to more than 50% of the retail gas prices in Europe. So what would happen when majority of drivers switch to electric cars? How european governments will recoup lost tax revenue?

Taken to its logical conclusion (a hired fleet model for cars rather than individual ownership), the charging becomes someone else's problem and they get to leverage economies of scale that you as an individual wouldn't.

But the tax difference is just temporary - if EV's become popular - charging will be taxed too.

I think it would be impossible to tax charging (how would you know if someone is charging off the grid via solar?), but you could probably institute some sort of per-mile charge when renewing the car registration.

I disagree. Fuel is only one part of a car's cost. The capital expense, maintenance and insurance are other costs.

You pay a really high premium for electrics. If you insist on buying a new car, the TCO of a Honda Fit or similar car will be lower than an electric, and you avoid whatever bullshit that you need to deal with from the vendor (i.e. Using the dealer for all repairs) and dealing with charging stations and carrying the various adapters.

To wit: the 12V battery in a prius (the one that fills much the same role as the battery in a gas-only car) "repaired" at the dealer, using OEM parts, in 2016, is pushing $300

this post is from 2012, OEM battery was $235 at the time:

http://www.priusonline.com/242-prius-battery-charging/20810-...

That won't fly, once you are out of the warranty period.

Also maintenance costs are lower for electric cars.

An assertion that has yet to be proven. While an electric car has fewer moving parts to wear out, those parts that do need maintenance are going to be specialized pieces of electronics and power distribution kit that will cost far more than a few spark plugs and a new muffler.

That's not really true. The OP claimed that the maintenance costs are lower. "Specialized pieces of electronics and power distribution kit" are not involved in maintenance, those are repair parts you're talking about. Maintenance and repair are two different things: one is something you do proactively because some parts are designed for limited life and must be replaced periodically to keep the system in good running condition, whereas the other is something you do when something unforeseen breaks down. A spark plug is a maintenance item; a spark plug coil is somewhere in the middle but closer to a repair part (they do fail, but not often and usually after a very long time, they usually last the life of the car), whereas an ECU is absolutely a repair part because it should never need replacement. "Specialized pieces of electronics" also should not fail for the life of the vehicle.

Why this is important is that a car can easily have very low maintenance costs, but very high repair costs. European luxury cars (sold in the US) are a good example of this: they're very reliable these days and shouldn't be hard or expensive to service (filters don't cost that much, oil is standard), but repair costs for a BMW or Mercedes are outrageous by most accounts because factory parts are very expensive for those brands, whereas similar parts for a more pedestrian American or Japanese brand are usually much cheaper.

Many utility companies have special rate plans for EV charging. Electricity is incredibly expensive in San Francisco but PG&E has a special rate plan that is only $0.11/kWh if you charge after 11pm.

https://www.pge.com/tariffs/tm2/pdf/ELEC_SCHEDS_EV.pdf

Does the utility that serves your father have a similar EV plan?

I doubt it. I checked their website (http://www.emeramaine.com) and I couldn't find anything about a special EV rate.

It doesn't appear they have an EV-specific rate unfortunately.

Other utility companies just always offer off-peak rates to everyone, e.g. depending on time of day or season.

But of course, this is specific to your father's scenario. A quick Google search shows the average cost of electricity in the US actually is $0.12/kWh.

Of course, but I would encourage anyone that's thinking about getting an electric car to figure out what they're paying for electricity and run the numbers to understand what the cost impact is.

To add another anecdata point, I live in the San Jose area and I just checked my latest PG&E bill; It's kind of complicated because there's a weird tier system, but I paid a weighted average of $0.2095/kWh last month. However, if I were to get an electric car, the additional electricity it would use would come from the top tier, which is $0.2409/kWh. Then again, gas is ~$2.80/gallon, so electric would still be cheaper, but not by much.

If you're a heavy user (probably with an EV) you can sign up for a Time of Use rate plan, which will give you access to lower rates for off-peak charging (and higher peak rates).

Wouldn't you often charge at night, when electricity is cheaper?

$0.22/kWh is crazy high I pay under 10c/kWh, you can install solar and save a lot of money at that rate. Further, 2.2$/gallon well below average for the last 10 years, where exactly does he live?

PS: There does seem to be some serious price gouging going on. "In Sacramento, a family using 500 kilowatt hours of electricity last October was charged $58." 58/500 = 11.6cents. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-electric-bills-d... That same 500kWh would be 47.07$ from vernon or 116.42$ from SDG&E.

Sacramento has their own utility district, "SMUD". In the neighboring counties, we have PG&E. I talked to a coworker in Sac. His highest "tier" price is about my lowest tier. Marginal cost in the upper tiers is in the 30 to 40 cent per kWh range (it has changed a bit from year to year due to some restructuring). The only people who I can see staying in Tier one would be single people who leave the house all day (with the AC off). If you have a family, fuggedaboutid.

We recently put in solar panels to at least shave the top tiers off of the bill (very cost effective vs $.35/kWh, even if not at $.12/kWh). However, I feel it's only a matter of time before PG&E lobbies for mandatory time of day based billing, in which case the panels won't help reduce the rates much for charging a car.

Sad, but true. Also, I had a used Leaf for a few days, but took it back because the battery only held about 80% of its original capacity, barely made a round trip to work (49 miles) with no A/C running, and required a special fast charge outlet to be installed if I wanted it to do a full recharge overnight. For doing short trips (say, 25 miles including some steep hills), it was great, and would recharge in about 6 hours from a standard outlet. It would have been a great car for my wife, if she could remember to plug it in when she returned from errands (not likely, alas).

