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Comment by tjohns | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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)

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.

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.

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.

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