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Comment by Rumudiez | Hacker News Reader

that's crazy. my 2005 volvo, 1991 nissan, and 1986 toyota altogether cost me a little over $1k per year (mostly insurance) and it was less than $10k total to buy them all. goes to show average financial literacy in the US. people won't save a few grand for a used car (or take out a small loan even!) and then pay 10x the cost for new

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Do they run on air?

I think you and I may be a rarity. Most people seem to value having new vehicles, and I don't say that dismissively- there's definitely something to be said for modern safety features as vehicles continue to grow bigger and heavier.

true, not all of these are created equal. that old volvo has side curtain airbags and other safety features that were ahead of its time. but it takes experience to know what you're shopping for. I turned down a corolla that was 10 years newer for the same price because the older volvo was actually the better vehicle inside and out

There's a difference between buying a GMC Pedestrian Destroyer and a Honda Civic.

Certainly true, but my 1989 Honda Civic would still be obliterated in a collision with a modern one- everything has grown substantially.

A modern civic, some of which arent much larger than yours, would have a much better outcome.

You don’t pay for gas? Oil changes? New tires? Air filters?

Oil changes cost like $35/year if you do it yourself. Decent tires last 4-5 years, so that's like $100/year (to be generous). Air filters are so cheap and need replacement so infrequently as to not even be worth counting.

I can only get 1-2 years out of tires, but I also drive 25K+ miles a year. (And its a heavy EV Van) Tires are $800ish a set for the affordable ones (also due to heavy van)

Cabin air filter is twice a year at $18 a filter (I replace them as soon as it smells weird)

Home electricity is cheap at least. (7¢/kw)

The increased frequency of tire changes for EVs is not something I realized when I bought an EV. Those batteries are heavy, and put a lot of extra wear on the tires.

Another factor is that brake-regen is putting additional stress on two tires if it is a single motor car. So they get a lot of workout accel/regen if you aren't using your brakes as often and driving economically to regen as much power back as possible.

Plus how fun it is to get going in an EV leads to a lot of extra tire wear.

I've found that rotating my tires more often helps spread the wear out from having a single motor EV.

I can’t rotate my tires, because the front and back are different sizes. Luckily, I do have dual motor, at least…

Ah yeah, I avoid cars/vans I can't use in normal economic ways. I need them damn tires to last as long as possible. And base model trims for less shit to fail.

I don't see why that would be worse than the very front-biased braking on conventional cars.

Must be nice to have dirt cheap electricity. PG&E rates are 0.26 to 0.62/kw for the EV plan.

Source: https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/resid...

Even with "expensive" electricity, and using your worst case scenario, it's still usually cheaper to charge 400 mile EV from 0-100% (another worst case scenario), than it is to fill up an equivalent gas vehicle. Even before the current gas prices spike.

But let's use your "worst case" scenario.

Worst case 300 mile EV charge (100%, during peak hours): about $50

Filling up a highly fuel efficient ICE vehicle: about $40

Of course, if you only charge the EV to 80% (as is recommended, and more efficient), and only set it to charge it off-peak (as is normal), then the numbers are much better. There are, of course, worst case scenarios, but it's actually hard to make an EV more expensive than an ICE vehicle.

I would say that to charge an EV with a 350 mile range to 300 miles would be about $25 here in California. Right now, a 300 mile range tank of gas is easily $60 or $70.

You have to lose the old mindset of a gas vehicle, ie, you "fill it up" once. EVs are much more convenient: it takes 10 seconds to plug it in when you get home and then the next day it's fully charged - and they're almost all grid pricing aware.

Like, on my BMW PHEV, if I try to fast charge during peak times, the charger actually makes me confirm i want to spend more, instead of trickle charging until 8PM.

Come move to a shitty southern state, we've got low wages but cheap power.

>for the EV plan

Alright, I have to know what in the cali hell is going on here.

If you are doing the work yourself, you have to count the value of your time, then.