Do you take into consideration the cost of installing solar and future maintenance costs in an estimate like this? Im asking honestly because Im not sure if people do?

I would, if you ignore them you can get as low as ~8 cents per kwh hour before and ~6c/kWh after incentives. But, that's ignoring battery backup for night time use. Still, beating 22c/kWh TCO is easy in most of the US and your insulated from future price hikes.

Here, around Denver, CO, I'm currently paying somewhere between $1.99 to $2.19/gallon.

I had always assumed that electricity was far cheaper than gasoline

As you note, in many places electricity is far from cheap. Also you need to amortize the cost difference of a Tesla vs a conventional car. That's hard to justify as long as a Tesla costs in the neighborhood of $100,000.

But, perhaps generate that electricity on your rooftop! The utilities have lobbied effectively to lower the feed-in prices they must pay, so it may increasingly be cheaper to use that solar power yourself. I not up on the details, but perhaps this is one argument Musk is using to support Tesla's proposed acquisition of SolarCity?

many people, like my father, will choose to continue to drive gas-powered cars

I agree with you. I don't think the article made a very good case for electrics cars. The "gadget" market isn't that large for such an expensive item.

That said, I think I'd buy something like a Tesla once the pioneers have endured all the arrows in their backs and the bugs are worked out. So maybe 2025 might be the tipping point, as the article posits?

Unfortunately, me and my car are at work when the sun is shining on my rooftop.

10 years from now you will have an electric car. An auto battery changing system where the batteries are charged with solar panels and changed automatically when you park your car at night all made by tesla of course. Currently the loss like battery life and power I feel are too high to make economic sense for using a home battery like powerwell charged with solar to top up your car. But swapping the batteries themselves might work.

You could feed power into the grid to offset your charging usage at night. (Perhaps even come out ahead of where you would be charging during the day, if your power utility has lower pricing off-peak.) Alternatively you could add a home battery.

However, a gasoline powered car also takes engine oil and transmission fluid if it's an automatic. It will also require regular servicing of the engine and eventual replacement of worn seals etc.

If the fuel cost per mile is the same the electric car could still be cheaper. I can't say how much though, because that depends on the servicing cost per year vs the battery replacement cost and that depends on your local service department.

The battery in a Tesla costs $12k-40k to replace, though it's under warranty for 8 years.

The battery decay is going to be gradual, even though noticeable in a Model S, given its huge battery, it would still be a drivable vehicle even if it loses 50% of the battery capacity. So that 14-20K expenditure will not kick in till 15 years or so with a patient owner, which is pretty much lifetime of many cars in US.

And in 15 years the batteries will inevitably be much less expensive than they are today.

And hopefully much more powerful, extending THAT purchase even further.

I wouldn't count on getting much more kWh into lithium. But the batteries probably will degrade slower in the future.

Luckily you don't need to maintain electric cars at all.

You do. But keep in mind they have way less parts, moving or otherwise. Spark plugs, cables, the entire engine cooling system, fuel pumps, all of that is missing.

It boils down to: battery (big unknown, but seem to be holding up surprisingly well), engine (incredibly simple!), no transmission or a very simple one (Nissan Leaf has a single gear), inverter, charger, brakes, and the standard 12V battery you find in all cars (which doesn't have to drive a starter motor, so should last longer).

Wow, electirc cars are so simple it is surprising that so few companies make them! The moving parts in a car are pieces that 1) have multiple manufacturers and are relatively cheap to replace, and 2) can be replaced by a wide range of repair shops so that competition can keep a check on the overall replacement costs. What you left out of your electric car list are all of the specialized electronics and only-for-this-car equipment that are all very expensive to replace and will all only be supplied by the manufacturer. The idea that you can just go online and shop around for an inverter for your Tesla or run down to the auto parts store to pick up the right 12V battery is laughable.

False comparison. Your gas car also has specialized electronics, namely the ECU, the ABS system, the SRS system, which are all needed for the car to be operational. Good luck finding an aftermarket ECU for your car.

There's no more "only-for-this-car" equipment in an EV than in any other car; the main difference is that with so many models of gas cars made by each maker, they reuse a lot of parts between models, so there's economies of scale. In an EV future, the same would be true for EVs. You're not going to swap an axle from a Chevy into a Honda, or from a Honda Civic into a Honda Ridgeline, so even here it's limited. And you're not going to swap a door panel from a 2017 Civic into any other car at all, or from any other car into that one; those are only-for-this-car items; every car has those.

There are lots of aftermarket ECUs [1]. Usually only performance tuners buy them, but there's no reason you couldn't get one for other reasons. That said a junkyard ECU is going to be a much easier fix.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=aftermarket+ECU&ie=utf-8&oe=...

Your aftermarket ECU won't pass emissions tests in most places that have them, so this really doesn't exist for practical purposes. Aftermarket ECUs are for race cars.

As for the junkyard ECU, why do you think that won't be also true for EVs?

You can usually choose different maps with aftermarket ECUs, there's no reason you couldn't load one that passes emissions tests.

I've flashed my own car's stock ECU with a tuned map, but it's easy to load the original one back on.

Anyway, this is a stupid argument, I hardly think that emissions tests will be a reason you can't put an aftermarket ECU into an electric car!

>You can usually choose different maps with aftermarket ECUs, there's no reason you couldn't load one that passes emissions tests.

Will it look exactly like the factory ECU? Most emissions tests now consist of plugging in a device into the OBD-II jack and ensuring the factory emissions equipment has not been tampered with. An aftermarket ECU would fail this; it's "tampering" by definition. Emissions laws generally do no allow any deviation from factory spec or factory equipment. They don't just test the actual emissions levels, and they don't test the levels at all in many places.

