[pentae]

I feel the same way and after speaking with many EV people i've realised the main benefit is how cheap they are to run. This comes down to the increase in efficiency compared to an ICE - ~80% of the battery energy finds its way to the wheels on EV's, vs ~30% on an ICE. If you live somewhere where electric costs are very low then a 0 to full charge your EV costs about $10. (Someone please correct me if i'm off on this one)

Depending on your mileage, by saving $3k-$4k a year on gas theres certainly a case to be made for an EV being a more sensible financial decision in the long term especially given government tax incentives

One of the biggest reason for the massive disparity in efficiency on EV's is due to regenerative braking (16-25%). So what's interesting is when you compare an EV to a Hybrid ICE vehicle then the efficiency disparity becomes a lot less and you still have the benefit of being able to take long trips and not needing a home charger.

Anyone thats driven a Hybrid Toyota will tell you that fuel consumption is dramatically less, in my real world scenarios I use about 2.5x less gas in something like a Toyota Corolla Cross compared to my not overly thirsty ICE BMW.

Another benefit to Hybrids is they only require a ~1kWh battery instead of needing a huge 60-70kWh battery like an EV. So you could create 60 or 70 hybrid vehicles for the same amount of lithium mining as one EV.

One has to wonder why the governments aren't just pushing everyone into Hybrids instead of EV's? If a young person was asking me to recommend a car and they didn't have a home charger I wouldn't hesitate to recommend something like a new Toyota HEV / Honda e:hev - they are basically an EV with an on-board Atkinson engine as a powerplant.

[coryfklein]

EVs are still solidly in the "luxury" category; they're specifically being sold to folks who are not paying attention to the price at the pump in the first place. So I don't understand why "they save you money" is even a selling point at all right now.

Once you see folks replacing their beat-up 1992 Honda Civic with EVs then you'll know that "they save you money" is actually a thing.

[bluGill]

A lot of people have weird budgets. So they will think nothing of $1000/month for a car payment, but complain about gas prices that work out to $100/month. They rarely consider that they could get better mileage luxury car for similar monthly payments but using a lot less gas.

Which is to say I do know people who complain about gas prices on their luxury cars.

[jes5199]

I have a 2021 Chevy Bolt, it is not a luxury car, it was hella cheap. My sister-in-law drives for Uber/Lyft and bought a Tesla model 3 because the total cost of ownership is lower than any gas car

[tekknik]

Edmunds would disagree with you, showing the Tesla costing almost $20k more to own than a Honda Accord:

https://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-3/2020/cost-to-own/

https://www.edmunds.com/honda/accord/2023/cost-to-own/

[hollandheese]

>I have a 2021 Chevy Bolt, it is not a luxury car, it was hella cheap.

For an EV, maybe. Still more expensive than a Honda Civic.

[insane_dreamer]

> EVs are still solidly in the "luxury" category

Not all models. With the tax rebate, a Tesla 3 costs nearly the same as a Camry, so does the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt. If you want a Polestar or Mach-e, sure, then your in BMW/Merc price range.

[TexanFeller]

Pricing from manufacturer websites just now. Base Camry is $26,420, base Model 3 is $38,990(apparently not tax rebate eligible) and the base Model Y is $36,490(after $7500 tax rebate).

Best case comparison there is a $10,070 difference between the Camry and a Tesla.

$10k is a LOT of money to average Americans living paycheck to paycheck. In percentages that's 38% more than the Camry! That's before considering larger loan balances to pay 7% on, since the poor average American won't have that kind of cash. This is almost on par with saying that Whole Foods is the same price as H-E-B or Kroger!

[insane_dreamer]

The 3 was eligible for the 7500 tax rebate until a few days ago (Dec 31) so only a few thousand more than the Camry which is easily made up in gas savings (if charging at home) and lower maintenance cost. Over 3 years comes to about the same. However, once you compare feature parity, the 3 was (with rebate) cheaper than the Camry because for the Camry you have to add on option packs to get the same safety features available in the 3 (like blind spot monitoring, backup camera warning, etc.; very important to us), not to mention other features like moonroof etc. You'd have to get the Camry XLE to start matching features (and even that doesn't have the moonroof) and the Hybrid version has a starting MSRP of $32970.

