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For 10K (+3) if you live in USA, you can buy a Nissan Leaf that came out the 3 year lease, and it is a decent car that seats 5 people with a range of about 80+ miles. Batteries are expensive and will continue to be till the turn of this decade and not a whole lot can be done. The better analogy would be laptops vs desktops, laptops gave mobility but they were heavy did not have the power etc. but by 2004 - 2006 they started to eclipse the desktops, EVs will slowly eclipse, they are expensive with range limitations but as they mature over couple of generations the efficiency gains coupled with economy of scale would make them eclipse ICE. 10 years from now, you will not find a Pure ICE vehicle in new cars, every car will have battery of some meaningful size.

a used leaf will likely only have <50 miles of range. My dad has one and it has been a disaster for him -- the range keeps decreasing and he can do less and less with it.

The 2011 and 2012 were disasters for Nissan. Never buy one of those, especially in a hot climate. I've had my 2013 for two years now and haven't noticed any drop in range at all.

We were one of the first in line to pre-order our 2011 Leaf. The battery capacity bar hasn't budged in four years, and there has been no noticeable drop in range. But we also live in Seattle, where 90F is considered to be unbearably hot.

The $8,000 price I quoted is after heavy subsidies. I imagine that used Nissan Leaf price is also after subsidies. If electric cars become mainstream I wonder what will happen with subsidies.

We just bought a used leaf for 12k at carmax. It was a 2013 with 16,000 miles on it and it easily gets 80 miles to a charge. All of the great things you read about them have all been true for us, super quiet, surprising acceleration, convenience of charging at home. It was hard to get our hands on one as they kept selling them as soon as they'd come in at carmax.

Second hand electric cars, as long as the battery is solid, should be an excellent deal if you're in the sweet spot for commuting distance. 50 miles a day equates to $1000 a year in US gas costs, and £2000 ($3000) in UK petrol costs. Especially in the UK, if you can get a used Leaf for £10-12k* , that's going to be by far the most economical way of running a second/commuting car.

* That seems to be the going rate for a two year old Leaf on Autotrader.

I think driving in a Model S to give you a sense of where mainstream $20,000 electric cars will be in 10-15 years will give you a much better idea than a $5,000 Chinese electric car that's probably slightly better than a bicycle will.

The "electric" part of the car is maybe 50% or more of an EV cost, and it will be affected by a "Moore's Law"-like law (but with a 2x improvement in 5-10 years instead of 2), and most of the other 50% is stuff like huge high quality wheels, leather materials and all that "luxury" stuff. Drastically reduce that stuff to $20,000 gas-powered car "luxury" levels, and then extrapolate where the "electric" side of the car will be in 10-15 years, and I think you'll get pretty close to a Model S-like driving experience on a much cheaper car.

To give you an analogy (I know, again with the iPhone, but I think they have more in common than not) what you're saying would be more like trying out a $100 "touchscreen smartphone" in 2007 and saying "Wow these suck - they are even worse than regular smartphones because they work so much more slowly having to power that big resolution and those graphics".

So your experience then wouldn't be an accurate prediction of how touchscreen phones, even $100 or $200 ones, let alone the $600 ones, will be in the future, because in 2007 you needed quite expensive components to provide a "good experience" with a "touchscreen phone".

The original iPhone that cost $600 gave you a much better idea of how touchscreen phones will be 8 years later, because now even $100 touchscreen phones have better specs and work better than the $600 iPhone did back then, and can do a lot more, too.

That's why the Model S should give you a much better idea of how $20,000 EVs will be in 10-15 years than a $5,000 EV does today.

Your argument doesn't hold. I make a few road trips a year. Only a weekly basis I make at least 20 trips varying in the range of 5-40 miles. That's the pay off for an electric car. If I can save money on gas, and maintainance cost. I'll gladly rent an old-fashioned gasoline car for those 3-5 200+ miles road trips I make in a year.

Here is the kicker they so conveniently ignore. America's love of the automobile, if not true for other parts of the world I would be amazed, is the freedom it offers. Go anywhere, anytime.

Electric cars limit owners ability to do so. You are on your car's schedule and the current limitations are still extreme. More than one magazine has staged a long drive of an electric car like certain manufactures and enthusiast have only to reveal that you will have to drive out of your way at times and your trip time is greatly extended. The same people who have the means to buy 100k cars; don't fool yourselves the transaction prices on many Ss are there have the extra time.

Think about it, if you can only go 200 miles and have to stop for thirty minutes each time to charge what it does to anything but travel completed wholly in that radius. Then add in diversions to acceptable charging stations.

Pure electrics are fine for metropolitan travel. When their recharge rate becomes very quick or an acceptable range extender; likely hydrogen; becomes available then they will have widerspread acceptance.

