I bought an EV last year and it's definitely been a "good idea" for me. Luxurious ride, fuel costs a tenth, doesn't stink.
Seems such an obvious upgrade it slightly confuses me take-up hasn't been quicker among people who like me can charge at home.
So I still run an old Landrover with a massive V8 engine.
Then I'd be paying roughly ten times as much for insurance, because it's a new and valuable car, and being "keyless" it cannot be secured in any meaningful way without locking it in a garage, which I don't have.
Because I don't have a garage or a driveway I can't park right at my house, so I would not be able to charge at home. So I'd have to park an EV up at the nearest charging point several miles away, cycle home, and then cycle back to the car to retrieve it. This would then be costing roughly the same per mile to charge it up as it costs per mile for propane (my car is dual-fuel).
That's before you add in the exorbitant cost of servicing an EV, which can only be done at a dealer.
All told, I'd be spending a grand a month to replace a vehicle that costs a couple of hundred a month, that - crucially - wouldn't allow me to actually do the things I need it to do.
IMO, this matters more than anything else.
If you can't charge at home, then an EV becomes rather nonviable unless you drive very little and your usual grocery store has a fast charger. But then public chargers are typically at least double the price per kilowatt hour compared to charging at home.
EV servicing is cheaper and I do it less often.
I bought used. The monthly depreciation is less than my previous fuel bill.
YMMV.
Most EVs need serviced every year and it's about £300 to do so. This is a ridiculous amount.
Mine needs a set of tyres every few years, a set of brakes every few years, and an oil change or two a year. None of this is especially expensive.
I guess you're in the US, where "lifetime oil" is a thing. Expect the gearbox to be scrap once it's a little outside the warranty period.
https://www.wilsonkia.com/service/service-tips/kia-niro-main...
What model were you considering and why only this one?
This is more than the £200-300 or so it costs to run my existing car.
Straight off, it's costing me more just to even own one - that's before it turns a wheel.
Tax on an EV is free just now, and about £300ish a year for the vehicle I have now, so that's got the difference down a little.
Insurance on even a fairly basic EV would be a couple of hundred quid a month, as opposed to a couple of hundred quid a year. This immediately makes running an EV uneconomic.
At the end of the five year lease (you can't buy them outright, without getting entirely ripped off) I'd have spent 24 grand to still not actually own a car. This is roughly 100 times as much as I spent to actually own a car. This too makes things uneconomic.
I'm not seeing you calculate any repair costs for your vehicle. Or depreciation overall, especially not replacement. What year do you expect to replace your vehicle? What would you replace it with? How much would you get for trading in your vehicle if you buy a new car now?
I think you're missing pretty large parts of the math - what happens if you take your likely depreciation/replacement costs into account over time?
I don't much care about the depreciation on a 30-year-old vehicle that I bought outright for considerably less than the price of a single car payment for something new.
I doubt I'd get anything for trading it in, and I'd probably get about £100-£150 if I scrapped it, or several thousand quid if I parted it out (you're looking at about £500 for the engine and about £300 for the gearbox alone).
If I was going to replace it, I'd probably replace it with another one the same, although admittedly I don't have to tow 3500kg trailers off road nearly as often as I did a couple of years ago. The choice would be driven by the fact that I have a complete service and workshop manual for it and suitable diagnostics.
I don't want to drive something that has an always-on internet connection or any sort of screen. That's also a pretty big factor.
But man, these ships sailed a long time ago. You don't get anything out of being a stick in the mud except undervaluing your time.
Also, given enough hardware, home, or at least local area, repairs save both time and money in practice.
When most people make these comparisons, they don't consider depreciation, trade-in value, or maintenance costs.
I don't understand what I was dodging though. Can you be really specific? Help me out.
I'd like to see those. Do you own both vehicles outright?
Can you buy an EV for less than about £300 per month total running costs (insurance, charging, finance payment, etc) that can tow a 3500kg trailer off road?
OP said this, you clearly don't fall into this category. And if servicing an electric car costs more than servicing an old Landrover I will not eat for a week
It just cost me £75 to service my car, of which nearly £15 was just the cabin air filters which have got bizarrely expensive since last year.
The only service it's needed beyond tires, wiper blades, and wiper fluid is a replacement of the low-voltage battery last year, which was under $200.
If you're paying $300/year to service your EV, either you drive a LOT or you're getting ripped off. There's nothing in an EV that requires $300/year in service.
There's no oil changes, no transmission fluid. Brake pads will last forever since regen should be doing at least 90% of your braking. Sure, maybe you still need tire rotations, but most tire shops will do it for free if you buy tires from them. I do them myself when I do the swap between winter and summer tires.