>Anyway, this is a stupid argument, I hardly think that emissions tests will be a reason you can't put an aftermarket ECU into an electric car!

It is stupid, because that's not what I claimed at all. One poster claimed that EVs would be too expensive to fix because of non-standard, "only-for-this-car" electronics. I pointed out that this is already true for gasoline cars, with ECUs being an example. Then someone else jumped in and claimed that aftermarket ECUs exist, when in reality they're horribly expensive and only racecars use them, so that claim was irrelevant, and then they admitted that you can just buy a junkyard ECU cheap. I pointed out that this would also be true of EVs, which was just ignored, even though it completely invalidates the argument about EVs being expensive to fix.

Face it: every car has specialized parts, especially electronics. You can't just take an ABS module from a Nissan and slap it into a Ford. You can't take a wheel bearing from an H2 and slap it into a Prius. Parts for mass-market cars have always been available from different places: dealerships for OEM parts at high prices, aftermarket parts for popular models from parts stores, junkyard parts for everything if you can find them and are OK with them being used. This will be no different for EVs; it's stupid to think it would be. And it's also stupid that several different people jumped in here with completely incoherent arguments, all so they could bash EVs.

Yes this whole ECU thread has nothing to do with the original discussion comparing EV and gasoline vehicles wrt how easy it is to get replacement parts.

>> I hardly think that emissions tests will be a reason you can't put an aftermarket ECU into an electric car!

> It is stupid, because that's not what I claimed at all.

Yes you did:

> Your aftermarket ECU won't pass emissions tests

You brought up aftermarket ECUs not passing emissions tests, I just (incorrectly) commented that you could probably load a stock (or what I thought would be emissions-passing) map onto an aftermarket ECU because I wasn't aware about the tampering part. I naively assumed they actually tested the emissions from the car when testing it for emissions. :P

For what it's worth, I agree with you about replacement parts being specialized for all types of cars, and for the record I'd be very surprised if an aftermarket ECU ever appeared for the Tesla, given how closed and hostile to any modification (or even repairs!) they are. You can't even get a service manual if you don't live in Massachusetts, and even then you can only buy access to it on a subscription basis! [1]

In fact, at the moment I'd never even consider buying a Tesla because who knows what it's like to own one after the warranty is up? If my Tesla ECU failed, there's nothing to say it would even be possible to put a legitimate Tesla junkyard ECU in there and have it work without their blessing.

Out of curiosity, do places that have emissions testing actually keep testing cars regularly every year?

[1] https://syonyk.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/is-tesla-building-thr...

FYI Generally an electric "engine" is referred to as a motor.

> You do. But keep in mind they have way less parts, moving or otherwise. Spark plugs, cables, the entire engine cooling system, fuel pumps, all of that is missing.

My hybrid actually has two independent liquid cooling circuits: one for the ICE, one for the electronics.

But other than that nit, I agree with your argument.

Battery cooling is also a factor that you shouldn't ignore

$0.22/kWh is very high. I pay like $0.09/kWh. On top of that in my LEAF I average ~4 miles per kWH, which gets me to a cost of $0.0225 per mile. Considerably cheaper than gas, even at $2.20/gallon. The last year or so has had abnormally low gas prices in the US, I don't expect them to stay that low.

I don't know why your dad has such incredibly high energy costs, but there may be ways he can cut that significantly such as having the car charge over night.

For 99.9% of people in the US and Europe, an EV is a lot cheaper than driving any gas burning car.

Holy crap that's not cheap. I pay about 0.08CDN here in Ontario. Which suddenly makes it a lot more feasible. Especially since gas is more expensive here than in most of the US.

People that live near recently shuttered small coal plants have it a lot worse than people that live near nuclear and hydro.

A small community nearby has had some months where their rates have spiked to $1 per kw-h. There's a lot of last mile grid per person and I guess they don't have much of a collective agreement with the provider (the town here buys roughly the same power for ~$0.10 per kw-h). The people getting huge bills don't seem to be real big on cutting their use though.

My electric bill went up by about $80 the first month I got my electric car. Computing the cost is a bit tricky because I have tiered billing and I'm hitting the next higher tier since I got the car. My electric company (PG&E) does have an time-of-use billing plan tailored for EV, but, by my computations it didn't help a lot because we use A/C during the day:

https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/solar-and-vehicles/opt...

If you charge at night and aren't home during the day, and your electric company has an EV plan, this might help.

For what it's worth, between CA, OR, and WA I haven't paid less than $2.59 anytime this summer. Where I live in eastern Washington state, it's been approximately $2.89 much of the summer.

Whereas where I live it's just starting to get above $2/gallon again. It's something that varies a lot by region/taxes.

The cost of driving is more than the cost of fuel alone. You also need to include wear and tear on the vehicle, the cost of insurance, and of course the cost of putting that CO2 in the environment, which is currently not a part of the price of gas.

The cost of driving is closer to $0.50/mile:

https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/2016-standard-mileage-rates...

An electric car has all of those same costs. The CO2 cost will be slightly higher, but 90+% of your electricity comes from CO2 generating facilities. Not sure where battery replacement will net out in terms of dollar and CO2 cost, but it is unlikely to be cheap.

Is there a substantial difference in this cost when comparing an electric vehicle to a gas vehicle, though?

The parent's post was about cost of fuel (per mile), not the overall cost of driving.

Oil and gas prices are low now, but are not guaranteed to be over the next decade. You might want to use a cost number that has been averaged over a number of years.

Also the 90D is not exactly a car to be looking at if you are concerned about costs. I don't know if it allows you to choose a more efficient model.