To be honest, outside of a small niche electric "cars" aren't there yet. However there is no reason electric school buses aren't worth the time. If you want acceptance to grow then employ the tech where everyone will see it and in a means you can sell on many levels. While an electric school bus would be expensive I would much rather see the Federal subsidy go there than funding a wealthy persons car, someone who could afford it without the subsidy. School systems spend a fortune on fuel and are subject to fluctuations in price. Electrify the buses, solar and wind power the depots, and you can not only charge them but sell to the grid and during times when school is out they could perhaps feed back stored electricty.

"America's love of the automobile"

The smartphone analogy would be the stereotypical hollywood/tv view of teenage girls spending hours talking on legacy landline corded telephones means that demographic will be totally uninterested in texting and social media on smartphones.

America's love of the automobile is waning. Miles travelled per capita has already peaked in several states, starting as far back as 2004:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/16/t...

If I remember correctly, iPhone came out when most featured phone is either free with a contract or less than 50 bucks.

You can get everything for free with contracts. High end smartphones of the time were about 20-30% off iPhone retail price.

Either way, comparison with smartphones is totally irrelevant.

And you don't "own" it if it's carrier locked (wait out your contract)

If you want to test drive a Model S and see what all the fuss is about then here are the events: http://my.teslamotors.com/en_GB/events

Also GLiiDE ("chauffeur driven car service, exclusively using electric vehicles") could mean you don't need to own one: http://gliide.co

< I've driven a lot of electric cars in the $5,000 to $10,000 range

Bumper cars at an amusement park?

Chinese cars, some with lead-acid batteries, some with lithium-ion. The price of the car is mainly determined by the batteries it holds. The rest of the car is usually cheaply made. Some cheaper ones feel like they don't have any shocks at all. Those in the $10,000 range have amenities such as WiFi, adjustable seats, and rear-facing video camera.

According to that page, it costs 10,880 Yuan (before subsidies). This comes to about $2000, which seems too low to be possible. Or is that without the battery?

I believe that's missing a zero. It costs 40,000 to 50,000 RMB after subsidies.

Just one more thing, he forgot to mention that we still need to wait for Tesla Model 3.

Not necessarily. Used Tesla Model S's will come down in price, and still have fairly extreme (in my estimation) reliability (which may actually work to keep the price from coming down as much as an ICE vehicle, but still...)

Spoken exactly like someone who has never driven a Tesla. ;)

> a used Lexus that cost us $8,000. It's an extremely comfortable luxury car that seats 5 and can easily be driven across the country

How much did that Lexus cost new?

How much will a used Tesla go for in a few years?

> and can easily be driven across the country

Yes, NOW. But, you didn't read the article (or your reading comprehension sucks). If 10% of the cars on the road become electric, at least 10% of the gas stations will start to close (since that business is barely profitable), making it increasingly less convenient to own a gas car.

> A new electric car [1], on the other hand, costs approximately the same but can only seat 2 people and can travel 160 km on one charge.

Yeah, today. What about in 5-10 years?

You consistently use current state to argue against future state. There must be a fallacy named for this.

> It takes 6 hours to fully charge.

Tesla's tech is here now and takes far less time. He also released all his patents.

> The costly lithium-ion batteries will have to be replaced at some point.

Yes, in 10 years, when they will be far, far cheaper, due to manufacturing economies of scale. In that time they will lose only 10-15% of their total charging capacity.

> True, it is convenient for trips around town without much luggage.

Using electric motors over gas engines is a HUGE space savings. Again, see: Tesla. (You really need to see one of these up close and drive one. It may be the only thing that will "show you the light.")

> I'm fairly confident that the used Lexus will outlast and outrun the new electric car.

Nope, because the ICE (internal combustion engine) and transmission has hundreds or thousands more parts (any of which can break) than an electric transmission. The Tesla only has ONE GEAR, for example. Teslas, and other electrics with 3-phase AC induction motors, will last faaaaaaaaaaaaaaar longer than gas powered cars. I've seen 60 year old electric motors running like a top, and in googling the reliability of electric motors, they are far higher than gas motors. Coupled with the "tipping point" effect of many gas stations closing up due to lack of business, that cross-country trip will end up needing to be routed through available stations one day...

Did I mention that a Tesla, going the same distance as an ICE vehicle, has 1/3 the carbon footprint.

Source: I own a Tesla Model S P85+ and fully expect this thing to still be in tip top shape in 10 years while continuing to run circles around gas cars (ohhhh, I can't wait till you experience simply passing people by at speed in this thing... you think the thought and it's like you're a pinball coming off caroms to your destination...)

There very likely is no tipping point with gas stations.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/07/the...

"A 10% reduction would be 221 million vehicles but that is how many vehicles there were in 2000. Was driving an automobile so much more inconvenient in 2000 than it was in 2009?"

> Was driving an automobile so much more inconvenient in 2000 than it was in 2009?

I don't understand this logic. The answer is "no, it wasn't, because there were fewer vehicles." What would happen is that stations would become less dense, and there's a low density point there where "inconvenience" is reached, or at least, gas-range anxiety. This actually happened when gas vehicles were new.

The response also says that demand is already decreasing simply due to the emergence of more fuel-efficient vehicles, so a penetrating EV market may merely accelerate that decline.