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Comment by goles | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps not applicable to NYC, but isnt it kind of troubling that people who cant afford a luxury vehicle (55-100k) could be put in a position where they have to spend more money (gas) to go fill up out of their way, taxed for being poor, or shut up and take public transit (if it even exists where they live)?

Surely no one driving an EV ever got to their position to buy one driving an ICE.

Edit: happy this comment inspired lots of spirited discussion. Would like to stress the "Perhaps not in NYC" part and if this trend spreads to say Oklahoma.

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Not in New York... But our Bolt, while not the cheapest car ever, certainly doesn't match your description here. One doesn't have to buy a Tesla to get an EV.

Would you be willing to share what the car has cost in total (maint, elec, insur, ect) over the years? Genuinely curious.

Not who you originally asked, but I bought one of the cheaper EVs earlier this year (Hyundai Kona, slightly more expensive than the Bolt but in a similar class). With fuel savings included, (which, for our use case was between $100-$130/month), it was hard to find an ICE vehicle that met our needs for cheaper when we were shopping. We did have to compromise slightly on size (it's smaller than we wanted) in a way that we wouldn't have had to with an ICE vehicle, but so far, it's absolutely been cheaper and easier than my previous ICE vehicles. As I said to some relatives not that long ago: even if I found out 100% conclusively that electric vehicles had exactly zero environmental benefit over ICE vehicles, I'm not sure I'd ever go back. I just like it more as a vehicle.

> We did have to compromise slightly on size

This is my main trouble with EVs available so far. If I want something that's not substantially smaller than what our current Ford Galaxy has, and I want to still have the tow bar and roof box, there are very few EVs available and they cost $$$.

We're talking stuff like the Nio ES8 at $70k+, or the Mercedes EQS at $105k+.

Or you can go down the van route and get a Peugeot e-Traveller ($65k) or Mercedes EQV ($85k) or something like this, you get even more space but your range is abysmal at 150 to 200 miles.

Meanwhile on the ICE side you can get the spacious Dacia Jogger for just $15k new! Then you have $40k+ left to spend on gas and maintenance...

I daily a 2015 LEAF, bought in Dec 2014.

It had a warranty battery repair (to replace a failing module, free of charge to me but a possible concern long-term).

As the guy who turns all the wrenches on the family cars, it’s been incredibly low maintenance. Wiper blades twice, cabin air filter three times, and I had to charge the 12V battery once in the peak of COVID shutdowns when the car sat for 8 weeks or so with a Bluetooth adapter plugged into the OBD2 port. It’s about due for tires all around.

It was $32K before $10K in government cheese, so $22K for a new car was pretty good, but, like any then-new car, it has been a lot more expensive than buying a 2011 Honda CR-V would have been. I paid that premium in order to see if I'd enjoy having an EV. Overall, I have, but only because we have a 2005 Honda CR-V for long-distance travel/road trips, etc. The LEAF is entirely impractical as an only car (though other EVs are better in this regard).

Our electricity is expensive in MA, so energy costs about $0.06 per mile. That compares slightly favorably (about half) to a 35 mpg car buying $3.70/gal gas and doing periodic oil changes.

Around town or to neighboring towns, we choose to drive the LEAF almost 100% of the time. If it had a better CarPlay story, we'd probably choose it 100% of the time. (If I'm not sure where I'm going, the aftermarket Android head unit with CarPlay maps that I installed in the CR-V is easier and safer than the terrible factory nav in the LEAF.)

The newer model Leaf has CarPlay, and as you say, it’s a deciding factor in which car we take.

EVs don’t have to cost 55k. Most of the people I know who drive them paid under $30k, almost half of the average gas-powered vehicle, and they’re so much cheaper than ICE vehicles to maintain and operate that they’re saving considerably more over the life of the vehicle.

Transit is cheaper still but has the problem that it’s nowhere near as subsidized as private vehicle travel but expected to have high fare box recovery, and the transit experience is directly worsened by private vehicle use. Simply subsidizing car ownership less would help there by not masking the true costs and reducing congestion.

I think it’s more troubling to view owning a car as a base right that everyone should have. It’s better as a luxury. We want fewer cars and for people to live in walkable areas where cars are not needed.

100% agree. But…. how do we get there? A LOT of people in the US living in very (gross) spread-out areas where there is horrible pedestrian infrastructure. The infrastructure that does exist seems like it was put in place to mock those without cars (sidewalks on extremely loud stroads). I currently live in such a place.

