There is zero charger infrastructure where I live. I realize you can charge at home but I don’t want to rely on just that. I absolutely love the idea but it’s not practical here.
I have a no charge hybrid which I’m happy with for now. Well almost happy. It’s in my top 3 favorite colors, but not my favorite. 😂
Get a bike and use it, and you will get ahead.
Everyone I know is jealous of EVs but can’t afford one. Regular cars break down all kinds of dumb ways and there’s great deals to be had if you can fix simple shit. EVs the battery just goes eventually and there’s an inevitable ~$5k bill so that’s kinda the price floor. Not much else to go wrong. 30 year old gas car I’m driving was $100 to haul out of someone’s yard and $600 to get back on the road
Statically, that’s not true, and is bordering on decades-old fear mongering about EVs.
In modern EVs, the battery will likely outlast the car body it is sitting installed in, or at least match the expected lifespan of the vehicle. There are a few EVs on the road right now with battery packs that have been driven many hundreds of thousands of miles.
The upfront cost of EVs is still a problem, but most people won’t need to spend thousands on a new or refurbished battery pack after a few years.
Here’s a well-made (and broadly pessimistic) source if you’re interested: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01698-1
decades-old fear mongering about EVs.
All coming from one PR firm in NY botting Reddit and Youtube.
Every month some Boomer tells me how my hybrid battery wiill last 2 years and cost $50,000 to replace.
Meanwhile, it has an 8 year warranty and in 8 years I saved enough $$$ that the car is free. Math, bitches.Statistically you’re using statistics wrong, that’s my directly observed experience of vehicle salvage and the extreme low end of the used market. Show me a $1k EV that’s still usable. Much less than 5 or so is because it needs a battery that costs around that. I’ve stripped packs for cells and know what even a dead core goes for/how common they are too. “Expected lifespan” is unsustainable nonrepairable anticonsumer bullshit whatever tech it’s applied to, some of us are still trying to use this stuff after the lease is up and warranty’s expired.
One of the reasons auto dealerships hate EVs is they are cheaper to maintain (about 2/3 the cost) and are projected to have much longer vehicle life spans since there’s no internal combustion engine to fall apart.
This means repeat sales and service for EVs is substantially lower for electric vehicles. Imo if auto dealerships think they’ll make less money on EVs that suggests they think EVs are actually the long term affordable option.
An internal combustion engine doesn’t just fall apart though. It’s a collection of smaller, less expensive parts that wear and fail and can be replaced. A monolithic, proprietary battery that must be replaced as a unit is much closer to what you’re describing. What you’re saying about sales and service is absolutely true for the first owner and there are even bonus maintenance pros like pretty much never having to do brakes, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Same as I told the other guy, link me the cheapest EV you consider usable. It’s going to cost at least as much a battery. If it doesn’t, it needs one. There are potential answers to this like battery standards, modular designs, recycling programs but no one seems to push for them, electric=green, problem solved, back to consuming
Batteries don’t just fall apart or stop working. They very slowly lose capacity over many charge cycles, but they very rarely just stop working. Actually, total failure of a battery pack is a lot less likely than catastrophic failure of an IC engine if something goes wrong. And I’m sorry, but engines eventually do need to be replaced, too, if you intend to keep driving the vehicle. Most people don’t, though, because the cost to replace or rebuild an engine typically exceeds the value of the vehicle by a lot. The labor alone is $$$. And if you look at the lower cost of maintenance, and vastly lower cost of charging vs fuel over the lifetime of a battery pack, the cost to replace one ends up being far lower than what you will spend maintaining and driving an equivalent ICE vehicle for the same amount of time.
Yes, there are up-front costs, but they’ve come down a lot, and you can get a lightly used EV for a lot less than you probably think.
