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Comment by tjohns | Hacker News Reader

If you look at TCO, electric cars are actually competitive with some of the cheapest ICE cars on the market.

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/06/04/tesla-model-3-lifecycle...

I don't entirely buy the author's depreciation argument, since that assumes you're trading in your car every 5 years as opposed to driving it for 15-20+ years until it ready to literally fall apart.

But even still, when you consider significantly reduced maintenance and fuel costs, it's not that far off.

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Depends. My current SUV costs $1100 a year to insure including tax. I just got a quote for a Tesla Model 3 for the same level of coverage. As of today it's $6014 a year without tax.

I don't drive enough to make up a difference of $5000+ a year in gas and maintenance.

$6k/year for insurance? Wow. I did not expect that.

Yeah it's why I usually have to mention that context matters a lot when talking TCO . Where I live, not only is insurance more costly, electricity is also considerably more expensive (it's hit 20 cents a kilowatt hour though starting to come back down). Then I also have to factor in both the higher upfront costs of the car, but also the costs upgrade my home to support charging the car at home.

For a lot of people that calculation is true, but there's also going to be people like me where the TCO statement is hilariously untrue.

Counterpoint I just ensured a PHEV Tucson and Ioniq 5 (full ev) for $1800 a year. Pretty reasonable. It’s probably a Tesla specific problem because they are in the luxury segment or maybe it’s their atrocious build quality.

I don't think it's Tesla specific, seems more like at least for me EV's in general are significantly more expensive to insure. Mr. Rumor Mill is that part of it is just because of higher rates of cars being written off due to damage to the battery packs. Of course, we all know how trust worthy Mr. Mill is so take it for what it's worth.

> As of today it's $6014 a year without tax.

Wow, that just sucks, even more so if you actually shopped around.

I was quoted $2-300/month for my BMW i4, switched insurance companies and got it back down to $100/month.

I have an S and the cost is $2k a year after tax, about on par with the insurance costs of my old Camry. Probably worth shopping around a bit more if you’re still in the process.

TCO doesn’t matter, financing is not based on TCO it’s based on sticker cost. The upfront costs of EVs are still prohibitively expensive for a lot of people even if TCO is lower.

“Being poor is expensive.”

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