Obviously if your only concern is cost then yes, an ICE is the cheapest option, especially if you get a Corolla or Civic. But if you want more features, EVs are fairly competitive price wise esp once you factor in the gas savings over 3-5 years.

There are also cheaper EV models like the Leaf, Bolt.

[skwirl]

> the main benefit is how cheap they are to run

This is a pretty weak main benefit as ICE cars are already cheap to run. At 12k miles/year, 30 MPG, and $3.20/gallon you are only talking $1300/year in fuel.

According to AAA, taking fuel, maintenance, repair, and tires into account someone driving 15k miles a year would only save $330. Given the cost premium on an EV over a comparable ICE car, I’m not sure you would ever come out ahead, although the cost gap is admittedly shrinking.

[shagie]

There's a section on XKCD 980's chart for that - https://xkcd.com/980/huge/#x=-2004&y=-6294&z=6

While it's a bit dated, you can see the parts with the cost difference and the "if gas was this much".

You can see some things like the Honda Insight (hybrid) has a slightly lower 5 year cost of ownership than the Honda Fit (ICE).

It would be curious to do an update of that part of the chart for current models.

[blue_cadet_3]

> If you live somewhere where electric costs are very low then a 0 to full charge your EV costs about $10.

I rented a Tesla Model 3 recently. From 40% to 98% cost me $7 CAD and I was able to drive from Vancouver to Tacoma, WA on a single charge and arrived with 20% battery. In the Seattle suburbs it cost a bit more, $13 USD, to go from 20% to 90% due to a supercharger station having issues so demand was higher at the next closest one.

$7 to go 175mi(283km) sold me on an EV as my next car. I never felt like I would be stranded and when the battery is conditioned for fast charging by time you pop in somewhere to use the bathroom and grab a coffee or snacks you're pretty much good to go.

[strunz]

>by time you pop in somewhere to use the bathroom and grab a coffee or snacks you're pretty much good to go.

I really think these comments are just EV driver rationalization. You really spend 30-45 minutes at a rest stop on road trips? When we take road trips we spend almost no time stopped. Even if we're eating, it's in the car. I can't even imagine stopping multiple times for 30-45 minutes to recharge, that is not the same as "going to the bathroom and grabbing a snack". That takes like 5 mins tops, the rest is just wasting time you could be on the road.

[Eggpants]

45 minutes is only if you are trying to charge over 80% which you don’t actually want to do. Unlike gas tanks that have a consistent fill rate, batteries are like a sponge where near empty the charge/fill rate is much much faster than when it’s nearly full. 20% to 80% is about 10 /15 minutes depending on how new the super charger station is. This gives you about another 3 hours of normal highway driving or so depending on conditions like temperature, 70mph+ and how hilly/windy the drive is. However, if you time the stop around meal times then you can take 45 minutes to charge to fill while you are eating at a restaurant.

Sadly, it is true most non Tesla chargers are terrible and require you make an account/give up personal information first and are not maintained well. Tesla does as well but the stations are maintained and the account signup happens when you buy the car so you just plug it in and charge.

There needs to be a just a pay and fill chargers like gas pumps but that doesn’t fly with todays VC vultures.

Electrify America was built by Volkswagen as punishment for the diesel scandal. They have zero interest in maintaining them.

[tekknik]

> 45 minutes is only if you are trying to charge over 80% which you don’t actually want to do. Unlike gas tanks that have a consistent fill rate, batteries are like a sponge where near empty the charge/fill rate is much much faster than when it’s nearly full. 20% to 80% is about 10 /15 minutes depending on how new the super charger station is. This gives you about another 3 hours of normal highway driving or so depending on conditions like temperature, 70mph+ and how hilly/windy the drive is. However, if you time the stop around meal times then you can take 45 minutes to charge to fill while you are eating at a restaurant.

Great so instead of just filling to 100% and using that until it runs out now I have to think and plan the next few hundred miles and charge accordingly.

EVs are making less and less sense.

[strunz]

So you're stopping every 3 hours for 15 minutes? So a 10 hour road trip includes 45 minute waiting for your vehicle to charge? And that assumes the chargers are immediately free. That sounds horrible to me.

[cjcenizal]

I think the point is that one group of people is imagining a change and saying, “That change will be intolerable!” And then another group is actually experiencing the change and saying, “Hey, it’s actually pretty good.” You won’t know how you really feel about it until you try it yourself, and speculating about the second group won’t net you any benefit.

