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by iainmerrick 1881 days ago
Buy an electric car for everyday stuff, hire a car for holidays?
1 comments

That's not really a thing in Europe.

Renting a big nice car for a 1 week holiday (so ~10 days) sets' you back 1000$, which is a bit over the average net monthly income over here. You can rent a small shitty car for much less, but then you might as well just use your own car.

If money is not an issue, renting a car, picking it up, etc. is a bit of a pain. Since money is not an issue, you might as well spend more on a better car that doesn't force you to do this.

Very very few are going to buy a car that forces them to spend one month full of salary to rent a different car for larger trips.

I don't think your number is accurate, at least not for western europe. Also you have to compare what you save in terms of purchase price (and electricity cost, because you drive a lighter car) with what it costs for renting over the lifetime of the car. The salary level doesn't really factor in directly.

The real reason more people don't do it, is that a car is a status symbol and most people like wasting money on it. Musk knows that and uses it for his PR. And of course still not many people are used to the new cost pattern of electric cars.

You can buy a used VW Golf 4 years old with <50k km for < 10.000 EUR.

You can probably re-sell it 4 years later with 100k km for 6k EUR.

There isn't an electric car that can compete with this today.

You could buy a Tesla 3 for ~30k EUR, and then rent at 500 EUR every 3 months (being extremely cheap), and in those 4 years, just the renting almost matches the entire price of the VW Golf.

For the numbers of the electric car to even make sense long term you'd need cheap ass electricity, which at least in central Europe you only get if you charge at home. The moment you charge outside, gas is almost always cheaper than electricity.

That still leaves insurance, repairs, etc. on the table. Repairing a popular car like a Golf is dirt cheap.

The rental part is unnecessary and can be removed from your calculations. That being said, yes a Golf is cheap, if not considering the incremental long term cost to the environment and the future. It’s the tragedy of the commons.
I was comparing a big electric car with a fat battery vs a cheaper electric car with a smaller battery + a rental car for holidays. Of course buying a used ICE car is currently still cheaper.
Wow. Thats expensive. I just checked and in LT there is a car sharing network, where you use cars on demand, and here one week rent for VW T-Corss is 125€. 379€ for month. +0.2€/km (fuel is included in price)