Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Oh, oh, I can answer this, given ownership of a ten year old Leaf ($35K) and a fifteen year old Scion xB/rebadged Toyota Echo ($20K): the $20K car is still going to win in TCO. Because the Leaf already starts out $15K in the hole. That's a lot of oil and coolant changes. That's a lot of brake pads. And those are pretty much the three things an ICE needs done versus BEV. After 100K miles, the Scion needed a $1500 clutch job. After 50K miles, the Leaf needs a new $5K battery pack (it'll last a few more years, but it's coming).

The Leaf still needs tires. It still needed the 12V accessory battery changed out. It still needs a cabin air filter changed once in a while. The Leaf has been reliable, nearly maintenance-free, and pretty appliance-like. But the Scion is a close second. We'll probably never buy an ICE again, that's how much we've like the Leaf and BEV in general. But "out of touch" doesn't even begin to describe someone arguing that those willing to spend $20K should spent twice as much because "TCO".

You left out the very important and difference making cost of gasoline. Which over 10 years of driving would more than make up the difference in cost.

That may depend on where you live, and what your electricity consumption already is. In CA, for example, with our tiered billing and PG&E's award-winning business practices, it's pretty easy for an electric car to rack up quite an energy bill. If you were already using electricity up to the top of your tier, the add for the car will be at $$$ rate.

So they also have non-tiered plans for electric car owners but those are time of use. If you use them at peak for whatever reason, $$$ again. It's a little tricky.

It won't be as expensive as liquid fuel, to be sure, but the savings over time might not be as high as you'd expect. Offsetting with solar seems to be the popular option around San Jose, where homeowners tend to be particularly affluent.

Beware NEM 3.0.

Note that the CA utilities are working to try to keep milking you even if you have solar. The most loathsome part of it is that the utilities are trying to charge you $10/month/kilowatt-peak for the array you own, even if they push zero energy onto the grid. From my perspective, that's ridiculous rent-seeking. Personally I'm working towards getting off the grid entirely.

The $10 a month is a service charge to be connected to the grid with a meter, so you can send energy to the grid to get money back, or use the grid when your solar isn't generating enough energy.

I think that's fair. It pays for the meter, the transformer you're connected to, the grid circuit, etc.

It's only fair if the people making polluting electricity pay to clean up the pollution they create

Your reply is nonsensical / a non sequitur. Where I live the local utility is 100% renewable anyway.

Then it's fair.

However people making electricity by polluting our planet are stealing from us, so should have to pay more, have to disadvantage those people more than you disadvantage solar producers

You've misinterpreted the proposal. It's $10/mo per installed kilowatt-peak of solar panels behind the meter. There's _another_ fixed charge that is more reasonable.

You're paying for that difference upfront, however. Is gasoline in the U. S. likely to go up faster than the, say, S&P 500, where one could put that extra $15K until it's time to buy more gasoline? Historical data say "no". Gas was $3-$4/gallon when I moved to Seattle 20 years ago, and it continues to stay between $3-$4.

There's lots to like about electric cars (again, so much so that I'll never buy another ICE), but IMO any cost savings is going to be pretty far down the list. After ten years of EV ownership, I'd almost pay the difference in price so I never, ever have to go out of my way to visit a gas station again. Man, what a hassle that is once out of the habit. But EVs are just generally better vehicles that make an ICE seem like the rattling, primitive contraption that it is. That doesn't sell cars because one needs to own an EV to realize that. So to get folks to the ownership, we tell them it'll save money on gas. Which is technically true, but not the reason to buy EVs.

We’ve put 50K miles on our Leaf. Assuming 35mpg like our Scion xB, and that’s about $5K worth of gas. Assuming electricity to be free, it still doesn’t make up the difference. Of course the savings go up the more you drive, but how many miles are you going to put on a car that can only go 100 miles at a time on its best day?

What range do you get on a 10yo leaf? My GF had to sell hers (2016) because she couldn’t get more than 70mi out of it. Which unless you kill the battery all the way, it gives you anxiety past 25mi one way. In Florida that’s just going to school for her. Getting groceries on the way would’ve put her out of range.

50-60 miles these days. Used to get 100 when it was new, if one didn't have a leadened foot. IOW, yeah, it's a city car at this point. Redmond->Seattle and back is about the limit these days.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com