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Comment by SlightlyLeftPad | Hacker News Reader

The amount of long term damage that is actively being inflicted to the scientific research community alone because of Elon’s crusade all but guarantees that I will never buy another Tesla. The one I have is a great car but I don’t want to be targeted by extremist groups on any side and I don’t want to financially support the economic and social collapse of my country. Elon and thus Tesla is rightfully being labeled as an enabler. If their board agrees, they’ll do the right thing and choose a new CEO.

I’m still a strong supporter of EVs but I’m frustrated that EV owners still pay at least as much for electricity and registration as ICE cars pay for gas (in California). Hybrids still make more financial sense in California.

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Here in the PNW we pay $5 for a full charge of our leased Model 3 at home vs $50 for a tank of gas for our ICE car. Switching to EV has saved us about $150 / month (plus all the other benefits).

Never going back to ICE (though we're keep our Subaru Forester for camping, etc.), but buying another brand when our Tesla lease runs out; there are other great options out there. (I would try to find someone to take over our Tesla lease but when I spoke to a dealer about this he said that lots of people are trying to do this now so I'm not likely to succeed.)

It’s probably closer to $15-20 for a full charge here but the catch is, a full tank of gas will get you a full solid 450-500 miles of range whereas a full battery on a LR Model Y will likely only get you 250ish, sometimes more sometimes less.

BC more specifically I take it?

We have EVs in California (no Teslas) that support two long-ish commutes.

With solar panels, we’re paying close to nothing for electricity. The panels and batteries cost about as much as an EV when we got them, but manufacturing costs have dropped and keep dropping.

Starting roughly this year, vehicle to home (V2H) will be mostly standard. That will let you use your car battery to top-off the house battery. That’ll make full-off-grid much more practical, which puts a ceiling on PG&E’s abusive rate hikes.

I find that most people don’t actually include the cost of solar fairly when making statements like this.

Maximum solar that fit on my roof, no battery with 1 EV with maybe 2 hours of driving per weekday - $250 minimum electric bill plus the cost of the solar system ($250 over 10yrs) = $500-$600/month. I almost never use AC or heat.

This isnt very helpful without your solar cost or electricity rate.

Parts of California are at $0.50/kwh and going up. Electric cars are ~0.35 kwh/mi.

A 60 mile both way commute is 21 kwh/day = 420kwh/month.

a 21kwh/day system has a huge range in price depending on how much you are being gouged by your state and contractor. Panels themselves are dirt cheap.

Yes there are a lot of variables. That said, the point is, no one should be buying a Tesla specifically for cost savings. There are plenty of reasons to buy a Tesla and plenty of reasons not to.

Tesla or EVs in general? I think the numbers can work out for either, but depend largely on your solar install cost and rate.

I think Teslas in particular are hard to justify purely financially. They’re not alone; Lucids, Rivians, some VWs fit in that category as well. Of course there are many other reasons to choose those cars but it’s not really to “save” money necessarily. They’re still cool cars with a lot to like. It just ends up being pretty close to a wash at the end of the day.

With access to Tesla’s charging network, that makes literally all other cheaper EVs significantly more appealing for me. I love the convenience of EVs personally and don’t see myself switching back to gas regardless but hybrids lately have been looking more attractive given the price of electricity in CA lately. Having a full solar system already, there’s not a lot I can do to ease the pressure.

Which comparable EV is cheaper than Model 3 and Model Y? I bought a 3 row AWD Model Y for $49k (excluding tax credit), and I didn’t see any other EV that came close in terms of performance, battery, space, and track record relative to price.

Throw in the $7,500 tax credit, and I would love to see an alternative with CarPlay at $42k that can seat 5 adults and 2 kids.

apparently a partial off-grid is a collective nightmare situation, as coal/nuke can't be turned off so opex remains constant, but the revenue goes down, so unit prices has to go up to make up for it. noisy electricity that is "sold back" to the grid is also hard to synchronize and basically wasted, and so that cost is further added into the bills.

I tend to agree. Rooftop solar is a collective disaster and doesn't make sense as anything greater than a niche solution.

Commercial solar already struggles from seasonal variation requiring you to over build by 5X to get reliable power. Residential PRooftop takes it up a notch by costing 10x more than commercial.

California Power policy is so backwards it makes my head spin.

I can't believe they made rooftop solar a requirement for new houses when daytime spot prices are often negative. It's common for new houses to come with solar leases with negative savings. This is the type of thing the government should be preventing, not mandating

Rooftop solar is perfect. The lack of a full, east/west ultra high voltage transmission line to connect markets......like the one China is building out, is the issue. Once a grid is connecting time zones, rather than "regions" then the whole peak demand thing, just goes away, add batteries in the gaps, and for remaining peak clipping, and then averages start to become much closer to real world demand.