Wouldn't the increase in demand for electricity also increase the price? Also, if the majority of consumers start switching to electric, I'm pretty sure the automobile and oil companies will respond. Not that that's a bad thing or anything.

It's hard to say, utilities can't just jack up their prices whenever they want. However, it's possible that there might be capacity issues, where there's more demand for electricity at peak times than can be generated.

I live in zipcode 23233 in the Richmond,VA, USA area. Gas is about $1.90/gallon right now and my power is about $0.09/KWh. I guess you can say YMMV.

His electrical rate is terrible, however. And, Tesla is not particularly efficient compared to, for instance, the BMW i3...

All that assuming residential recharge. Power stations with fast revharge will need a profit, so expect energy there cost more.

Not necessarily. Often, large commercial electric consumers pay less per kilowatt than you'd pay at home.

One major reason for this is that the load for these users is usually constant and predictable. The load at a fast charging station would necessarily be spiky and most likely bimodal (going to/from work, I'd imagine), so their cost wouldn't go down as much as, say, a steel forge with massive arc furnaces.

That's on top of the added cost of an electric vehicle. Worse, how does it handle the Chicago winter? I'll be running the heater 6 months out of the year, which is a drain on the battery, but on a ICE-based car, it just uses excess heat with no cost on fuel. So its tough to figure out what my real cost per mile will be in the winter.

I think TCO is going to be difficult to calculate for many people, especially when you're on tiered electric pricing that punishes heavy users. Electrics may have an uphill battle to popular adoption if the PR narrative is 'save money' instead of the other benefits of electric. I can't imagine the Model 3 edging out the Civic or Fit and other cars for TCO-minded consumers.

The only Telsa owner I know here in Chicago told me that his electric bill went up about how much he was spending on gas before. I suspect this is going to be the case for many.

Doesn't the electromotor also produce excess heat that can be used in a similar way?

My understanding is that heat is generated by tapping into the battery. There's no coolant to tap into and the electric motor is fan or passively cooled. Because they're so efficient there's no waste heat for the cabin.

It does, but it's a matter of <20% efficiency versus >80% efficiency. Not enough to heat up the cabin.

Not that it matters for a Tesla though. A Leaf feels the effects of running the heater more.

Unless Tesla goes out of business and nobody manages to produce a similar electric car, I will never buy a gas car again. Electric cars are quick, fun, quiet, clean, safe, and convenient. It would feel like a big step backwards for me to buy a gas car again.

They're not for everyone right now and I think it will take a long time to reach significant penetration, but more people will try it and many will never go back.

The Chevy Bolt will beat the Model 3 to market and have similar specs, ~$37K and 200 mile range.

The BlackBerry was also the first widely adopted smartphone. Many experts laughed at Apple's attempt to enter the phone industry.

Good to see there's going to be more choice at a lower price in the near future.

The maintenance sold me. As in, there is none. It's freaking awesome.

I just bought a 2014 Nissan Leaf. It's excellent and I'd recommend one (with a couple of caveats, see below).

A few (hopefully) interesting comments:

There's no premium for being "cool" or "green" any more. It cost 26,000 NZD for a 2014 Japanese import, which is about the same as an ICE (internal combustion engine) two-year-year-old mid-level vehicle costs (yes, NZ car prices are mad). And I'm guessing the trend will continue and they will soon be significantly cheaper.

The real savings will come from maintenance. Apart from battery chemistry, an EV is far simpler than an ICE. You don't need to pump noxious fluids around, no oil, no complex transmission... just an electric motor connected directly to the wheels. Not even any brake pads, thanks to engine braking. If you know a mechanic, tell them to start pivoting to ICE car rental for EV owners wanting to take long trips; EV battery replacement; charging station installation; and providing a mobile EV fast-charging service.

It's just a car. If you buy one expecting a radically different experience, it might be an anticlimax. Yes, it's cool the first couple of times you roar off (great acceleration, BTW) without any roar, but you quickly realise it's the exact same thing you've done thousands of times before. Your granddad won't have any difficulty the first time he drives one.

Caveats:

You need off street parking. I don't think it's ever going to be acceptable to run electric cables across footpaths, so unless you can park on own your property you'll need to figure out how to charge the darn thing. Maybe chargers will become a perk of working in an office one day, and there is probably a good business in installing charging stations for employers and shopping destinations.

They aren't good for long distances. Duh. Unless you have a Tesla, in which case I hate you! You will probably be able to use an EV for 95% of your driving, but you will have to have a contingency plan for any long trips you make. Currently we find neighbours are more than willing to swap their ICE car for an EV for the weekend, but I think there is potential for a very local car hire service to handle this requirement.

You're overstating how much maintenance a modern gas car needs, and understating how much long-term maintenance and repairs an EV will need.

A modern car with automatic transmission needs the fluid changed maybe 100k miles, and oil change intervals have gone up too; 7500 miles is more normal, and many cars with computers telling when to change the oil (based on actual driving conditions) are giving intervals of 10k. These are generally pretty easy to do yourself too. Most other service intervals are similarly long, usually not until 100k miles: coolant, brake fluid, etc. Brake pads usually last 50k-100k miles, but this depends a lot on how you drive. Modern spark plugs last 50-100k. Cars don't have distributors any more so you don't need to replace the cap and rotor and wires like you used to.

