| For many, many years I have had a personal benchmark in mind when purchasing vehicles. I want my TCO to be < $1000/year barring routine costs like fuel, oil, tires. So if I purchase a car for $3000, I expect to own it for 5 years with minimal problems. There is room for a bad alternator or a starter. But not too many of those over that 5 years. Of course, if I can sell it for $1500 after the 5 years, that's another $1500 I can sink into maintenance and still justify that it cost me < $1000/year. If I spend $10K, I have to think the car will be reliable for 15 years with ~$5K of repairs along the way. In the past five years or so I have thought I might need to raise that $1000/year figure to reflect modern practicality. But, surprisingly, I haven't really needed to. Cars are becoming amazingly more durable, and prices in the used car market aren't sky-rocketing the same as in the new car market. Still, it is time to make the transition to electric. The used electric market is still very immature. I don't want a used Prius. I'm ignorant of how to value used batteries, so I'm not sure what the maintenance costs will be on an 8-year-old Honda hybrid with original batteries. A 10-year-old Tesla is still way beyond $1000/year. To step into this brave new world will probably require me to suspend my $1000 rule until the water settles a bit. Or I can pick up one more ICE car and stretch it out for 10 more years while things sort... Or compromise and just get a series of 3-4 year clunkers until I'm ready to dive into electric. Or just bite the bullet and take the plunge now...
Or... |
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/01/electric...