The end-point I want is for people to live in dense walkable areas by default. But people don’t live there and the few places that exist like that are disgustingly expensive because they are (surprise surprise) desirable patterns of building cities. So we need to build more of it. It will be a very big very energy intensive build-out program that will take decades. So the question is: Is it better or worse for the environment to move people to ICE so they can live in their existing buildings or is it better to build entirely new infrastructure so they can walk.

Maybe my thinking is too black and white. I want the latter but I’m not sure the costs to the environment in the short term are justified. Maybe the long term benefit justifies it. I don’t know.

I think there are two key moves: one is removing the subsidies for private car usage so the true costs are more visible and people can make better choices (c.f. The High Cost of Free Parking), and another would be removing low-density requirements – most expensive cities could increase density rapidly if, say, every homeowner had the ability by-right to add an ADU or convert a single house into a multi-family without decades of recreational lawsuits from the neighborhood NIMBYs. Anywhere built before 1950 probably has a bunch of neighborhoods with little business zones which are marginally profitable because there isn’t quite enough local business but would do well if the density went up by 20-30%, and the profits would probably encourage a virtuous cycle of other neighbors upgrading.

I am homeless and live in a 2001 Dodge grand Caravan. So they’re not even thinking about people like me. Nor the hundreds of people I see parked out in the deserts of Arizona because they can’t afford housing.

If they want EV adoption, they also have to Provide housing.

That's a great position to have—anywhere in the developed world but the USA.

Here, it's a great aspirational position to have, but wholly impractical in the short or medium term.

Perhaps, if the Republican Party genuinely collapses within the next couple of years, it might become possible to pass the kinds of massive infrastructure overhauls required to make owning a car anything but a necessity in the vast majority of this country. Until and unless something that drastic happens, their adamant resistance to that kind of measure makes it very clearly impossible.

In short, high density housing, apartments. Not everyone wants to rent a little apartment the rest of their lives, particularly with the incredible limitations they bring with what you can do at home. There's a whole world out there that apartment dwellers can't participate in, and most people would prefer not to live in an apartment if given the choice and the financial means.

That’s fine but it’s not a fantasy that we should be specifically subsidizing for people that cannot afford it.

It is simply unnecessary to own a car in New York city and my impression is that poor folks in the city already largely don't own a car. The only way to maintain more gas stations than the market naturally demands is to subsidize them or otherwise distort the market. In NYC it would involve taxing everyone including the poor to subsidize the well off.

> Perhaps not applicable to NYC, but isnt it kind of troubling that people who cant afford a luxury vehicle (55-100k) could be put in a position where they have to spend more money (gas) to go fill up out of their way, taxed for being poor, or shut up and take public transit?

Base electric vehicles like the Fiat 500e can be had for ~35k [1], if all you're interested in is commuting without getting wet choose a Twizy for ~10k [2], and if you're fine with whatever and just need something cheap, get a motorcycle for ~5k.

[1] https://ev-database.org/car/1328/Fiat-500e-3plus1-42-kWh

[2] https://evcompare.io/cars/renault/renault_twizy/

Twizy's doors don't have glass windows, so you will get wet in it. Also, it doesn't have heating (or cooling), so in terms of thermal and rain comfort, it's closer to riding a motorcycle than driving a car.

This is a lazy line of thinking that argues we should always maintain the status quo, no matter how lousy, if the transition costs money: won't somebody think of the poor!

"If we outlaw child labor, isn't it kind of troubling that families who particularly rely on their 8-year old's wages will be the ones losing the most..."

The fact of the matter is that EVs have gotten cheaper, they are getting cheaper, and there are government subsidies to help people buy them. Maybe those subsidies could be even larger, or better targeted, or means-tested? Or, yes, in fact we could improve public transit!

Anyway, I'd give this argument more credence if the same partisans for sticking with fossil fuels had demonstrated any kind of consistent care for the world's poor in any other context, but I haven't seen that.

"""The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.""" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

This effect is true but the thesis is dumb. The rich are rich because of the compounding effects of wealth. Not that small fraction spent on durable goods.

I think the OP demonstrates the compounding effects of wealth, just not in a direct money-creates-money way.

Shrug. It’s a tiny drop in the bucket.

When you're rich, it is.

When you're poor, you can't afford the bucket.

Having the drop in the bucket is not, however, a path to being rich.

It is when your standard for "rich" is framed in terms of "can afford to buy good boots".

Which is not the definition implied by the original quote so great. We agree.

What are you even talking about? This is literally called "boots theory" and is explicitly giving boots as an example. That's what "framing in terms of" means.

If you read the discussion, the quote responded to included the claim

> The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Which is a dumb claim. As you’ll note, I said that the general effect was true but this claim was wrong.

