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Comment by CharlieDigital | Hacker News Reader

Completely anecdotal, but I recently drove by a mall parking lot here in NJ and noticed that there was a whole section parked with new Teslas. There have typically been inventory in this lot as there is a sales/service center ~1 mile away. But I did a double take because there were so many more than usual.

I myself recently purchased a Prius Prime (plugin hybrid) and it's been fantastic. 1000 miles on the first tank and $32 to fill it. My driving pattern means that 3 days a week, I'll burn a few miles worth of fuel. But otherwise, I'm electric. I like that I can charge it up overnight on a standard 120v outlet and didn't need any new wiring or installing a charger. I like that I'll never have range anxiety and I can always just drive it as a very efficient gas vehicle.

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Quaker Bridge Mall I am guessing? There are always so many teslas parked there.

But do you like having to constantly change oil, filters etc.?

You say it as if they had to change oil once a month. In their case is probably every 6 months minimum.

10,000 mile service interval. I probably won't need to change it for a year, but will do so at 6mo. interval I think.

I think changing oil is the least annoying thing about owning a gas vehicle. I think the 100% top problem is Smog checks and catalytic converter replacements.

A cat usually has to be replaced only once during a car's life and the interval is so long it's very unlikely to affect the initial purchaser.

I've had to replace about 4 in the lifetime of the cars I've owned. If you replace a car every 5 years then you may not have to deal with it, but if you are a broke college student driving an older car or someone who buys a car and drives it for 10+ years it's a real problem. Especially when the engine starts to get more tired or someone uses a cordless Sawzall on it...

Every other repair I've made to older cars has been relatively painless compared to the price of a catalytic converter. Radiators, head gaskets, clutches, and brake master cylinders were a couple hundred bucks. But catalytic converters? Some of them are up to $2500 just for the part.

Electric cars have their own long term reliability issues, but for gas cars my main problem is the cat. Everything else lasts with good maintenance. Unless it's a Chrysler...

Oh I always buy cars of 10+ years old and keep them until they become too expensive to maintain.

One of them blew a transmission which was the end of that obviously. Another one had an ECU error but drove normally so I kept it until I left the country anyway.

But a cat never failed on my and then I'd just switch to another car anyway. But I've never spent more than 2200 on a car anyway :) The last one was not bad though, full leather heated seats, automatic everything etc. Really nice condition too, it's just that big cars are really unpopular and thus expensive here due to the road tax.

But these days I just don't even bother with a car anymore.

Constantly, like every 10k miles or once a year.

How much do you enjoy endless service centre visits to correct manufacturing defects?

On a Toyota?

No with a tesla

Those are pretty trivial things that don't involve a huge amount of time, hassle, or money. When I'm thinking of the downsides of ICE vehicles, and there are many, those would be at the very bottom of the list.

I like not having to wait half an hour to fill the tank.

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