alt Hacker NewsI drive an EV because in every dimension I care about it’s a superior vehicle. They drive better, sound better, and use a fundamental force rather than flintstone fire smoke stink. It’s time to move on from pouring distilled dinosaur juice into your explosion mobile and join the Maxwell equation crowd. The upgrade of your electric is a one time cost that will enable you to use an EV until you move, and improves your home value, so hard to count it into the cost of the car.
Plus they last basically forever and require almost no maintenance. I like being able to never change oil, tune up, belts, whatever every few months. Every few years I get the cabin filter changed and that’s it. In 10 years the battery might be reduced by 20%, and I might replace the batteries around 15-20 years out, but I expect to literally drive it into the ground. (Mine is a Tesla with unlimited super charging for life, and I live next to a super charger)
I have family overseas and will likely buy them one of these EV Camrys. If they’re good, I might get one for my daughter. At $30k it’s fairly affordable.
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I'm not anti EV. I would love to own an EV. I just can't justify the expense. In my case a big part of it is the cost of upgrading the electrical, otherwise I might be inclined to pay the premium.
I'll point out one area that EVs are inferior in lifespan - calendar life of the battery. I use a bicycle for day to day and take the car only on road trips so I only end up driving about 5k mi/yr or so, maybe 10k if I roam far. At that pace the 2% capacity loss per calendar year (even higher in hot climates) will total any EV I buy long before an ICE vehicle has age issues. ICE vehicles without defects do not creep towards engine failure or transmission failure little by little like EVs do, or at least do so at a pace far slower than EVs, as long as they are driven at least once a month to prevent issues ICE vehicles can get in storage.
Unfortunately EVs still have a ways to go to catch up to my use case of buying 10-15 yr old vehicles with 100k mi for $5k and taking them to remote trails where a 550mi range is useful for safety. Such vehicles can be screened for design defects and are therefore more reliable than new vehicles - see the Toyota V6 recall for an example that even a sterling reputation isn't as strong a guarantee as just waiting and seeing. Maybe the EV range will catch up in my life but I wouldn't expect the cost of those long range models to catch up for a long time, and by the time an EV is well-used and in my price range it will no longer be a long range EV what with the capacity degradation. See how this use case perfectly hits all the negatives of EVs? It's not that uncommon a use case in North America among us dirtbag wilderness enthusiasts. I don't doubt EVs are strictly better for many people though and am very interested to see how their long term reliability and cost fares as they trickle into the 10+ yr used market I participate in.
Btw my diy oil change takes 20 minutes and costs $20 all in and during that time I do an annual safety once-over which an EV would also require. So almost 0 net time involved and a negligible amount of money compared to things like tires which cost me 5x as much per year, a number that apparently is higher for EVs since they use tires more quickly afaik. Plus many EVs seem to be much harder (intentionally?) to do DIY repairs on - wrenchers probably won't move over for a long time either.