Lot of words, no sub–$5k EV listings. Again, my car was $700, 1 to own it 6 to fix the engine. Not at all hypothetical. I have a pretty solid idea what a used one costs and can find ICE beaters ~$500 all day. Post em if you’ve got em
If you have the skills and tools to repair and rebuild junkers on your own, that’s great for you. The vast majority of people do not, and the economic reality is that the total cost of ownership in that case does not tilt in favor of ICE vehicles. Sub $5K? Probably not right now. Sub $10K? Absolutely. And to most people that’s an amazing deal for a vehicle that will probably last at least 10 years with very little maintenance costs. That may not seem like a deal to you personally, but that was not the point.
My dad’s a mechanic, most cars get junked at engine failure because it requires a ton of labor to rebuild an old engine. While there are a lot of parts, pulling an IC engine out for repare is not a cheap task.
Like battery tech tends to improve over time. It being both the major constraint with the cars and the most frequent large replaced part means there’s a chance that when you do swap the batteries out your vehicle range increases beyond its original range. Imo thats a selling point.
I’m your new dad, the world has changed, and some idiot with a socket set and can-do attitude (hi) is 100% saving most of those junked cars. I’ve pulled motors with hand tools in gravel lots before and will likely get stuck doing it again. This is hell and the choices a lot of people face aren’t about which new thing would be better to buy. There is absolutely no sub–$5k EV market and if you’re clever and patient you can get a “junked” ICE car going for free
In the future, there will be more EV repair shops and aftermarket battery packs, but right now, these cars do not last as long as ICE on roads and that negates any green claims. Wrecker Tesla motors are cheap because there are so many of them.
I’m usually on the other side of this argument
- Tesla model 3 and y are $10k cheaper than originally
- we finally have a couple affordable EVs (Chevy equinox) and Nissan leaf is more usable than originally
- anyone with their own home should be able to charge at home cheaply
- just plugging in at home is so much more convenient than going to local gas stations all the time
- every road trip I’ve taken has had a usable amount of trip chargers (admittedly along the east coast)
- battery warrantees are typically longer than the first owner keeps a car, but real life shows batteries staying useful through 15 years, 250k miles
But yeah, in the us we’re not “over the hump” yet. There are still few EV models, selling for too much, and all the exciting announcements for next year have been cancelled. We’ve slowed the buildout of trip chargers and may have entirely stopped trying to find charging answers for apartments, condos, street parking. Worst of all the politicizing of EVs and cancelling the incentive means we are also not building a used EV market. Sure, there are cheap used ones now as a consequences of supply and demand, but that will constrict again with the pullback of new vehicles, while the existing used fleet rapidly obsolesces
Lot of downvotes, not one link to a sub-5k EV. “Anyone with their own home” and “batteries stay useful through 15 years” demonstrate an unimaginably privileged lifestyle from here. I rarely see vehicles that new and often end up sleeping in my car, which again cost less than a grand, a rounding error in your household budget. There are no EV options anywhere near this price point. The best deal I’ve ever seen was $950 for a Leaf self-estimating 30 miles of range. Refurbished small battery $4k, big one 6. The politicization is dumb as hell, both in terms of people they’d be a perfect fit for refusing to even consider them and the tribal immune response I got pointing out the high price floor has left me behind
but can’t afford one
It’s worthwhile to run all the figures through a spreadsheet.
I borrowed money to get one. The savings justify the interest. Mine will break even this year after 5 years. After that, it’s pure savings, so I really couldn’t afford not to.
They make a lot of sense for a lot of people, but less the lower end you go or more remote you live with a pretty solid floor ~$5k. Again, my car was less than 1
The main problems in the US in terms of EVs are lack of infrastructure and that car manufacturers keep pushing gigantic inneficient cars.
No excuse for car manufacturers focussing on high profit models/trims, but …
I think the infrastructure considerations are overblown. Don’t get me wrong, its very true and this is an appropriate role for the government to coordinate infrastructure buildout, that it’s failing at. But it’s enough to support far more EVs than we have, and for many it’s not the obstacle they think it is
- there’s a solid percentage of people who own their own home and can charge at home - that should be a no-brainer yet most don’t have EVs yet.