[j4yav]

It’s quite simple really, there’s a wrong group who disagrees with me, and a right one who agrees. Not sure what all the debate is about to be honest.

[cromka]

20 minutes every 6 hours is absolutely minimum for me, if not more often. That’s to stretch, relax, walk around. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t do that. But this is in Europe where distances are smaller.

[GiorgioG]

The mental gymnastics these people do to make themselves feel good about waiting longer to fuel up their EVs to go shorter distances vs filling up ICEs is impressive.

I'm not ready to drink the Kool-aid. Give me an 800 mile range EV. Then and only then will I not care if it takes an hour to charge to 100% because I'm unlikely to be able to drive farther than that in a day. I've had to drive nearly that distance once and it was miserable and I'll never do it again without breaking it up into overnight stays at a hotel.

[Pet_Ant]

Seriously? If I take a shit, it's more than 5 minutes itself. Waiting in line to buy coffee or a donut, let alone eat (I guess if you are in a real hurry eat in your car, but don't you want a break???). Just doing a lap of the parking lot to stretch my legs. Even if that's just 25 minutes, that's still quite a bit of charge. That said I'll still choose a bus or train over a car trip any day I can, but yeah..

[brailsafe]

I also usually rent a car for the same trip, but am quite happy to continue renting every single time. $150 for the couple of days I usually leave for, maybe at most 3 times a year, and maybe $80 in gas. Saves me like $2000/year minimum. Buying a car hasn't seemed sensible since moving to Vancouver, because the transit is so good, and I'm not rich and don't want the liability of owning one when the job market disappears (now).

Not that there aren't reasons to own one here mind you, surely a long and unwieldy commute might do it, but then you're probably in Delta or a suburb, which was my situation when I last had one; after it was crashed, I just didn't buy another and realized that I used it more because I had it rather than having it to help me go distances I'd need to anyway.

[recursive]

> i've realised the main benefit is how cheap they are to run

Depends what you value. For me, that's a nice to have. Greater benefits are: never go to a gas station, no oil changes, no fumes, more fun to drive.

[Rumudiez]

> more fun to drive

I’d argue the opposite, but it’s certainly subjective. Driving my sister’s Model 3 was leagues below my cheap little BRZ, and it’s still slower than my motorcycles if I want to accelerate fast. The suspension is crap. Body roll was astoundingly bad and the front end doesn’t want to push you through corners when trail braking. I was excited to drive it, but after 500 miles of backroads and open freeway I firmly believe a cheap sports car is a much better driving experience.

[chokolad]

BRZ/GR86 are ridiculously fun to drive. There is just no comparison in that price range, other than Miata.

[recursive]

I've never driven a cheap sports car, so I might agree with you. However, my subjective take is, between otherwise similar non-sports cars, the EV is more fun to drive. For a few reasons, I can't realistically have a purely fun car at the moment.

[Reubachi]

I think, then, you're the perfect target for a well-established EV platform. Don't listen to naysayers, I'm sure you're not a shill l(ike this whole thread seems to think about anyone pro-EV.)

Personally, I'm in a spot where my "perfect car" is a cheap sports car with two seats and a bunch of turbo lag. But I can see the appeal of having main car be an electric horsepower monster with a squishy ride.

[conk]

IMO the lack of fumes/exhaust is my favorite part of owning an EV. Sure there are some downsides with EVs (more expensive to buy, less range, lack of public charging infrastructure) but those don’t impact me and I’d gladly take the negatives for a car that doesn’t smell every time I park it in my garage.

[f4c39012]

There is no lack of fumes. They are somewhere else, that's all.

[rafabulsing]

The resounding success of sewer systems shows that that's a huge improvement.

[Symbiote]

Coal and oil power stations have scrubbers to remove organic and sulphurous compounds from the chimney.

In most developed countries, coal and oil is a small part of power generation which continues to decline.

[recursive]

Even if that was true, it's still an improvement.

