I heard someone said that, at the end EV will cost you almost the same as gasoline vehicle, if you have to change the expensive battery every so often. Can someone please give me more info on this? Thank you so much.
One thing to note is that car infrastructure maintenance (e.g. upkeeping roads and bridges) is often paid for in substantial part through a gas tax. Electric cars don’t pay the gas tax, so they are essentially freeloading. In the future, this may change, but this is one reason why EVs are currently cheaper than ICEs.
My state hits you with a tax you can pay per mile or once a year with registration, and was fairly expensive, so not really true here.
That sounds sensible. Car use is heavily subsidized, so someone is paying for those miles. It makes sense that a greater proportion of that cost falls on the driver.
At least in Georgia, I actually pay more in “gas tax” by owning an EV because I just don’t drive enough but the yearly cost doesn’t reflect miles driven
I pay for that infrastructure when I register my car. As in, I pay easy more than an ICE car does. Way more. There is no freeloading going on. It is just a propaganda point used by oil interests to discourage people from adopting evs. The freeloaders you are looking for are the corporate interests who are using my lungs to clear the poisons they are spilling into the air with their diesel engines. Those are the freeloaders you are looking for. Protip: you can spot the freeloaders in a crowd real easy. They are the ones pointing their fingers and yelling “freeloaders”. Projection is a powerful tool
Oh please, your modest increase in registration fees do not cover all the externalities of cars. Cars still enjoy TONS of subsidies, including free parking, free highways, etc. In fact, 60% of the surface areas of most cities in NA are devoted to cars.
It’s hilarious that you think you’re fighting “Big Corporate Lobbying” by defending EVs. I don’t know where you get that I’m in favor of ICEs. I am against car dependence entirely. You’re being brainwashed into thinking environmentalism is just about buying another expensive product instead of fighting the car lobby entirely.
In Australia, roads are paid for out of the general tax pool, and from a proportion of the registration cost. Fuel excise goes into the general tax pool and doesn’t directly fund roads.
This hasn’t stopped states from trying to implement a distance based tax on electric and low emission vehicles.
Victoria introduced one under the guise of needing extra money to pay for roads. It was a state-collected tax. The federal government collects fuel excise, so the state wasn’t losing funding from electric car owners. The new tax collected didn’t even go toward roads.
There were numerous other critical issues with this tax, but it’s still running.
Distance based taxes are economically better because they internalize the externalities of driving. That is, driving more benefits the driver but is paid for by the general tax pool. This means people are encouraged to drive more than they should because the true costs are borne by society as a whole (including non-drivers) and not the individual driving.
Isn’t most (non-environmental) road damage done by commercial trucks?
Maybe paying for roads by taxing fuel was always going to be a losing battle since mpg requirements have been trending upwards for decades.
There is obviously a LOT of car infrastructure that is not used by commercial trucks: residential streets and parking lots account for most road surface area. There are also many other externalities besides maintenance like pollution and accidents. By not properly taxing distance driven, we are essentially subsidizing car use.
Large trucks (semi-truck, big-rig, 18-wheeler, etc.) cause around 200,000 times the damage to roads per distance driven than cars.
Even accounting for the lower number of trucks than cars, in Australia trucks cause around 50,000 times more damage to roads per year than cars.
In Australia, commercial trucks pay less fuel excise per litre than cars.
Still way cheaper even if you replace the battery when recommended (7 years ish)
Add in the minimal to zero auto maintenance and your EV just keeps getting cheaper every time Tucker’s bronco needs an oil change and filter.
Last time I took my EV in for service the guy just told me to come back in 6 months. Truly hilarious.
No spark plugs, oil changes, no transmission fluid, nothing to leak. No air filter or fuel filter or vacuum hoses or plug wires or whatever they are going to try and sell you.
Plus, fewer brake jobs because of regenerative braking.
I miss a manual transmission but I don’t think I’ll ever go back to gas.
My dream would be an 80s M3 with an electric engine swap. There are electric motors you can just bolt in front of the transmission as a direct replacement for a gasoline engine. I’ve heard most people just put the transmission in 3rd gear and leave it there, but I bet it would be crazy fun to take off from green lights in 2nd and go through the gears while accelerating. Having the best of both worlds imo
Which vehicles or manufacturers specifically suggest replacing a battery at 7 years?
I have not heard of any manufacturer recomending a battery replacement. If you can find any sources I would love to read them.