- most of the us population is within 50 miles of a trip chargers, which, in conjunction with 300 mile ranges, makes road trips doable without too much inconvenience
I completely agree with you there.
However, unfortunately more often than not people focus on the 0.1% of the use case for their car rather than the 99.9% day to say. I think until the infrastructure is ubiquitous and reliable, people tend to think that EVs are not practical.
That’s wrong, but I feel it gets in the way of people getting them.
And to be clear, I am an apartment dwelling EV owner that cannot charge at home. The difference is that I don’t live in the YS and can charge literally everywhere I drive to.
Petrol is still cheap (here it’s over $10 per gallon), and so long as the US continues to severely undertax it, the US (and global) economy is going to keep paying the price.
True, but spoiled petrolheads are complaint how expensive it is now that it hit $3.49/gal
Don’t worry, we’l invent privatized public transit again soon
2/3 of Americans still won’t buy them. They love overpaying for overpriced, oversized gas guzzlers. This has all happened before and will probably happen again. This is the country that elects people who want to tear down windmills and solar panels so they can “drill baby drill”.
After a certain price; people will hurt. I hope we reach that price and Joe “My F350 has truck nuts” eats shit.
evs are somewhat overpriced as well.
Only in USA. But just add that to the list of USA suckage.
I love EVs and still lease one, but they’re horrible for family’s needing to travel thousands of miles to take holiday/vacation or to see family.
Broke down and literally just sold my Kia EV6 to get a Toyota Highlander Hybrid: zero regrets. There’s still real world use cases for gas cars still.
Do you drive all thousands of miles in 1 single session? You the driver needs resting and that’s like the perfect time to charge them back up.
We usually drive 400 miles straight without stopping and many times without seeing any civilization.
Further, most of the Western half of the USA has level 2 charging stations, not level 3 fast charge (L3 chargers exist yes, but are often relegated to areas way out of the way in major cities). So it’s no where close to just ‘taking a break’, it’s sitting there at Maveriks or Love’s or some random Target/walmart for hours next to Fred in his model 3 jacking off to porn while Tony in his Rivian on the other side sleeps.
Maybe it will be worth it in a decade when EVs can fast charge in under 30 minutes at a station in BFE Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, South Dakota or Minnesota for example.
For now however, the entire thing is not exactly advantageous for a family of 5 travelling 3,000 miles twice a year. Especially with young children.
Yeah, I live in the SF Bay Area and we’ve driven our EV to LA and Vegas. The stops are fine.
I’ve driven over 1,000 miles down the east coast without too much inconvenience.
It’s not just that people don’t really take as many road trip ps as they claim, but also a lot of them are quite doable. Of course we need a lot more infrastructure, but we do have a usable amount in many places. Of course a lot of geography is underserved, but that’s a small percentage of the population
We usually drive 400 miles straight without stopping and many times without seeing any civilization.
Further, most of the Western half of the USA has level 2 charging stations, not level 3 fast charge. So it’s no where close to just ‘taking a break’, it’s sitting there at Mavericks for hours next to Fred in his model 3 jacking off to porn while Tony in his Rivian on the other side sleeps.
Maybe it will be worth it in a decade when EVs can fast charge in under 30 minutes at a station in BFE Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, South Dakota or Minnesota for example.
For now however, the entire thing is not exactly advantageous for a family of 5 travelling 3,000 miles twice a year. Especially with young children.
For sure, infrastructure gets built out over time and least populated areas probably are last. But, pulling numbers out of my ass, if a third of the us has their own house and lives near a city or coast, at least a third of our vehicles could conveniently be EV already, and that number just increases over time
I had intended to reply to the person above you and deleted my post. sorry.
You are absolutely correct in your assessment though. We can travel from Tijuana, Mexico all the way to Canada on the 5 in our remaining EV with no issues actually. Sure, it requires planning where to stop to find a level 3 charger. but it’s doable.
Traversing the continent laterally is where EVs just fall short currently though and why we opted to get a hybrid.
I think hybrids are better because there is no reliance on an external electric source.
You forgot your /s tag.