[m_mueller]

> Anyone thats driven a Hybrid Toyota will tell you that fuel consumption is dramatically less, in my real world scenarios I use about 2.5x less gas in something like a Toyota Corolla Cross compared to my not overly thirsty ICE BMW.

well that depends on the ICE car and your driving behaviour. E.g. VW group turbo 4 cylinders from ~5y ago are very efficient. I drive a 5yo Seat Leon ST (basically like a slightly smaller Golf Variant, e.g. a typical European hatchback), and mostly at highway speeds with some mountain driving also. With this I get ~45-47mpg or ~5.0-5.2l/100km. A hybrid would maybe get me up to 50mpg but not much more, as highway speeds are not really where they gain you much. They're great for the occasional shopping run, but where I live those are max. 20min driving both ways, so not that much of an impact either.

[pentae]

Absolutely! But most ICE vehicles people drive don’t get anywhere near that type of mileage because we tend to be buying much larger heavier cars. Hybrids help a lot of people get god level mpg and the reduced running costs without needing to go all in on electric

[fho]

As "someone with a Toyota hybrid": I consistently use about 1l/100km than that. (The dash keeps a "best milage" number, which is 3.8l/100km for me right now.

At some point it becomes bike shedding, but a 20% reduction (from 5l to 4l) is still impressive to me.

[m_mueller]

Indeed. Is that also at highway speeds? And what generation is it, I’m guessing a Prius? Afaik e.g. a Corolla with comparable trunk space as my Leon doesn’t get that low.

[fho]

Nope, a 2013 Yaris (XP13).

To be fair I am mostly on rural roads (70-100 km/h) during my commute. But if I am not doing WFH I M doing 100km per day and with our family car that equated to >10€ Gas per day.

So getting a used car with great milage was a reasonable decision to me.

[fho]

As "somebody who just bought a 2013 Toyota Yaris Hybrid":

Full EVs are for some selected few... Here in Germany it's just homeowners with PV already installed. I did the math before deciding on the hybrid and literally everybody else is paying more for electricity (at 0.4€/kWh) and is producing more CO2 (at avg. 400g/kWh).

I really pity the guys in their Dacia Spring SUVs in the supermarket parking lots (at 0.6€/kWh) who bought a EV to "do the right thing" here.

(That said, that's a problem very unique to Germany ... Most countries around us have cheaper electricity and a smaller CO2 footprint per kWh.)

[mushufasa]

I think the savings argument often misses the context of discount rate: the NPV of the savings is a lot less than the total savings, especially with high interest rates.

[phpisthebest]

I tend to keep my Vehicles longer than most people, currently I drive a 2015 model.

All that savings goes out the window if I am hit with with $40,000 to $60,000 repair bill to change the battery, even if my entire drive chain goes out in my ICE I am looking at probably $5,000 and that rarely happens.

batteries 100% will need replaced, and ICE can go decades with no major issues

[lanstin]

Except global warming.

[a_gnostic]

The grid not being able to handle recharging electric cars in every home, does not agree with your purist stance. Switching to hybrid vehicles, or an efficient generator at home, would be a responsible stopgap.

https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/208891-2016-12-14-darpa...

[lanstin]

For sure. But “stopgap” isn’t keeping a car for twenty years despite the flooding and storms and heat waves and that sort of thing over those decades. Moving some stuff to hybrids for a while isn’t a terrible idea. As well, moving some trips onto small electrics like bikes or tuk tuks. Lot of ways to mitigate the problem. My purist stance isn’t “do it my way only” but “gas burning has a major issue”.

[a_gnostic]

Since I grew up and left home, my dad kept using an inefficient freezer from the 1950's, my own family went through 5 of the newfangled energy-saving freezers, prompting me to question the environmental friendliness of most modern appliances, and cars.

Remember to factor in the supply chain, and shipping costs.

[lanstin]

If we keep burning the fossil fuels we are going to keep increasing the temperatures. If we switch the power plant the freezer is plugged into to power the freezer and the powerplant the factory making freezers is plugged into, and replace the trucks moving the freezers around, we improve the odds of a nice world in fifty years, regardless of whether or not the freezer is low tech cheap junk or not.

[themaninthedark]

How much is the environmental cost of a new battery vs environmental cost of gasoline hold up?

Otherwise we are just shifting where the pollution is happening.

[lanstin]

One needs to distinguish carbon dioxide and methane from your run of the mill toxic chemical pollution. It isn't a linear sum of "pollutants" but different substances with different effects.

[phpisthebest]

I have never and will never make a purchasing choice based on global warming

[lanstin]

Why?