There is. You think those gears run completely dry?
> Brake pads will last forever since regen should be doing at least 90% of your braking.
Turns out they don't. Maybe if you are driving slowly in a completely flat part of the world they will. In an ICE-powered car, engine braking does most of the work anyway.
Incidentally, a set of brake pads lasts me two or three years, even allowing for pulling heavy trailers quite frequently. They're about £80 for a full set. Brake discs are more expensive but they last a very long time if you don't let the pads wear to the metal.
Sure, there's a fixed gear reduction that is lubricated, but it doesn't need frequent changing. It's a sealed unit. No moisture or debris from the outside gets in. As a result, it lasts an exceptionally long time, likely even the life of the car.
> Turns out they don't. Maybe if you are driving slowly in a completely flat part of the world they will.
I drive in Portland, which is anything but flat. I rarely use the foot brake.
> In an ICE-powered car, engine braking does most of the work anyway.
Absolutely not, especially in modern automatics which coast exceptionally well.
Another commenter said you're arguing in bad faith, and at this point, I'm highly inclined to believe them. You really just have no idea what you're talking about. Somebody has sold you lies, and the disappointing thing is, you bought the lies and even argue against people with first-hand experience.
You really just don't have a clue.
If you don't want an EV because an EV doesn't fit your lifestyle, that's fine. You mentioned pulling heavy trailers frequently. EVs absolutely suck balls at that. Sure, they've got tons of torque and certainly have the power to pull a trailer, but their range goes into the toilet. So an EV doesn't work for you, and that's okay, but that doesn't mean you have to believe in lies and spread them.
For fuck's sake, the brake pad thing is very widely known and accepted. I have no idea how you got convinced that brake pads in EVs don't last. Yes, they're heavy cars, but regen braking is huge. EVs actually typically have brake problems from the brakes being underused.
I think legacy car makers have been slow rolling. They might have to in order to allow their organizations and customers to adapt.
I would say that investing oneself and one's money in an idea changes how one feels about the choices that was taken. I would say that those not invested might think that some of the arguments might have untruths more than those who have invested.
(For me inertia does play a role too! "Why fix what's not broken")
No big mystery: a) most people keep cars for 20 years or more, b) most people don't buy new cars - they're too expensive.
It's true that most people don't buy new, but there's still 20% of purchases new, and a steady flow of EVs into the used market.
> As of 2025, the average age of a scrapped car in the UK is between 16 and 20 years old!
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/123niq7/ag...
I know for a fact that the figure for Poland is exaggerated, because plenty of cars which are currently shaving people's beards and have been performing this duty for years now remained in the registry and were purged from it only in 2024. That was 7 million out of 41 million originally there and most likely there's many more, as the criteria were set to avoid false positives.
b) You can also buy used EVs. I bought one last year, 2 years old, for 56% of the original price.
ADAC did a test with a vehicle that reached 160,000km and its battery was at 91%.
That being said, when a battery fails, it’s a €20,000+ whole unit replacement (e.g. for Audi e-tron 55 it is €26,500 in my country), while ICE failures very rarely need a whole unit replacement, usually it’s a €1700 turbocharger or a €400 injector or something of that caliber. Personal anecdote: my 12 year old 262k km BMW did not need any engine repairs until now, except for free manufacturer recall on the EGR cooling system. And it still has 1000 km highway range in the winter.
https://www.scrap-car-dealers.co.uk/latest-news/post/average...
> As of 2025, the average age of a scrapped car in the UK is between 16 and 20 years old!
...
> You can also buy used EVs.
True, but you're quite limited there since good EVs have only been around for a very small number of years. Maybe you can get an old Tesla for not too much but that's pretty undesirable for obvious reasons.
You'd think that, but (I am shopping at the moment) it is routine to see last year's EVs on Autotrader, at 30-50% off list price. That does make me a little suspicious (is this being got rid of because it's a lemon?), but they're there.
I think we can narrow the statement to "if you are buying a new or nearly-new car, or leasing, and you can charge at home or work, you should seriously consider an EV". Fleet and business use should definitely be thinking very hard about it.
> most people keep cars for 20 years or more
and
> the average age of a scrapped car in the UK is between 16 and 20 years old
Because the second fact doesn't tell you whether or not the 1st fact is true. After all, there is a second hand market where you can find cars of every age.
We get these ads emphasizing the luxuriousness, the status, the high-tech, the exclusivity of EVs. Meanwhile... BYD.
Surely it can't be entirely conspiracy to bludgeon the public with messaging that EVs are premium goods and ICEVs are for the mass market.
Could it be that the maxim should really be something like "bullshit too often and too greedily and you forget how to sell something that sells itself"...?