On your EV, you probably won't need to change the brake pads as often because of regenerative braking, but they are still there. However, some things will not change: it'll still need tires just as often as a gas car, and anything related to the wheels, tires, and suspension is no different than a gas car. You may still need to replace a wheel bearing at 125k, for instance, or a ball joint (these things usually wear out faster if you drive on rough roads). Your windshield will still get cracks from rocks and need to be replaced. Your brake fluid will still need to be replaced (100-120k probably), even though you aren't using them as much. Your A/C will probably need recharge or repair or even a new compressor after 100-150k miles or 10 years. And worst of all, you might need to replace the battery pack after 50-100k miles (we really don't know that much about how long these last yet, and it probably depends on the model; Teslas seem to last longer because they don't get discharged as much in regular usage).

Leaf tires tend to last a little longer than ICE tires b/c they are over-inflated, low rolling resistance tires. Handling suffers of course and an educated ICE driver could get similar results pretty easily.

One small correction: your Leaf has brake pads.

Thanks for your undeniably better-informed comment.

Would I be right that regenerative braking should substantially reduce brake pad wear?

Would I be right that regenerative braking should substantially reduce brake pad wear?

I'm betting the pads on ours outlast our ownership of the car. (Note that I have absolutely nothing to base this on other than watching the "I'm braking using the motor and not the pads" meter.)

Not that I find lifetime brake pads to be a big selling point. Other than something like changing the oil, replacing brake pads has to be one of the easiest jobs to do (albeit with some of the greatest consequences should you screw it up). Even with new rotors, I might have to go grab a hammer to knock the old ones loose, then it's another 30 seconds to put the new one on.

My boss has a Prius. Had to replace the front brake pads at 120,000 miles. Rear ones supposedly good for a while longer.

Meh. I've a 3.2L alfa gt having 120k km. Front pads got changed at 100k because they were getting old and hard, not because consumption. Rear pads are still stock. Got one spark plug and belt change at 90k km, anticipated because I did extra maintenance after a track days season.

Maintenance is baskcally changing oil every two year.

That's to say veihcle that are cheap to maintain are easily found if that's a priority, even amongst unexpected make/models.

100,000 km is 62000 miles. My bosses Prius had 120,000 miles, so 193,000 km.

You want crying my old E150 cargo van eats a set of pads every 15-20,000 miles.

Perhaps he meant you don't need to change the brake pads (often).

All for electric cars here, but think a minute about the convienence of gasoline auto travel, especially refueling at a gas station. They must get electric charging stations everywhere, but they also must reduce the 30 to 60 min. Recharging time. Gas is what 2 minutes? Especially in the age of tech and gadgets people will not stand for LESS convienence, only more. Replacing gas will take a while.

If you're just commuting, an electric car has it's own convenience - every morning it's full up and ready to go as it's been charging in your garage all night. No need to even think about remaining range or if you need to fill up or what gas station to go to.

Unless you renting and don't have access to a plug. Or want to go on a weekend trip. Electric is interesting, but nothing more as a result for me personally.

These are common arguments. But really it comes down to your last comment "Electric is interesting, but nothing more as a result for me personally"

Okay, fine.

There's solutions for all the other stuff.

But those solutions cost money too, many people A) dont have access to a garage and/or B) a garage with 220 AC in it. That changes charging time significantly, and installing 220 is expensive. There are solutions but it all adds to the price of an electric car.

Is it really a surprise that it's going to cost time/money? We're on the leading edge of EV adoption.

It used to be that you couldn't get high speed broadband in most places - now it's more widely available and even advertised in listings.

5-10 years and we'll start to see new houses/apartments advertised as having an 'EV ready parking spot'.

Most people own cars for ~11 years, so people are on average 1 additional car away from owning an EV vehicle. It's coming but were not as ready as people would like to think just yet.

Once in a while, I need to move. I don't own a U-Haul-sized moving van and drive it to work every day just because of this; instead, I rent such a truck when I need it.

If you're married or cohabiting, you most likely have two vehicles anyway. You're not going to bring both of them when you go on a weekend outing with your significant other or family, so having one EV just for commuting absolutely can make financial sense in that situation. There's a reason many families have one nice car and one crappy beater car; the beater gets used for one person's commute, and the nice car is used for the other's commute plus family trips.

It will happen, eventually, though. It's starting with the affluent. Anyone who can afford a house with a garage is capable of buying a charger and having it installed. As that happens, charger prices go down and they get better. As more affluent people buy electric cars, they will also get cheaper and better. Unlike Hydrogen and Ethanol, electricity and batteries are well-known technologies that most people have been using for years.

By the time apartment dwellers start buying electric, gasoline automobiles will seem like quaint relics of the past.

The only problem is that electric cars won't do anything directly to mitigate global warming, because they will still be powered largely by fossil fuel.

"The only problem is that electric cars won't do anything directly to mitigate global warming, because they will still be powered largely by fossil fuel."

But electrical generation is more efficient than an internal combustion engine in terms of carbon output. According to PG&E:

"Additionally, from well to wheel, electric vehicles emit approximately 66 percent less carbon dioxide (CO2) compared with internal combustion vehicles. CO2 is the principal gas associated with global warming."

https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/solar-and-vehicles/opt...

> Gas is what 2 minutes?

Depends quite a lot on where you are. There are 12 gas stations south of 96th St. in Manhattan. SF will have lost 40% of the service stations it had 10 years ago as of 2017. Boston, same. The gas station at Divisadero and Fell has what looks like a 20 minute wait at all times. This is all due to real estate prices. Getting gas in affluent coastal metropolises is not a pleasant experience. Not coincidentally, these are the same people who are buying electric cars.

20 minutes is still 30x faster than charging. And how many charging stations do you think there are south of 96th street?

Tesla charging stations outnumber gas stations in Manhattan. Guess which will continue to decrease in number and which will continue to be deployed.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/225088-tesla-charging-sta...