You appear to be arguing something tangential

> The rich are rich because of the compounding effects of wealth. Not that small fraction spent on durable goods.

The less you (have to) spend on goods and services the more you can keep invested to compound.

If 100% (or more) of your income is taken up by paying for necessities (shelter, food, transportation), what do you have to compound?

* https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-biggest-lie-in-personal-fin...

No, this is the misleading thing. Which your article is largely agreeing with me on.

The compounding effect of wealth scales with the amount of wealth you have more than the incremental savings you’re likely to earn. Trimming your expenses won’t make a difference. If you have no wealth and low income then the compounding is irrelevant. Even if your income is high it’s very hard to acquire “wealth”.

Poor folks will be poor even if you chop their expenses by half.

Basically all EV sales are new EVs and the used EV market is still very hot.

There will be a lot more “cheap” EVs in 5-10 years as the first EVs depreciate and sell for $3,000 type thing.

It is crazy how fast that is happening here in the UK. Just over a year ago a friend bought an ev VW Golf and was convinced by the delay telling him the current resale value for a year old 2nd hand ev Golf was only a 10% drop.

He took the car to tide him over to a great deal we were supposed to be getting at work on EV cars. Went back to sell the car to the dealer and the chap said best he could offer would be £8k (well over a 50 percent drop), and he actually didn't want it even at that price as he had 5 on his forecourt already.

Last summer we wanted an automatic, and vaguely looked at EVs - and they were totally out of our budget. This year we totally could have bought one.

I'd say it is possible to geta £5k ev here in the uk now, and in the next year or two it will get even better for the 2nd hand market.

It’s NYC. There’s going to be an underground gas distribution that fills that gap.

China has EVs that aren't luxury and I'm pretty sure Europe does as well if I am reading your comment correct you are trying to insinuate that EVs are luxury. If not your comment needs some clarity.

What is the least expensive EV one could buy in the middle of nowhere North America?

I'm open to anyones knowledge in this area I dont have but our primary mode of transportation when we were struggling was a $2,000 USD 30 year old Toyota.

If you don't think EVs are a luxury than we both need some clarity.

On cars.com right now it looks like the electric price floor is roughly $5k, which gets you a 10 year old Nissan Leaf, though it looks like they mostly have lower mileage than comparable-age ICE cars.

Used car prices have ballooned in recent years, so I’m not sure how much lower you can go without buying a complete heap. As a comparison I looked at the cheapest Nissan Sentras and Versas on the market, which are about $4k, a bit older, and have 200k miles.

A car with a 40 mile effective range is not a realistic solution.

Why not? It would have done my commute when I was struggling in Idaho and would easily do my commute since moving to civilization.

> I'm pretty sure Europe does as well

Does it? A cursory search seems to put an (used) EV at around 10k$ at best. Poor people definitely do not drive 10k$ cars here. Hell, even my tech-adjacent friends in their twenties rarely own anything more expensive than 3k$-ish.

The scrap value of a car is now $3k, so cars that actually run are north of that price these days.

They may not drive a $10k used ICE, but if you add up the cost in fuel & oil changes, it's likely equivalent.

The real problem is that right now a $10k used EV is almost certainly an old Leaf or Kia Soul EV etc with extremely low range and degraded battery (because they lacked proper thermal mgmt, mainly). So they're not really directly usable by most people. This will eventually change though; in 10 years there'll be boatloads of Model 3s or Ioniqs or Bolts etc on the used market. And yes, they'll be more expensive than a used ICE but they'll also be cheaper to maintain.

ICE are to EV as HDs are to SSDs. My intuition is that because there’s a floor to the cost of HDs (I think at some point it was around $35) and no practical floor to SSDs, there might be a similar story with cars. I know it’s really a bad analogy.

Cars still need brakes (for now) and tires and lots of other stuff, but there’s a huge amount of infrastructure built in a car to help it blow up million year old leaves. EVs are simpler so should be able to be made cheaper (eventually).

Maybe that means that what we expect from a car changes. If it costs you $10,000 to do all the stuff for a gasoline engine then a $1,000 AC isn’t a huge addition and there are maybe a bunch of other thousand dollar decisions that get added to make the cars cost what they cost.

Makes me think of stuff that used to be luxury items that came in expensive packaging and came with expensive accessories and now the actual item is so cheap the old packaging costs more than the actual item.

Sorta, but. It's not really analogous. The "floor" on EV cost is the battery. It's the hugest bottleneck and although prices / kWh have come down drastically it's still extremely high because supply is just not there.

Meanwhile the floor on an ICE is more the complexity of manufacturing and labour. Some of which exists also for EVs.

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