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Comment by slumdev | Hacker News Reader

Only sort of.

John Q. Public has no reason to buy an EV. Today's gas prices don't put the same dent in his pocket that $5/gallon* gas did. And there's good reason to believe that $5/gallon gas is probably never coming back.

I am for EVs, Tesla, and anything that can keep us from making large portions of Earth unarable and uninhabitable. But most people's car-buying decisions are driven by economic realities, not environmental concern.

*$5/gallon US average price - I understand it's frequently this high on the coasts and in large cities, and it's almost always higher in countries with appropriately levied fuel taxes.

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If commercials tell me anything about what car buyers value, there are so many other apsects John Q Public would appreciate!

John likes fast cars. And oh boy my Nissan Leaf is fun to drive! Mountain driving feels like floating silently into the air. Instant torque, no gear shifting.

John may also appreciate the extra leg room, as even a compact car gains a lot of room without a gas engine.

John also likes saving money and convenience. And while gas isn't super expensive, I wake up every morning with a full charge for about $1. Gas stations just aren't a part of my life. (charging away from home is still a PITA, FWIW)

John might also like skipping the majority of standard maintenance. No oil changes. No random belts. Less brake wear (I think?) from regeneration. Sure, after 100k you'll probably want a new battery, but it's a known cost that's dropping.

Maybe EVs need to drop the 'environmental' badge and focus on how awesome they are.

> And oh boy my Nissan Leaf is fun to drive!

just curious, what else have you driven to compare it against? I rarely hear even hardcore EV enthusiasts describe that car as "fun".

Fun is pretty subjective. I'm not a car guy and don't have much experience with nice cars.

But, this isn't a nice car- I paid $6,500. I'm just comparing it to every ICE car I've driven (aside from that one time I got 20 minutes in a Lamborghini), and definitely every ICE car you can purchase used for $6,500.

But given the acceleration and smoothness, I'm just betting it's more fun to drive than nearly every car described in commercials fun to drive.

for $6500 you're probably right, unless you're willing to purchase a "project" vehicle. I bet it's a lot more peppy than a 1.5L honda civic. I mainly ask because I see the MSRP for a new leaf is almost $30k, which is where you can start getting into some new entry-level performance cars or a lightly used bmw coupe.

> Less brake wear (I think?) from regeneration.

On the Model 3, if you enable Hold mode, then it's possible to drive without EVER using the brakes outside of emergency situations. The rotors and pads will theoretically last forever outside of environmental damage.

While I like the idea of Hold mode, not regularly using the brake will cause the breaking reflex action to fade with time. You really want to have a good "slam the breaks" reflex if you drive a car On the other hand, maybe Tesla feels their automatic systems will break better than humans and this is not really a problem to worry about.

I'm not a Tesla driver, but I would guess the Hold mode doesn't turn off "slam the brakes" when the driver needs to stop fast.

I think njarboe feels that it is the human reflex to 'slam the brakes' will fade if the human doesn't use it enough in 'hold' mode, not the mechanism in the car.

Correct. Moving your foot from the accelerator to the brake is a much practiced motion and your body can do it very quickly without much thought. I rarely use cruse control, so when I do and think I might want to brake soon, I get nervous. I don't really know where the brake is. At that point I put my foot back on the accelerator and now my body knows how to hit the brake again.

Which is why the cybertruck announcement was so huge. The styling dominated the headline, but IMO the biggest news was the pricing. $40K for a full size medium duty crew cab pickup is cheaper than the equivalent gasoline truck.

Yeah, the cybertruck gives me hope, too.

If the $40K model had a longer range, I'd place a preorder.

As a counter point to this, gas in Atlanta costs $3.11 for premium. A BMW 3 series gets about 30mpg. Driving 1000 miles per month in the BMW costs $104 in gas.

GA Power offers $.01 per kilowatt hour rates in the middle of the night. A Tesla Model 3 gets 2.91 miles / kWh. Driving 1000 miles per month in the Tesla costs $3.44.

Fueling the Tesla costs $1200 less per year than the BMW if you drive an average number of miles, and we haven't even gotten to the cost of oil changes and brake pads.

If 1000 miles / month is an average US mileage... well then maybe there needs to be some way how to lower that.

Apparently it's closer to 14k miles / year. I underestimated at 12k.

Isn't this ignoring other parts of the world? Europe single handidly can drive this market. Also large portions of asia that would love affordable electric vehicles (not ness "cars") for their densely populated cities. Never mind the short range cargo vehicle market throughout the world.

Europe currently faces a bit of an chicken and egg problem with the EV market. European manufacturers don't produce meaningful EVs which results in no subsidies that would accelerate the market (or those subsidies are also available to hybrids in their lineup which won't be driven in EV mode). In turn they don't have any incentive to move forward with their EV lineup, as most people are loyal to their local manufacturers.

> as most people are loyal to their local manufacturers.

This is perhaps true for a few countries making good cars. The rest of EU is more than happy to drive German and French cars (if they can afford it, of course).

The EU has introduced fleet CO2 emission standards that are going to go up every year. As a consequence the European manufacturers are scrambling to design and produce ev's.

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