I don't know exactly the area you're talking about, but 96th Street, Manhattan NY?

Probably lot more than you think[1].

[1] https://www.plugshare.com/

No it's not. 20 is all one needs for DC quick charging.

really? I thought the superfast charging stations could charge a something like the first half of your battery in something like that time? Granted, gets rather slow as you approach 100%..

Some 90% of journeys by vehicle are under 100 miles, well within the range distance of an electric car, a sizeable number of those being your daily commute.

The amount you save in gas money alone would easily pay for a gasoline rental for those occasions where you really do need more and can't possibly stand to wait for a recharge.

Alternatively things like the Chevy Volt exist which get you that interesting pairing of electric and gas generator (it recharges the battery using gasoline, which gets you away from the horribly inefficient variable speeds for combustible engines). The Electric motor will do you for 50something miles on a charge which still covers a good number of journeys, and with the full tank of gas you can get some 400 more miles out of it.

If it was 99.9% of all trips were under 100 miles then it'd be much easier. But I make between 5-10 trips a week. Statistically I'm going to have a range anxiety situation a few times a month, while making a car payment that's 6x higher.

If you regularly need to make 200 mile round trips without charging facilities on both ends, then you're probably not a good candidate for an EV at all. A plug-in hybrid is probably your best bet until there's more charging infrastructure.

My household has 2 cars, and one of the cars stays under 50 miles for 100% of trips since we only use it for commuting.

Couldn't agree more! When I go on a car trip I want it to be a long way away, and a long way from any thing. That's why most electric cars can't be my only car, and I don't want two cars either. For someone like me a plug-in hybrid like the Volt makes a lot more sense because I can drive it ten hours out into the desert when I want to.

The only reason we're reaching a tipping point in the American car market is because families with two cars are so common. If you have two cars it makes perfect sense to have one that can go around your city, and another one that can go anywhere.

Electric cars can do 800+ miles a day easily with sold charging infrastructure. Sure, if you want to do a cannon ball run rent a car, but 4 hours of driving, get lunch, another 4 hours of driving, take a 30 minute break, 2 hours of driving, dinner anther 4 hours of driving get some sleep. That's an extra 30 minute break for 14 hour road trip.

That's a lot of downtime. Most people I know, including myself, when doing a 14 hour roadtrip would stop as infrequently as possible, for a total of 30-60min over the course of the trip. And that figure is including pee break stops, which your calculation presumably didn't.

It's actually really dangerous to do that kind of driving without taking significant breaks on a regular basis. But, sure if you do this regularly enough you can't either rent a gas car or spend an extra hour or 2 then fine. However, nobody I knew has done a trip like that in the last decade.

I think "really dangerous" is overstating it a bit. Driving while fatigued is dangerous, yes, but 14 hours with a 30-60 minute break is hardly that extreme, especially since we could be talking about road trips with multiple drivers.

It's a question of repetition not fatigue. People are just really bad at paying attention to limited stimulus. Swapping drivers every 4 hours or so is a good counter to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_hypnosis. But again if you have multiple drivers you only need one car that takes gas.

There's only one car that can go 4 hours on a charge, and that's the Tesla S. If you charge it for 30 minutes, it can go about another 2.5 hours.

My VW Golf TDI goes more than 750 miles on a tank at 65MPH. That's an entire days' driving for 5 minutes of fueling. Yes, the filthy Volkswageneers have to buy my car back, but it was certainly nice on the range.

While true, that range is from a 12,000$ battery pack which could be put in a 35,000$ car. So, really these cars don't have great range because they don't need to have great range.

How far does a TDI travel on a tank when it's not cheating on its emissions?

>The only reason we're reaching a tipping point in the American car market is because families with two cars are so common. If you have two cars it makes perfect sense to have one that can go around your city, and another one that can go anywhere.

This is exactly right, and I'm glad I finally see someone one these forums saying this. You're probably the first one. I find it rather sad that most people on a forum like this cannot conceive of this at all, presumably because they're all single.

I've had a Leaf for going on a year now and one thing I love about it is that I never need to worry about the inconvenience of stopping at a gas station. :)

But I'm with you that I don't really see the point of public charging stations. All the places I drive during the day are within my ~100 mile range (putting a charger at a grocery store, as they mention in the article, makes little sense given that). If I needed to drive somewhere that was not in my range, I sure as heck wouldn't gamble on one of the few charger stations being available.

It will take a while, but with time the supporting infrastructure for charging will become widespread. Even better, the companies would introduce battery swapping outlets too all over, so you spend two minutes on the highway to get your run down battery swapped with a fully charged one and just drive on. The battery then is no longer a part of your car that you own, but just rent/lease with a specific performance guarantee. You pay the outlet based on some parameters they measure on your run down battery. It'd be an interesting future, and like another post here about the pre vs. post Internet generations, I look forward to seeing such widespread changes coming and changing what people think of as transport and maintenance of one's means of transport. :)

Also the inconvenience for those who live in apartments and condos.

To me this sounds like Coca-Cola or Pepsi - as if those are the only two options. I prefer water. Let's take an auto analogy...

Whilst you guys with your big miles to commute are comparing costs and getting range anxiety, I am doing okay in the UK with a bicycle and a train station. Much to my bitter disappointment I had to spend a total of £22 to fit new brakes on my 'eco-vehicle'. Yep, £22. That is the total cost of everything in the six months I have had my new steed. I could easily pay that per day if I was parking one of those four wheeled planet-trasher things. I never actually time my commute as I enjoy the ride, which is on a far bigger network than afforded to other road users. In fact I travel mostly traffic free on cycle paths, with the fit people jogging and the friendly people walking their dogs.

