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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Average price of a new vehicle in the US is $50,000. This is priced appropriately considering total cost of ownership delta against a combustion vehicle. Rivian needs more volume for prices to decline from manufacturing efficiency at scale.

https://www.axios.com/2024/12/19/cars-prices-inflation-suvs

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A cursory search of the web shows that TCO for EVs in the US is higher than ICE for all but high mileage commuters. Wish it wasn't the case, but insurance alone is a 30% premium.

https://www.atlasevhub.com/weekly-digest/new-2025-update-on-...

> While drafting the fact sheet, we checked two headline policy ideas that the One Big, Beautiful, Bill introduced: the early sunset of the consumer EV credit and a new $250 annual EV fee. While the annual fee was dropped from the final legislation, the $7,500 consumer credit now ends September 30th.

> For the Equinox EV, these changes would cut its seven-year savings over the gasoline Equinox from about $9,000 to under $200. The Model Y also showed savings compared to its gasoline comparison under that less favorable scenario for EVs.

That link also factors in fuel savings which depends on where you live. I'd personally never save on an EV if it costs more upfront.

Model 3 TCO is very competitive for all sedans. But yes, there are a lot of luxury EVs and EVs with questionable reliability.

https://www.self.inc/info/expensive-cars-to-run/

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-maintenance/the-cos...

Insurance is a bear for Teslas. They cost a lot to repair.

The Model 3 Highland is super fun to drive. Maybe other EVs have this too. It's a very different experience to a similarly priced ICE car, and worth factoring in to the value proposition.

I specify Highland because the previous version was rattly and noisy enough to seriously detract from the zippy driving experience. Highland is nice.

These TCO reports include maintenance. The first one includes insurance. Insurance can be cheap. It varies wildly.

NYT recently did a fantastic calculator. It isn't simple flat one or the other is cheaper. It takes into account buy vs lease, milage, local energy cost, length of ownership etc

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/upshot/ev-vs-gas-ca...

Are you sure about that? The cost of repairing even minor collision damage on a Rivian is ridiculous.

Yup, R1S dented rear quarter, $55000 to repair, insurance totaled it out...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Rivian/comments/1r19jxb/vivian_is_o...

How are insurers making any money insuring these things nowadays? 30% higher premiums are being mentioned elsewhere in the comments; that doesn't sound like enough!

>How are insurers making any money insuring these things nowadays?

Because insurance is fundamentally a "skim some" model.

They have a massive pool of money. Sure the pool is bleeding all the time because they're paying out, but it's also being replenished by premiums paid in. They invest this "constant" pool of money and the return on this covers overhead plus profit.

So when we're all getting screwed on our premiums because fenders cost tens of thousands and Karens file claims for parking scratches they're making more money, because the same ROI on a bigger pool of money is a bigger number.

There are multiple other people in the comments saying they had quarter panels repaired for $15K. Which is still a lot, but it’s not $55K.

There’s definitely more to that story.

I'd love to see the itemized bill.

People keep repeating this uncritically. There is a car-debt crisis, and wages haven't kept up with house/car costs.

We have one person saying "well in Californian wages..." and another saying essentially that 50K isn't a lot of money when the average SALARY is $66K/year.

I also believe this $50,000 stat is the mean car price which is likely to be pushed up by luxury car sales that cost 2-4x what a typical car costs, whereas a median price would give a better indication of what most people are actually spending. I did a quick Google search and wasn't able to find any data on median price, though.

$50000 stat is the mean transaction price, which includes the dealership stuff that gets added on. While it’s true that it is an average, companies are increasingly not making cheaper models. Sub $30k new cars are almost a myth at this point. You get sedans and hatchback models that start in the high 20s as the base price but we all know you’re not walking out of that dealership with a base model or just paying the advertised rate. SUVs on the other hand, which most people prefer these days are closer to $40k.

> There is a car-debt crisis

To what degree is this caused by car prices versus Americans' compulsion to keep buying new cars? Anecdotally, the folks I know struggling with car payments are almost exclusively in the latter bucket. But I'm open to having my mind changed with data.

If people didn't buy new cars there would never be used cars.

Tell that to Cuba.

Not entirely true; there are at least the lease, rental, and commercial fleet markets supplying predictable inventory of used cars to the public market.

I have 2014 Tesla S which which I recently had drive unit and battery replaced ($20k total). my friends all think I am nuts, but they all have $1k+ payments (some for 72m) while I haven’t had a car payment since 2017 and won’t have another one till 2036 :)

How many miles?

67k

What are you thinking about getting next?

nothing till 2035 and even then I might just replace the battery again. people look at EVs as like some disposable thing, when battery deteriorates you chuck it (shows in the pricing of 'used' EVs, my friend bought a 3-year old eTron that was originally purchased for $93k for $35k - 19k miles on it). my tesla is rock n roll now and will be good for the next decade

If your friends dumped $20K into paying off those loans they’d be a lot closer to paid off or maybe paid off completely, though. And that’s on a newer, lower mileage car.

I’m all for maintaining vehicles and keeping them on the road, but I don’t think you’re in a place to criticize your friends with $1K car payments after putting almost 2 years worth of those payments into a car that’s over a decade old.

I put in two years worth of payments for 18 years driving the car (9 since my last payment and 9 more after the maintenance) :)

> I put in two years worth of payments for 18 years driving the car (9 since my last payment and 9 more after the maintenance) :)

Plus paying for the car itself

You can’t estimate your future repair bills to be $0

I get it that you like the car, but there are some major mental gymnastics happening with your math

I have spent exactly $0.00 on maintenance since 2014 when I bought the car (other than tires, 5G modem and internal battery). not sure what “paying for the car” means, it was paid off in 2017.

to simplify the math:

1. I spent total $90k

2. to have a car from 2014 through 2035-ish

for a $1k/month that would be $252k for my friends :)

Who paid the $20k?

I did :)

I wonder how much of this ridiculous car money was previously buy-a-house money. If you don't think you'll ever buy a house, you might as well spend it on a car.

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