An oil change is quick, like 30 minutes. If I grab a granola bar instead of sitting down for breakfast and then instead use that time to do the oil change, the time expenditure is basically a wash.

yep, it's dirt cheap to maintain yourself. and only a few hours per vehicle per year tbh. lots of people on hn don't know basic real life skills so this all seems insurmountable to them, and there's the ev cope that somehow your 60+ grand car is going to save you money in gas and maintenance in the long run. I have 8 cars and motorcyles for less than the cost of that one car lmao

Oil changes are cheap. A lot of places will put your tires on for free or cheaply if you buy tires from them. Assuming the car is free, the cost of car ownership is dominated by gas, insurance, and the raw cost of materials needed to maintain it. Whether you do it yourself or have someone else do it isn't going to move the needle much.

How much liability coverage are you getting for ~ $100/month? In other words if you injure or kill someone with your vehicle how much of that cost will be covered by your insurance company? With Waymo the answer is "not my problem".

I pay ~100/month per car for full coverage on two fairly new cars and $500k in liability from the auto policy plus a $1m umbrella policy. And that's in CA which is comically expensive. I find it very believable that you can get excellent liability only coverage on 3 cars for $100/month depending on the state and drivers.

For comparison, I live in SF and am low-risk on all the dimensions you'd expect on HN, and I pay $100/month for non-owner coverage with similar limits - i.e., I don't own a car and my coverage only applies when I rent one. When I owned a car it was much higher, of course.

Hmm, for my €209/year (~$20/mo) liability insurance I get unlimited coverage for personal injuries and €5M coverage for property damage (both mandated by Finnish law).

It sounds like you pay much more. Any idea why?

One major reason is probably that most of the liability portion is going to be covering medical bills in the US. I only did a quick skim of the Wikipedia summary but it looks like Finland, like (almost?) all of Europe wouldn't have that particular liability?

Another reason might be that insurance costs vary widely in the US. I recently had a reason to get an insurance quote in Utah, and it was literally one third the price that I currently pay in California.

All that said, you do seem to enjoy remarkably cheap insurance over there from my perspective. I hardly think those two factors are enough to cover such a large difference.

Medical bills are covered (the Wikipedia summary seems accurate to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_insurance#Finland). But I'm going to guess that those medical bills, and related damages, are much lower than in the U.S.

Maybe also lower average value of cars and less accidents here plays some part. But not sure how large that difference actually is.

Could also be some difference in the insurance premium systems: The amount of accidents changes one's cost for next year based on fixed rules - the ~$20/mo is with the highest discount (no liability insurance covered accidents in many years). The maximum it can grow to (for me, with my modern car) is ~US$100/mo, by having 4 consecutive covered accidents without accident-free years. Not really sure how wildly this varies in other countries or if the systems are similar...

The optional car insurance is more expensive, my full coverage (including damage, theft, parking, glass, fire, towing, substitute car etc.) is in the ~US$100/mo range, with ~$230 deductible on most coverage, and towing, substitute, glass repair at $0.

>How much liability coverage are you getting

Who cares? Liability coverage is only there to satisfy the state and little more IMO. If you do need it the counterparty will exhaust the limits of your liability coverage and call it quits. It is not worth it for the other guy's insurance to sue you unless you're a million bucks in the red.

Your used cars are only so cheap because most people don't buy old used cars. If they did as you suggest, then it would no longer be such a good deal.

sure, but also that would drive new car prices down and put pressure on dealerships to stop adding ridiculous fees on top of the MSRP. and more used cars on the road means more independent mechanics means cheaper service. Japan is a great example. in addition to their strong domestic market, the driving culture there is a decent size tourist industry unto itself. there are more tracks per capita in Japan than any other country

Most people spend more per year on gas than you claim is your total cost of ownership. Sure, cars are cheap if you never drive them.

do you buy things just to look at them? my vehicles (all 8) are for driving. fuel costs vary, and as another commenter in this thread said they were comparing $50 (max) to recharge an EV vs $40 (min) for gas. so depending on where you live, what you drive, and how you drive it you'll get wildly different ideas about fuel costs. fueling up is not maintenance either. even in the best case the difference in fuel cost is a drop in the bucket vs the difference in vehicle price

Ok, I think the situation is different when you have 8 cars which are for driving. It's not really fair to compare per vehicle costs when you're dividing your usage up among 8 vehicles whereas most people are dividing it among 1 or maybe 2

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