So $0.12 per mile saved in fuel costs implies about 80k miles for break-even.
This excludes costs of servicing, which should be higher on the gas car.
[edit typo'd an extra 0 it's 80k miles for break-even]
[edit2]
After looking up my energy bill I pay $0.27 so it's between 10 and 11 cents per mile saved. Break-even is still under 100k miles.
$35k - $26k = $9k
$9k / $0.12/mile savings ~= 75,000 miles breakeven
I definitely wouldn't buy an EV based on lower service costs.
- check the brake fluid for water - change the cabin air filter - change the gearbox oil - check/change the battery coolant
If you're going in more frequent than that you're getting a very expensive windshield wiper replacement.
The real kicker is going to be repair costs. An EV has about 10% of the moving parts of an ICE car, so in theory repairs should be much less frequent. But if the ICE is a Toyota and the EV is a Tesla, YMMV.
You'll probably have to replace the battery at around 250,000 miles but at that point the car is worth pretty much scrap value anyways.
I replace mine annually, but it's easy enough to do myself (right behind the glovebox, needs zero tools)
> In reality you can probably bring your EV to the dealer once every 4 years or so.
Not really, I need twice-yearly seasonal tire changes/rotations.
I could budget for yearly service (rather than the never-service-until-required plan I went with) that would presumably lengthen the lives of my brakes as far as corrosion is concerned, but at current shop rates that would cost more than what my brake replacements cost.
Are you somewhere where you actually need dedicated winter tires or have you just convinced yourself that rocking all weathers all year isn't feasible?
So, living in Alberta, and spending significant time in the AB/BC rockies in the winter, I still think all weathers would be feasible, but I'm more comfortable with dedicated winters. (For that matter, when I'm buying winters, I'm always borderline on whether I should get studded or not.) (And as a parallel effect, with dedicated winters I can also run higher performance all-season tires during the summer.)
And if I ran all-weathers with my driving patterns, I'd still want to be rotating them yearly, so that would cut my dealer visits by half, but definitely not to once every 4 years.
And tying back to my last ICE vehicle - for the first 4 years of its life it would have been okay without a dealer visit if you took tires/oil changes out of the equation, but not for any 4-year period after that. There are just too many random little things that break down in cars over time. (e.g. after 12 years or so the cruise control buttons were getting really mushy - I replaced them myself for the cost of the $65 part, but YMMV on whether you feel a service visit is warranted when removing your steering wheel air bag.)
Also rotating tires every 10-20k miles is good because most cars run higher camber in the rear (inner shoulder wear) than front and the fronts wear the outside shoulder more because of turning. Swapping them extends tire life by spreading the wear.
Not about all seasons, which are not rated for winter use.
(My car averages 3.3 miles / kWh, so ~$0.055 / mile assuming 100% charge efficiency... I'm using a 120V outlet so it's probably 75-80% charge efficiency, pushing the cost to ~$0.068 / mile.)
Suggests up to 25% loss if your just plugging into an outlet, but a wallbox improves that considerably.
Southern California Edison on the time-of-use plan, charging during "Super off peak." Note that nowhere on the bill do they show one number for how much you pay per kWh. These numbers will change next month as we go from "Winter" to "Summer"
Delivery charges: $0.17664
CCA Cost responsibility surcharge: $0.02007
Nonbypassable charges: $0.00644 + $0.00591
Fixed recovery charge: $0.00619
Generation charge: $0.05958
Unless I typoed something again (oops 800k) that works out to $0.27 for the cheapest I can pay in winter. I compared last fall and this was by far the cheapest plan offered to me for overnight charging.
Factors like the (perceived) environment friendliness, comfort and (in)convenience are likely to be much more important.
Can we stop being so out of touch and/or deluding ourselves to believe $35k is “pretty inexpensive” for people not living in a bubble; whether that is the Americas bubble or the tech bubble within the bubble or the urban bubble within that; let alone for a tiny two seater electric truck that has a 200 mile range.
The 45th percentile, i.e., the bottom 90% have a median income of roughly $40,000. $35,000 for a enclosed covered or even hatchback type mini SUV is not reasonable and you know very well when they come out with that, it’s going to be at least $40,000. None of that is inexpensive or even pretty inexpensive. That’s just rationalization and coping, trying to convince ourselves and others of things that are incongruent.
“Pretty inexpensive” would be an enclosed bed version that cost $22,000 maybe.
For additional context; the industry standard measure of income to cost ratio has risen from 9.3 weeks of household income gross pay for a baseline vehicle, i.e., civic, in 1973 to, 16.5 weeks of gross pay in 2024; and that’s based on the fraudulent official inflation numbers.