That doesn't solve the cost issue. Rooftop is at least 10X as expensive as plopping down panels on flat land, even before taking into account the efficiency of doing it in a desert vs rainy SF.

Same for home battery storage. A Powerwall ~$1000/kwh, grid storage is $250/kwh and can actually stabilize the grid.

Incentivizing it is a massive waste of public money. It is mandating citizens spend $1, when a commercial operation can do it for 10 cents.

The problem is the regulatory environment, not the technology.

Battery costs are dropping below 50$/kWh in China and will drop to 30$/kWh in a few years.

Distributed solar and storage is already economic the issue is the utilities and grid operators have captured the regulatory framework.

See Australia for an example of what California could be at 1/10th the cost.

agreed. Legally requiring home builders to include rooftop solar, and providing tax rebates doesn't address the fundamental challenges. In fact, it makes it worse.

Is there no opportunity cost for your solar?

> we’re paying close to nothing for electricity.

>he panels and batteries cost about as much as an EV when we got them, but manufacturing costs have dropped and keep dropping.

So basically you prepaid.

$20-40k buys a LOT of electricity. I live in a real dump of a state with insane electric prices (only reliably exceeded by Hawaii) and I can't make a privately owned system pencil out. Even with the credits the amortization time is on the order of 20yr +/- a few. I get the draw of spending a ton up front to eliminate a bill and have better cashflow but I just can't justify that with tens of thousands of dollars.

in my case the panels came with a home which was already a very special deal to begin with. I'd be surprised if over this decade those panels haven't more than paid themselves off.

the inflationary measure probabyl doesn't help either. I can't say for sure how much the panels themselves cost, but given the crazy times I wouldn't be surprise if they were as low as 40% cheaper back then.

In Denmark, electric is about 5-10% cheaper with my hybrid compared to gasoline. It also has the convenience that my car can charge at the car park without me doing anything.

Interestingly, the savings from parking fees are a thousandfold more worth it than the gas stuff.

I’m getting downvoted but the truth is In California, hybrids make way more financial sense. For one, the cars themselves are significantly cheaper. With a Tesla, I definitely pay more per mile when you factor in the significantly increased registration and rising electricity costs which will definitely be increasing more after annual wildfires.

I've been pretty happy with my plug in hybrid, you get the convenience of charging at home so most day to day miles are electric with no carbon emissions, but without having to worry about where to charge on road trips.

Yeah that’s what I’ve been thinking about getting for my next car too. I need something that comfortably seats 7 that isn’t 100k. You get some decent local electric range for shuttling around town and with gas as a backup for long excursions into remote areas. Even with a Tesla, it’s still challenging to find reliable charging in some areas.

Maybe I'm getting old and jaded, but I don't really care about what the CEO or company does.

Nearly every time I (and likely you) buy something, it's produced by, transported by, funded by, owned by a company or in a country that has been found guilty of repeated human rights violations. Literal genocides in an alarming number of instances.

It almost feels cathartic for the externalities of the society we've built to be burdened by us, rather than someone in another country.

That being said, I agree with the self-interest aspect and would also prefer not to be targeted by extremists on either side. The real trick is figuring out who that's going to be ahead of time - my money would have been on Chinese EV's being hit before Tesla.

So you rule out Tesla and Chinese EVs. That leaves most available. It’s not really that complicated to at least try to avoid the most problematic companies.

All those other companies are just as amoral or problematic as Tesla and any Chinese manufacturer (and by extension their respective governments).

The only thing that differentiates them in my eyes is price relative to performance, and I buy accordingly.

> All those other companies are just as amoral or problematic

Doesn't it seem weird and suspicious to you that every company is EXACTLY the same level of immoral? I suppose it could happen, but most industries I've studied have a pretty broad variation. I can't speak for the EV market, but there's plenty of companies in other markets that care about doing the right thing and try to avoid these sorts of problems.

Really? When did the CEO of Honda or Toyota spend immense amounts of wealth and influence to promote fascism and cripple America's strength in a multitude of ways? I suspect they haven't and you're exaggerating to make this an all sides thing to try to excuse Elon's behavior.

Scale matters. A CEO being sleazy to a supplier or a some employees, or whatever it is you have in mind, isn't nearly as harmful as everything Musk is doing.

I'm so tired of lazy "both sides" dismissals. It's a boring position to take at this point and only reflects lack of care to research, empathize, and dig into society.

Just admit your apathy and say You don't care about society. Don't assume everyone subscribes to your world view.

I am apathetic and don't care about society beyond my own timeline.

The only difference between you and me is that I'm honest about it - actions speak louder than words and I'm not seeing much action on that front. Why would I waste my limited time on this earth struggling against something that everyone seems so apathetic about?

Musk is a bit unusual in that he is so associated with Tesla and its image. On the other hand I have no idea who is the ceo of the company that made my car (old merc).

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