The last time I bought a personal vehicle (2022) I did some math. I drive X miles a year, I pay Y for gas, I pay Z for electricity. I then compared some vehicles in the segment that fits my needs and found the ICE options to have a significantly lower cost of ownership for the 8-10 years I expect to operate the vehicle. So I left the extra 15 grand in stock, which will see a much higher rate of return than an EV would have.
It's not even Joe Schmoe that's looking at the up front costs. I don't think EVs pencil out as profitable for people that aren't doing more than average amounts of driving. For someone borrowing for the car I cannot image ever getting ahead compared to traditional vehicles if you get $10k-20k more into debt at 6%apr for 60 months. That's an additional $3500-7000 in interest which buys you a lot of oil changes and gasoline. I guess I'll do the math again in 2031 when it's time to start looking at a more modern car and see if they are a good deal or not.
I bought an EV because it needs way less regular maintenance. I don't need to do oil changes or replace parts at an interval defined by the manufacturer. I don't even need to go to a gas station.
And every time I leave home, I've got a full tank, charged with cheap electricity.
And as a bonus it's really comfortable to drive, including having the ability to keep itself cool/warm even when the engine is not running.
IF I went purely by numbers the best choice would've been to buy a 2000€ car drive it until it breaks down. Then just call a taxi for the rest of the trip and buy a new similar one online for the next day. I could've bought 20 shitty cars for the price of my EV. But that's stress I don't want in my life.
Maintenance, planned and breakage, is a huge differentiator in favor of EVs- there are simply less moving parts and the EV ones are usually simpler and more reliable.
There is no question that the electric motor is the future.
The only question is that how do we transport the power for it, currently it's batteries but in the future it might be something else.
I'm personally wondering why more companies don't do range extender trucks for long hauls. Electric drivetrain with insane torque and long maintenance intervals. Add a small to medium sized battery. Plug in a diesel generator that can always work at 100% optimal RPM to produce maximum output to charge the battery.
(Edison Motors[0] is doing some amazing work in this space, but they're a small player)
Same, going on 5 years now, still only had to get my tires replaced. It’s been night and day compared to my last vehicle that always had something breaking for >$1,000 and I definitely don’t miss gas stations
I think we should be pricing in the time wasted on going to mechanics for routine and other maintenance. My last ICE would spend a couple of days a year in the shop (besides routine maintenance, there were some recall events, which then lead to engine malfunction which I learned were a known problem on this model, etc. etc.). And then each time you need a rental to substitute, which is a huge chore, and not to mention taking vacation days to handle it. Just got an EV last month and look forward to none of this.
The motivation behind choosing an EV is not because it's cheaper. People like the features, low pollution, low noise, the imagine, etc. Buying a car is very often not about making the best financial decision. E.g. in Europe, SUVs are now the most popular car model, even though they are more expensive, use more fuel, are more dangerous, noisy, polluting, etc.
Which I find crazy tbh (that they are so popular). Especially in Western Europe where vehicle taxes are crazy (imo). Here in the Netherlands, you could be paying €100/mo for a "midsize" SUV just in taxes. That's nothing to say about the cost of fuel, insurance, and maintenance.
I understand why they are priced that way, and perhaps it is my expat bubble in NL specifically, but with the cost of public transportation the way that it is, I'm not sure how they expect to keep raising vehicle taxes without also making public transportation more affordable.
You’re valuing your own time at $0/hr that is spent at gas stations, doing oil changes and other ICE maintenance, unless you have a personal assistant to do that stuff for you.
My calculation was 15 minutes/week for gas, 1 hour every 3 months for oil changes, and 1 hour a month on average dealing with other ICE problems (for instance I had a water pump failure cause my engine to overheat on a busy highway, had to wait 2 hours for a tow truck waiting in a dangerous location, then took another 2 hours to finally get home).
So that’s ~30 hours of my time per year. I value my own free time at $300/hr so even at a much higher initial cost an EV still made sense to me.
Where in the world does it take 15 minutes to fill up a tank of gas? You change your oil every 3 months? Are you driving 20,000+ miles per year? 1 hour per month on ICE problems? What are you driving, a 1985 Pontiac Skylark? My parents' 2003 Camry has never had a single mechanical problem.
Sometimes you just want something and that's OK...but your calculations are not based in reality.
The 2014 Ford Escape I had before my current EV was actually worse than his calculations. I'm glad your parents' Camry was reliable but my experience was not good.
1 hour per month is amortized. My last car ended up in the shop for several days. It's not several days of my time but dealing with renting a replacement and coordinating the drop-off took me half a day, and this happened more than once. I ended up burning a vacation day on it which was pretty frustrating.
If you read the article you posted, you’d see it say that the EV problems referenced have to do with paint, trim, climate, as opposed to engine, transmission, etc. In other words, not major issues.
“Tesla Motors, the market leader in EV sales, continues to have issues with body hardware, paint and trim, and climate system on its models, but are not as problematic for motor, charging, and battery. At number 14, Tesla is the second-highest ranked domestic automaker in CR’s brand rankings. The Model 3 and Model Y have average reliability while all the other Tesla models–the S, and X–are all below average.“
This has been my experience too. In 5 years I have not had any major issue with my electric car preventing me from driving it other than a flat tire. There have been a couple minor other issues, such as a window not automatically closing all the way and a software issue with the display but they were minor and tesla came to my house to fix it for free while the car was in my driveway. I don’t think there’s enough room in this comment box to type out all the major problems I had with my previous ICE vehicle in the 5 years before that.