Yet more context, a civic can seat 5 people and still has a range of 450 miles on a tank of gasoline that you can find all over the place, even in far off rural places OSD puppy can carry gasoline with you if need be.
There is no sense in rationalizing and deluding ourselves about the real limitations that still exists that are real and are why adoption is not matching imaginations.
I can find electricity in far more places than I can gasoline. It even comes out of my walls. Do you have gasoline piping throughout your home?
But otherwise... Yeah, That's absolutely amazing to wake up every morning to a full tank/charge
> If gas prices return to pre-Iran-war it will be cheaper than paying to use an L3 charger, and even if they don't it will be far more convenient.
Yeah, that's Toyota's main argument for not diving head-first into EVs. Yes, merging the two technologies means you have the complexity of both... but after a decade+ of experience, they've gotten it down to be pretty reliable.
For a lot of people, that's still the best choice assuming you don't mind the budget for wear-items / oil changes ... etc. When my current econobox is _done_, I will probably go straight to EV just so I don't have wear-items to deal with and because I either drive a few hundred miles per week or fly. I don't need to account for family road trips or anything else that make the ubiquitous fuel station network worth it.
I (and many others) would actually argue many common hybrid drivetrains are actually simpler than many ICE-only drivetrains.
Things like transmissions and complicated AWD setups are incredibly complex. Planetary gear sets and using an electric motor for the rear axle to add AWD can make things vastly simpler mechanically than a regular pure-ICE. You need a computer to get it to all play nice, but in terms of moving parts and things rubbing it can be a lot simpler.
For practical EV purposes there is not electric everywhere. If there isn't enough at home chargers are hard to find. Sure they are all over - but they are not advertised and not at every exit: you need an app to find them. Using an app is not safe when you are driving so you better have someone else with you to figure out how to find them or plan ahead.
Using apps like ABRP you can easily schedule your drip to have the optimal stops for route planning based on your battery technology, if you are doing a drive long enough to have multiple stops that should be part of your travel planning even with a gas car alongside a pre-trip check.
You can easily circumnavigate the entire USA with an EV that supports NACS!
Agreed
> the question is just do they have a 240v outlet somewhere nearby to a garage or parking spot.
They almost never do. This is the key thing you are not understanding about my reply. We can get level 2 anywhere, but most of the time it means you have to have an electrician.
> Using apps like ABRP
That is my objection. When I drive a gas car don't need an app. I drive until my gauge gets "low" and then find the next gas station - I can be assured that almost anywhere I will make it to a gas station if I start looking when the gauge reaches 1/8 (though I refuse to let it go below 1/4 for safety reasons). No app needed for gas, there are big signs everywhere that alert me where I can fill up. Last road trip I looked for those signs wondering if I could have used the EV and there wasn't 1 in 300 miles: then I pulled up the app, and there were plenty - but none where in places you could see from the main road and none advertised (they were also a lot less common than gas stations)
In my personal experience most, homes have a dryer outlet in the washroom connected to the garage at least in TX. It's no bother running a cable from the washroom to the garage.
> That is my objection. When I drive a gas car don't need an app
Any time I am making a long drive I always use a GPS app such as Waze or Apple Maps, I don't know what's on the road ahead traffic, accidents and closures the app will re-route me appropriately and optimally. If you made a drive so regularly you felt like you didn't need an app then you would already know on that route where charging stations are.
I do agree they are less common than gas stations because of a few reasons but that's set to change with time and market adoption.
I use a GPS when I don't know the route, but I've been to parents in a different state several times - I don't need a GPS interrupting my music to get there.
I agree EV chargers are being installed and will be installed more and more.
That's assuming you have a garage and the breaker box isn't already in it, which is also common.
Of course, I have neither, so installing a car charger would be expensive. Thus my continued use of ICE vehicles.
Overnight charging will give you approx. 30 miles of range (depending on the car and state of charge). It's really hard to know without having an electric car for some time if it's going to be annoying for you.
Also, who the hell still uses GPS instruction its annoying. I always have my gps muted
For me, installing a 240V outlet for charging would entail...
Running a new circuit from the breaker box (back wall of basement) to the front facade (40' forward, 1 level up) with whatever drywall patching/paint comes with that.
That gets the outlet. But, I don't have a driveway, so I'd need to trench my front yard and the public sidewalk in front of my house, so I can pull the charge line through to the front edge of the curbing adjacent to my parking space.
