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Comment by krzyk | Hacker News Reader

> And they're far cheaper and more available than they are in the US

Ekhem, I think you live in a really wealthy place in EU, maybe Norway that subsidies electric cars so e.g. plumbers are driving Teslas.

But in the real world, electric cars are too expensive for normies to buy.

Car sharing - OK, that's available - but I'm yet to drive such car, because in in city in Poland there are only few such cars available (for a normal price) to drive. And I would like to test them out - but not at the price of driving to the other side of the city.

Car rental - tried that - either not available or too expensive to rent (trip to Italy last year).

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Nope, I live in Hungary. Also Teslas aren't really the electric vehicles of choice in Europe. Volkswagens are much more practical.

I haven't been to Poland, but I'm surprised that the car sharing options there are worse than in Hungary.

Dude, you're not in contact with the reality of most people. Most europeans outside of the blue banana buy second-hand cars, which are 99.9% gas cars.

Everyone is, in fact, aware of the price hike of new gas cars to try to make electric cars competitive. Not so long ago it was possible to buy new gas car <15k.

I remember some car tests on YT. I don't think any of VW cars make 400 km. And in winter will be more like 210 km.

There used to be a large network of electric cars in Warsaw by one of the utilitiy companies, Innogy GO. They had a few hundred cars, very nice BMWs (i3 and i3s), decent prices but, sadly, didn't survive the lockdowns and folded in early 2021.

That company existed solely to procure carbon credits for RWE. RWE is the company clearing ancient forest in Hambach for its brown coal open pit mine.

Could you share more details about this? I have seen different misuses of carbon credits mechanism, this one seems quite novel and creative (in a negative way).

They are cheaper TCO right now, but not initial investment.

Even initial investment in the EU is comparable to gas.

A lot of that depends on having access to relatively cheap charging at home/work. If you only have the public chargers, I really doubt the TCO is cheaper for an EV.

As on owner of BEV - if you are unable to charge at home, no chance to ride cheaper than ICE.

I bought my used 2012 Nissan Leaf in 2015 for $6000. I left it sitting uncharged for 8 months while I travelled and lost no discernable range, I have done absolutely no maintenance other than tires and windshield wipers, and I can sell it for $6000.

That's not bad. And I'm assuming from the fact that it's a Nissan Leaf that you're in the US. I looked into buying a Leaf at one point, but I was afraid that the battery of a used Leaf would give out.

The Leaf doesn't give you a capacity figure but when I bought, it it was down "2 bars" and would estimate about 128km range on a full charge.

Today it is still down "2 bars" and gives me 114km range estimate on a full charge.

I do drive it like a grandma though (since I'm unemployed and not in a big rush like most drivers).

Low range, uncooled battery unsuitable for fast charging (degrades - Nissans own words), chademo and type 1 charging sockets only? Plenty low priced ones with bad batteries (funnily enough most from Norway), battery replacement more expensive than buying another car ($6K).

Whats the SOH on yours?

Mine doesn't even have a port for fast charging, but I do charge at 50A (about 3 hours) to 100% in a hot climate.

The old girl is still giving about 80% of original range. I also don't drive it on the highway unless it is the only option.

“In the real world, computers are too expensive for normies to buy”. Was true once too, but things move fast.

A huge difference is going to be in four or five years when currently new cars start really showing up on the used car market. At the same time, there will be more entry-level priced new EVs (in part because of laws like this, but also just the normal technology development cycle)

A large part of the cost savings of those used cars will be cut by need to get a new battery.

Though, on the other hand, if the driving patterns in the EU favor extremely short trips in a temperate climate then maybe that's actually fine.

That is a common fear, but no, it’s not matched by real-world experience. Modern battery tech should usually last the life of the car. The batteries are often fairly modular, so if some individual cells do unexpectedly fail, often the battery can be fixed by just replacing one of 20 or so modules.

European climate has a big range, you have Greece/Spain and you have Norway. And countries in the middle have few months with temperatures below and at 0 degrees Celsius.

The TCO of a Tesla Model 3 is less than that of a Toyota Camry over a 15 year period. If you can afford a new Toyota Camry, you can also afford to finance a Model 3 to take advantage of the TCO savings.

If you can't, then you should be buying used. But in that case the phaseout of availability for new vehicles doesn't affect you.

I'm about 30% confident that a Toyota Camry will last 15 years. I'm about 2% confident that a Tesla Model 3 will last 15 years.

Ask again in 20 years, I expect to update these values.

> The TCO of a Tesla Model 3 is less than that of a Toyota Camry over a 15 year period.

Nobody can know this because the Model 3 was introduced mid-2017, so the very oldest ones are now only under 6 years old. We need to wait until 2032 to have 15 year data on just the first year production run logevity and TCO.

In that case nobody can know it about any car, except maybe a Lada. You can't buy a brand new 2007 Toyota Camry this year, and the 2022 Toyota Camry is a very different car than the 2007 Toyota Camry.

> You can't buy a brand new 2007 Toyota Camry this year, and the 2022 Toyota Camry is a very different car than the 2007 Toyota Camry.

That is not how TCO over 15 years is calculated.

You need data for the same fleet of cars over 15 years, you don't buy the same car over and over for 15 years. It's not relevant that the 2022 model is different, the TCO is for the 2007 model year cars (using 2007 as the example).

So for a 2007 Camry, we could poll all owners of Camrys built in 2007 to get data about their TCO over the past 15 years. We can't do that for a Tesla Model 3 since nobody has owned one for 15 years so there is nobody to poll yet.

A 2022 Camry is not going to have the same reliability as a 2007 Camry. It might be better, it might be worse but you don't know because they are two very different cars.

The TCO for cars is based on projected reliability, whether it's a Tesla or a Toyota. It's a mathematical model based on incomplete data in both cases.

Camry price starts in my country from 38k EUR, that is about twice the amount and I would use to buy a new car still feel guilty for overspending.

And Tesla 3 starts at 47k EUR.

Last new car I bought was for 13k EUR (but that was 10 years ago, so it is not directly comparable) - segment B is enough for me.

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