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Comment by dirtdobber | Hacker News Reader

I own a EV and I love it. But it was pretty expensive (60K+) and from what I've seen, the trade-in value for my car is effectively half of what I bought it for after just 1 year of ownership.

I'm not complaining too much since I plan to keep this car until the wheels fall off anyways, but it does seem like the accelerated depreciation of EVs versus gasoline cars is a good reason not to buy at the moment.

EDIT: I should clarify, my vehicle is a PHEV. I couldn't commit to giving up gasoline given the added convenience of being able to quickly fill up on gas for long road trips. That being said, I drive less than 10K miles a year and probably only use ~1 tank of gas every 2 months.

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After calculating fuel vs. electricity costs and analyzing my driving patterns I got pure BEV. I have real 200 miles highway winter range and it’s ok for my trips. It’s very important to do some basic research and don’t trust 400 miles WLTP range advertising. I would call this advertising basically a scam. A road trip with one charging stop is no big deal.

My car only gets 26 miles to the charge, which, believe it or not, is more than enough for my daily use (I live within 5 miles of my work). That being said, I'm not actually convinced that I'm saving money when I look at my electricity cost vs cost of gasoline. Still, the added convenience of just plugging in when I get home and hardly ever having to stop at a gas station is nice.

Have electricity cost of <7€ now for 100 km. Petrol cost was close to 20€. Plus I save a lot on repairs. Previous car was old and I got tired of lying under it.

I guess car choice and calculation behind it is very individual. I never wanted Tesla, but got best trade—in conditions there.

It's costing me roughly $4.50 per charge (we pay ~$0.30/kWh and it takes roughly 15kWh to fully charge). My MPG is ~20mpg, and gas costs around $3.50 per gallon, so I have roughly the same fuel costs whether I'm charging or putting gas in the tank.

I am saving a bit on repairs as well. I was spending close to $1500 a year on maintenance for the old car (but it was 8 years old and had 100K miles on it). We also had a nice tax incentive for buying EVs/PHEVs, so that helps.

Where are you located that you’re paying $0.30/kWh but also only $3.50/gal for gas? Is this at-home charging? Some kind of seasonal or peak time of use rate?

I'm on the east coast of the US in a large metro area. My last electric bill was $585 and I used 1800kWh for the month, so my costs are roughly $0.32 cents per kWh currently.

Gas at the closest station to my house is currently at $3.40 (according to Google Maps)

EDIT: I don't see anywhere on my bill that I'm paying a peak rate. I do charge my car at night though, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm paying the electric company extra just to do that.

Long road trips are awesome in a Tesla. I've done 4 2000 mile trips in one. Stopping for a bathroom, meal or sleep every 250 miles is something you'd be doing anyways, and the trips are invariably mostly well covered interstates.

It's the medium distance trips that are more annoying. On a 400 mile trip you'd normally just drive that straight. Adding 20 minutes for a charge is sometimes annoying.

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