So, as much as I aspire to own a really cool Tesla, I then think about the practicalities. I would be 'sitting in traffic', having to do the run around one-way systems and having to spend as long as my journey takes to find a parking spot at the other end. The journey would stress me out as with driving there isn't the guarantee that you can get there in a timely fashion.

So then I think about getting a 'Go-Cycle'. Designed by cool F1 engineers, in 'off-road mode' it can do 40 mph with that torque that comes with electric. £4K - not bad, almost toy level expenditure. An 'option' on a car can cost that, e.g. air-con.

But then I think again, I kind of need that exercise! If I didn't cycle then I would have to go to the gym or get a non-office job. I don't want to spend my evenings locked in some gym (why are they always next to really busy roads?). Plus I would have to pay some electricity to charge it up and most of my electricity needs are fairly undemanding, why would I want to increase my electricity bill just so my legs could waste away?

Ah, but range anxiety... I take the train. On the train I treat myself to some quality snacks and some reasonable free wifi. In fact I normally get so stuck in to what I am reading/doing that I am wishing the journey could be just that bit longer so I can finish stuff. I make time on the train productive (although I wish I could just sleep).

Ah, but what about the family, the 'big shop' and the need to take golf clubs places? Well, I am not living life like that. I don't have to live in the middle of nowhere where the nearest vitamin is a 50 mile drive away. In cities everything is on the doorstep, everything except for an unoccupied parking spot. Taxis, trains and even busses mean that I am not totally dependent on the bicycle and its awful 'range anxiety' problems. I might not have 'ludicrous speed' as Tesla sell it, but nobody in a four wheeled vehicle beats me to any office in the city centre, even if plodding along I am doing better than the 9-11 mph that motorists achieve in city centres.

Sadly I see these electric vehicles (car or bicycle) as glorified mobility scooters, and it just does not make sense for me to take one to two tonnes of extra metal and comfy seats with me to work and back every day. I have already sorted out the transport problem for myself with the 'water' option, no 'coke' or 'pepsi' needed.

There are only four petrol stations within London's congestion-charge zone. Already there are far more charging stations. Even if I still had a car the idea of driving into London, charging/'gassing', trying to park, being somewhere on time and being able to afford the whole nightmare is just not something I ever wish to do. These electric cars are not going to change those realities.

Why can't the car generate electricity and last like 5x as long? Each wheel could probably generate quite a bit of static electricity and refuel the tank. Honestly I think hybrids will be the go-to method for the next decade or two, unless they can get batteries to 500+ miles. -- If they get the battery to 1000 miles though it's game over for gasoline cars though.

yeah, plug-in hybrids seem like the best of both worlds; that could still let you go all-electric for the ~90% of your commutes, but w/o the range anxiety or limits to your occasional longer trips. And the fact you end up occasionally driving it like a (hyper-efficient) gasoline car is a totally negligable quantity of emissions in your overall driving.

It's quite possible you can have an all-electric range-extender with over 1000 miles; there was some talk Tesla was looking into current-gen Aluminium-air batteries for that purpose; afaik Al-air is currently the most mature metal-air battery with some actual deployment in limited applications. Downside for conventional aluminium-air is they can't just be recharged once you use up the charge, but the Aluminium needs to be mechanically replaced after the charge has been used up.

Practicalities of that exact scheme sound dubious, but the concept is promising; early gen of some metal-air batteries, even if rechargable could be quite limited in the number of cycles it can last, so be a poor fit for being the main battery bank of an EV car. As a range extender though, this is much less limiting, so could find first use like that, in practice giving 1000 miles range for occasional long trips.

> By comparison, the average new car in the U.S. today sells for about $33,000.

That may be the mean but I'll bet it's nowhere near the median.

yeah, and maybe they should factor in the average car bought and sold, there's still a LOT of car owners/buyers that stick to the used lots.

You can buy a fairly low mileage used Nissan Leaf for approximately $10,000 right now. Look on Craigslist take your pick. For the life of me I cannot imagine why you wouldn't be able to buy the same cars for $5,000 five years from now.

The warranty on the battery pack is 60 months / 60,000 miles. A replacement battery costs $5,500 plus taxes and labor. I wonder how many on Craigslist don't want to write that check.

A fair number of vehicles on Craigslist at the $10k price range have 20-40k miles on them. More than likely the battery will last 100k/10 years. Unlikely someone selling a leaf with 25k miles on it is doing so because they fear the replacement cost of a new battery.

Also, replacement battery costs are dropping year by year. So if one bought a used leaf, drove it for five years and replaced the battery you wouldn't pay $5500.

I wish I had saved a link to it, but a study on affordability marked an average earning household of about $35k/yr as being able to afford an $8,000 car. In order to be able to afford the "average" $33,000 car took a $90k/yr income.

My household income is way more than that and I still found it painful to buy a $20k car. I find it hard to understand why people buy cars at such high relative prices.

People, like myself, don't want to buy into someone's problems. Sure you pay a bit less, but you also have a bit less car. 35,000 miles into a car, how long before you need to buy just another used car? I buy new, and then run it into the ground after the warranty runs out. Typically by then, normal defects have been covered. Change your own oil, filters, tires. Keep up with things like alignments, wash/wax, and keeping things clean. You'd be surprised at how long a new car will last if you take care of it. Conversely, who knows how the previous guy treated it, because most definitely do not care. This will be the seventh year with mine, and it's immaculate.

