Hacker News Reader

Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

This seems to lack 2025 data, unless BEVs have suddenly disappeared! (Which they haven't, everyone around here in stockbrokerland seems to have one.)

View on HN

The data point for BEVs in 2025 is off by a factor of 1000. It reads 1,747.961; the decimal point instead of thousands separator is surely an error.

I am embarrassed for the RAC that they put out a graph with such a blindly obvious error. I spotted it within 10 seconds. Did they not read their own report?

I included this as an example of garbage data:

https://successfulsoftware.net/2026/03/29/stop-publishing-ga...

Petrol is just too cheap to justify the cost unless you drive massive amounts. I do 3,000 miles a year, that costs £400 a year

The cheapest electric car I can see is £2500. It would take me 6 years to get the money back even if the electric was free

Average car does twice that mileage but that’s still a small part of the total cost of ownership.

I got petrol Friday for £1.45 a litre. In July 2022 it was £1.90 a litre, or £2.20 inflation adjusted. In 2012 it was £1.40 or £2.05 a litre inflation adjusted.

Maybe if petrol was in the £2-2.50 a litre it would make sense

Petrol has never been £1.90 a litre for any length of time

https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time

Thank you for linking to the data showing petrol at about £1.90 a litre in 2022.

That was for a weekly peak in the data… Britain has never had a price of 1.90 / litre for any sustained length of time

Your original comment remains misleading

I think the real way I've lost money is on depreciation - that's more severe than anything else that happened - even though I always buy second hand.

If you're buying second hand, like it would appear from the price you quoted, then reliability could be the thing that makes the price worthwhile.

I also don't do high mileage but as our petrol car gets older, it's starting to be less reliable. I've had brake issues - EV regenerative braking should ease that problem - and the engine is starting to use more oil. My car has a reputation for gearbox issues from the Uber drivers that I know.

Every time there is some problem my wife gets more freaked out. To avoid total disaster I'm going to have to get something and if it's an EV I just hope that it will give us some years of plain sailing.

I bought my car 4 years ago with 12 months MOT. It’s just passed again, with two new tyres and some suspension work. And a new bulb. It’s only needed tyres, wipers, and a new wing mirror in previous years.

Not bad for £1200.

The killer cost is the massive VED, way more than petrol Tax. I’d far rather VED were removed and the revenue reclaimed by taxing per mile. Seems crazy to have high fixed costs and low marginal, that just encourages driving.

VED is coming in on electric cars, and so is per mile charging. Meanwhile politics won’t allow fuel to return to 2012 levels in real terms let alone expanding beyond.

Far better ways to invest cash - home battery for example - than in an electric car. Maybe in 5 years there will be reasonable specced second hand ones.

You're fortunate on what you've spent so far. The problem is that the moment something does go wrong it can be brutal.

Personally I think cars can't be considered an "investment" because they just suck up money.

I do get this view and in many ways I agree - for me a car in an investment in flexibility.

I could hire a car/van as an when I need one, and send my kids to school by taxi and do my local shopping by bike (which I already do other than the 'big' shop that my wife does).

But investing £3k 10 years ago on a 10 year old car (now 20 years old) has proven a great investment. In a bad year it has cost £500 pa in maintenance, but in an average year I pay more in VED(tax) than I do on a service and mot.

I could have bought £3k of ftse 100 stock and have used the dividends and growth for transport, but I think that has turned out better for me. But I'll be honest, I've not done all the maths, but I don't think investing £3k would cover my costs and I would have eaten into the principle long ago. At best I have a £250 (scrap value) asset now, but realistically if I continue to spend £200-500 a year on looking after my investment, I'll get flexible transport.

Of course it’s not an investment on its own. They’re a consumable. But without the car it limits your options - my kids can’t do after school clubs unless I can transport them as we live too far from the nearest school and the bus doesn’t cover after school clubs. So the car is an investment in their future.

Unless you’re doing higher than average mileage though a cheap car with 12 months MOT is going to last several years, enough that the cost of tax and insurance is going to dwarf the cost of the car.

A car's assumed lifecycle is around 15-20 years. Practical suburban EVs have been around for around half that, practical ICE-replacement EVs for about a third. Consequentially, EVs have not yet arrived in the econo-shitbox segment of the used car market, and it will still take some time for them to get there - this is simply a lifecycle question and not a "new product introduction question" (which most of the press gets wrong for obvious incentives).

That being said, there's an argument that even basic EVs are often much more pleasant to drive and less hassle overall, which could be a reason for them to command a sustained premium on the used market.

How are EV's going to get to econobox/shitbox levels when the batteries go bad in less than half the time you mentioned and it costs ~£5000 for a new one?

Because newer batteries are not degrading as fast due to better thermal and load management. Because newer cars use newer chemistries that are less prone to degradation.

Moreover, just like some cars are good enough for people now, the cars with some degraded batteries will be good enough for some second hand buyers.

I saw a Nissan Note ev around here for £600 - the battery is good for around 24 miles - which exceeds what I'd do in a day on school run, gym run and shopping.

I would need to pay for a home charging point, but that would be a long term investment.

For me that Note would likely do me another 4 years of easy and cheap driving. An ice car of the same price would have more to go wrong and I'd be lucky to get 2 years driving from it. We are getting to the usable 2nd hand market already, and it is only going to get better.

I see 4,000 petrol cars under £1500 on auto trader. I see 1 (one) electric.

Upto £2k it’s 9,000 and 9.

Facebook market place had a few near me recently under £1k, but they certainly sell fast!

"An ice car of the same price would have more to go wrong and I'd be lucky to get 2 years driving from it. We are getting to the usable 2nd hand market already, and it is only going to get better."

Stop extremely, wildly exaggerating.

This is a conception primarily based around the Nissan Leaf battery, which combined poor BMS, a badly chosen chemistry and no thermal management. (People sometimes claim that the batteryleaftime is because they're passively cooled, but there are other, similarly old EVs, with passively cooled batteries, that have nowhere near the battery degradation that the Nissan EVs had).

Was 'battery _leaf_ time' intended?

Would be amazing if you could stop blatantly lying.

Excuse me? Lying about what you moron? Try not to be a electro-zealot and communicate normally.

> the batteries go bad in less than half the time you mentioned

This.

3,000 miles a year is very low, I think the average in the UK is 7,200. Interestingly that has declined since the nineties (presumably because we have more two car households).

I drive a bit more than you at 4000 miles a year but most of that is outside the UK so would like to see more details on the recent proposals to tax electric cars on annual mileage.

Current petrol car is 13yo so will need replacing eventually.

It doesn’t much change your calculations, but if you charge at home in the UK (we trail a cable across the pavement with a low-profile cover) then the electricity _is_ all but free.

We pay 7.5p/kWh for 6 hours overnight, but we also get £5 per month back (if we charge at least 10 hours) in return for having charging interrupted for up to an hour each night when the grid has least capacity. I drive about 7000mi/year, which means I’m paying about 1p/mile on average for home charging.

(The £5/month is from the charger manufacturer, SyncEV).

Remember a flat fee of 3p/mile tax is coming in a couple of years. That’s going to quadruple your per mile cost.

You are comparing against a free ICE car? And it still works out financially after just a few years for the average driver?

And you think this reflects badly on the EV transition?

No, I’m comparing the cheapest ICE car and the cheapest Electic car over the lifetime of the car, and the petrol one comes ahead even before the coming electric car tax.

2025 data https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/choosing/electric-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com