Hacker News Reader

Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people still don’t want or can’t really afford EVs given their limitations. I’d say it’s the majority where I live. I directly know only one person who has a full EV (not a hybrid).

I don’t think the Japanese automakers have squandered anything, yet.

View on HN

We paid maybe a $10K premium for a used EV truck. It gets 2mi/kWh. Most parts of the country are paying ~ $0.125 per kWh, so that’s &0.06 of a dollar in electricity per mile.

A comparable truck gets 18mpg mixed. At $3/gallon, that’s $0.16 per mile. So, the price premium pays back after 100K miles. That’s comparable to milage driven during a long car loan.

I ignored oil changes, tax breaks on used cars, and picked the form factor where EVs are the least economical.

It’s still basically break-even.

For commuter with charging access at office or home EV makes sense. For me making 300+ mile round trips with no charging infra (pull in at the gas station in the foothills) and low overall mileage EV is trickier.

If that’s your common use case (with no stop on the destination side of the trip), then it’d limit your options to high range vehicles.

There's a stop, it's just in the middle of nowhere. 20 minute charge would be annoying but survivable assuming they had them in say Lone Pine. And yeah, 20 something mpg and 16 gallon tank multiplies out to a large range.

You're in luck! There's a dozen Superchargers available right in downtown Lone Pine: https://www.plugshare.com/location/60596

Including supply and generation, we pay $0.148 / kWh, and yeah, I average $0.06 charging my EV at home on a slow, inefficient 120V / 15A. (Some day I'll upgrade, maybe.) I've never charged anywhere else (except for free at the used car dealer where I bought it.)

We make a ~180 mile trip roughly once / month and could charge on site as we always stay ~2 nights, though probably slow 120V / 15A charge (aka Level 1). My current car would probably be pushing it, range-wise, but I definitely think for the vast majority of our usage, we could be using only EVs if we got one with a 300+ mile range (based on 100% battery usage.) From what I've read some EVs (like mine) struggle a bit below 15% and start to run in "limp" mode.

China is currently making affordable EVs, though they might not meet (American) expectations of things like range. There’s no reason why traditional automakers couldnt be doing the same had they not focused on larger ice vehicles, hydrogen, or the luxury market.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com