A bit less, or maybe a lot less. If you're buying an used car, you take your time to look for signs that tell about how well it's been taken care of (or abused). And of course you take it for a test drive. I don't think there are that many critical (as in very expensive / impossible to repair) defects that you can't spot by looking, feeling, smelling, and listening.

In my case, I got my newest car just a few weeks ago. For the price of a battery and a tank of gas to drive it home. It's only 20 years old and runs great, has 230k km on it, and will likely last at least double the kilometers, possibly much much more, up to around 1000k.

I could get a dozen used cars in the $0 to $1000 range and still have $15k or more for repairs before I've spent as much as the average new car costs.

As I'm not a mechanic, I'd rather not deal with it. You sound like someone who enjoys tinkering around with cars. The time you spend keeping a car with 230,000km on it running, I am spending doing other things. And unless that previous owner was obsessive compulsive, it's certainly going to have some funk after that amount of time. I want a car to provide its purpose, with the least path of resistance.

Agree about used vs. new, but I am comparing a $20k new car vs. a $35k new car. Maybe I should be factoring in the type of car here (sedan vs. truck) but otherwise, the only thing the new $35k car has over my $20k new car seem to be frivolous luxuries. Now that I think about it the type of car must be accounting for a lot of the difference.

It's easy to understand why people overextend themselves on vehicle purchases that they really can't afford:

One is to feel "safer" in having a newer vehicle, especially if it's still under warranty.

The second is simply peacock presentation of showing they've spent more money than you'd think they could afford otherwise.

I guess some might simply be a mega-fan of a particular car model and go for it even when it's outside of their financial means, but I haven't seen that very often out of people in average income brackets.

For the vehicles I've been looking at recently (minivans, light trucks), buying a 2-3 year old vehicle with ~35k-50k miles doesn't make sense-- I was seeing savings of at most $2k-$3k, and over the (minimum) 10-year lifespan of the vehicle for me, having a warranty and complete service records was much more appealing.

"Sooner" - I thought it would happen in 2012 when in Germany one of their largest energy provider "secretly" built a network of chargers which are more-less unused today.

Also, Lithium is a finite element, battery production causes quite a lot of environmental damage during extraction, manufacturing and disposal (of course not amortized to future necessary environmental cleanup, but who cares about a remote place in Zimbabwe?), all of them energetically demanding as well and the proposed scheme of paying $80/month flat fee for a battery swap as well as electricity costs might not come cheaper than fossil fuels...

battery production causes quite a lot of environmental damage during extraction

Do you have a link to more info about this? My idealized view is that Lithium is more-or-less there for the taking.[1] E.g. here is what SQM says:

Salar brines are pumped from beneath the saline crust in two different areas of the salar. In one of them, extracted salar brines contain unprecedented concentration levels of potassium and lithium.

salar brines are located in SQM's solar evaporation ponds that cover 1,700 hectares approximately. Atacama Desert is the driest place on earth, with a solar evaporation index of 3,200 millimeters and average precipitations of only 15 millimeters per year. This results in an extremely efficient process of solar energy concentration

Neither "pumping" nor "solar evaporation" seem to be so environmentally damaging. But the devil is in the details, is it not?

Also, lithium will eventually be recycled, much like current lead-acid car batteries are.

[1] http://www.sqm.com/en-us/acercadesqm/recursosnaturales/salmu...

One interesting development is that I see the small "Nissan Leaf" style electrics competing against electric bikes now for the "second car / commuter car" role. For 1/10th the price ($4000) you can get a very top-of-the-line electric bike which is free to park, doesn't get stuck in traffic, has no regulatory costs, more flexibly to charge (removable battery), etc, etc. Of course it also has downsides (weather, exercise, safety), but I see those bikes more and more around Cambridge and they seem to make a lot of sense.

I mostly commute by cycling, and would like to consider an electric for longer commutes. There are a few problems, but the biggest one I'm concerned about is theft. It's so darn easy to steal a bike and get away with it.

I was looking at buying a new car recently. I wanted a commuter car while my wife kept the utilitarian Rav 4. I wanted to buy the GM Spark, the electric version.

http://www.chevrolet.com/spark-ev-electric-vehicle.html

The irony being that a car named Spark originally isn't electric, but only in certain markets.

Spark is somehow crucial in traditional car engines...

...and doesn't exist in electric cars.

hopefully! :)

You should! The Spark EV is awesome.

"Available At Participating Dealers In California, Oregon And Maryland In Limited Quantities"

I don't live in any of those 3 states :(

So, a plug-in hybrid will be lugging around a gas engine and (probably full) gas tank which it won't be needing for 90% of all trips. Am I the only one who thinks this is terribly inefficient?

Not as inefficient as using a 1.5 ton vehicle to move 1 person around.

It's somewhat ironic to see that question posed as a genuine concern, when presumably you already made the choice to travel by automobile, the least efficient form of transportation.

Least efficient in economic/environmental terms, not necessarily in time/safety terms.

This purist talking point infuriates me, but aren't you lugging those 50kw battery when you are not traveling 200 miles and only 30 miles. PHEVs are not your enemy. I see the criticism and some of it is fair, but most of it is not.

That provides redundancy. Redundancy is an insurance. Insurance is inefficient in term of resources but very useful in unforeseen situations.

There's lots of different hybrids out there. You can get buses that only use the electric part when moving from a stop. In that case, you get the main advantage of electric (torque) and then combustion takes over for normal running conditions. I think something like that is more sensible.

> In part, this is because electric cars are gadgets, and technological change in gadgets is rapid.

Does anyone take this to be valid logic? It doesn't seem like a very useful analysis to me.

Because it's already late 2016 and we always expected them by 2018?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com