[Solortho]

Because greenwashing with batteries mined by children and vegan soy-based food from toxic crops are just a way for snobs for virtue signaling.

[lanstin]

You might want to look into the science a bit more. The carbon burn is already having consequences all over the place. Transportation and energy are about 65 percent of the emissions, and solar, batteries, and electric vehicles are pretty simple ways to mitigate the harms. Cows are only about six percent of emissions, so relatively less important.

I don’t understand why this simple physical problem of absorbing more infrared radiation has become confused with class warfare. I don’t think the US manufactured batteries are more tied up in child,labor than like regular clothes and chocolate, and ending child labor across the globe is mostly independent of how we power transportation and energy.

There is a lot of greenwashing, but actually converting sectors of the economy to non-fossil fuel is not an example of that.

[insane_dreamer]

> If you live somewhere where electric costs are very low then a 0 to full charge your EV costs about $10. (Someone please correct me if i'm off on this one)

Our utility offers very cheap prices at night, so our Tesla 3 costs $2.25 to fully charge vs. $55-70 for our Forester.

Also, maintenance is cheaper on EVs.

[danans]

> If you live somewhere where electric costs are very low then a 0 to full charge your EV costs about $10.

It's not that simple because "full" means something very different in a Cybertruck (123kWh battery) vs a base Ioniq 6 (53kWh battery).

Likewise the fuel economy is dramatically different with the Cybertruck at 2 miles/kWh Vs the Ioniq 6 at 4.6 miles/kWh.

Assuming a cheap electricity rate of $.15/kWh, the Cybertruck will cost $.07/mile to drive.

The Ioniq will cost $.03/mile.

The regular hybrid Prius gets 56 mpg. At the cheapest current (i.e. Texas) gas price of $3/gallon, it would cost $.05/mile to operate.

It will be far less performant than either the Cybertruck or the Ioniq 6, though.

> One of the biggest reason for the massive disparity in efficiency on EV's is due to regenerative braking (16-25%). So what's interesting is when you compare an EV to a Hybrid ICE vehicle then the efficiency disparity becomes a lot less and you still have the benefit of being able to take long trips and not needing a home charger.

The disparity is still around 28%, which when talking about efficiency is pretty big.

> Another benefit to Hybrids is they only require a ~1kWh battery instead of needing a huge 60-70kWh battery like an EV. So you could create 60 or 70 hybrid vehicles for the same amount of lithium mining as one EV. > One has to wonder why the governments aren't just pushing everyone into Hybrids instead of EV's?

We aren't lithium constrained, we are battery manufacturing capacity constrained. One goal of the IRA (and its EV incentives) is stimulating the build-out of a domestic battery manufacturing supply chain. That battery production capacity is a strategic asset, not just for cars, but also for stationary storage. It's a win-win for energy security and decarbonization.

There are also plugin hybrids that use smaller batteries, but let you use either/both electricity and gasoline (albeit with an efficiency penalty on both drivetrains).

Also, 67% of Americans live in single family homes (mostly suburbia), many with an electrical outlet near their parking spot that they can use to charge their cars. These are also the people who drive the most on a per capita basis.

> If a young person was asking me to recommend a car and they didn't have a home charger I wouldn't hesitate to recommend something like a new Toyota HEV / Honda e:hev - they are basically an EV with an on-board Atkinson engine as a powerplant.

Depends on the young person. For one thing, I wouldn't recommend that any young person buy a new car unless they are very financially comfortable. But if you don't have a home charger (or nearby DC fast charging) it's not a matter of a recommendation, but rather a physical requirement to get an ICE car, so it might as well be a hybrid.

[tsimionescu]

The Cybertruck is a bad example, being a car that doesn't really exist (they've sold what, a hundred cars?) and that has at best a tiny niche market (man children living their boyhood dreams of driving a Transformer).

[danans]

> The Cybertruck is a bad example, being a car that doesn't really exist (they've sold what, a hundred cars?)

Then sub the F150 Lightning or the Rivian and you'll get basically the same numbers.

> and that has at best a tiny niche market (man children living their boyhood dreams of driving a Transformer)

I agree with the customer characterization (although I suspect that number of such people out there is higher) and from an efficiency perspective it's just as bad as it's more conventional looking EV truck competitors.