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by JohnDoe365 3806 days ago
Current oil prices make electronic cars a total personal economic loss.
4 comments

Perhaps at face value, and only at this exact moment in time. It would be interesting to see examine both the hidden and extrinsic costs of both sorts of vehicles. I believe that maintenance/performance of electric cars ends up being less in lifetime costs than combustion - that's a relatively well-studied area, and narrows the amortized gap between electric and combustion. What hasn't been studied much, and may be interesting to examine, are the extrinsic costs of both types of cars. Take health expenses for instance - does owning a combustion vehicle have an effect on an owner's health, vs electric ownership? Would this effect be reflected in higher healthcare costs later on? At the macro level, if emissions were reduced dramatically by mass replacement by electric vehicles, would aggregate healthcare costs decrease as well?
Just for comparison here, I have a 2013 Leaf. In December I drove 920 miles and with my utility prices the cost of electricity to cover those miles was about $28. You still need either an extremely efficient car or quite a bit lower gas prices to beat this. This also does not account for the fact that you can routinely get free electricity for your EV.
This is true of almost all cars, electric or not. People buy way more car than they need, just because they like it.

Electric is starting to take off because it's finally moving past that "save a little money by not buying gas" phase, and towards "this is a great car, spend some extra money on it."

Not everything is about dollars and cents.