I also have experienced much lower maintenance numbers with ICEs than what are being quoted. I think it's a combination of the models I pick (only those manufactured in Japan) and the fact that I buy new and drive for 8-10 years so I'm the single owner.
My 2019 Santa Fe has needed oil changes and 0 other maintenance in 5 years/50k miles.
I do the oil changes myself in about 30 minutes and they cost me about $30 using synthetic oil(costco) and OEM filter. So, I have spent $300 in 5 years on maintenance. Still original tires.
The people claiming expensive maintenance on ICE cars DID NOT follow what manufacturer recommends but the dealer, who have an incentive to offer extra services.
It's hard to decide based on any kind of published data because so much chance is involved. And it's hard to decide based on first-hand experience because you can't compare a new and 10-year old car. In my case I figured the unexpected maintenance is unlikely to be worse, and I know the expected maintenance will be better.
Well, either we believe the data, or we believe stories (true or not) that people tell us (EVs are more reliable). EVs compared to ICEs are still in the early adopter phase in terms of ironing the kinks out. We've been doing ICE vehicles for what, 100 years?
I don’t doubt the data, but the question is how to use it. When it comes to long tail events like breakdowns there is a big difference between an individual purchasing one car and a large fleet owner purchasing in bulk where the law of large numbers helps remove the variance.
In my anecdotal case, I traded a potentially larger but still small probability of a major breakdown for a guaranteed better maintenance schedule (no oil changes, less brake/rotor work) and no gas station visits. We’ll see how it goes!
It’s a few min out of my way each direction to get to a gas station, then another few min to fill it up, sometimes longer if I have to wait. For some reason you assume that the typical fill up is what happens every time, for an accurate average you have to consider worst case scenarios too. I’ve had too many experiences traveling late at night looking for a gas station in a rural area only to be driving 30+ min out of my way to find stations that were either out of gas or closed. I’ve also had plenty of instances where there was a long line at the station for whatever reason. So overall it roughly rounds to 15.
Yes I was told to change oil every 3 months, I drive a lot. I had a ton of mechanical problems with my Lexus RX.
It's always been true that people who drive a lot every day are the low hanging fruit for EVs. EVs are more efficient when in motion, but most cars spend a lot of their time parked.
But in most places prices have continually dropped so the people who will save has expanded.
(Not checked to see if recent battery sourcing changes are included but either way it's still illustrative if the big picture.)
I like to look at these types of calculators to make sure I am considering all the important parameters but I never use them to do the actual calculations. I have found too many that either don't consider all the parameters I want, aren't configurable enough, and some that are simply incorrectly implemented.
One example of this specific calculator is that it compares all vehicles in the same graph, and all vehicles use the same parameters. However, not every vehicle actually has the same parameters. For example, the resell value of different brands varies significantly. The maintenance cost of different brands varies significantly. I don't want to be too harsh on this because it does provide some value and seems to be implemented by a well meaning student. I just would never suggest someone use it to actual compare the cost of ownership of different vehicles.
EDIT: Another thing that's hard to model is road trips. During which time gas prices fluctuate and electricity prices shot up.
Because if you’re putting modest mileage on a vehicle you probably don’t need to worry much about maintenance beyond a once a year maybe scheduled visit to the dealer for a long time. That’s worth a lot to
Me.
the supply of used cars isn't what it used to be post-covid. Some people end up leasing a new car simply because their used car search was extremely slim pickings.
When in a conversation about keeping car expenses low, mentioning leasing seems like a bizarre thing to do.
My understanding is that a lease price is essentially the purchase price minus the expected value at the end of the lease (Plus a few dollars for profits). ie, A $50,000 car that's expected to be worth $30,000 after 3 years might have you pay $25,000 over the course of the 3 years, which would be about $695/mo.
But frequently, in reality, I would see such a car being leased for $750/month with $3,000 due at signing or some shit.
Every time I see lease offers, I do the math and they seem like an incredibly bad deal. Even if the lease expenses are a business tax deduction, I don't see how in the long term it ends up a better deal than buying new over the course of 10 years.
Didn't lease, but did buy new due to this factor. I was looking for a rather modest, cheap, reliable, used sedan. Prices were all well over $14/$15k (for a 2015-2017, and nearly the cost of new after that). At that point, it made sense to look at a new Kia/Hyundai in the lower price range and gain a decade's worth of warranty.
It's not even Joe Schmoe that's looking at the up front costs. I don't think EVs pencil out as profitable for people that aren't doing more than average amounts of driving. For someone borrowing for the car I cannot image ever getting ahead compared to traditional vehicles if you get $10k-20k more into debt at 6%apr for 60 months. That's an additional $3500-7000 in interest which buys you a lot of oil changes and gasoline. I guess I'll do the math again in 2031 when it's time to start looking at a more modern car and see if they are a good deal or not.