I figure all-in, that's a $10k buy-in that only serves one of my two cars, so I'm stuck rotating cars every few days (not a big deal, just not ideal). Only one of my parking spaces is assigned - the other is "guest parking" open to anybody.
And I fully realize my situation might not be the norm, but it's not far off for many TH or condo residents.
You may use your phones maps app while driving to show you the nearest gas station, or even the cheapest. You might also do the same with EV charging.
Technically true, but if you've only got 60 amp service to your home because it was built in 1955 and the cost to run a new service line is greater than the cost of a new car, it's pretty difficult to get any useful amperage to your level 2 charger.
Pulling the service wire, upgrading the panel, etc. are all normally priced.
See https://www.titam.ca/2021/05/cost-to-upgrade-underground-ele...
The transformer for my house is two lots away and under a pathway.
Would be less expensive to install a natural gas generator and connect an EV directly to that whenever I need to charge it.
Also, your price is in CAD not USD
Also also, for the case that you already have power unless it was installed a long time ago its probably already in conduit and doesn't require any horizontal drilling
A $35K vehicle will reach $22K on the used market a lot faster than a $60K vehicle will.
The problem with the Slate isn't that cheaper vehicles exist. The problem with the Slate is that you can buy nicer, better equipped vehicles for the same price.
$35k is not outrageous for a new car, but the Slate is supposed to be affordable basic transportation. Slate is selling barebones, stripped down basic transportation for the price of a middle class family car.
The trackers aren't in the infotainment. Removing the infotainment do not solve the tracker problem.
Seriously tempted with the Slate though. I have the $50 pre-registration down from a few years ago, so I could have it in July-August of next year.
$25k is about right for a cheap new car today (you can get a few base models for less than that, but good luck finding one). Median household income is around $83k. So a cheap new car cost went up by 10x but income only went up by less than 5x. Inflation implies it should cost 8x as much, but it costs 10x as much.
Of course the Chevy Nova didn't have ABS, airbags, a touch screen, an automatic transmission, power steering, or retractable seat belts. Car companies could make models without some of these (though most are required by law; can't even have a car without a screen since RVC is mandated). But now they would be competing with used cars that have most, if not all, of these things and cost less.
It suppose is "pretty inexpensive" compared to other new trucks you can buy right now. However, my much more equipped, full size truck cost less, inflation adjusted even, than this thing when it was new. Today's truck market baffles me.
At the same size (17"), going from steel to alloy improves performance but reduces durability. Larger wheels (20") are generally a downgrade for performance and ride quality.
Engineering Explained has a video on this topic: NYvKxsYFqO8
That means, for a given spindle height, the car ride height is the same regardless of wheel diameter.
- wider wheels are marginally less efficient but almost negligible
- rims with larger diameter have larger air resistance. Probably because the rim patterns intersects the air in weird ways but it's not explained. Tire walls are relatively smooth, so tires with higher aspect are way more aero-efficient despite having more marginally lower rolling resistance.
Same conclusion: interesting, but not necessarily interested. Hope they go places though.
The Transit Connect is discontinued in North America and was only ever a plug in hybrid here (outside a 500 unit collaboration in the early 2010s) but maybe one of the newer electric variants of the Transit lines will make its way over some time (e.g. looks like the Ford E-Tourneo Courier is an all electric in Europe).
Gas stations have this problem too but it's not as bad, because filling up a fuel tank takes maybe 5 minutes not 20-30.
My boss's have been asking me how life is with my Ford E-Transit, but it doesn't have enough range for most of our site technicians which end up driving 200-300 miles a day.
A reasonably priced cargo van with decent range was a large untapped market for far too long.
I bought an E-Transit anyway to setup as a Home/Office on wheels. Really hoping that in the future we see aftermarket long range batteries for these first two decades of mass market EV's being produced.
Electric vans will remain ecpensive until the eSUV market has been saturated: the cost to make either is similar, and using the limited inputs and lines to make more of the lower-margin vehicle model makes no sense when the market can absorb more of the higher-margin ones.
Rivian vans start at $80k, which is in the same ballpark as the R1S starting price of $83. Rivian axed the cheapest SUV trim in its line-up, so we're even less likely to see cheaper Rivian vans now.
Similarly the GM BrightSpot Vans (which are now dead as a platform).
Although if you get lucky you can find used GM Bright Spots for $40k, and used E-Transits for $20k. Haven't seen any used eSprinters yet on the market.
But, is that likely? Most people buy cars on credit and won't have $10k cash to spend on those bits later. I guess they could put it on Visa, but that's a terrible financial choice.