That’s weird, it’s very common to replace ev batteries as they age because they tend to lose capacity depending on how they’re used.
Maybe if you’ve only used gasoline vehicles up until this point you would not have heard about replacing batteries? Although gasoline car still have batteries which have to be replaced often. EVs just have much bigger batteries than the car batteries you’re used to, if that makes it more relatable.
Delfast recommends ten years max, Nissan recommends 8, most ev batteries lose a significant portion or more(easily 30% ) of capacity before a decade is up, just google any ev company for their company’s recommendation and then weigh that against real world usage and replacement statistics.
Interesting. I guess my 2011 Nissan Leaf would be an outlier then. It’s lost some range, but I think it will keep working for me for at least another 10 years.
A gas car costs twice as much as a gas car after like 100k miles or so… you end up paying for some random ass shit that broke every couple months. Alternator here, transmission there, radiator, head gasket, O2 sensors, rusted out muffler, injectors… it’s not like your gas motor just keeps on trucking forever and doesn’t nickel and dime the fuck out of you as it ages. An EV is mainly just gonna lose some capacity as it gets elderly, and isn’t likely to have random little repairs as often.
If you ain’t super well off, you roll your shit til the wheels fall off, and with an EV, that’s just going to mean that the Tesla that goes 300 miles on a charge today, in ten years, is gonna be a Tesla that goes 150 miles on a charge, and there’s going to be people that will rock that old ass battery pack for as long as itll keep rocking, and a lot of those packs aren’t actually going to get replaced at the age everyone is claiming they will be.
Battery pack might be the whole ass cost of the car, but poo-pooing EVs over it is disingenuous if you ask me.
The main counter to that is that EVs are very difficult to repair on your own, so when something breaks, you’re going to be taking it to a specialist shop. While you’re right in saying that ICE components break, let’s not act like electric motors are indestructible pieces of machinery
I have never in my life repaired a car on my own, so that means nothing to me.
Bought an electric car in early 2020. Costs me a few bucks a months to keep charged, tops. I have spent literally 0 dollars on maintenance for it. There are just plain fewer moving parts. It’s a battery, an electric motor, and that’s about it.
So that’s 3.5 years (so far) of paying practically nothing to operate a smooth-driving, quiet vehicle that still gets almost 300 miles per charge and operates primarily off the wind power I buy from my utility company.
I expect to drive this one until it can’t hold a charge anymore, and then I’ll get another one.
How is an EV harder to repair on your own than an ICE? I think you’re wildly underestimating the shade tree tinkerers of the world.
Sure, an EV contains a bunch of proprietary software and configuration, but so do ICE vehicles, and people have been hacking that shit for decades. They’ll swap out the whole ass controller if that’s what it takes :)
They’ll swap out the whole ass controller if that’s what it takes :)
And we all know the ass controller is the most important part.
that’s just going to mean that the Tesla that goes 300 miles on a charge today, in ten years, is gonna be a Tesla that goes 150 miles on a charge, and there’s going to be people that will rock that old ass battery pack for as long as itll keep rocking
That 150 mile battery pack is still hugely useful with zero refurbishment as a stationary utility power battery. A Tesla model 3 Long Range (330 mile version) is 75kwh. A brand new Tesla Powerwall is 13.5kwh. So that old 150 mile battery is equal to the capacity of 5 and half brand new Tesla Powerwalls.
There’s already a solar power generating company using old Nissan Leaf batteries to store excess generated electricity, then putting that electricity back on the grid at peak times to earn money.
Planned obsolence. EVs suck after 5 years or so. SimPLy BuY a neW oNE.
I’m guessing you don’t actually know anyone who owns an ev. My coworker has been driving over 100km a day on his Leaf for nearly a decade and he’s only ever had tires and brakes done on it. I’d buy an electric myself if I didn’t need my truck for work
Really hard to believe your friends Leaf with more than 200k still holds a range of 100km, specially knowing the 2015 version had a initial range of 135 km
Driving a Leaf 100km a day does not mean that the battery has a range of 100km or more. It is extremely common to charge whenever you park, whether at work or when stopping at home or any time in between drives. With a charge in the middle of the day, even a car with a max range of 50km could still do 100km in one day.
The point he’s making is not about range, it’s about the longevity and the reliability of the car.
You know what you’ll never have to do to an electric vehicle?
Replace a stolen catalytic converter.
